NS&I Cuts ISA Rate As Popularity Soars


National Savings & Investments (NS&I) is slashing the interest rate on its Direct ISA because of its soaring popularity among savers.
The savings organisation said it was taking the decision to "balance the interests of its savers, taxpayers and the stability of the broader financial services sector."
NS&I is unique in the UK marketplace in that it is backed by the Treasury, meaning its products are 100% protected but laws govern their management to help ensure market fairness.
It said the interest rate on the tax-free cash ISA would fall to 1.25% from 1.5% on 16 November.
NS&I said the move would affect 404,210 customers with savings of more than £3.8bn in total and it was writing to them to explain the rate reduction.
Chief executive Jane Platt said: "Interest rates in the easy access ISA market have been in decline over the year and our Direct ISA rate has stood out at the top of the best buy tables for some time.
"To ensure that we continue to strike a balance between the needs of our savers, taxpayers and the stability of the broader financial services sector, we have taken the difficult decision to reduce the rate on our Direct ISA.
"However customers continue to benefit from a competitive rate and 100% security on all their deposits."
NS&I said its decision would move the product back to the middle ground for rates available in the ISA market currently.
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Inflation Falls Back To 0% In August


The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) was unchanged in the year to August 2015, that is, a 12-month rate of 0%, down from 0.1% in the year to July 2015.
Smaller increases to clothing prices on the month compared with a year ago was the main driver behind the slowdown to price level growth.
Lower prices at the pumps together with cheaper ferry fares also helped to suppress price growth.
Bucking the lower price trend were soft drinks and furniture prices which helped prevent the UK from entering negative inflation again.
The UK entered negative inflation in April for the first time in 55 years.
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Get-Rich-Quick Case Cost Taxpayers £1.4m


The prosecution of a group of women who ran a £21m pyramid scheme cost taxpayers at least £1.4m, according to a Freedom of Information request.
The scheme, which generated £21m before it was shut down, conned at least 10,000 people between May 2008 and April 2009.
But the perpetrators paid back as little as £1 each, according to an investigation by the Press Association.
The victims were encouraged to "beg, borrow or steal" to take part in the scam, which promised £23,000 for each £3,000 investment if a player recruited two people.
Bristol Crown Court heard the scheme's committee members pocketed up to £92,000 each, while up to 88% of their members lost between £3,000 and £15,000.
The eleven women prosecuted for the scheme were the first in the UK to face prosecution for a pyramid scheme under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act.

Six women who were convicted of operating and promoting the scheme paid back a total of £535,454 in confiscation orders and prosecution costs.
The prosecution cost taxpayers "not less" than £1,465,000 - not including defence costs, legal aid costs or court costs.
A spokeswoman for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said there was a "strong public interest" in bringing the case to act as a deterrent, warn the public and achieve justice for victims.
"Investigating and prosecuting complex economic cases of this kind are invariably costly, often taking a significant time to investigate fully and resulting in lengthy trials," she said.
"In particular, they will typically involve sifting through millions of physical and electronic documents, complicated money tracing exercises and interviewing of a large number of potential witnesses.
"All this calls for a team of staff working full-time, including expert staff, and the advice of specialist counsel.
"The costs associated with this particular case are in no way unusual or unexpected for a case of this kind."
Judge Mark Horton ordered the defendants to pay back individual amounts following a Proceeds of Crime hearing held in July.
Chairwoman Laura Fox, 70, was ordered to pay £156,000. Treasurer Jennifer Smith-Hayes, 69, paid £111,912, while secretary Susan Crane, 69, paid £81,162.
Hazel Cameron, 55, paid £65,012, charts co-ordinator Mary Nash, 65, paid £53,362 and Carol Chalmers, 69, paid £47,862.
In 2012, Sally Philips, 35, of Hengrove, Jane Smith, 51, of Bishopsworth, and Rita Lomas, 50, of Whitchurch, received suspended sentences after they admitted promoting the scheme.
Two other women accused of being involved with the scam were cleared of all charges.
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Meet the Window Washers That Transform Into Superheroes for Sick Kids


Roger Corcoran has been a window washer for 35 years. But on Wednesday, he was Batman.
The 61-year-old grandfather of two rappelled down the side of Mayo Clinic Children’s Center alongside Spiderman and Superman.
“When a kid wanted to know why I was so old, I told him I played the original batman,” Corcoran said with a chuckle.
Rappelling Elves Delight Patients in Indiana Hospital
John Carroll, 48, dressed up as Spiderman.
“It’s one thing I look forward to doing all year,” said Carroll, who has worked as a window washer for 15 years.

After rappelling down the side of the building, Carroll and Corcoran went inside to meet the kids, who were appropriately shocked to come face-to-face with their high-flying heroes.
“The first time it happened, I was kinda crying because it means a lot to those kids,” Carroll said.
Carroll and Corcoran work at ISS Facility Services, which washes windows for Mayo Clinic. Charlie Kleber worked with Mayo Clinic to set up the special event, and said he picked some of his best guys to swing down and make the kids smile.
He said he’s watched even the sickest kids come alive when they’re face-to-face with the superheroes.
He called Wednesday’s superhero experience “life-changing,” and said they were all struck by a special patient: 13-year-old Claire Strawman, who in April became the youngest heart-lung patient Mayo Clinic had ever transplanted.
She told them about how she went into lung failure and underwent a transplant in April. She was hospitalized for about seven months before being released a few weeks ago. But she got sick on Monday and needed to come back.
“I got goose bumps right now telling you that story,” Kleber said.

