'Mormon Match' Dating Site Sued By Church

A Mormon dating website is being sued by the Mormon church over a trademark dispute.

Start-up company Mormon Match is looking to connect single members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

But the business arm of the church - Intellectual Reserve (IR) - has objected to the site trademarking the name Mormon Match because it holds the rights to the word Mormon.

After IR tried to get the site shut down, protection was sought in the US District Court by site founder Jonathan Eller. The IR then sued Mr Eller and his company.

The Mormon church in Salt Lake City, Utah

Now the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has stepped in to defend Mr Eller, who is counter-suing the IR.

IR claims trademarks on several terms related to the church, including Mormon, Book of Mormon, and The Mormon Church.

But in a brief filed with the court, EFF said the word Mormon was too broad a term to be claimed in this way.

It said: "We believe there is more at stake in this litigation that the simple question of whether an online dating site should have to change its name.

"Intellectual Reserve has brought numerous claims against Jonathan Eller, a small start-up entrepreneur that in all likelihood cannot afford to fight.

"And that is unfortunate, because Eller's use of the term Mormon is indisputably fair.

"Cases such as this one, where the affirmative defence of fair use is so clear from the outset, can and should be dismissed at the earliest possible stage of litigation."

The Mormon Match site is still in a pre-registration mode and has not officially launched yet.

It explicitly states on the home page that it is not affiliated with the church.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for August 8.

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Osborne Should Heed IMF House Market Warning

What would you like first: the good news or the bad?

Well, if you're George Osborne, the good news is that the long battle with the International Monetary Fund - the one that began last year when chief economist Olivier Blanchard told Sky News the Chancellor was "playing with fire" on economic policy - is over.

We knew as much in Washington earlier this spring, when Blanchard acknowledged that the Fund's forecasts for Britain had been overly pessimistic.

But today the saga has come to its end, with the Fund also giving the Chancellor's fiscal plans (those precise plans Blanchard had criticised) a ringing endorsement.

"The planned fiscal adjustment this year is appropriate," the IMF says in its annual survey of the UK economy - the so-called Article IV report.

This is a shift from last year, when the Article IV recommended that the Chancellor bring forward spending plans to try to boost the economy. So cause for celebration at the Treasury?

Not altogether, for there is also some bad news. The criticisms of the Treasury's tax-and-spend plans may have dissolved away, but they have been replaced with concerns of another variety: about the housing market.

Such concerns are hardly new: the European Commission already recommended earlier this week that the Government take action to prevent a housing bubble.

However, the Fund is a touch more authoritative - and more specific. Its suggestions are as follows: The Bank of England should leave interest rates on hold for the time being; it should impose limits on how much mortgage companies can lend homebuyers in relation to their incomes; it should also consider outright caps on loan-to-income levels and loan-to-value ratios.

On top of this, the Government should "consider whether [Help to Buy] should be modified or even remains necessary for the full three years of the policy. And as the volume of high-LTV transactions rises, the FPC will need to evaluate if the program is contributing to financial risks."

Like the Commission (and, well, every economist out there), it suggests that Britain needs to build more homes. However, there are no silver bullets in this enterprise, and it acknowledges that all of the above "can only be temporary palliatives to an underlying problem."

The best it can suggest is that the Government reconsider "unnecessary constraints on brownfield and greenfield developments; tax policies that discourage the most economically-efficient use of property; and underdeveloped rental markets with relatively short lease terms."

Some might see the final point as a note of support for the rental reforms recently suggested by Ed Miliband. The problem for politicians of every stripe is that the housing market's structural problems are no secret: but mending them will take many years.

Reforms to the planning system have been desperately needed for decades, but only now are they being implemented; changes to green belt regulations are an economist's dream but a local politician's nightmare – so are unlikely to be implemented before the election, if at all.

However, it is clear that the Chancellor would be foolhardy to ignore the tone of the IMF's report. For there is a growing risk of a housing bubble, and with it the political risk that George Osborne could be remembered not as the austerity Chancellor who got it right, but the man who generated yet another housing market bust.

