Category: News

Filed under: China, India, Tata, Geely

Tata Motors has milked the Nano minicar’s “most affordable” status for a ton of press, but it might soon hand the title belt over to a new challenger. According to a report at TopNews.in, Geely’s reportedly got its own ultra-frugal compact in the works for 2010. Called the IG, it’s expected to bring a $2,250 price tag and a 1.0-liter, 70 horsepower motor to the party.

We have no idea what to expect from a new car that’s priced like a lawn tractor, but word is that Geely aims to surpass the Nano from a quality standpoint. We already have a good idea of what the IG might look like if/when the Chinese microcar hits crowded city streets in a couple years, since Geely showed off the IG Fantastic concept car at last year’s Shanghai Motor Show.

While we’re certain the concept’s gullwing doors will never see life outside an exhibition hall, we’re thinking that a cute little runabout could fare quite nicely with a $2,250 price tag. We’ll likely never see the IG here in the States, but the folks in China and India will probably love it.

[Source: TopNews]

Geely to build car cheaper than Tata Nano? originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 23 May 2010 11:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Week of May 17 – to – May 21, 2010

Could the House help siphon off the venture capital dollars, which over the past few years have helped sustain cutting-edge renewable energy companies?  As Congress pushed this week to pass legislation that would tax the gains partners at private equity and venture capital funds earn for their investors, also known as carried interest, the private capital industry was fighting back. Lobbyists in Washington warned that the tax hike would swamp growth of startups developing much-needed technologies.  As is carried interests are taxed at the low, 15 percent capital gains rate. Congress wants to change that (and it’s looking more and more like it will) and tax these profits at the higher 35 percent income tax rate.

On the specifics of the legislation being debated in Congress, PeHUB Editor Dan Primack notes that under the House bill 25 percent of carried interest would be taxed as capital gains and the remaining 75 percent as ordinary income. The new tax regime would not go into effect until the beginning of 2013.

Primack says the tax hike could push PE and VC firms to  “accelerate their attempts to exit existing portfolio companies.” That would not be good for cleantech companies, which are largely dependent on venture capital these days to support their R&D. A recent PeHUB Top 10 ranking, where five of the 10 largest VC investments were cleantech companies, underscored that reality. Cleantech companies are a long ways from being commercially viable and if anything requires more private financing rounds to turn their technologies from R&D wonders into viable businesses.

In terms of exit, a look at the performance of cleantech companies that have recently exited via IPOs is far from glowing. Shares of Battery maker A123 systems (NASDAQ: AONE), which issued shares last fall, are currently trading far below their introductory price. Shares of second-generation biofuel maker Codexis (NASDAQ: CDXS) have flatlined since the company’s IPO a month ago. Jinko Solar (NYSE: JKS), the Chinese PV maker that did an IPO last week, is also trading below its $11 introductory price. There is a lot of buzz around cleantech but that’s not enough to convince investors to buy the shares.

The steep capital-dependence of renewable energy companies was again highlighted this week with solar power plant developer BrightSource Energy’s Series D $150 million raise. Stepping in, as equity holders were a couple of heavy weight investors, including the California State Teachers Retirement System and Alstom, the French power and transportation company. BrightSource says it will use the cash as equity to structure the  financing to support the development of up 14 solar power plants in the U.S. Southwest. Earlier this year, BrightSource also received a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. With the Series D the company has accumulated $300 million in equity financing.

BrightSource shareholder Google shared some more insight this week on its ever-evolving clean energy strategy. Besides North America, the company will also consider making investments in European renewable energy projects, said Google head of green business Ben Kott at a conference in London. The comments came a couple of weeks after the Mountain View, Calif., company announced a $39 million investment in a NextEra Energy Resources wind farm in North Dakota.