Claire is on immunosuppressant drugs to prevent her from rejecting the new organs, but the drugs also make her more prone to infections. When she got sick, her parents worried and brought her back to the hospital, according to her mom, Ellen Strawman. She was in the pediatric ICU when the superheroes visited.
“Just seeing them put a big smile on her face,” Strawman said, adding that Claire left the hospital today for her home in Bloomington, Minnesota.
“She told us what happened to her and everything. We were all standing around her tearing up,” Carroll said. “That story made you feel so proud to do it for the kids because it means so much to them. It was great.”
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Fury over Cecil the lion also sparks race conversation


Cecil, we hardly knew ye...
The assassinated lion of Zimbabwe, killed recently under dubious circumstances by an American dentist, is being mourned with passion and fury by celebrities on social media. And the dentist is the focus of such an outpouring of contempt and hostility, he's been forced into hiding.
Meanwhile, however, a backlash is also building on Twitter from those who wonder: Where is the celebrity passion for Sandra Bland or the "Black Lives Matter" movement?
Leave it to the usually wisecracking talk-show host, Jimmy Kimmel, to sum up the anger and shame millions of Americans feel over the death of Cecil, a lion beloved in one of Zimbabwe's national parks and in Britain, where conservation scientists had been tracking him for years.
Kimmel was so upset on his show Tuesday night, he choked up even as he was telling excoriating jokes and urging viewers to donate to the Oxford wildlife conservationgroup that had been studying Cecil and his endangered kind.
Kimmel was unsparing of the Minnesota hunter/dentist, referring to him as a "jackhole," as "vomitous," and...ahem...inadequate.
"Why are you shooting a lion in the first place...how is that fun?," Kimmel demanded, addressing Walter Palmer, who paid more than $50,000 to kill Cecil with a crossbow, under circumstances now being investigated by Zimbabwe authorities as a possible poaching crime.
(The Minneapolis dentist, who has protested in vain he didn't know Cecil was a protected lion, shut down his practice and disappeared as threats and protesters multiplied on Twitter and outside his office.)
"Is it that difficult for you to get an erection that you need to kill things? They have a pill for that, it works great. Just take that and save yourself from a lifetime of being the most hated man in America who never advertised Jell-o pudding on television," Kimmel sneered.
And he was not the only one sneering and fuming. Outrage spread across Twitter in a twinkling after the news about the lion exploded Wednesday. There is already an onlinepetition, with over 400,000 signatures so far, demanding "justice" for Cecil from Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.
Celebrity animal lovers, of which there are scores, have been tweeting, including known activists such as Ricky Gervais and Kaley Cuoco Sweeting.
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Four-time NBA All Star Vin Baker is working at Starbucks


Vin Baker played for six different franchises over the course of his 13 seasons in the NBA. Baker was named to four NBA All-Star teams, and according to Basketball Reference made more than $97 million in salary.
Baker, 43, now works at a Starbucks in Rhode Island.
Baker struggled with alcoholism during his playing career, and in 2007 was arrested on an alcohol charge after failing a sobriety test. In a Providence Journal feature, Baker explains how he squandered his massive fortune and offers advice for young players.
“When you make choices and decisions and think that it will never end, and then you get into spending and addiction and more spending, it’s a definite formula for losing…. I would insist that you surround yourself with the person you trust the absolute most, someone who can tell you, ‘You’re wrong, don’t buy that, don’t go there, that person’s no good.’ I would also say be able to monitor every single dime that comes out of your accounts as if you’re a Starbucks barista. My check here I know exactly where my money goes. Don’t trust it with an accountant or a family friend. Make sure you’re aware and be responsible because next thing you know people are stealing from you.”
Baker is now training to become a Starbucks manager, and also serves as a minister at a church. Baker says he’s determined to rebuild his life to be an example for other troubled stars.
“I was an alcoholic, I lost a fortune. I had a great talent and lost it. For the people on the outside looking in, they’re like ‘Wow.’ For me, I’m 43 and I have four kids. I have to pick up the pieces. I’m a father. I’m a minister in my father’s church. I have to take the story and show that you can bounce back.”
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'Obama Eight' adjust to life after life sentences

WASHINGTON — One is a high school counselor. Two or three work in restaurants. Some can't find a job. Others have slipped into obscurity.
The Obama Eight, as they call themselves, don't fit into easy categories, except for this: They were all convicted of drug crimes, and they were among the first to have their sentences commuted by President Obama.
And as Obama prepares to issue even more commutations in the last months of his presidency — part of an aggressive attempt to use his pardon power to shorten long drug sentences — many of them say they feel the weight of criminal justice reform on their shoulders. If any one of them returns to prison, it could taint the clemency initiative and make it harder for other deserving inmates to be released, they say.
They've become leading voices for leniency, especially for drug crimes. Last year, many of them came to Washington to lobby members of Congress and meet with Pardon Attorney Deborah Leff, the Justice Department official whose job it is to make clemency recommendations to the president.
After nearly three years without commuting a single sentence, Obama has now issued 89 commutations as president. It's a record that still ranks as one of the "least merciful" in presidential history, said P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political scientist who blogs about the president's pardon power.
Of those 89, one died shortly after her release. 47 have yet to be released, while 21 were released Tuesday. The 46 sentences Obama commuted this month won't be completed until Nov. 10. (As recently as the Clinton administration, people whose sentences were commuted were released the same day.)
The other 20 are free. The Obama Eight have been out the longest, most of them a little more than a year.
In many ways, the challenges they face are not unlike anyone else released from prison after a long sentence. Finding a job, reuniting with relatives, getting a driver's license and adjusting to the speed of an Internet-driven world that barely existed when they were sent away.
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