Friend of British Prime Minister Found Dead in Toilet at Music Festival
June 27th, 2011Via: Belfast Telegraph:
Detectives are hoping toxicology results will shed light on the death riddle of a senior Tory in a Glastonbury Festival VIP toilet.
Christopher Shale, 56, a close friend of David Cameron, was discovered slumped in a cubicle in the backstage area on Sunday morning. The Prime Minister’s constituency chairman had been reported as missing by worried family members at 900-acre Worthy Farm on Saturday.
It is feared his body may have lain undiscovered for up to 10 hours.
Police found his body as he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday bemoaning difficulties his party faced in recruiting new members. He was reported to have written: “No reason to join. Lots of reasons not to.”
Downing Street was understood to have contacted Mr Shale on Saturday to warn him that the note he had written had been leaked to the newspaper.
Mr Cameron said he was “devastated” as he described Mr Shale as a valued friend and a “big rock” in his life.
Confusion reigned at the site after Michael Eavis said the wealthy businessman’s death could be a “suicide situation”. But police dismissed the claim, with sources saying he was thought to have suffered a heart attack.
Research Credit: AC
Google Gets Driverless Car Law Passed in Nevada
June 26th, 2011Via: PhysOrg:
The savvy among you may remember that back in May we told you about Google’s attempts to get the Nevada state legislature to consider allowing users to driver UGV, or unmanned ground vehicles, that are more popularly know as self-driving cars on the states roads. At the time it seemed like an interesting notion and a bit of a pipe dream.
As it turns out dreams become real for the search giant quickly. The Nevada state legislature has just passed has just passed a bill, Assembly Bill No. 511, that does two things. First, the law allows the Nevada Department of Transportation to create rules and regulations regarding the use of self-driving cars, so that they can be used legally on the road. The second part of the law requires the Nevada state Department of Transportation to designate areas in which these vehicles can be tested.
Power-Grid Experiment
June 26th, 2011Via: AP:
A yearlong experiment with America’s electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers — and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast.
“A lot of people are going to have things break and they’re not going to know why,” said Demetrios Matsakis, head of the time service department at the U.S. Naval Observatory, one of two official timekeeping agencies in the federal government.
Since 1930, electric clocks have kept time based on the rate of the electrical current that powers them. If the current slips off its usual rate, clocks run a little fast or slow. Power companies now take steps to correct it and keep the frequency of the current — and the time — as precise as possible.
The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment that would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press.
Officials say they want to try this to make the power supply more reliable, save money and reduce what may be needless efforts. The test is tentatively set to start in mid-July, but that could change.
Five Bushehr Experts Died in Russian Plane Crash
June 26th, 2011Via: AP:
Russia’s top nuclear agency says that five experts involved in the construction of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant have died in Monday’s plane crash in northeastern Russia.
Rosatom said Wednesday hat the five men were among 44 passengers of the Tu-134 plane that slammed into highway near the Petrozavodsk airport.
It said the experts were on their way from Moscow to a meeting at a Rosatom subsidiary that manufactures equipment for nuclear plants.
Research Credit: afterhours
Austrian Company Debuts Revolutionary Wingless Aircraft
June 24th, 2011Via: PhysOrg:
A firm from Austria, Austrian Innovative Aeronautical Technology (IAT21) has unveiled a new type of aircraft that flies without wings or rotors, at the Paris Air Show. Though not actually flown at the show, spokesmen for the new aircraft, named D-Dalus (no doubt after the tragic Greek figure Daedalus, who lost his son Icarus when his wings melted as he flew too close to the sun) claim the aircraft is capable of both hovering and flying forward as fast as a jet, all with very little noise.
U.S. Government Launching Antitrust Investigation of Google
June 24th, 2011Oh sure. I bet Google is quivering with fear.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Federal regulators are poised to hit Google Inc. with subpoenas, launching a broad, formal investigation into whether the Internet giant has abused its dominance in Web-search advertising, people familiar with the matter said.
The civil probe, which has the potential to reshape how companies compete on the Internet, is the most serious legal threat yet to the 12-year-old company, though it wouldn’t necessarily lead to any federal allegations of wrongdoing against Google.
While Google has faced several antitrust probes in recent years, the U.S. has limited its investigations largely to reviews of the company’s mergers and acquisitions. The new inquiry, by contrast, will examine fundamental issues relating to Google’s core search-advertising business, its biggest money maker, said the people familiar with the matter.
