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Moody’s Investors Service on Friday cut its long- and short-term debt ratings for American Express Co., citing deterioration in the credit card lender’s assets and the recession’s effects on its business.

Moody’s cut its senior long-term debt on American Express one level to A3 from A2. The downgrade tipped American Express closer to “junk” status, with its new long-term rating five levels below the highest investment-grade rating and four above non-investment grade.

The short-term rating was downgraded to Prime-2 from Prime-1. Moody’s also reiterated the negative outlook that it assigned to the company in October, signaling further downgrades are possible if business conditions worsen.

Despite Moody’s action, investors focused on the better-than-expected first-quarter results that American Express announced after markets closed Thursday, which led several analysts to boost their earnings outlooks and price targets for the stock. Shares of American Express rose $4.54, or nearly 22 percent, to $25.51 in afternoon trading, following the report that the company earned $361 million, or 31 cents per share, after paying preferred dividends.

Moody’s said its ratings downgrades “reflect the erosion of Amex’s asset quality and weaker revenue trends stemming from the severe U.S. economic recession.”

The agency, one of the two largest credit-rating companies in the U.S., also cited American Express’ “relatively high credit exposure in the states most heavily affected by home price declines, particularly California and Florida.”

The other main ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, said American Express remained under review for a possible downgrade, despite the stronger-than-expected earnings report.

“The story behind the numbers, as with all lending institutions, lies in the analysis of asset quality,” S&P credit analyst John Bartko said in a statement.

Bartko noted that American Express took a $1.8 billion provision for loan losses in the first quarter, up from $1.4 billion in the fourth quarter.

Even though American Express’ first-quarter profit easily beat analysts’ expectations, it was also the sixth straight quarter in which the company has reported a profit decline. Its earnings fell 63 percent in the latest period, compared with the year-ago quarter.

Nearly all lenders, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Discover Financial Services, are seeing more customers stop making monthly payments. At the same time, consumers are cutting back sharply on their spending.

S&P put American Express’ ratings on “CreditWatch negative” on March 19. On Friday, S&P said the review “should be resolved within the next 90 days following our reassessment of the deepening recession on the company’s prospects.”

S&P’s rating of American Express’ long-term debt remains at A - an investment-grade rating four notches above junk - with short-term ratings at A-1.

-Forbes

Shares of online DVD-rental pioneer Netflix Inc. (NFLX) dropped 5% Friday on concerns about the company’s outlook and increasing competition from DVD rental kiosks.

The stock recently traded down $2.27 at $43.05, a day after Netflix issued quarterly results.

At Lazard Capital Markets, analyst Barton Crockett, who has a sell rating on Netflix, said that despite an “impressive” quarter, earnings that topped analysts’ estimates and raised 2009 subscriber forecasts were already priced into the stock, which has jumped nearly 50% since the beginning of the year.

Crockett also said the company’s argument that kiosks are nothing to worry about “was not especially compelling.”

Chief Executive Reed Hastings told analysts Netflix expects DVD rental kiosks from Redbox, owned by Coinstar Inc. (CSTR), to be its main competitor by the end of 2009, surpassing video stores. The kiosks, which charge $1 per day for rentals, have sprung up at supermarkets, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) stores, 7-Eleven (SVNDY) outlets, and many other places with significant foot traffic.

A growing number of customers who cancel their Netflix subscriptions cite kiosks as a reason why they dropped the service, Hastings said.

But the CEO also said Netflix is not overly concerned about the kiosks, despite their increasing ubiquity, because the kiosks focus on new-release DVDs, which only account for about a third of Netflix’s rentals.

“Our differentiators continue to be our vast selection, over 100,000 titles, the convenience of mail and streaming,” he said.

The company has no current plans to offer stream-only rental subscriptions, Hastings said, contrary to speculation.

Hastings explained that although the company has considered the idea “from time to time…the combination of DVD rental and streaming is what our customers are interested in.”

However, Netflix does intend to spend “aggressively” to market its movie download service, so as to be competitive with rivals such as Apple Inc. (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and other streaming providers, Hastings said.

Still, the company expects the costs to acquire each customer to stay below $28 for the rest of 2009, according to Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy.

Netflix paid $25.79 to acquire each subscriber in the first quarter, down from $29.48 a year earlier, the company reported.

