The spectacular success of Indians in the U.S. smashes old stereotypes and adds a dash of spice to the American melting pot By ANTHONY SPAETH When Manoj Night Shyamalan was growing up in suburban Philadelphia, his parents--both immigrants from India, both physicians--didn't hesitate to pile on the pressure. There was simply an assumption that I'd come in first in my class, he recalls. He was also expected to follow them into medicine. When he ...

A few weeks back, at an event to celebrate the role of women in finance, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to get things started with a joke. He said he had recently come across a headline that asked, "What If Women Ran Wall Street?" "Now that's an excellent question, but it's kind of a low bar," Geithner continued, deadpan amid rising laughter. "How, you might ask, could women not have done better?" It is rarely noted that the financial ...

Investors are courting an old flame: bond mutual funds. But how sincere are their intentions? The relationship sputtered in 1994, when bond funds logged their worst year in six decades and investors fled the church in a panic. Now they're back for another fling. In January net new cash flowing into bond funds surged to an estimated $11.5 billion--the most since August 1993. The disturbing thing is that people probably don't understand this fickle mate any better today than they ...

A new lawsuit alleges that convicted swindler Bernie Madoff financed a cocaine-fueled work environment and a "culture of sexual deviance," and he diverted money to his London, England, office when he believed federal authorities were closing in at home. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York's State Supreme Court, was brought on behalf of former investors and seeks unspecified punitive damages and compensation. Beyond that, it offers a look at what the plaintiffs' attorneys say was once Madoff's multimillion-dollar empire ...

Gunmen opened fire on a military vehicle in Islamabad on Thursday, killing an army brigadier and a soldier, officials said. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York's State Supreme Court, was brought on behalf of former investors and seeks unspecified punitive damages and compensation. Beyond that, it offers a look at what the plaintiffs' attorneys say was once Madoff's multimillion-dollar empire and what is now his world in a federal prison in North Carolina. Among the allegations in the 264-page ...

Semion Mogilevich may be the most powerful man you've never heard of. NEWTOWN, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Semion Mogilevich may be the most powerful man you've never heard of. The FBI says Mogilevich, a Russian mobster, has been involved in arms trafficking, prostitution, extortion and murder for hire. "He has access to so much, including funding, including other criminal organizations, that he can, with a telephone call and order, affect the global economy," said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Peter Kowenhoven. ...

"Obviously, first of all, this conversation never took place. ... OK?" So began a phone call in which convicted swindler Bernard Madoff told colleagues how to dance around questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to an audiotape and transcript released Wednesday by the Massachusetts secretary of state's office. "You know, you don't have to be too brilliant with these guys, because you don't have to be," Madoff said, referring to SEC investigators. Authorities continue to unravel ...

The SEC internal-investigation report released on Wednesday points a clear finger of blame at the agency, stating that SEC investigators missed multiple opportunities to discover Bernard Madoff's criminal activities. But while the report hammers the SEC for repeated instances of incompetence, it stops well short of declaring the SEC liable. "The OIG [Office of Inspector General] investigation did not find evidence that any SEC personnel who worked on an SEC examination or investigation of Bernard L. Madoff ...

Kenneth Lewis' days as chief executive of Bank of America may finally be numbered. Observers and investors say a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission may ultimately cost Lewis the top job at the nation's largest bank. On Monday, the bank agreed to pay $33 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that Lewis and other executives misled the bank's investors prior to its $50 billion purchase last year of brokerage firm Merrill Lynch. In a separate ...

Bernie Madoff bankruptcy trustee, Irving H. Picard, may be the hardest working man in the collections business — and maybe one day the richest. Picard, the New York-based lawyer who could have easily doubled for actor Frederic March in film Inherit the Wind, is at the turbulent center of the post-Madoff world, a world that includes multi-billion dollar feeder fund lawsuits, multi-million dollar deals with international banks, and, less grand, the issuing of multi-hundred thousand dollar checks to the nearly 7,000 direct account holders caught ...