"Reserve release has been boosting EPS and while it likely fades, the tank doesn't look empty yet," analysts led by John McDonald said in a note to clients.

Reserve release as a percentage of earnings is likely to fall from around 22 percent of EPS at the large- and mid-cap banks in 2012 to about 10 percent in 2013 and about 1 percent in 2014, they said.

However, with low interest rates, high liquidity, tightened underwriting and lackluster new lending, credit costs should be able to stay lower for longer, which would help fuel continued reserve releases, the analysts added.

Bernstein analysts also expect net charge off rates to fall below historical average over the intermediate term, as banks benefit from an improving economy, cleaner books, and improved underwriting standards.

Bank of America is likely to benefit the most from the combined impact of lower charge offs and reserve releases, which are expected to constitute about 56 percent of the lender's adjusted annualized first-quarter 2013 earnings. They would be about 55 percent for Synovus Financial Corpand about 52 percent for Citigroup, the brokerage added.

(Reporting By Neha Dimri in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In a push to curb cellphone thefts, prosecutors for New York state and the city of San Francisco said on Wednesday they plan to meet with industry representatives to urge them to install switches to disable stolen smartphones.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said they will meet on June 13 with representatives of the four largest smartphone manufacturers.

They said they will ask the industry to place "kill switches" on mobile devices to render them inoperable when stolen, eliminating any incentive for theft.

"With 1.6 million Americans falling victim to smartphone theft in 2012, this has become a national epidemic," Gascon said in a statement. "Unlike other types of crimes, smartphone theft can be eradicated with a simple technological solution."

Gascon and Schneiderman said representatives of Apple Inc, Google Inc's smartphone maker Motorola Mobility, Samsung Electronics and Microsoft Corp would attend the summit in New York.

Last month, two men in San Francisco severely cut a 27-year-old tourist's face and throat while robbing his iPhone. In April 2012, a 26-year-old chef was killed while being robbed of his iPhone on his way home to the Bronx.

"The theft of handheld devices is the fastest-growing street crime, and increasingly, incidents are turning violent," Schneiderman said. "It's time for manufacturers to be as innovative in solving this problem as they have been in designing devices that have reshaped how we live."

Representatives for Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Google and a cellphone trade group either declined to comment or were not immediately available for comment.

Gascon and Schneiderman have both criticized the cellphone industry for what they perceive as its perceived unwillingness to solve the escalating problem.

About 50 percent of San Francisco robberies involved stolen mobile devices last year, Gascon said. A recent study found that lost and stolen cellphones cost consumers $30 billion in 2012, his office said.

Some companies have measures in place to reunite smartphones with their rightful owners. For instance, Apple has the application Find My iPhone which allows a user to track a missing device on a map and remotely lock it or erase data.

A nationwide database has been created for stolen cellphones, but law enforcement officials say its use is limited because many stolen devices are shipped overseas or modified so they cannot be easily identified as stolen, according to a New York Times report from May.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Lisa Shumaker)

Zoo officials say the Mangarahara cichlid is thought to be extinct in the wild and that two of the last known individuals both male are in the zoo's aquarium. A third is in the Berlin zoo.

Officials say the species' habitat in Madagascar has dried up due to dam construction.

The zoo on Friday asked aquarium owners and fish collectors to come forward it they know of any living females "so that a vital conservation breeding program can be started."

Officials say a worldwide search of zoo and aquarium organizations has so far proved fruitless.

Nasdaq said in a statement on Thursday banks supporting the venture were BNP Paribas , Citi , Nomura , Royal Bank of Scotlandand UBS , while brokerages and traders included Newedge, DRW Trading and Getco Europe.

NLX, which gained regulatory approval this week to launch from Friday, will allow participants to trade a range of short-and long-term interest rate euro and sterling-denominated derivative products, such as futures in three-month Euribor or the 10-year Bund, on a single market.

Interest-rate derivatives have traditionally traded and cleared on two separate platforms, but NLX will allow clients to clear products on the same market as they trade.

"Regulatory change is driving the need for us to look closely at how we create capital efficiency in all parts of our business," Adrian Averre, global head of G10 flow rates trading at BNP Paribas, said in the statement.

"NLX has the potential to create significant margin savings in the short, medium and long term, which enables our clients to invest those savings into growth activities that support the global economic recovery and higher returns," Averre said.

(Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by David Holmes)

Their deal is the latest example of growing collaboration between entertainment companies in the world's two biggest movie markets.

Legendary, which also made "Inception" and "The Dark Knight," said its Chinese venture, Legendary East, signed an agreement with the Chinese company's unit, China Film Co., on Thursday in Beijing. The deal calls for the companies to fund development and production of multiple films over three years.

Their first collaborations will be announced in the coming months. Legendary said each is planned as a US-China co-production. That means they can get around China's import restrictions that limit the number of foreign movies shown on the country's 12,000 screens to 34 each year.

The companies said they plan to produce movies for global audiences that will be "tentpole-scale" in other words, the big-budget, highly promoted productions that earn enough box-office revenue to support the whole studio, in the same way that a tentpole holds up a tent.

No specific details were released.

In a statement, China Film Co. Chairman Han Sanping said the partnership will allow the companies to "make films that are more appealing to filmgoers, creating new genres that, through the magic of film, bring greater variety to audiences around the world."

