Category: News

There’s been an almighty kerfuffle in British historian circles the last couple of weeks, after some people noticed a couple of reviewers on Amazon were talking up one historian’s work while trashing books written by others in the same field. The author in question was named Orlando Figes, a professor at London’s Birkbeck College. One of the pseudonyms used on Amazon was “orlando-birkbeck”, so it wasn’t too difficult to assume who was posting the reviews. Word started getting around and was picked up by some newspapers, leading Figes’ lawyer to deny his involvement and demand corrections be run, suggesting Figes could be entitled to damages. Then, the lawyer issued a statement blaming Figes’ wife (herself a lawyer) for the reviews. Not surprisingly, Figes has now admitted he wrote the reviews, and he’s very sorry. This isn’t the first time authors have been caught giving themselves good reviews, and generally, most attempts to do this sort of thing end badly. You’d expect by now that most reasonably intelligent people would understand that, and figure out that the potential downside of getting caught far outweighs any positive benefit the fake reviews could deliver. Then again, you’d also expect that most reasonably intelligent people wouldn’t fall for 419 scams, either.

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ABCNews is reporting that “a new government report reveals that some high-level regulators have spent more time looking at porn than policing Wall Street.” It seems that the report, obtained by ABC News, says senior employees of the SEC spent hours on the commission’s computers looking at sites like naughty.com, skankwire, youporn, and others, thus clearly removing their only defense, the fact that “X” is right next to “C” on the keyboard.

Oh here’s the best part, one of the 31 staffers mentioned in the report, a senior attorney for the SEC, was actually spending “up to eight hours a day” surfing for porn, and when the hard drive on his government issued computer was full he “downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.”

Another staffer, this one an accountant, apparently accessed pornographic sites 16,000 times in a month, says the report.

And how much does one make surfing porn for the SEC? Seventeen of the employees were “at a senior level,” earning salaries of $100,000 to $222,000 per year.

Looks like I’m in the wrong business.

SEC and Pornography: Workers Spent Hours on Porn Sites Instead of Stopping Fraud [ABCNews]

The Obama administration’s newly passed healthcare reform bill received more bad publicity last week, as officials with the nonpartisan Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released an assessment indicating that the legislation will actually increase spending over the next decade.

In the report, Rick Foster, CMS’ chief actuary, estimated that projected healthcare spending would increase by 1 percent over the next 10 years to $311 billion. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the new law would decrease spending to an estimated $222 billion, Fox News reports.

The report also indicated that by delaying the implementation of most of the spending provisions until 2014, the administration is hiding the true cost of the legislation, according to The Hill.

"Because of these transition effects and the fact that most of the coverage provisions would be in effect for only six of the 10 years of the budget period, the cost estimates shown in this memorandum do not represent a full 10-year cost for the new legislation," wrote Foster in the 38-page report.

He concluded that the proposed Medicare cuts may be "unrealistic," as they could force about 15 percent of healthcare providers into the red, "possibly jeopardizing access" to medical care for senior citizens.

Filed under: Saab, Beijing Motor Show

It didn’t take long for Beijing Automotive Industries Company (BAIC) to start making use of the old 9-3 and 9-5 tooling it bought from Saab last fall. After grafting on a new nose and taillights, both have been reborn as the C60 and C71.

It’s not clear what’s propelling the regular versions of these two reworked Saabs, however, there was a second ex-9-5 on display dubbed the C71EV. That version had a battery pack inserted into the floor and featured what BAIC was labeling as a fast battery switch system (ala Better Place).

The sign next to car claims a 90-mile range, but we think that’s highly optimistic given the size of the sedan and the comparatively small battery pack. Of course, that’s assuming this is actually a functional car.

Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Beijing 2010: BAIC (Saab) C60 and C71 and swappable batteries originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s team of lawyers filed papers with a Federal judge April 22, asking the court to issue a subpoena for President Obama to testify as a witness in the disgraced politician’s upcoming corruption trial.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the motion indicates that the president has direct knowledge concerning the government’s accusation that Blagojevich attempted to sell the senatorial seat left vacant following Obama’s presidential election victory.

While no direct accusations were brought against the president, the court documents claim that the comments made by Obama at a news conference conflict with statements made by a candidate for the seat and a labor union president.

"There are two conflicting stories and the defense has the right to admit evidence that contradicts the government’s claims," said the motion, which was obtained by news sources after blacked out portions of the documents were mistakenly revealed online for several hours.