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RAC Demands Dirty Diesel Scrappage Scheme

Taking Britain's oldest and most polluting diesel cars off the roads could save lives, the Government is being told.

The RAC Foundation believes that by offering financial incentives, some of the 30,000 people believed killed each year by dirty air in the UK could be saved.

The charity argued that ministers should consider introducing a new scrappage scheme for vehicles which emit high levels of particulate matter and nitrogen oxide - with both linked to lung cancer, asthma, diabetes and heart problems.

The report pointed to estimates that poor air quality in the UK currently reduce average life expectancy at birth by six months.

It also suggested that removing the particles from the air would have a bigger impact in England and Wales than eliminating all road deaths or deaths from passive smoking.

European regulations in recent years have helped achieve significant reductions in particulate emissions from new diesel cars.

Older models often throw clouds of black dust from the exhaust - particularly when accelerating.

Diesels now make up almost one-in-three of the vehicles on the UK's roads.

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: "Many people believed that by buying diesels they would get better fuel consumption and help fight global warming through low CO2 emissions.

"But such was the focus on the planet that policy makers missed the impact older diesel models in particular have on health in urban areas.

"The car industry has risen to the challenge of cleaning up diesel engines but we still need to deal with the legacy of the dirtiest diesels."

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Couples Now Demanding 'Social Media Prenups'

A top US attorney says a third of her clients are now asking for social media clauses in prenuptial agreements.

Ann-Margaret Carrozza specialises in estate planning in New York and says each breach of an agreed social media rule can result in a fine of up to $50,000 (£29,700)

She said a typical clause will state couples cannot post nude photos, embarrassing photos or anything that is likely to harm a spouse's professional reputation.

She told ABC News: "It's a huge issue because we all know this stuff, once it's out there, you can't shake it.

"It can be humiliating. It can be painful. It's really no joke, and I expect this clause to become much more important."

She said the rules were less about making money, and instead to set boundaries in a relationship.

"The damage is psychological, in the case of humiliating posts and tweets and pictures out there, and it's economic because my career prospects are harmed."

Ms Carrozza is a former New York state assembly politician – and currently practises in Manhattan.

The clauses written by her state that for a typical client, a fine of around $50,000 would apply to each post or photograph published online.

A recent survey found 80% of US divorce attorneys say social networking issues in divorce proceedings are on the rise.

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Game Makes Market Return After 2012 Collapse

Video games retailer Game Digital is back on the stock market, two years after its collapse into administration and subsequent rescue.

Game, owned by US hedge fund Elliott Advisors, announced ahead of conditional trading this morning that the offer price for its flotation would raise gross proceeds of £121m - giving the firm a market value of £340m.

The offer was said to be fully subscribed.

The Initial Public Offering on the London Stock Exchange marked a new chapter for Game after the UK and Spanish arms were rescued from administration.

Game collapsed in 2012 with shareholders receiving nothing while 2,000 staff lost their jobs.

It was a casualty of not only the-then slump in high street spending but also a business model that left it with high rent bills and little access to the digital marketplace.

A number of key suppliers, including Electronic Arts, had refused to distribute major titles to the chain over cash flow fears.

Elliot Advisors has since slashed 300 poorly-performing stores and its new management team, led by former HMV executive Martyn Gibbs, has been credited with boosting sales and profits.

Mr Gibbs said today: "Game Digital is a profitable and cash generative business with a great team, strong supplier partnerships and exciting digital growth opportunities.

"These fundamentals have enabled us to attract quality investors who we welcome into our business.

"We are a truly specialist retailer, with a loyal customer base, operating in a growing market. Our supplier partners are producing increasingly advanced  gaming content, for which we will continue to develop and facilitate new ways to buy and play."

However, there was concern raised over the timing of the flotation and Game's past history.

