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(This is a guest post from Dances With Bears.)

A gas supply agreement signed yesterday by the presidents of Russia and Ukraine dramatically changes the prospects for both oil and gas shipment across and under the Black Sea; extends Russia’s Black Sea Fleet lease of the Sevastopol base by another 25 years; and costs Gazprom nothing.

The terms of the deal promise to change the future investment prospects for the Ukrainian ports of Odessa and Yuzhny at the expense of Burgas, Bulgaria. Constanta , Romania, will also gain at Burgas’s expense if the new agreement changes the routing for Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline across the Turkish and Bulgarian seabeds, to permit the shorter seabed route via Ukraine and Romania.

According to the press announcements so far, Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Victor Yanukovych have agreed to a 30% discount price for 30 billion cubic metres of Russian gas to be delivered to Ukraine this year, and 40 bcm to be delivered annually from next year to 2019. The effective purchase price for Kiev will be about $230 per thousand cm, well below the $334 asking price from Gazprom, which has been on the table since the start of this year. The export volumes to Ukraine for this year have been lifted from 33.75 bcm, agreed with Naftogaz-Ukraine last November, to 36.5 bcm; the discount will cover the first 30 bcm sent to Ukraine, and the first 40 bcm thereafter.

The savings, estimated at $40 billion ($4 billion per annum) over the term of the agreement, will be applied to the extension of the Sevastopol naval facility lease. But Gazprom will not lose this amount from its revenue stream. Instead, a zero export duty for Gazprom deliveries to Ukraine will be introduced, which is equivalent to the 30% discount in pricing. As a result, the Russian government will receive less tax – about $3 billion less per annum, according to one bank estimate.

By removing the risk of Ukraine-related disruptions of gas flows and Gazprom’s sales revenues to Europe, the agreement relaxes a costly drag on Gazprom’s share price and market value. The company’s current market capitalization is $141 billion, down 6% in the year to date, trailing well behind Russia’s other oil and gas companies, and behind the RTS stock market index as a whole.

A Ukrainian offer is also on the table for Gazprom to take equity in Ukraine’s gas distribution and pipeline system to further reduce the likelihood of supply cutoffs for European consumers in future.

Read more at Dances With Bears –>

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Airports are wonderful places, aren’t they? Everyone is friendly, the seats are comfortable, the prices reasonable, and the food delicious. I love hanging around airports. I relish the time between connecting flights, and I have been known to pack my bags and drive to the nearest international airport just to hang out and pretend I’m waiting for a flight.

However, I realise that these feelings aren’t universal; there are some people out there who don’t enjoy airports. While I would be happy to relish in the extra few days of airport merriment that the recent flight cancellations have caused, Skype seem to think I’m in the minority, and have taken it upon themselves to give free internet access at more than 100,000 WiFi hotspots worldwide.

Skype Access, the service that lets you pay for WiFi access using Skype credit, will be free until 23:59GMT on Friday 23rd April 2010. This means you can check your email, surf the web, and — most importantly — call your parents, for free.

While I view paying $20 an hour for an internet connection whilst sipping $5 worth of aged, extra-bitter coffee, as “all part of the experience” some people may not enjoy it. If you are one of those people, and want to take advantage of the free WiFi on offer, all you need is a nearby compatible WiFi access point, and the latest version of Skype.

[via Pocket Lint]

Apple has never played well with others, and is well known for their use of proprietary technology to lock in customers and vendors.

Despite opening their own chip design company, it must have rankled to still have to rely on Cambridge-based ARM Holdings for the basic design of their chips.

Given their $40 billion cash hoard however Apple does not have to put up with the situation for long.

Rumours are currently going round in the markets that Apple is looking to buy the chip technology company for a cool $8 billion, seeing the ARM’s share price shoot up  8.1p to 251.1p, and more than five million shares changed hands by midday.

“A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple,” said one trader. “That way, they could stop ARM’s technology from ending up in everyone else’s computers and gadgets.”

ARM is somewhat of standard, with their chip design being widely licensed by many companies, including Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Marvell and all current generation smartphone operating systems being tied to the chip design. Around 10 years ago this was not the case, with the MIPS and SH3 architectures still in use by many companies. If Apple were to stop making available further design improvements to others it could leave other smartphone makers scrambling for an alternative which no longer exists.

Can anyone think of a more evil company than Apple to own such a technology lynchpin? Let us know your thoughts below.

Source: Evening Standard via Trusted Reviews.com

When I was a kid, I used to haul my 25 cm ’scope out to the end of the driveway every clear night to observe. In the summer, one of my favorite targets was the Lagoon Nebula: it’s bright, easy to find, and even with the frakkin’ streetlight I had to peer past, details in the vast gas cloud were easy to spot.