Before the "computer glitch" could be fixed, the public was able to view sealed testimony by several witnesses who reportedly said that a labor union representative spoke with Obama on Nov. 3, 2008, and that the then-Illinois senator expressed his hope that Senate Candidate B would be picked by Blagojevich as his replacement. Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend of Obama’s and a current White House adviser, is known to be Senate Candidate B, according to Fox News.

Blagojevich’s trial is expected to begin on June 3. It is still unclear whether Obama will be forced to testify.

One day after Earth Day, Harvard continued to celebrate the environment, rolling out a green carpet for the individuals, teams, projects, and Schools that have advanced the cause of sustainability.

There were more than 160 nominees for what Harvard is calling its inaugural Green Carpet Awards. At a side door to Memorial Hall this afternoon (April 23), the walkway was lined with velvet ropes (in Harvard crimson) and overlaid with an all-weather carpet (in pea green).

The carpet continued into Sanders Theatre, where a raucous crowd of about 800 enjoyed the ceremonies.

There were no gold statuettes on hand, but there were Oscar-like touches.

One of the award presenters, Jack Spengler, showed up in a white sports jacket, black shirt, white tie, and wraparound shades. Spengler, a pioneer of sustainability education at Harvard, is the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH.)

In another Oscar-like touch, the Harvard LowKeys, an a cappella group, opened the show with a bright-colored spoof of “Paint It, Black” by the Rolling Stones. “I see a red door,” the sultry lead vocals went, “and I want it painted green.”

Three student films added another quasi-Hollywood touch. By the end of the hour, the audience learned the winner in that category: “Harvard Heroes,” a production from the undergraduate TV show “On Harvard Time.” It was a 2-minute, 10-second spoof on best-sustainability practices in a Harvard dorm.

Among other things, the hero John pops out of a recycling can to: eat leftover food from another tray (to reduce waste); drink directly from the soda fountain (to save on cups); and turn off the lights in the library while everyone else is still there (to save energy).

But there were real Harvard heroes, and the Green Carpet Awards provided examples.

A wide-screen slide show behind the podium — another Hollywood touch — flicked past the pictures of 52 individual achievement award winners, which was one category. (The names eventually will be posted at http://green.harvard.edu/greencarpet/awards/1.)

Many of the pictures drew hoots and shouts, and one group kept waving green bandanas.

“It isn’t easy being green,” said one of the emcees, Harvard executive vice president Katie Lapp, especially at a University of 600-plus buildings. “But these heroes got results.”

Team Project Award winners came next. In the Student Project category, the Harvard Community Garden took top honors. An honorable mention went to Seeding Labs, a Harvard Medical School and Faculty of Arts and Sciences project that has distributed used laboratory equipment to 16 developing nations.

In the Waste/Water Reduction Project category, top honors came down to a tie: the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) Green Team and EcoDiv for a 70-percent composting and recycling rate; and to Sebastian’s Café and the HSPH Green Team café program. Sebastian’s is the first Harvard dining operation to receive a Green Restaurant rating.

In the running for that same category was the F.A.S. toilet and sink conversion project — surely one of the least Oscar-like nominations in Oscar-like history. But retrofitting 700 toilets and 900 sinks did lead to a 20 percent reduction in water use.

The Capital Project Award went to HDS for its renovation of Rockefeller Hall, a late-1960s architectural artifact where energy use has been trimmed by 42 percent.

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Project category was split into two parts, for energy infrastructure and for behavior/operations.

In the first category, there was a four-way tie. The winners: University Operations Services for retrofits and fuel switching at the Blackstone Steam Plant; the Graduate School of Education and the Radcliffe Institute for a fuel switch in their shared boilers; the Harvard Business School for its Chilled Water Plant Diversity Project; and Harvard Real Estate Services, in part for installing a 1,600-panel solar power array on an Arsenal Street property.

In the Behavior/Operations category, there was another tie. “We’ll have to be more decisive next year, said another event emcee, Heather Henriksen, director of Harvard’s Office for Sustainability (OFS).

One winner was the FAS Chemistry Operations Team, for finding ways to reduce energy use in science laboratories, which account for 48 percent of FAS energy use – but only 25 percent of its square footage. (The savings so far are $200,000 a year.) And the Harvard Law School (HLS) Facilities Team won for a series of energy audits that increased compliance with energy-saving behaviors by 15 percent.

Then there was the Green Team Project award winner, the team from Alumni Affairs and Development. (Two people accepted the award. One was dressed as Kermit the Frog, who for the occasion wore lime green stockings.)