Speaking after an hour's trading, Mark Priest, head of index and equity markets at ETX Capital, told Sky News: "It's come in at the offer price and not done a great deal.

"It's once bitten twice shy with a company that has been in administration in the past.

"You look at yesterday's 40% fall at ASOS and the shine has been slightly taken off online retailers. I think we're going to see the same with this stock."

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US Recovers 8.7 Million Jobs Lost In Recession

The US economy has now recouped all the 8.7 million jobs that were lost during the recession.

The Labor Department made the announcement as it was confirmed the steady improvement in hiring seen since the end of winter continued in May, with 217,000 net new jobs being created - in line with economists' forecasts.

The jobless rate remained at 6.3%.

Every major sector recruited - with the strongest growth recorded in services.

Despite the slowdown from April's 282,000 gain, May marked a fourth straight month with job gains above 200,000 and an important milestone in returning to pre-recession levels.

The Labor Department said employment had now risen by 8.8 million since hitting a trough in February 2010.

Average hourly earnings, which are being closely watched for signs of how fast labour market slack is easing, rose five cents last month.

The pace of hiring adds to data ranging from automobile sales to services and factory sector activity that has suggested annualised GDP growth this quarter will top 3%.

The economy contracted at a 1% rate in the first quarter, dragged down by unusually harsh winter weather and a slow pace of inventory building by businesses.

Economists expect previously discouraged workers to re-enter the labour force over the course of the year.

Such a move would be welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has cited low labour force participation as one of the reasons for maintaining an extraordinarily easy monetary policy.

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IMF Sees Housing Market Threat To Recovery

Osborne Should Heed IMF House Market Warning

Updated: 11:57am UK, Friday 06 June 2014

By Ed Conway, Economics Editor

What would you like first: the good news or the bad?

Well, if you're George Osborne, the good news is that the long battle with the International Monetary Fund - the one that began last year when chief economist Olivier Blanchard told Sky News the Chancellor was "playing with fire" on economic policy - is over.

We knew as much in Washington earlier this spring, when Blanchard acknowledged that the Fund's forecasts for Britain had been overly pessimistic.

But today the saga has come to its end, with the Fund also giving the Chancellor's fiscal plans (those precise plans Blanchard had criticised) a ringing endorsement.

"The planned fiscal adjustment this year is appropriate," the IMF says in its annual survey of the UK economy - the so-called Article IV report.

This is a shift from last year, when the Article IV recommended that the Chancellor bring forward spending plans to try to boost the economy. So cause for celebration at the Treasury?

Not altogether, for there is also some bad news. The criticisms of the Treasury's tax-and-spend plans may have dissolved away, but they have been replaced with concerns of another variety: about the housing market.

Such concerns are hardly new: the European Commission already recommended earlier this week that the Government take action to prevent a housing bubble.

However, the Fund is a touch more authoritative - and more specific. Its suggestions are as follows: The Bank of England should leave interest rates on hold for the time being; it should impose limits on how much mortgage companies can lend homebuyers in relation to their incomes; it should also consider outright caps on loan-to-income levels and loan-to-value ratios.

On top of this, the Government should "consider whether [Help to Buy] should be modified or even remains necessary for the full three years of the policy. And as the volume of high-LTV transactions rises, the FPC will need to evaluate if the program is contributing to financial risks."

Like the Commission (and, well, every economist out there), it suggests that Britain needs to build more homes. However, there are no silver bullets in this enterprise, and it acknowledges that all of the above "can only be temporary palliatives to an underlying problem."

The best it can suggest is that the Government reconsider "unnecessary constraints on brownfield and greenfield developments; tax policies that discourage the most economically-efficient use of property; and underdeveloped rental markets with relatively short lease terms."

Some might see the final point as a note of support for the rental reforms recently suggested by Ed Miliband. The problem for politicians of every stripe is that the housing market's structural problems are no secret: but mending them will take many years.