As we report on Google’s cleantech developments we keep asking ourselves: “Is there a business strategy there?” It’s hard to say. The company has definitely become a pivotal player in the industry. Put a Google executive on the dais at an industry conferences and you can bet you’ll have a packed room. But what is the company trying to do? Is it looking to repeat in clean energy what it did selling sponsored links? Or is Google just a renewable energy do-gooder that’s less concerned about generating profits and more focused on raising awareness about climate change issues. As is, right now, it seems that for the time being, it’s a little of both.

VC and PE Watch

Half of the deals listed in a Top 10 ranking of the year’s largest venture capital deals involved cleantech companies. Better Place, the battery service provider, lead with $150 million raised.

Infinis, the clean energy company backed by London private equity firm Terra Firma, announced its acquisition of Scottish and Southern Energy’s (SSE) wholly-owned 30-megawatt Ardrossan Wind farm for £28.1m ($40.5 million) in cash and outstanding debt of £25.7m.

Solar power plant developer BrightSource Energy tapped the deep pockets of the California State Teachers Retirement System and French transport and power company Alstom, among others, for $150 million in equity financing.

Cleantech-focused PE firm Arborview Capital has completed a recapitalization of Paragon Airheater Technologies, a provider of solutions that reduce fuel consumption and emissions of fossil fuel-fired power plants. No financial terms were disclosed.

Mid Europa Partners, a London-based private equity and buyout firm focused on Central and Eastern Europe, invested €60 million ($76.19 million) for an undisclosed stake in Energy 21 a Czech developer and operator of PV-solar power plants. The investment marks Mid Europa’s entry into the cleantech business.

Pattern Energy Group secured more than $800 million in equity funding. It expects to use some of that cash to fund acquisitions of wind projects. Of the $800 million, about $400 million come from investment funds controlled by New York-based private equity firm Riverstone Holdings.

Rambling

The United Nations has a new climate change negotiator. She is Costa Rican and her name is Christiana Figueres. She’s a well-tested international beaurocrat who has been a member of her country’s climate change negotiating team since 1995.  The appointment by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was a surprise. The betting money was on South African Tourism Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk. Figueres takes over as the head of the Bonn, Germany-based United Nations’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) less than a year away from the next major climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico. There is growing skepticism — especially amongst developing nations — that the UN system is the appropriate body to roll out a comprehensive climate change agreement. The international body is too rigid, centralized and is not able to provide the sort of flexibility nations like China or India are asking for in dealing with their Co2 and green house gas cuts. It will be up to Figueres to come up with a strategy that’s able to bring back some credibility to the UN as the PLACE able to forge a comprehensive, global climate change agreement.

Image: Charlie Rose

The growth of the cloud community and the appetite for cloud-based software options over the past few years has been remarkable, although not unexpected. The SaaS model offers two distinct competitive advantages for software developers — massive economies of scale and sustainable profit streams –- over the traditional model. Yet astoundingly, many firms take the plunge into providing SaaS without understanding the underlying requirements necessary to ensure success.

In order to become a sustained market leader in SaaS, software companies need to focus on building and delivering a highly efficient service to their customers without spending significant money on the underlying infrastructure (cloud or otherwise). A poor architecture will underutilize server resources, making software costly to deliver.

Feature-wise, most SaaS applications have the ability to quickly provision new customers to the system as well as to manage subscriptions in order to identify the types of application functionality they’ve purchased access to, metering systems to track what was used so they can be billed appropriately, and the ability to roll out upgrades to a live environment. The addition of such features could take anywhere from six months if the goal is to “just to get by” to well over a year if it’s to reach full SaaS stack maturity.