OFS this year awarded its first Student Sustainability Grants. A long list of winners won a moment of Green Carpet glory, flashing onto the big screen. Two of the grant proposals were a HDS garden and a HLS dorm composting project.

Toward the end of the ceremonies, the audience — still revved up — got a look at “Green is Sexy,” a short from the Mather House Council. The film showed two doubtful best practices for sustainable living. (Shower with all your friends, and use body heat instead of the furnace.) But one idea would work: Once you are under the covers, turn out the lights.

All three film entries, including “Real Men of Genius” from Sam Novey ’11 and Sam Berman ‘12, are available for viewing on YouTube.

The wrap-up had an Oscar feel as well. Special Achievement Awards went to Spengler and to Thomas Vautin, Harvard’s acting vice president for administration. A dozen years ago, both were on the ground floor of Harvard’s awakening to the power and importance of sustainable practices — a direction that Vautin credited to undergraduate action starting in the 1980s.

Today, he said of the issue, “The opportunity for continuous learning is endless.”

The sleek, 7-series-based four-door concept from Beijing will make it to production.

After a two-year hiatus in which the project sat on the shelf, BMW’s 7-series-sized four-door “coupe” is back on again. The licorice-black Gran Coupé concept shown in Beijing at a private reveal for journalists “will be built” according to BMW head of design, Adrian von Hooydonk, “though we don’t know yet what to call it.”

With the numbers 5, 6, and 7 taken, its possible BMW will revive the long-dead 8-series moniker last used in the 1990s on its wedge-shaped super coupe. (We’ve also read internet chatter that it could join the 6-series lineup as a range-topper, possibly with a convertible variant.) Although BMW is mute on timing, judging from the nearly finished state of the design, we can probably expect a production version to appear next year wearing a base price in the high-$70K to low-$80K range.

Keep Reading: BMW Says It Will Build Gran Coupé Concept – Car News

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Australian scientists have discovered that whale poo is not only helping ocean plant life to flourish, but also increasing the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2.

Because whales’ diets are made up largely of iron-rich krill (small crustaceans), their droppings are a great fertilizer for marine plants, helping them to grow like weeds (or algae).  These plants then do their part by absorbing CO2 as they grow, a process that scientists have tried to amp up (unsuccessfully) in Antarctic waters with iron fertilization.

Researchers say one-third of the world’s oceans are low in iron.  On the other hand, whale excrement contains a very high concentration of the mineral — about 10 million times the concentration in Antarctic seawater.  But how will scientists use this information?  That’s not clear yet, but it’s a great reminder of how intricately well-tuned nature can be.

via AFP

Bell Mobility wants you to take a Palm Pre off their hands, and they want you to take it real bad. Why do we say that? As our maple leaf friends at MobileSyrup have noted, the Canadian carrier has dropped their pricing for the Pre considerably. You can now get a Pre for free on a two-year contract (previously you had to sign up for three years for a free Pre), or you can buy a Pre off-contract (CDMA, mind you), for just $299.95. Canada: the time is now.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

Following news that Michael Abbott was leaving Palm for Twitter, TechCrunch is churning out a couple more executive rumors today: First, that a 14-year Palm veteran and current VP of carrier marketing, Caitlin Spaan, is also leaving the company. Second, that Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein himself could be leaving.

Crazy, we know, especially given that who’s getting cited here are simply ‘industry sources.’ On top of that, our hunch is that going on a whirlwind tour of interviews certainly doesn’t seem like the behavior of a CEO on the outs. 

We get it: there’s a general feeling out there that there’s another shoe to drop with Palm in the near future – but do you really think it’s going to involve a gigantic combat boot-sized executive shakeup? In the unlikely event Palm sees fit to make statement on this rumor-du-jour, we’ll let you know.

Update: @rboatright is in the next room over from us at Palm’s developer day and he reports that Rubinstein himself just quipped "I’m still here" to lots of laffs. Move along, everybody.

For the third year in a row, lawmakers are debating whether to require businesses to give their employees paid sick leave.

After much debate, the appropriations committee passed a bill Friday that would require businesses with 50 or more employees to give workers paid sick leave. The vote sends the measure to the Senate, which passed a similar bill in 2008. That bill was never voted on by the House.

In 2009, the House passed a paid sick leave bill, but the Senate did not vote on it.