But I kinda wish I had access to a 1.5 meter telescope. Their view is a wee bit better:

Wow! Click to embiggen, or grab yourself a ginormous 2000×2000 pixel image if your current desktop is boring. Compared to this, I bet it is.

This image of the Lagoon was taken using the European Southern Observatory 1.5 meter Danish telescope in La Silla, Chile. It’s actually kinda sorta true color, using filters that mimic the sensitivity of the human eye.

If you could find a nice dark spot away from city lights, the Lagoon is actually bright enough to spot with your unaided eye, which is quite a feat considering it’s 40 quadrillion kilometers away — that’s 40,000,000,000,000,000 if you like your zeroes. Even from moderately light-polluted skies it’s easy in binoculars.

The Lagoon is one of those giant star-forming regions I’ve written so much about. And it’s big: a hundred light years across, and busily forming lots and lots of stars.

A wider view of it shows why it’s such a great target for small telescopes. It’s bright, colorful, and has lots of cool swirls and shock waves that accentuate its shape. It’s also located between us and the center of the galaxy — think of it like being towards downtown of a big city when you live in the suburbs — so that whole area of the sky is lousy with gorgeous, interesting things to see.

That also makes these objects great targets for large telescopes, because then we can see all kinds of incredible details. The more of these we study, the better we understand the environment where stars are born, including the Sun. There’s lots of science here… but when I look at images like this, I can’t help but think of that poor dorky teenager (me!) struggling mightily to get that giant, heavy telescope positioned just right so he could see a few wisps of gas gazillions of kilometers away.

All I can do is mentally smile and give him a virtual decades-later pat on the back. Keep at it, kid. It’ll pay off. I promise.

Image credit: ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/ R. Gendler, U.G. Jørgensen, K. Harpsøe

Boy, the money just keeps getting uglier, doesn’t it?  Our new $100 bill is now the official ugly stepchild of our currency family.

Start pricing up HTC’s Desire or Incredible, Nexus One owners, as Google has put down its hammer and announced “we are no longer investigating further engineering improvements.” You’re stuck with those bugs for good. More »

Back in 1999 at the height of the dot-com with the state treasury overflowing with money, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa joined in a bipartisan move to share the wealth of California.

The beneficiaries were public employees and the vehicle for rewarding them was know as Senate Bill 400, a measure that started out tamely as updating the 40-year-old death benefits plan but became in the Assembly a massive enhancement to pensions for employees of the state, the schools and most local jurisdictions.

With only seven of the 120 legislators in both houses voting no, SB 400 allowed public employees to retire as young as 50 and to get pensions of up to 90 percent of their highest salaries in the case of police and firefighters, or 75 percent for civilians.

It was argued that it would save the state money in the short run and that the cost over time would be no more than $650 million a year.

Over the next two years, even as the boom was turning to bust, the City of Los Angeles got in  step with the state with then Mayor Richard Riordan and Police Chief Bernard Parks signing a ballot measure to get LA’s cops and firefighters the same pension deal — support that both have come to deeply regret

“This new funding structure is
projected to reduce the City’s General Fund contribution to the Fire and
Police Pension System by an estimated $196 million over the next five
years,” according to the ballot argument that drew no opposition. “Given current projections, the reduction in General Fund
contributions could continue for an additional five to ten years.”

And so the seeds of destruction were sown.

Today, taxpayers are putting more than $3 billion annually to keep the state pension funds able to pay their obligations with estimates of the total statewide unfunded liability to public employees running as high as $500 billion.

In LA, the payment to pension funds is eating the city budget alive at $j800 million this year and soaring potentially to more than $2 billion within a few years because of an unfunded liability of as much as $17 billion.

Just Wednesday, the governor declared public employee pension reform his No. 1 priority, saying, “”The single biggest threat to our fiscal health and California’s future
is our public pension system. I refuse to pass this crisis onto the next governor or the next
Legislature.”

For his part, Villaraigosa announced the city’s “pension system
is no longer sustainable” with benefit costs at 19% of the general fund budget and certain to rise sharply in coming years.

So what do they want to do about it?

Change the law so that new city and state workers get smaller pensions and can’t collect them until they are seven to 10 years older than current employees can.

There are no estimates available of how much these steps would reduce the burden to taxpayers but how much could it be when both the city and state are broke and not likely to be doing much hiring for years to come.

“The city and the state are legally prohibited from taking existing
benefits away from people already on the government payroll or receiving
a pension,” as the LA Times noted today.

Of course, bankruptcy — an option for the city but not the state — could make real pension reform possible, as Riordan is now advocating publicly.

