Archive for July, 2010
Citigroup to Pay $75 Million to Settle SEC Subprime Case
July 29th, 2010Another one for your Pocket Lint file folder. Via: Bloomberg: Citigroup Inc., which got a $45 billion taxpayer bailout, will pay $75 million to settle U.S. regulatory claims that it understated investments linked to subprime mortgages as the housing crisis unfolded, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.
New Amazon Kindle
July 29th, 2010The new wifi only Kindle for $139 looks very tempting to me. I won’t be buying any ebooks, but I have tons of documents in PDF. The problem is that I never did get used to reading for pleasure on my regular flat panel display. I think of pleasure reading as something that happens away […]
Timing of Stock Sales by Moody’s CEO
July 29th, 2010Via: McClatchy: The chief executive of Moody’s Investors Service sold almost $3 million in company stock this year, and $7.1 million last year, both times right before his company’s stock price fell from its peak levels, a McClatchy analysis has found.
Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents
July 29th, 2010This astonishing statistic is mentioned in the audio feature on the page linked below. Via: PRI: The term we were looking for is “Forward Operating Base” or FOB. The US has many FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The large ones have many tents and other structures where personnel live and work. And all of them […]
Judge Orders Life Sentence for Florida Keys Drug Smuggler — Who Worked for the U.S. State Department?
July 29th, 2010Via: Key News: An admitted drug smuggler who carried millions of dollars in hash oil and marijuana in the keels of sailboats through the Florida Keys will spend the rest of his life in prison, a federal judge ruled Monday. The life sentence of Juergen Heinz Williams, also known as Juergen Werthmann, was the last […]
Details of 100 Million Facebook Users Compiled, Distributed Over Bit Torrent
July 29th, 2010Via: MSNBC: The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private. However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised. The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online […]
CIA and Google Fund Same Web Surveillance Startup
July 29th, 2010Via: Wired: The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships […]
Doomers in New Zealand
July 29th, 2010Interestingly, the piece doesn’t mention Transition Towns New Zealand, which would make much more sense to average New Zealanders than wealthy British and American people, like the ones featured in the video. The 2012 woowoo element doesn’t help either. *sigh* Via: 3news: Many people believe that a great world catastrophe is going to happen in […]
Gulf of Hormuz: Japanese Tanker Damaged
July 28th, 2010Update: Cause Still Unknown Via: BBC: An investigation has been launched into the unexplained damage suffered by a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman. The M Star was damaged on Wednesday while travelling from Qatar to Japan. Port officials in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates say the ship was involved […]
Congressional Budget Office: “Growing Budget Deficits Will Cause Debt to Rise to Unsupportable Levels”
July 28th, 2010Via: Congressional Budget Office: Unless policymakers restrain the growth of spending, increase revenues significantly as a share of GDP, or adopt some combination of those two approaches, growing budget deficits will cause debt to rise to unsupportable levels. … Beyond those gradual consequences, a growing level of federal debt would also increase the probability of […]