Currently, businesses are not required to provide paid or unpaid sick leave. Beginning in 2011, the controversial bill would require businesses with 50 or more employees to let employees accrue up to 40 hours, or five days, worth of paid sick time, and it would prevent employers from discriminating against a worker who requests or uses the time.

The bill does not apply to temporary workers or certain state college or university employees, and it would give an employer who does not follow the provisions outlined in the bill a $600 civil penalty per violation. The bill also allows complaints to be filed with the state Department of Labor if an employer violates any of the provisions.

Those who are in favor of this year’s bill say paid sick days would help prevent the spread of disease in offices and help productivity.

A report recently released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, D.C., says that a paid sick leave bill would save Connecticut businesses $73 million each year, because the cost of implementing paid sick time would be outstripped by a large reduction in costs associated with employee turnover.

Many people must go to work sick because they need the day’s pay, said Sen. Edith Prague, D-Columbia. Requiring paid sick leave is the right thing to do, she added.

The state’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women reports that currently about 553,000 Connecticut workers do not receive paid sick days. Of those workers, fewer than half would get paid sick time if the proposed bill gets signed into law, the commission says.

Opponents, however, say businesses would be hurt by the unfunded mandate during tough economic times, and they say the bill would drive businesses away from a state that is already known for being “business unfriendly.”

The Connecticut Business & Industry Association has been lobbying hard against the bill.

“This is a business killer,” said Sen. Robert Kane, R-Watertown, of the proposal.

The bill’s opponents did try to amend the bill by deleting most of its requirements at Friday’s meeting, but the amendment failed. Another effort was made to modify the bill to only apply to service workers — an amendment Prague said the Democrats had hoped to call on the Senate floor next week. That amendment also failed because the bill’s supporters did not want the bill to get tied up in a more complex legislative process. Republicans were trying to kill the bill, Prague said.

The appropriations committee is not the first committee to the pass the paid sick leave bill. The labor and public employees committee, chaired by Prague, passed the bill in March.

Hey PopCrunchers, rock icon and reality star Bret Michaels could use our well wishes. Bret was admitted to the intensive care unit of a San Antonio hospital late Thursday after falling ill with a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage, or in layman’s terms “bleeding at the base of the brain stem.”

Oh no…..

Michaels, 47, was rushed the hospital complaining of a very severe headache. Insiders tell PEOPLE the former Rock of Love star is currently listed in critical condition.

“After several CAT scans, MRIs and an angiogram, [doctors] decided to keep Michaels in the ICU and are running several tests to determine the cause. [It] will be touch and go for the next few days while he is under intense observation,” a source close to the star tells PEOPLE Magazine.

The rocker — who suffers from Type I diabetes — underwent an emergency appendectomy in a Texas hospital on April 12. He was released to a diabetic treatment center on Wednesday, where doctors expected him to make a full recovery.

Sadly, that’s proven not to be the case.

Earlier this week, Bret hit up his blog with a light-hearted and encouraging update on his recovery:

“I’ve been spending my time in the hospital watching ‘Modern Family.’ It is the best new comedy out there,” he wrote on April 17. “And yes there are hot nurses taking care of me, in case you were curious. I mean, come on, every man has the nurse fantasy don’t they?” Bret continued.

“I have played concerts with broken bones, extremely low blood sugars, the flu, colds, and all kinds of things before. I tend to try to perform at all costs. But, I knew I was really sick this time when I started throwing up that morning and didn’t stop all day. I just didn’t realize how bad it was. After the [surgery], they told me that if I had gone onstage like I wanted to, it likely would have ruptured and I could have died. Not good.”

Oh dear — this doesn’t sound good. We sure hope Bret pulls through. Please keep him in your thoughts….

About eighteen seconds after word got out that a prototype of Apple’s next iPhone had been lost, found, and then subsequently sold to Gizmodo (for somewhere around $5,000), commenters and pundits everywhere started asking: is all this legal? There are a bunch of complicated laws involving the ownership and selling of lost goods — not to mention lost top-secret intellectual property — and this iPhone seemed to be sitting in a pretty nasty gray area.

Turns out, the people of the Internets aren’t the only ones interested — the Santa Clara County police are curious, as well.

The folks at CNET spoke to a source at the Santa Clara Police department, who said that a “computer crime task force led by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office” is now investigating the matter.

It’s not at all clear who (if anyone) they’re aiming the law hammer at, be it the gent who found the prototype for turning around and selling it, or Gizmodo for buying it. Either way, things get even more complex when you bring in the First Amendment and freedom of the press; what if Giz won’t reveal who sold them the iPhone? Is that protecting a source, or some sort of crazy mixed up obstruction of justice?

