The DeviantART Comic-Con Scholarships Program will be providing two scholarships to emerging artists: one web-based comic artist and one traditionally-based comic artist. The chosen artists will get to spend two days at Comic-Con, where they will be able to cruise the convention floor, attend panels, and be introduced by Comic-Con to prominent artists in the industry, with a chance to pick their brains and gain artistic inspiration right from the source. Comic-Con International: San Diego is the largest comic-book and popular-arts convention in the world. Comic-Con draws a worldwide audience of entertainment enthusiasts of every kind, and offers panels, seminars, and workshops with comic-book professionals, along with art shows, portfolio review sessions, and exhibits.

To be considered for the DeviantART Comic-Con Scholarships, students are asked to submit their Portfolio. Any emerging comic artist located anywhere in the world who is over the age of 18 can submit a Portfolio for consideration.

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- A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Lee B. Farkas, a former mortgage industry executive accused of masterminding one of the largest bank fraud schemes in history, to 30 years in prison.The case against Mr. Farkas, the former chairman of the mortgage firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, stands as the single-biggest prosecution stemming from the financial crisis. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of as much as 385 years.

“I do not detect one bit of actual remorse,” Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told Mr. Farkas in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday. “You regret getting caught.”

- Vancouver, London and the big cities down under are second homes of choice for China’s super rich, according to real estate services firm Colliers International.One of the reasons the China real estate market is so hot is because wealthy Chinese are buying up property to hold onto real assets, rather than put money in low yielding bank bonds and volatile equities. The super rich are buying real estate outside of China in an effort to avoid taxes.

In the past six months, Chinese spent 1.3 billion yuan through Colliers’ international property department, with Canada, the UK and Australia topping list.  “We are expecting a clear increase in the extent of mainland buyers’ purchases of overseas properties this year because of the government’s rigorous restraint on the number of homes a family can buy in key cities,” Alan Liu, managing director of Colliers International, said in China Daily Tuesday.

- The settlement of a major class-action lawsuit is shedding new light on a controversial real estate practice that home buyers and sellers typically know little about: fees paid to real estate brokers and agents for promoting home warranty policies.The case involves potentially thousands of home buyers and sellers who purchased warranty coverage from American Home Shield between May 2008 and March of this year. American Home Shield is the dominant player in the home warranty field, with sales of $657 million in 2010, according to the company. Home warranty policies offer repairs and replacements for owners when specified home systems and appliances malfunction.