Reforms to the planning system have been desperately needed for decades, but only now are they being implemented; changes to green belt regulations are an economist's dream but a local politician's nightmare – so are unlikely to be implemented before the election, if at all.

However, it is clear that the Chancellor would be foolhardy to ignore the tone of the IMF's report. For there is a growing risk of a housing bubble, and with it the political risk that George Osborne could be remembered not as the austerity Chancellor who got it right, but the man who generated yet another housing market bust.

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Vodafone Blows Whistle On State Snooping

By Tom Cheshire, Technology Correspondent

Security services should not be snooping on people's data just because it is technically possible, Vodafone has warned in a report that reveals the global extent of government surveillance on the operator's customers.

It called on authorities to submit to "regular scrutiny by an independent authority", and to "amend legislation which enables agencies and authorities to access an operator's communications infrastructure without the knowledge and direct control of the operator".

In some countries, governments have "direct" and "permanent access" to Vodafone's infrastructure - so don't have to make an interception request.

"In our view, it is governments - not communications operators - who hold the primary duty to provide greater transparency on the number of agency and authority demands issued to operators," Vodafone says.

But the company made clear it would continue to comply with the requests, rather than cease its operations in a country: "If we do not comply with a lawful demand for assistance, governments can remove our licence to operate, preventing us from providing services to our customers."

The report breaks down lawful intercept requests and communications data request for the 29 countries in which Vodafone operates.

Nine governments already publish this information. The UK government made 2,760 interception requests and 514, 608 communications data requests to all mobile phone operators in 2013.

By comparison, Italy made 139,962 interception requests in total and 605,601 communications requests to Vodafone alone. In the US, Verizon said it received 321,545 requests for customer information.

Some of the figures are being disclosed by Vodafone for the first time, including those for Spain and Tanzania.

But several countries refused to reveal the number of requests they made, including Egypt, India, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey.

The report also lays bare just how much communications data - often referred to as metadata - can reveal about a person.

"It is possible to learn a great deal about an individual's movements, interest and relationships from an analysis of metadata … In many countries, agencies and authorities therefore have legal powers to order operators to disclose large volumes of this kind of communications data."

Vodafone said it was publishing the report because "questions have been asked about the role of communications operators such as Vodafone in support of those activities".

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White Van Woman 'Held Back By Sexism'

By Clare Fallon, Sky News Reporter

Campaigners are calling for more help to encourage women to enter traditionally male professions, including plumbing, building and plastering.

Despite headlines about the rise of the so-called white van woman and claims a record number of females are working in the trades, industry experts say the proportion is still worryingly low. 

According to Women and Manual Trades, a national organisation which offers support to women, only around 1% of people in skilled trade occupations are female. 

Campaigners say part of the problem is sexist abuse still suffered by some women working in male-dominated professions. 

Hattie Hasan set up Stopcocks, an all-woman plumbing company, after working in the profession for more than two decades. 

She says sexist attitudes are still a problem.

"Unfortunately even after my own 25 years in plumbing things haven't changed much ... girls are still not encouraged to get into the trades.

"Firstly they're not encouraged at school. When I was at school, I just wanted the boys to fancy me, I didn't want to be a plumber and I think that's the pressure for most girls.

Hattie Hassan, who set up her own plumbing firm, calls for more role models

"The second thing is that there are not enough role models. The more female plumbers there are the more there will be because the more people see us the more they'll realise it is a possibility for them.

"There are a lot of things that people say women can't do such as carrying heavy things but health and safety rules mean even if you're a bloke you still can't carry over a certain amount of weight.

"Also I think people seem to forget that women carry babies ... and women do that on a regular basis so I don't think there are barriers where heavy things are concerned."

She added: "The barriers for women are that once women have trained where do they go? The opportunities for getting employment in plumbing are not as widespread as they used to be. It's difficult for lads coming out, but it's even more difficult for girls.

"So really the only route for them is self-employment."

However, there are signs things may improve in the future.