Giz took things to a new level, for better or worse, in purchasing the prototype and publishing what they did — and if any legal action goes down as a result, it’ll undoubtedly set a precedent. With that said: In the long run, it’s just a phone. No one died, nothing too earth shattering was revealed from a trade secret standpoint was revealed (Gasp! New shape!), and Apple got their prototype back. Sure, it’ll make Apple’s June announcement ever so slightly less exciting — but is that worthy of a mark on someone’s criminal record?

I was under the impression that GM was developing the Volt, and Voltec technology, for use in other vehicles. We saw a hint of that when GM unveiled a Volt MPV5 at the Beijing Auto Show. To be honest, I’ve had daydreams of a Voltec-powered Camaro that gets 40 mpg and does 0-60 in five seconds.

But Alan Taub, director of GM’s Research & Development, has shattered those dreams. He says that the Voltec technology that underpins the Volt won’t work in cars much larger — or smaller — than the Volt.

(more…)

Filed under: Concept Cars, Budget, Sedan, China, Honda, Beijing Motor Show

The Beijing Motor Show is well under way, and Honda is showing off a new concept slated for the Chinese market. Called the Li Nian Everus, the car is the fruit of a partnership between the Japanese automaker and its Chinese partner, Guangqi Honda Automobile. We don’t have too many details on the sedan other than the fact that at this point, it’s nothing more than a concept.

Judging by the renderings, we’re tempted to guess this thing has more than a little Civic DNA swimming around in its blood stream, though it looks like Honda raided the Acura design department for the car’s less-than-traditional nose and rear-end.

Speaking of the Civic, it would make some sense if Honda swapped a little sheet metal and called it a day. Honda’s compact is sold under the Dongfeng Honda banner, leaving Guangqi Honda Automobile without a comparable model. Our guess is that when the Everus comes to market, it will be slightly more upscale and boast more standard niceties than its sibling.

[Source: Paul Tan]

Beijing 2010: Honda Li Nisn Everus sedan concept originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook has been inaccessible to many, if not all, users for the last 30 minutes or so. This is incredibly bad timing for the company, which is trying to pitch itself this week as a central part of the web’s infrastructure. Not only is the Facebook.com site down, but error messages are popping up on partner sites using the new social plugins launched this week.

Not to get all I-told-you-so, but after hearing the presentations at Facebook’s f8 this week, the burning question on my mind was: Has Facebook made itself a central point of failure for the web? It appears that the answer is yes.

Meanwhile, jokes are running rampant on Twitter about how long till people tweeting about Facebook take down Twitter. Downrightnow.com is reporting a service disruption of 28 minutes and counting, though just before we hit publish, we were able to load Facebook.com again. We’ve reached out to Facebook about the outage, which says it’s looking into it.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my bio.

El Salón Internacional del Automóvil Ecológico de Madrid se celebrará del 20 al 23 de mayo en la capital española y contará con numerosos stands de marcas para mostrar sus soluciones al problema de la movilidad ecológica, una necesidad cada vez más acuciante en todos los mercados automovilísticos internacionales.

Para enfrentarse a ello Citröen mostrará nada menos que cinco vehículos, dos de ellos completamente eléctricos, el C-Zero y el Berlingo First Electrique, uno bastante innovador, el C3 Picasso e-HDI, que viene equipado con células fotovoltaicas para obtener una fuente extra de energía y dos diésel de bajo consumo y emisiones.

Equipado con la motorización 1.6 HDi, el concept-car C3 Picasso e-HDI incorpora un sistema Stop&Start de su techo de policarbonato está equipado con 70 células fotovoltaicas de 160 W de potencia, que permiten recargar las baterías y de esta forma reducir la utilización del alternador. Además el C3 Picasso e-HDI está fabricado con una mayor proporción de materiales verdes teniendo Citröen como objetivo utilizar un 20% de materiales verdes sobre cada uno de sus nuevos modelos en 2011.

Por último Citröen presentará dos modelos nuevos, el DS3 HDI 90 FAP Airdream y el C3 HDi 90 Airdream SX, que sólo emiten 99 gramos de CO2 a los 100 kilómetros, una barrera la de los 100gr/km bastante difícil de rebajar. Una apuesta fuerte la de la marca francesa por no quedarse atrás en la captura del mercado ecológico.

Fuente | Citröen