“Apple’s iWatch is the new primary focus of speculation for the company’s unannounced products, and a newarticle at Bloomberg today detailing its market potential also let slip that the wrist-mounted computer could arrive by the end of this year. Bloomberg’s source, which is one of the same that leaked details about the team within Apple working on the iWatch, said Apple hopes to have the device out to market “as soon as this year.”

Bloomberg’s report today adds a bit more color about what we might expect to see from an Apple iWatch, too. The still-unconfirmed device would be able to make calls, check caller ID, relay map coordinates and carry a built-in pedometer and health monitoring sensors, according to the news publication’s source. That might mean another partnership with Nike for built-in fitness tracking, as we’ve seen in iPods and iPhones from the company to date.

The news comes after reports from Apple supply partners and Gorilla Glass manufacturer Corning said that products based on its flexible Willow Glass product wouldn’t come to market for another three years, prompting many to assume that meant an iWatch was also at least three years out. Apple had patented a wrist-mounted computer based on flexible display tech, but that’s far from the company’s only option for producing an iWatch – it could easily take a more traditional form, like thePebble smart watch….”

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“Many women soon can thank Obamacare for ensuring that they won’t have to pay higher health insurance premiums than men. But elderly women can’t say the same of long-term care insurance.

Thanks to an Obamacare loophole, long-term care insurance providers can charge women more than men for the same coverage. And Genworth Financial, the largest U.S. provider of long-term care insurance, plans to charge some women higher premiums than men starting this spring, Kaiser Health News reports.

The change will apply to women who buy new individual long-term care insurance policies, Genworth Financial told Kaiser Health News.

Long-term care insurance covers help with daily habits such as eating and getting out of bed, usually for the elderly, the ill and the injured.

“Claims experience shows that two out of three of Genworth’s current claim dollars are paid to women,” Genworth Financial spokesman Tom Topinka wrote in an email to The Huffington Post on Saturday. “Our decision to charge women applying individually for long term care insurance higher premiums than men beginning this April has nothing whatsoever to do with The Affordable Care Act.”

Obamacare will ban gender discrimination in pricing for new individual and small-group health insurance policies starting in 2014. Women currently pay $1 billion more in premiums every year than men for the same set of benefits, according to the Center for American Progress. That may be partly because research has foundwomen use health care services more than men. Starting in 2014, Obamacare also will ban health insurance companies from denying coverage to women.

This post has been updated to include a comment from Genworth Financial spokesman Tom Topinka….”

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“March 2 (Reuters) – Las Vegas Sands Corp said it “likely” violated the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws the bribery of foreign officials, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday.

The filing marks the first disclosure by the casino operator, controlled by founder and billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, that it was under investigation.

The SEC subpoenaed company documents in February 2011 relating to its compliance with the antibribery act while the U.S. Department of Justice also advised Sands it was conducting an investigation, the company said in its annual report filing.

“There were likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions of the FCPA,” the company said.

Sands spokesman Ron Reese said on Saturday he had no additional comment beyond the SEC filing….”

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“Forestar Group boasts a rich portfolio of assets and businesses, including 136,000 acres of real estate, mostly in Texas; 752,000 acres of oil and gas properties; 1.5 million acres of water rights; and 275,000 acres of timberland. Yet the company trades for just a fraction of its net asset value, as investors don’t quite know what to make of this diverse mix.

Peter Martin, an analyst at JMP Securities, believes the shares are trading at a 40% discount to net asset value, which he puts at $18 to $43 a share. Forestar’s shares (ticker: FOR) closed on Friday at $17.56, or 1.2 times book value. The midpoint of Martin’s range is $30 a share.

The discount to net asset value isn’t likely to persist. With the housing market improving, Forestar is accelerating its sales of residential lots and investing the proceeds in higher-returning ventures, including its oil and gas business and real-estate development properties.

The strategy calls for tripling sales of residential lots, oil and gas production, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. From 2008 to 2011, Forestar generated average Ebitda of $34 million a year. Through 2015, management is targeting average annual Ebitda of $120 million. Last year, Ebitda reached $90 million.

As Forestar’s strategy unfolds, net asset value and book value could rise, driving the stock higher, perhaps by as much as 70%. Martin thinks the shares are worth $29, or 1.6 times his estimated 2013 book value.

Incorporated in 1955 as the Lumberman’s Land Corp., Forestar develops residential and commercial lots and sells them to builders. In addition, it owns interests in a hotel and three residential communities. Seventy percent of the company’s real-estate investment is located in Texas, in attractive markets such as Austin, Dallas, and Houston. A legacy timber business in Georgia produces fiber that Forestar sells primarily to Temple-Inland, its previous owner. Forestar was spun off from Temple Inland, now part ofInternational Paper (IP), in 2007….”

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“(Reuters) – Insurer American International Group Inc eliminated the U.S. government’s last financial interest in the company on Friday, buying back warrants from the U.S. Treasury for about $25 million.

The government rescued AIG at the depths of the financial crisis as the insurer teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. The bailout ultimately totaled $182 billion, and when all was said and done theTreasury owned more than 90 percent of the company.

The Treasury sold the last of that stock last year but still held some warrants. AIG said Friday it had repurchased all of them. They had originally been issued in 2008 and 2009.

“The U.S. Treasury does not have any residual interest in AIG after AIG’s repurchase of these warrants,” the company said in a statement.