To be a market leader, however, companies must be willing to go the distance and attempt to reach full maturity as quickly as possible. Architecturally, this means:

• Handling multitenancy: The days of managing and executing data for a single customer at a time are over. To succeed in the cloud, software companies must be able to simultaneously recognize and handle requests from many customers (and their associated end users) at once. From a delivery standpoint this means one instance of your SaaS offering must segregate customers efficiently and offer them their own unique experience, despite sharing an instance of the software and the underlying resources. From a technical standpoint, this massive efficiency of scale adds significant complexity, and, as with most fields, complexity is money.
• Scale-out: In order be able to meet the aggregate demand of all customers, not just the largest, the software has to be able to utilize the elastic capacity offered by cloud infrastructure such as EC2, to give them the ability to scale-out each of their components independently. Simply running on EC2 doesn’t mean your application can scale infinitely, but that your application has infinite resources at its disposal if it knew what to do with them and how to manage them. And knowing what to do with an infinite number of resources requires highly complex software architectures that most applications simply don’t have. Maintaining a level of abstraction from the underlying hardware, and being able to dispatch requests from any user to any part of the network provides the foundation for such scale-out.
• Customer management: Of all of the cloud’s distinct advantages, among the most prominent are its superior operations and customer management tools such as customer provisioning, upgrade engines and monitoring. Granted, such tools have to be built into the core architecture, but by allowing customers to track their end users’ activities, they provide a path to stable and recurring revenue streams. Customer provisioning systems even allow a software vendor to seamlessly “turn on” a new customer without impacting existing ones.

This is far from an exhaustive list, and software architectures built for cloud-based delivery can be extremely costly. But any software vendor serious about becoming a sustained market leader needs to be able to offer these features in a fashion that keeps operations and maintenance costs as a single-digit percentage of revenue.

Doing so can be especially difficult when combined with a fundamental shift in the services paradigm. If not managed properly, however, an entire SaaS offering’s future can be put in jeopardy.

Make no mistake. The cloud’s superiority is undeniable. But such advantages require a commitment to go the extra mile in terms of service. For those willing to make that commitment, SaaS offers a path toward long-term prosperity.

Sinclair Schuller is co-founder and CEO of Apprenda. He will be speaking at our cloud computing-focused conference, Structure, which will be held June 23 & 24 in San Francisco, on the panel “Hybrid Clouds — The Best of Both Worlds.”

---

There are a variety of reasons why stretching your neck is good for your body. Whether it is before an exercise program, as part of a rehabilitation program, or simply a way to relax your body, stretching your neck muscles is highly beneficial. It helps to prevent injury or re-injury during and after workouts. However, if done incorrectly, stretching can do more harm than good. The following is a list of things to remember when doing your stretching routine:

1. Perform your stretches slowly, and fluidly. Don’t jerk your muscles.

2. Hold each stretch for 10-20 seconds.

3. Perform each stretch 3-5 times.

4. Stretch until you feel a pulling sensation in the neck muscle you’re targeting. Do not push yourself to the point you feel burning, tearing, or pain of any kind.

5. Stop immediately if you do feel any neck pain.

6. If you are unsure about a stretch, ask your doctor for a demonstration to make sure you are doing it correctly.

Stretching is a great way to keep your muscles safe and relaxed before and after a workout, while on the computer at home or at work, during a break from a long drive, even a stressful situation. It’s also a great way to warm up your body after first waking up. However, it’s important to always make sure you are taking your time and performing each neck stretch correctly so you won’t injure yourself.

Visit Arc4life.com for your online selection of cervical support neck pillows, orthopedic pain relief products and Home traction units. Products for pain relief. Bookmark this on Delicious Stumble It!

After 800 years of discouraging foreigners, Japan is opening the floodgates to tourists — especially the Chinese. The government relaxed visa requirements for Chinese nationals last summer and now plans to give out ten times as many visas to China.

What deflationary Japan wants is more of this:

(AP) Foreign tourists, especially from China, have boosted sales at major department stores across Japan amid their dwindling overall sales after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008, the Japan Department Stores Association said Saturday. 

The combined sales of each department store was 2.2 times higher in February, the month embracing the Chinese New Year holidays, compared with the same period last year. The figure in April rose 37.3 percent to 2.4 billion yen as well.

But is it a healthy relationship like the good old days of Chimerica?