Faced with stagnant box-office growth at home, Hollywood studios are keen to break into China, now the world's second-biggest film market. Box-office receipts in China totaled $2.7 billion last year and pushed the country's movie market past previous second-biggest, Japan, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Legendary East was set up in 2011 with the aim of making one or two "major, event-style films" starting in 2013. But the company had remained quiet since then and a plan to raise $220.5 through a deal with a Hong Kong construction company was scuppered by rocky financial markets.

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Online:

Legendary Entertainment: http://www.legendary.com

Long rumored to be under development, the 40-page lawsuit filed Thursday tries to show that the NCAA and its top leadership overstepped the organization's own rules in levying penalties against the football program with uncharacteristic speed, representatives for the Paterno family have said. They hoped it would raise new questions about the university's internal investigation led by former FBI director Louis Freeh, along with how and why the NCAA used Freeh's report as a basis for its sanctions in July.

A statement late Wednesday night from Paterno family attorney Wick Sollers said the case would be "further proof that the NCAA has lost sense of its mission" after college sports' governing body relied on Freeh's explosive report. Freeh asserted last July that Paterno and three school officials concealed allegations against Sandusky, a retired defensive coordinator; the NCAA announced its sanctions less than two weeks later.

"If there was ever a situation that demanded meticulous review and a careful adherence to NCAA rules and guidelines, this was it," Sollers said in the statement. "Instead, the NCAA placed a premium on speed over accuracy and precipitous action over due process."

It suit is the latest filing in a tangled web of litigation related to the sanctions. Most prominently, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, which also has faced criticism for a botched investigation of Miami and departures in the enforcement division.

On Wednesday, Sollers and other family representatives spoke with Bob Costas on his NBC Sports Network show, along with other media, in previewing the latest lawsuit.

The NCAA said Wednesday it had not received any such lawsuit and could not comment.

"Despite our request, the Paterno family has not shared any information about its planned legal action," chief legal officer Donald Remy said in a statement. "We remain committed to working with Penn State toward the continued successful completion of our voluntary agreement with the university and to working" with the NCAA's independent monitor, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell.

Penn State spokesman Dave La Torre said the school was not a party to any litigation that might be filed by the family and remained committed to "full compliance" with the sanctions.

"We look forward to continuing to work with Sen. George Mitchell and recognize the important role that intercollegiate athletics provides for our student athletes and the wider university community," the statement from La Torre said.

NCAA president Mark Emmert and Oregon State President Edward Ray, who was chair of the NCAA's executive committee, "acted in clear and direct violation of the organization's own rules based on a flawed report" by Freeh, said the statement from family representatives.

Sollers said Freeh is not named as a defendant, but is listed as a "co-conspirator" in the lawsuit. He says that there were close communications between the NCAA and Freeh's team throughout the investigation.

The Associated Press left messages Wednesday for a spokesman for Freeh.

Paterno's son, Jay Paterno, and Bill Kenney were two former Paterno assistants taking part in the action against the NCAA, the statement said. Also joining in the suit were five trustees, including vocal critic Anthony Lubrano and former player Adam Taliaferro; four faculty members; and other nine ex-Penn State players, including Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson, according to the statement.

Dick Thornburgh, a former U.S. attorney general and Pennsylvania governor, also was interviewed by Costas. Thornburgh was one of the authors of a critique released in February and commissioned by the Paterno family that called Freeh's work a "rush to injustice."

Freeh accused Paterno and three former university officials of covering up allegations against Sandusky, who was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison after being convicted last year of dozens of criminal counts of abuse including assaults on and off campus.

Paterno died in January 2012. His family and the former school officials have vehemently denied they took part in a cover-up.

Sollers said the NCAA bypassed its typical lengthy investigative process and relied on Freeh's report, then bullied Penn State behind the scenes into agreeing to the sanctions.

The university board as a whole entity has never formally discussed, nor has it voted on Freeh's report, though its members have embraced many of Freeh's recommendations to improve university governance and procedures.

The penalties against Penn State included a $60 million fine. The NCAA also vacated 111 wins from Paterno's record, meaning he would no longer hold the title of major college football's winningest coach.

The lawsuit lodges six counts against the NCAA, Emmert and Ray, including breach of contract, civil conspiracy, defamation and commercial disparagement, according to Sollers' statement.

Sollers has said the suit would ask for the sanctions and agreement between school and the NCAA to be deemed unlawful and the penalties overturned.

The lawsuit also would ask for unspecified damages and court costs, Sollers said, though the family would donate any net proceeds to charity.

"The broader goal is to get the truth out," Sollers told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "This narrative that's in public that was perpetuated by the NCAA's adoption of the deeply flawed Freeh report ... cannot stand."

The family planned to post the complaint on www.paterno.com after it was filed.

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Online:

Freeh report: http://progress.psu.edu/the-freeh-report

James, the NBA's reigning most valuable player, was fined along with David West and Lance Stephenson of the Indiana Pacers for exaggerating contact during Tuesday's Game Four of the best-of-seven series, which is tied at two games apiece.

With the intense series set to resume on Thursday in Miami, the league decided to crack down on the theatrics displayed in Game Four, where the players involved tried to trick referees into calling fouls off limited contact.

James and West were cited for flopping on the same play during Indiana's 99-92 home victory.

West, guarded by James, was backing in toward the basket in anticipation of receiving a pass when the nine-time Miami All Star spun and sprawled onto the floor as West stumbled awkwardly toward the baseline after minimal contact.

Stephenson earned his fine for exaggerating contact after a slight elbow push from Ray Allen following an Indiana basket.

The NBA instituted an anti-flopping policy this season to cut down on the practice. (Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Frank Pingue)