AIG shares fell 0.5 percent to $37.81 in afternoon trading.”

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“Bank of America said in a securities filing on Thursday that the New York State Attorney General was investigating the bank over its purchase, securitization and underwriting of home loans.

The bank, the second-largest in the U.S., is the third known to be targeted by the New York attorney general’s office over how banks bundled mortgage loans into securities during the housing boom.

Bank of America said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it was cooperating with the investigation. A bank spokesman declined to comment….”

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“DETROIT (AP) — Chrysler says its sales last month rose 4 percent from a year ago for the company’s best February since 2008.

The automaker says it sold just over 139,000 cars and trucks last month.

The increase is a sign that U.S. auto sales remain strong even in an uneven economy. Industry analysts expect an overall increase of 7 percent when automakers report results on Friday….”

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“NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. BBY +6.34% said Friday its fourth-quarter loss narrowed to $409 million, or $1.21 a share, from $1.82 billion, or $5.17 a share, a year earlier. Revenue inched up to $16.71 billion from $16.67 billion a year earlier. Excluding items, adjusted profit was $1.64 a share, the company said. Analysts, on average estimated Best Buy would earn $1.54 a share on sales of $16.3 billion, FactSet data showed. The company didn’t give forecasts for this year, but said the first quarter will be “under significant pressure.” …”

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“Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, which yesterday received a 4.1 billion-euro ($5.3 billion) government bailout, sued Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Nomura (8604) Holdings Inc. over two derivatives that soured.

Monti Paschi filed separate suits in Florence seeking damages over two contracts from 2008 and 2009 dubbed Santorini and Alexandria, the Siena, Italy-based lender said in a statement today. The bank also sued former executives Antonio Vigni and Giuseppe Mussari over their involvement in the transactions. The lender didn’t specify how much it’s seeking….”

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“Smartphone sales in India may suffer from a higher tax on handsets costing more than $37 just as Apple Inc. (AAPL) steps up efforts to tap demand for data services in the world’s second-largest mobile-phone market.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram yesterday said he would raise the excise tax on high-end phones to 6 percent from 1 percent to help finance welfare programs for the country’s poor and fund the widest budget deficit among the largest emerging economies. Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), which sells the Galaxy range of smartphones, said the move “won’t have a positive impact” on the mobile-phone industry and will force customers to pay more.

India’s government, after attempting to squeeze wireless operators including Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) and Bharti Airtel Ltd. (BHARTI) with higher license fees and airwave tariffs, is now targeting handsets for revenue from an industry that has boomed since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opened the economy more than two decades ago. Chidambaram also increased tax on high earners, luxury cars and yachts….”

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“Groupon CEO Andrew Mason was handed a pink slip Thursday, fired after the company reported disappointing fourth-quarter results along with a dim outlook.

“After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today,” Mason said in an email to employees announcing his departure.

“If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention,” he added. (Read the full text of the email below.)

Groupon shares shot up more than 10 percent following the news. What’s the stock doing now? Click here for the latest after-hours quote.

The stock has fallen more than 75 percent since its November 2011 IPO. In regular trading Thursday, the stock fell 25 percent after the disappointing fourth-quarter results came out late Wednesday.

The results revealed that the company has had to slash its fees from merchants to grow its business and that its new Groupon Goods business would decline in the first quarter. Mason was so confident on the earnings call, he drew criticism of being entirely out of touch. Twenty-four hours later the guillotine fell….”

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“AOL AOL -2.03% Chief Operating Officer Artie Minson plans to leave the company by year-end, according to people familiar with the matter, amid a restructuring that the company announced Thursday that eliminates his position and brings in media veteran Susan Lyne to oversee some of AOL’s content properties.

The shuffle comes just eight months after AOL CEO Tim Armstrong promoted Mr. Minson to what was then a newly created COO position from his previous post as chief financial officer. Now AOL says it is seeking to decentralize its top management.

Mr. Minson, who had been seen as one of Mr. Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenants, also had differences over strategy with Mr. Armstrong, say people familiar with the matter. They say Mr. Minson disagreed with Mr. Armstrong on how the company was running the Huffington Post and its Patch network of local news sites, believing they required restructuring. However, people familiar with Mr. Armstrong’s thinking say that Patch, which Mr. Armstrong co-founded, wasn’t a factor in the restructuring. Mr. Minson declined to comment…..”

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“Boeing and the Japanese firm that makes lithium-ion batteries for the 787 Dreamliner disagree about what should be included in a package of measures aimed at getting the airliner back in the air, the Wall Street Journal reported.

But Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner told reporters in Tokyo that there was no dispute with GS Yuasa about the proposed solution, adding the planemaker has “a great partnership” with the Kyoto-based battery maker.

All 50 of the technologically-advanced Dreamliners in service have been grounded since mid-January after a battery fire on a Japan Airlines Co Ltd 787 at Boston airport and a second battery incident on an Nippon Airways flight in Japan.

GS Yuasa believes the battery fix should include a voltage regulator that could stop electricity from entering the battery, the Journal said, citing government and industry officials.

Boeing proposed its fix to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last Friday. The previous day, GS Yuasa told the FAA that its laboratory tests indicated a power surge outside the battery, or other external problem, started the failures on the two batteries, according to the newspaper.

Boeing’s solution included a stronger containment box, a battery with greater cooling capacity and other changes.

The FAA confirmed the meeting with GS Yuasa, but gave no details. A GS Yuasa spokesman declined to comment….”

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