The China Bubble inflated prices enough to drive Chinese shoppers to Japan. Chinese money may inflate Japanese prices and skewer Japanese consumer spending. Chinese inflation promotes Japanese deflation, and a crash in either country brings them both down. This is what psychologists call codependency.

Scary when you read Hugh Hendry says the major collapse that spurs global hyperinflation will be Japan or China.

Don’t miss: China’s 14 Dominoes Of Destruction

Join the conversation about this story »

As the hot summer days are drawing faster again, there are many people who prefer to go the swimming pool and have their time of relaxation there. But, the customers should take some precautions about the dangers related to swimming especially when it comes to using the public swimming pools.
There are some reports by the Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) that swimming pools that are being used by the public are not safe. They said that the bacteria in these places are high and could be risky to one’s health. As the CDC went around for some investigations, they have reported that 1 in 8 public swimming pools hold violations on the health and safety code. Some of these pools are too dirty that could threaten the public health, while others had other problems like missing safety equipments. According to the CDC, kiddie pools have the most disinfection problems where they found some bits of fecal matters.
In 120,000 public swimming pools that the CDC investigated, 12% of these public swimming pools are for immediate closure due to some serious violations. The public swimming pools that they have investigated came from public park, hotels and also motels.

Related posts:

1. CDC Finds Public Pools Highly Unsafe
2. CDC recommendations in swimming pools and water parks
3. Worst Mine Explosion in West Virginia kills 25

Bad timing. A new international airport opens up in Panama City, Florida today — only 100 miles away from the notorious BP oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. Instead of celebrating, the area’s visitor’s bureau is trying to convince tourists that the water is still clean.

“We’ve been getting calls ever since the oil spill occurred,” said Dan Rowe of the Panama City Visitors’ Bureau. “You know, wondering about their vacation plans.”

Tourism, Rowe said, is the largest industry in Panama City. The $318-million Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport is the first international airport to open in the country since 1997.

“It is really going to be an economic driver for all of northwest Florida’s economy for years to come,” he said.

The new airport is expected to generate approximately $80 million in new state revenues over the first 20 years of operation.

But the challenge, now, is to convince tourists that the water is clean.

“We’ll get through the oil spill,” Rowe said. “There’s no oil on Panama City Beach or any of the beaches in northwest Florida.”

Tarballs, (big globs of emulsified oil) have been seen washing up on the shores of Mississippi and Alabama, however.

Florida officials hope oil spill fears won’t keep tourists away [CNN]

Los Angeles Lakers lead 3-0 against Phoenix Suns in NBA Western Conference Finals. Boston Celtics in control of Eastern Conference 2-0 against Orlando Magic.

Fans clamor for a possible rematch Lakers vs. Celtics since 2008 in this year’s NBA Finals. Lakers’ coach Philip Jackson is thinking head on saying, “We can’t worry about anything besides this one right now (Suns). We’re just playing to see what happens here.” Kobe Bryant is looking at the game just the same, with his team focusing at the moment for there are still games to win. Meanwhile, on the eastern court Celtics are taking the game on stride to win the championship despite Magic’s home court advantage. Celtic’s coach Doc Rivers avoids any comparison with the 2008 finals because a lot of changes have been going with his team. They are hard on practice now after losing against the Cavaliers in Game 3 semi-finals 124-95. Rivers wants to go for the gold. “This is not a team to rest on its laurels. We got 2-0 lead with home court, but we don’t look at it like that. We look at this as a must win.”

Lakers in the past finals had lost to Celtics three times. It was a mismatch, a sports commentary adds.

But that was before. It could be different this time.

Related posts:

1. Empty-handed Orlando Magic Faces Game 3
2. James Lebron’s Hard Court Tantrums
3. Paul Pierce’s Twitter Account Hacked

Fish gasping for oxygen flapped helplessly around George Arnesen’s shrimp boat off the coast of Grand Isle, Louisiana. Arnesen said he’d never seen anything like it in his 15 years working on the Gulf.