For the second quarter, Netflix expects revenue of $403 million to $409 million and a total of 10.4 million to 10.6 million subscribers by June 30.

Netflix ended the first quarter with about 10.3 million subscribers, up 25% from the 8.24 million customers it had at the end of the first quarter of 2008.

Churn, or the rate of subscriber cancellations, was 4.2% in the first quarter, compared with 3.9% a year earlier.

For a basic monthly subscription rate starting at $4.99, Netflix customers go online to select DVDs, which are delivered via first-class mail, including postage-paid return envelopes. More than 97% of Netflix subscribers live in areas that can receive disks in one business day, and the company’s library carries more than 100,000 titles.

Since January 2007, Netflix has offered downloads as well, with more than 12,000 titles available for streaming. With unlimited plans starting at $8.99 a month, customers can rent at least one DVD at a time and stream as many movies as they like.

Starting April 27, Netflix will raise its fees for subscribers who want the more costly Blu-ray high-definition discs.

The price for a basic subscription with one DVD out at a time on an unlimited basis, plus Blu-ray, will go to $10.99 a month from $8.99. The unlimited plan allowing eight DVDs to be taken out at a time with Blu-ray will cost $56.99, up from $47.99.

Netflix said its first-quarter profit rose 68% as the company surpassed the 10 million subscriber mark and cut costs during the period, topping the average estimate of Wall Street analysts.

The company also lifted its revenue and subscriber estimates for 2009. For the year, the company raised its revenue outlook to a range of $1.63 billion to $1.67 billion from its previous forecast of $1.58 billion to $1.635 billion.

And the company now anticipates that it will end 2009 with 11.2 million to 11.8 million customers, up from an earlier estimate of 10.6 million to 11.3 million.

Netflix said it earned $22.4 million, or 37 cents a share, compared with a profit of $13.3 million, or 21 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago.

Excluding stock-based compensation, Netflix said it would have earned 40 cents a share in the latest three months.

Revenue rose 21% to $394 million.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet Research were expecting a profit of 33 cents a share, excluding stock-based compensation, on $391.1 million in revenue. - WSJ

A chic alternative to the more mundane BlackBerry Curve, the HTC S740 holds appeal for those who prefer a physical keyboard to a touchscreen. This slim, eye-catching smartphone has a clean interface and a spacious keyboard–making it one of the best Windows Mobile devices I’ve ever used. But that isn’t to say the S740 doesn’t have its quirks–call quality and camera quality both disappointed. (This model will also be known as the S743–see near the end of this review.)

The HTC S740 handset takes a design cue from last year’s HTC Touch Pro and Touch Diamond: Like those models, it has a jagged, rubberized back cover. This ultraslim, remote control-like smartphone (it’s 4.6 by 1.7 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4.9 ounces) features a 12-key number pad and a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. On the front face of the phone lies a 2.4-inch QVGA screen. Below the display sits a four-way navigational toggle with six buttons (two softkeys, plus Talk, End, Home, and Back) and the numeric keypad. The keys are flat and a bit slippery, but easy enough to press; they’re also quite large and brightly backlit.

Like the HTC Touch Pro, the S740’s keyboard has some useful shortcut keys for SMS/MMS, e-mail, and Internet Explorer. I also appreciated having several other keys, such as the CTRL key–which made copying and pasting a breeze–as well as the Page Up and Page Down keys, and the “@” key. In short, the S740 makes other smartphones with so-called “full” QWERTY keyboards look miniscule and nonfunctional. My only gripe: I didn’t find the keys as tactile and clicky as I normally prefer on a hardware keyboard. Another trick in the S740’s bag: Sliding the keyboard open triggers the accelerometer to rotate the display from vertical to horizontal, and without the accelerometer lag I’ve seen with other HTC handsets.

In my use, the S740 had unreliable call quality over T-Mobile’s 3G network. Distracting background static could be heard on both ends of the line. Voices sounded loud and natural enough; however, a few of my contacts said I seemed to be speaking from a windy place (I was indoors). I heard an echo on a few occasions as well as some distortion in voices.

The S740 runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard edition; on top of that, it has an easy-to-navigate sliding panel overlay. The home screen delivers one-click access to your calendar, call history, text messages, e-mails, the local weather, Internet Explorer, your music library, and your settings. Navigating the interface was straightforward, and I didn’t have any trouble finding what I needed. Standard Windows Mobile apps are preloaded on the S740, including Microsoft Office Mobile and Windows Media Player. Equipped with 256MB of RAM and a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, I found the phone responsive, and did not experience much sluggishness, even while multitasking.

