SYDNEY -- Australian new home sales rose 0.2% in April, according to a monthly survey released Monday by HIA-Jeld-Wen. Sales of detached houses rose 0.4% in the month, while sales of multi-units posted a third consecutive monthly decline, falling by 2% in April, the survey showed.Copyright © 2011 MarketWatch, Inc. France, who quit May 18 after he was accused of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid. He has denied the allegations. Lagarde will meet with the head of Brazil's Central Bank and also the nation's finance minister, Guido Mantega. In recent years, Mantega has loudly fought for reforms in the IMF, World Bank and other multilateral institutions that would take into account the growth of emerging nations such as Brazil, China and India. "We must establish meritocracy, so that the person leading the IMF is selected for their merits and not for being European," Mantega said earlier this month. "You can have a competent European ... but you can have a representative from an emerging nation who is competent as well." Mantega also has said that whoever is chosen to replace Strauss-Kahn should only hold the job until Strauss-Kahn's term expires at the end of 2012. That, Mantega has argued, would give IMF member nations more time to carefully choose a full-term chief. China has suggested it is time to shake things up at the IMF, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu saying the leadership "should be based on fairness, transparency and merit." South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan spoke in stronger terms earlier this month. He said the new director should come from an emerging economy, to "bring a new perspective that will ensure that the interests of all countries, both developed and developing, are fully reflected in the operations and policies of the IMF." French Embassy spokesman SteAlthough most investigators and credit card fraud teams focus on minimizing cybercrime and identity theft activities launched through spam attacks, the California teams discovered a network of businesses that developed complex fulfillment systems to prevent chargebacks and to encourage repeat business.Under this model, a team of spammers could make more money over time selling many of the same goods to repeat customers than by simply selling credit card account details to fraud rings. Out of 56 completed transactions during the study, only seven of the team's orders failed to arrive.Though top rated credit cards already offer significant consumer protection, few customers feel compelled to file transaction disputes after packages arrive from fulfillment centers in India, China, and even the United States.Visa, MasterCard could team up to block spam fundingEfforts by the technical community to block consumers' access to potentially fraudulent websites have often been thwarted by a combination of hacker attacks and customer frustration. The researchers suggest that American credit card issuers could help curb the growth of spam-sending botnets by choking off the supply of cash to merchants on a "financial blacklist."The team suggested that a partnership between credit card platform providers like Visa and MasterCard could eliminate many spammers' financial incentives, just as a similar enforcement action closed off most Americans' access to illegal online gambling operation