“It’s real emotional for me being a commercial fisherman knowing that my livelihood, way of life altogether, is in great danger of being destroyed,” Arnesen said. “A whole industry is in danger of being destroyed.”

Arnesen dipped a large bucket into the water. When he pulled it back into his boat, the bucket was filled with thick, black sludge.

Echoing the sentiments of other fishermen, Arnesen complained about a lack of adequate protective measures along the coast.

“We just rode the whole beach and there’s no boom,” he said. “There’s no absorbent. They’re not out there trying to close off any of the gaps. We’ve seen one spot that had some sand bags in it.”

In addition to the effects of the oil, federal regulators had raised concerns about potential hazards associated with the record quantities of chemical dispersant BP has been using to break down the oil near the site of the spill. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a directive instructing BP to seek less toxic alternatives.

But BP officials said some of the other chemical dispersants are not available in the amounts they need, or haven’t been fully tested for effectiveness in the type of setting of this deep water spill.

In a letter to the EPA and U.S. Coast Guard, Douglas Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production writes:

“Based on the information that is available today, BP continues to believe that COREXIT was the best and most appropriate choice at the time when the incident occurred, and that COREXIT remains the best option for subsea application.”

BP has applied a total of 715 thousand gallons of dispersant on the Gulf oil spill, including 85 thousand gallons underwater.

Today, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson returns to Louisiana to monitor the response to the oil spill. This marks Jackson’s third visit to the region since the oil spill in the Gulf began just over one month ago.

Remember all of last week ago, when we first spotted what could have been a white iPhone 4G? It happened again! Leading many to believe that, yes, Apple is going to release two versions of the phone later this year. More »










iPhone – Handhelds – Smartphones – Apple – Wallpapers and Themes

The World Bank has created a new Web site, data.worldbank.org, to make available for free online more than 2,000 statistics on development that previously had been available only to paying subscribers. Some of the databases include data that is more than 50 years old. The data for more than 200 countries covers such topics as infant mortality, life expectancy and educational achievement. The data is accessible in English, Spanish, French or Arabic.

The World Bank’s decision to make much of its data available for free is part of a global movement, according to Beth Noveck, director of the White House Open Government Initiative. Data.gov, formed a year ago to boost access to federal data, and other public agency efforts to increase data availability are designed to empower individuals and communities to take action on issues of importance to them

[Source: Federal Computer Week]

Yesterday I set out on my 12 mile bike ride with my new clip in shoes/pedals.

I start at a mile marker 7 on the trail and then go to mile 13 and turn around. When I got to mile marker 12, I was like, “woohooo one more to go and then i can turn around,” but I swear it felt like I was going forever. I kept cursing, “where the hell is 13?~!”
Finally, I came upon mile marker number 14. #$% what the hell, I thought! I missed it!?
Well, I turned around and finally came up mile 13, which had been ripped from the ground and put kind of out of sight…soooo my 12 mile ride turned into 14.
That’s okay though because I felt great. I absolutely love my new pedals and shoes. I wish I would have gotten them sooner.
I finished in 1 hour and 11 minutes. It would have been shorter if I hadn’t stopped at 234 red lights and stop signs. maaaan!

Still smiling after 14 miles:

Another day, another video chat/video conferencing bit of debugging code to throw atop the heap that’s amassed around the coming “iPhone 4G.” Today’s revelation: A menu screen from a “field test” that purports to show video conferencing. More »










IPhone – Videoconferencing – Apple – Smartphones – Handhelds

The finale of American TV series “Lost” will be tonight. Executive producers has some spoilers for tonight’s finale.

“Lost” Executive producers reveal some inner details on how the Finale will end in its last episode tonight on May 23, 2010. They didn’t give too much away but they made the viewers more curious and eager to watch.