I found surfing the Web adequate with the default browser, Internet Explorer. The S740 supports POP3 and IMAP e-mail as well as Exchange push e-mail.

You can use either Windows Media Player or HTC’s Audio Manager as a music player; I prefer the latter. With Audio Manager, you can create playlists and view songs by artist, album, genre, or composer. The player has many presets for the equalizer; it can be manually customized, but you have to plug in the headphones to use it. When you plug a headset into the S740, you can use the Audio Booster function, which bolsters the bass of the song. Unfortunately, like most HTC phones, the S740 has a proprietary headphone jack, which limits its capabilities as a media player.

The 3.2-megapixel camera has standard features such as brightness and white-balance controls as well as metering. Image quality wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t stunning either. Colors appeared washed out and a bit fuzzy in both low and bright light environments. The only time I noticed any lag in the S740 was while using the camera and adjusting its settings.

The HTC S740 is currently available in the U.S. at third-party stores, such as Amazon.com. A U.S.-specific device will be coming out later this year under the name S743. At the time of this review, it had not been confirmed whether the S743 will be similarly priced. The S740 is a quadband GSM phone, so voice will work in the US. Data, however, can only be used over EDGE or Wi-Fi. The S740 also supports HSDPA at 7.2 mbps in Europe, meaning Internet speeds up to 18 times faster than US 3G networks.

The HTC S740 has everything you could want in a messaging and e-mail powerhouse: A fantastic keyboard, a slick operating system, and slim design. If you can tolerate mediocre call quality, the HTC S740 (or S743, when it debuts), is an excellent buy.

It’s looking more and more like there’s a bankruptcy filing in Chrysler’s future-maybe as soon as next week.

White House officials, Chrysler executives, and the banks holding the struggling automaker’s debt all point to a strong likelihood that Chrysler will fail to win the concessions needed from debt holders and auto worker unions by Apr. 30 to merit additional loans from the U.S. Treasury. On Wednesday, Apr. 22, Michael Robinet, head of global forecasting for CSM Worldwide, said he placed a “95% likelihood” on a Chrysler bankruptcy filing.

Behind that hard arithmetic is a calculation by the banks that they would do better selling Chrysler’s assets in bankruptcy court than by taking a $1.5 billion deal being offered by Chrysler owner Cerberus Capital Management and Treasury, say officials close to the negotiations who spoke on background. The banks are led by Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Morgan Stanley (MS), with some smaller banks and hedge funds involved as well.

Asset-by-Asset Valuation
There has been some movement in negotiations. On Thursday the Treasury’s auto task force proposed that banks holding $6.9 billion of Chrysler’s secured debt-collateralized by hard assets such as factories, real estate, and brands such as Jeep-accept $1.5 billion and 5% equity in the company, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. But that’s a long way from the $4.5 billion and 40% equity that bankers and private equity firms have been demanding.

Political pressure is being applied to the banks by the White House as well as by officials such as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and members of Congress. They express outrage that banks that took taxpayer money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program would take such a hard-line position, which would jeopardize the U.S. auto industry and hundreds of supplier companies if Chrysler and/or General Motors (GM) go bankrupt.

So far, the banks are dug in. But it wouldn’t be easy to find buyers for Chrysler’s dented assets if a sale were forced in the current economic climate. Here’s an asset-by-asset valuation of what a broken-up Chrysler might be worth.

Jeep, the Best of the Lot
By most accounts, Chrysler’s Jeep brand is its most valuable asset. Jeeps, after all, are world renowned for their off-road ruggedness. But they’re also gas-thirsty SUVs. Any company taking on Jeep is going to have a hard time meeting tougher fuel-economy and C02 emissions standards in the U.S. and Europe. Last year, Jeep sales in the U.S., the brand’s biggest market by far, dropped 30% from the year before, to 334,000. (Globally, Jeep sold 497,000 vehicles.) Buy Jeep, and you get a sprawling, costly, unionized manufacturing complex in Toledo, Ohio. And customers have gotten used to seeing sales incentives on Jeeps as high as $10,000.