Training centres where construction skills are taught report an increase in the number of women enrolling. 

At Access Training in South Wales, women account for one in 10 of those signing up for courses including plastering, plumbing and electrics.

Mary Henderson swapped her admin job for plumbing

Mary Henderson quit her office job to retrain as a plumber, saying she was fed up being patronised by workmen she had hired. 

"I feel like it's a useful thing to have a trade in this competitive, career-driven industry - it just made sense.

"I used to work in admin, from when I left school, and basically I had a lot of trouble with my own bathroom ... I wanted to do something more practical so plumbing just seemed to pop out at me."

She believes there should be more encouragement for women to get into the trades.

"I don't think practical things are pushed at children leaving education  It's not gender specific, it's just something that boys tend to fall into whereas girls are pushed into the first job that comes and then it just rolls into admin.

"I think there should be more focus on school leavers. I think it's a really good thing to have a trade and it should be suggested to students because exams are forced on them and teachers can't afford to have an interest in what they do after that."

Although she is in a minority, Ms Henderson says she is content being a woman in a man's world.

"There is slight banter and it's a little less PC than what you find in an office, but to be honest I find that refreshing rather than threatening."

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Oil Giant Shell Kicks Off Hunt For New Chair

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Royal Dutch Shell, the biggest company on London's stock market, has kicked off the hunt for a new chairman.

Sky News has learnt that the oil giant has asked Egon Zehnder International, the executive search firm, to identify a successor to Jorma Ollila, who is expected to step down next year.

Mr Ollila will have served as Shell's chairman for nine years by next year's annual meeting, marking a natural departure point for the Finnish former Nokia boss.

It was unclear this weekend whether a successor could be drawn from Shell's existing ranks of non-executive directors, who include Guy Elliott, the former finance director of Rio Tinto; Sir Nigel Sheinwald, a former British ambassador to the US; and Linda Stuntz, a top American lawyer.

Some leading investors in Shell are likely to be keen for the company to appoint an outsider as its new chairman as the oil group continues to refine its strategy under its recently-appointed chief executive.

Ben van Beurden took over at the helm of Shell at the beginning of the year, having previously run its downstream operations.

Mr van Beurden was a surprise appointment to replace Peter Voser, another veteran Shell executive who was well-regarded in the City but who quit to spend more time with his family.

The process of finding Mr Ollila's successor is not thought to be especially well-advanced although an announcement about an appointment is likely to be made this year.

The leadership transition will represent another important moment for Shell, with Mr Ollila having taken over as chairman in 2006 in the wake of a scandal which involved the company dramatically overstating its reserves.

With a market capitalisation of more than £153bn, Shell's value outstrips that of every other British company, beating HSBC into second place. It is more than 50% larger than BP, its rival energy group.

Shell attracted some disquiet over its executive pay policies at its annual meeting last month, although it averted the scale of revolt witnessed at a large number of public companies in recent weeks.

The oil giant has also faced searching questions about its strategy since Mr van Beurden took over, after being forced into a profit warning in January which it blamed on weaker refining margins and higher exploration costs.

Like BP, it is engaged in a process of offloading non-core assets, which is expected to generate tens of billions of pounds in proceeds in the coming years.

A number of US shale assets are among those that Shell is likely to divest.

Shares in Shell have risen roughly 12% during the last year, a performance which has trailed that of the FTSE-100.

In his AGM speech, Mr Ollila acknowledged concerns about the company's progress.

"Our cashflow growth has been competitive in the last few years, and our cash flow, $40bn in 2013, was strong in our peer group.

"However, that's not the whole picture, since we have also had weak financial performance from some of our more mature businesses, from Downstream and North America upstream.

"The remuneration policies in the company reflect this performance, with total compensation for the executives reduced by some 50% from 2012 levels, including the use of downwards discretion on bonuses by the remuneration committee."

A Shell spokesman declined to comment on the search for Mr Ollila's successor.

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