Here are some of the “Lost” Finale spoilers/teasers:
The Man In Black will be introduced in the season as the brother of the guardian of the mysterious Island, Jacob. The Man in Black is said to be made from smoke with the name Smoke Monster, or often called “Smokey”. He only inhabits the bodies of the dead, such as John Locke. A lot of people are thinking that the man in black is actually Locke. It confuses the viewers because he looks like Locke for some reason. The Man in black is similar to a shape shifter that illuminates people.

There are only a few more hours until the much-awaited 2 1/2 hour season finale of “Lost”. We will clear the teasers tonight and see what will really happen.

Related posts:

1. Watch Grey’s Anatomy Finale Episode HD Online Promo Video
2. FlashForward Cancelled Due to Low Ratings
3. Watch Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale Online

Se acaba de dar a conocer la que podriamos definir como lista negra para los fabricantes y marcas que operan en España. No hablamos de otra cosa que de los coches menos vendidos en nuestro territorio durante el primer cuatrimestre del año.

De los vehículos que podremos encontrar en esta lista, ya podriamos casi confirmar que su marca o fabricante realizará cambios drásticos para revertir la situación actual. Algunas ventas de coches son realmente sorprendentes ya que los modelos que encabezan la lista en su correspondiente segmento han venido sólo 2 unidades.

En definitiva es algo triste el dar a conocer estos datos pero es algo necesario, a continuación os dejo con la lista por segmentos:

URBANOS

1. Fiat Seicento (2 unidades)
2. Daihatsu Sirion (6 unidades)
3. Th!ink City (6 unidades)
4. Subaru Justy (7 unidades)
5. VW Fox (13 unidades)
6. Suzuki Splash (26 unidades)
7. Indica (106 unidades)
8. Opel Agila (114 unidades)
9. TATA Indigo (154 unidades)
10. Chevrolet Matiz (220 unidades)

SEGMENTO B

1. Lada Kalina (2 unidades)
2. Chevrolet Kalos (2 unidades)
3. Daihatsu Materia (2 unidades)
4. SEAT Córdoba (2 unidades)
5. Hyundai Getz (3 unidades)
6. Hyundai Accent (7 unidades)
7. Peugeot 1007 (14 unidades)
8. Hyundai Matrix (65 unidades)
9. Nissan Cube (67 unidades)
10. Lancia Y (99 unidades)

SEGMENTO C

1. Peugeot 307 (1 unidad)
2. Fiat Stilo (1 unidad)
3. SEAT Toledo (10 unidades)
4. Alfa Romeo Giulietta (10 unidades)
5. Chrysler Pt Cruiser (12 unidades)
6. Nissan Tiida (15 unidades)
7. Hyundai Coupe (17 unidades)
8. Honda CR-Z 27 (unidades)
9. Honda FR-V (69 unidades)
10. Chevrolet Nubira (76 unidades)
11. Alfa Romeo 147 (105 unidades)
12. Dodge Caliber (121 unidades)
13. Subaru Impreza (134 unidades)
14. Honda Insight (192 unidades)
15. Toyota Corolla (204 unidades)

SEGMENTO D

1. Opel Vectra (1 unidad)
2. Kia Magentis (3 unidad)
3. Volvo S60 (3 unidades)
4. Cadillac BLS (4 unidades)
5. Jaguar X-Type (6 unidades)
6. Mercedes CLK (14 unidades)
7. Dodge Avenger (22 unidades)
8. Infiniti G37 (27 unidades)
9. Fiat Croma (35 unidades)
10. Chrysler Sebring (72 unidades)