The most likely buyers of Jeep would be Chinese automakers or Indian SUV/pickup maker Mahindra & Mahindra, which is planning to enter the U.S. next year with its own brand in more than 200 dealerships. “There is value there, but making a profitable business model internationally in this environment is going to be tough for a lot of automakers,” says Gary Dilts, senior vice-president for global auto operations at J.D. Power & Associates (a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies (MHP), as is BusinessWeek).

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Two top Indian officials headed Friday to Sri Lanka to demand an immediate cease fire in the bloody civil war as a private U.N. document reported that nearly 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the last three months of fighting.

Concern for the safety of the civilians trapped in the war zone has increased in recent weeks as the government pushed ahead with its offensive to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels and end the nation’s quarter-century civil war.

On Monday, the military broke through rebel fortifications on the edge of a previously declared “no fire” zone along the northeastern coast, sparking an exodus of more than 100,000 civilians. The rebels said at least 1,000 civilians were killed in that battle and the Red Cross said hundreds had been killed or wounded.

Neighboring India, under pressure from its own Tamil population in the midst of a national election, was sending National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Monen to Sri Lanka on Friday to push for a cease-fire.

“We are very unhappy at the continued killing in Sri Lanka. All killing must stop. There must be an immediate cessation of all hostilities,” External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishu Prakash said in a statement Thursday.

International rights groups have accused the government of shelling densely populated civilian areas in the war zone and accused the rebels of holding the civilians hostage for use as human shields against the government offensive. Both sides deny the accusations.

At least 6,432 civilians were killed in the intense fighting over the past three months and 13,946 wounded, according to a private U.N. document circulated among diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka in recent days. The casualties were reported as “verified data” in the document, which was given to The Associated Press by a foreign diplomat Friday.

The U.N. has declined to publicly release its casualty figures and had no immediate comment on the document.

The level of civilian deaths has increased dramatically as the fighting has worn on, according to the U.N. An average of 33 civilians were killed each day at the end of January, a number that jumped to 116 by April, the document reported.

The rebels have been fighting to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have faced decades of marginalization by governments controlled by the ethnic Sinhalese majority.

Washington, April 23 (ANI): The Jonas Brothers will host the Teen Choice Awards set to be aired on August 10 on Fox channel.

The teen pop-rock band will also play their tunes to the crowd at the event that honours the year’s most popular teen icons in film, television, music, sports and fashion.

Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas will make the appearance in the midst of their world tour, for which they hop three continents, reports Us magazine.

The Grammy-nominated trio will begin the US leg of the tour on June 20, five days after the release of their new album Lines, Vines and Trying Times.

The band was handed out the Favourite Music Group trophy at this year’s 22nd Kids’ Choice Awards in Los Angeles

Due to International pressure, the Sri Lankan government ordered for a two days Cease fire. In order to save the lifes of thousands of people trapped inside the war zone, the UN President Ban Ki Moon pressed the Sri Lankan President for Cease Fire. The government has ordered for a Temporary cease fire for 48 hours in the Island.

The War between the Sinhalese power and the Tamil tigers is in a critical stage. The Sinhalese goverment attacked the rebels and procured many part of the land from the LTTE’s control.

The LTTE condemned the act of the Sinhalese government for bombing its own people, for using cluster type bombs and chemical weapons. The Tamil expatriates are demonstarting protest all over the world to stop the Genocide.

It is expected that the First Dog will arrive White House on coming tuesday. The dog is a Black Portugese male water dog. It is six months older and its name is Charlie. This name will be changed after entering the White House. The dog was brought up in a Texas Kennel. It was sold recently and now returned back. The dog is related to the lineage of Sen. The new dog is presented to President Barack obama by the Kennedy family.

When a reporter asked Obama about the arrival of the dog. He replied, “Oh, man, now, that’s top secret.”

Levi Johnston Addresses Tensions with Palin Camp:
By Jennifer Wren Just days after appearing on the Tyra Banks Show, Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s former fiancé and father to her son Tripp, talked more on CBS’ The Early Show about his difficulties with the family of former vice presidential candidate …

The profile of Shauvon Torres of The Real World at www.buddytv.com:
Shauvon Torres is a writer who comes from the United States, and she appears as a cast member in the 19th season of MTV’s reality television series, The Real World: Sydney. She was 24 years old during the time of the show’s filming, …