Sunny Sheu: Murdered for Investigating NY Foreclosure Judge Joseph Golia?
June 24th, 2011Via: Naked Capitalism:
The details are thin but they sure don’t smell right. The short form is that Sunny Sheu had his house stolen from him by fictive buyers who used forged documents. Judge Golia of Queens engaged in what appears to be highly questionable behavior in failing to reverse the sale. Sheu started investigating the judge, was told by policeman who specifically referred to information he had provided about Golia, and that if he didn’t drop it, he’d wind up dead. Sheu disregarded their warning and did wind up dead. The authorities are also refusing to honor requests for information regarding Sheu’s death made under New York’s Freedom of Information Act. This story has been publicized by Foreclosure Fraud and The Daily Bail and I hope it gets more traction.
Research Credit: anon
U.S. to Release Oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve
June 23rd, 2011Spit balls. Noise level. Clown antics.
Via: CNBC:
But enough on oil, because that’s not what this is really about anyway.
It’s about the White House finally recognizing what millions of American families already know: the economy is still too weak, the recovery too slow, and they need to try something new.
That’s bad news, but the worse news is that there probably isn’t much that the White House, Fed, OPEC, HUD or any other acronym can do to fix it. Even the combined might of the President and Ben Bernanke can’t overcome millions of deleveraging American households.
Retirement As We Know it Is “Dead”
June 23rd, 2011Via: Daily Ticker:
An increasing number of Americans are worried about their retirement. In fact, a recent Gallup poll finds retirement is the top financial worry in this country. The poll found that 58% of adults are “very/moderately worried” about maintaining their current lifestyle after they stop working. The number jumps to 77% among 30 to 49-year-olds.
There’s good reason to worry, says Michael Pento, senior economist at EuroPacific Capital. “Retirement is on life support, if not indeed dead as we know it today,” he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying interview.
“Where is the income going to come from to sustain a viable retirement?” Pento asks. The problem, as he sees it, is simple — income and asset values have plateaued over the last decade, while pension and entitlement programs are underfunded.
Pento recently penned a piece called “The Extinction of Retirement,” detailing the financial problems facing Americans on a fixed income.
“In the past many retirees could count on accumulated stock market wealth to help fund retirement. Not so much anymore. As of this writing, the S&P 500 is now no higher than it was in January of 1999. For over 12 years the major averages have gone nowhere in nominal terms and have declined significantly in real (inflation adjusted) terms. The dreams of becoming rich from investments have crashed along with Pets.com and Bernie Madoff. Then there is always the supposedly safest asset of all — a retiree’s home.
Despite a misguided faith that real estate prices could never fall, they have done just that … with a vengeance. According to S&P/Case-Shiller, the National Home Price Index has declined some 30% to levels not seen since the middle of 2002. And prices are still falling, with the rate of decline accelerating. The National Index dropped 4.2% in Q1 of 2011, after dropping 3.6% during Q4 2010. This means that only those retirees who have owned their homes for at least 10 years have any hope of selling at a profit. Ownership of significantly longer periods may be needed to have built up significant equity.
That leaves public and private pension plans. But here again there are serious issues. Let’s just look at state public pension shortfalls. According to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, “States report that their public-employee pensions are underfunded by a total of $438 billion, but a more accurate accounting demonstrates that they are actually underfunded by over $3 trillion. The accounting methods that states currently use to measure their liabilities assumes plans can earn high investment returns without risk.” Huge returns without risk? Bond yields are the lowest they have been in nearly a century! What world are these states living in? With few options, the states will undoubtedly look to the Federal government (taxpayers) for a bailout. Failing that, cuts are inevitable.”
China: Central Bank Finds Officials Stole Billions
June 23rd, 2011Via: MarketWatch:
Corrupt Chinese officials and employees of state-owned companies have absconded with about 800 billion yuan ($123.7 billion) of public money over 15 years through 2008, much of it making its way to the U.S., Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, according to Chinese news reports citing a central bank study.
The 67-page report, completed in 2008, was posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website this week, purportedly by mistake, and has since been taken down, although PDFs of the document are circulating in cyberspace.
In the report, which appears never to have been intended for public release, the PBOC estimated about 16,000 to 18,000 individuals have fled the country with ill-gotten funds over a 15-year period leading up to the report’s release, according to news-media accounts.
The PBOC focused upon where people went and how they got the embezzled funds out of the country.
One method, the study was cited as saying, was with the help of family or other trusted individuals who emigrated overseas, often using fake documents.