SUV Y 4X4

1. Cadillac SRX (1 unidad)
2. Santana 300 (1 unidad)
3. Cadillac Escalade (1 unidad)
4. Nissan Patrol GR (2 unidades)
5. Chevrolet TrailBlazer (2 unidades)
6. Nissan Terrano (3 unidades)
7. Hummer H3 (5 unidades)
8. Mahindra GOA (10 unidades)
9. Mercedes Clase G (10 unidades)
10. Infiniti EX (11 unidades)
11. Daihatsu Terios (13 unidades)
12. IVECO Massif (14 unidades)
13. Subaru Tribeca (18 unidades)
14. Jeep Commander (23 unidades)
15. Mercedes Clase GL (25 unidades)
16. Lada Niva (35 unidades)
17. Mazda CX-9 (35 unidades)
18.  TATA Safari (38 unidades)
19. Jeep Cherokee (48 unidades)
20. Nissan Murano (58 unidades)

Related posts:

1. Los coches con peor frenada del mercado
2. Aumentan las ventas de coches en España
3. El Nissan Tiida no se fabricará más en España

Here’s one reason to believe that bearishness is getting long in the tooth. Less than 2% of S&P 500 stocks are above their 52-week moving average.

Basically the entire market has been creamed and historically this has been a decent trading opportunity.

Traders’ Narrative:

“…a number of significant buying opportunities have been identified in the past after periods of market weakness have caused the percentage of stocks above their 10-day moving averages to drop below 10%.”

…

I mentioned the financial and energy sector in passing yesterday as being extremely oversold with just 1% (or less) of stocks closing above their 50 day moving average. Today the banks got a major boost, rising much more than the general market proxies. Most are attributing this to the passing of the Wall Street regulation bill in the Senate on Thursday night. As a technically oriented trader I prefer to think of it as an expected reaction to the extremely oversold condition in that sector.

Even if you believe we’re heading lower in the long-term, perhaps we’re in for a near-term bounce.

(Via Abnormal Returns)

Join the conversation about this story »

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] has decided not to file charges against former American International Group (AIG) [corporate website] executive Joseph Cassano, according to prosecutors from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] on Saturday. The decision appears to end a two-year criminal investigation of several executives from AIG’sFinancial Products subsidiary [official website], which played a large role in constructing complex contracts known as credit-default swaps [TIME backgrounder] that insured bond losses tied to the US housing market. The SEC investigation was undertaken to determine whether AIG officials deceived investors and auditors in 2007 by misrepresenting the accounting value of a credit default swap portfolio, which nearly bankrupted the company. The SEC will continue its investigation into the London-based Financial Products subsidiary and could eventually lead to civil actions.

In August former AIG executives agreed to settle [JURIST report] a suit brought by the SEC alleging their involvement in inflating the company’s reported financial records. The SEC accused former CEO Maurice Greenberg and former CFO Howard Smith of being “control persons” under the Securities Exchange Act [text], making them liable for AIG’s securities law violations. The SEC claimed that the two executives made false statements which allowed the company to misrepresent key earnings between 2000 and 2005. Greenberg will pay $15 million in disgorgement and penalties without admitting any charges to “put these issues behind him,” while Smith settled for $1.5 million.

American college students today show no significant loyalty to a news program, news personality or even news platform. Students have only a casual relationship to the originators of news, and in fact don’t make fine distinctions between news and more personal information. Yet student after student, in a recent study, demonstrated knowledge of specific news stories.

How did they get the information? In a disaggregated way, and not typically from the news outlet that broke or committed resources to a story.

This is a Wordle data visualization of the 111,109 words the students in the study wrote about their experiences of going 24 hours without media.

[Source: blogs.worldbank.org – Susan Moeller]

This is Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering with Android. And he’s about to say something you need to listen to. Something you all need to listen to. And when he’s finished, go back and listen to it again. And when your ears are done steaming and you’re through stomping your feet into the ground, listen to it again.

Carriers need time to organize and test software updates, people. Your phone is just one of many, and it needs to be done right. And Vic does an excellent job explaining why carriers need time to get out the latest and greatest version of Android.

All that said, we definitely feel your frustration at the wait, and there are some phones — cough, Xperia X10 — that take far longer to update than is practical for a consumer to consider. Anyhoo, check out the video after the break.

read more