But that would be political suicide for everyone in office so don’t expect your elected leaders to take such an honorable step.

Facing job eliminations and furloughs, public employee unions have shown
no inclination to negotiate new deals on pensions and lifetime health benefits.

Most of us who work or worked in the private sector didn’t have the same protections or rights. The company I worked for half my adult life closed its pension plan more than a decade ago and my wife’s employer just sent out notice her pension plan is being closed, reducing the projected payout to employees by more than half in most cases.

The disparity in wages and benefits between the public and private sectors is tearing our city and state apart. We are at loggerheads with no way out so things will have to get worse, a lot worse, before unions make concessions or a taxpayer revolt bring the situation to a moment of truth.

Services at every level of government are being cut and the cuts will grow deeper year after year because our leaders are papering over the deficits, borrowing against the future, praying for the Obama economic miracle to save us all.

This is insanity  We can keep going round and round in circles talking about pension reform and doing nothing to fix it even as our city and state spiral downward into economic decline with all of its consequences. “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is how Einstein once defined insanity.

All the talk by our political leaders is nothing more than posturing. Their long-term failure as leaders has left them caught between the public’s refusal to pay more to government and the unions’ refusal to give up anything.

We can go on and on like this. We can keep on shouting the end of the world is coming unless we spend every cent we have to go green. We can keep on warning we need more cops to protect us from lawless gangs and criminals. We can keep on firing teachers and closing parks and libraries. We can keep on denouncing each other and saying “no” to every solution anyone else proposes.

Or we can come to our senses and see where this inevitably leads. It shouldn’t take catastrophe to get people whose lives and fortunes are inextricably tied together to seek the common ground but that’s the way it usually works.

The dangers of the fossil fuel industry have sadly come into focus again, after an “explosion and fire on an offshore drilling platform” off the coast of Louisiana left “least 12 people missing and seven critically injured.”  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story in this repost.

The explosion on the rig Deepwater Horizon occurred at about 10 PM Tuesday, about 52 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana’s tip. The rig is still “burning pretty good and there’s no estimate on when the fire will be put out,” a Coast Guard official said. The rig is leased by BP Exploration & Production from Transocean, a Houston-based company.

Offshore drilling advocates from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to state Sen. Frank Wagner (R-VA) have repeatedly promoted the false notion that the practice is safe — for its workers and for the environment. The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was a particular booster:

This disaster comes on the heels of the Massey Energy coal mine explosion that took 29 miners’ lives on April 5, and the Tesoro oil refinery explosion in Anacortes, WA, that killed six workers on April 2. It is a tragic fact that fossil fuel extraction in America is not “safe.”

You have useless new Trophy-organizing features thanks to FW 3.30, might as well put them to use. Here’s another game to give you more shiny badges to sort out.
 
 
 
 

KNOXVILLE – UT Knoxville students will perform and compete in this year’s Carnicus, a lighthearted spoof of the popular MTV show “Jersey Shore,” this weekend.

This is the 81st year for Carnicus, a singing and drama competition among student groups presented by UT Knoxville’s All Campus Events.

“A Fist Pumping Carnicus” will feature skits performed by 13 student organizations. The fun begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 23, and Saturday, April 24, in the Cox Auditorium in Alumni Memorial Building.

Participating organizations are Alpha Chi Omega and Kappa Kappa Gamma, Alpha Delta Pi and Alpha Omicron Pi, Alpha Tau Omega, Baptist Collegiate Ministry, Chi Omega, Delta Zeta and Zeta Tau Alpha, Kappa Delta and Kappa Sigma, and Phi Mu and Phi Sigma Kappa.

Skit themes include “Shrek,” “Hercules,” “Toy Story,” “The Bible: SNL Transition” and more. Winners from the skit competition will be announced after the performance. Trophies are awarded for the first, second and third place skits, as well as for the best actress and best actor.

After Carnicus trophies have been presented, each organization’s score is combined with scores from other All Campus Events (ACE) competitions throughout the academic year, including the Volunteer Challenge, Homecoming and All Sing. The group with the largest overall score will be awarded the ACE Cup.

ACE is a component of the Central Program Council, which represents seven committees under the Office of Student Activities. The goal of this student-driven organization is to plan campus events that have become longstanding UT traditions. Each year ACE organizes Volunteer Challenge, Homecoming, All-Sing and Carnicus. For more information, contact the Office of Student Activities at (865) 974-5455.

Tickets to Carnicus are $10 for UT students, $13 for UT faculty and staff, and $15 for the general public. Tickets can be purchased at the UT Central Ticket Office or through Tickets Unlimited at (865) 656-4444 and http://www.knoxvilletickets.com.

C O N T A C T :

Rebekah Winkler (865-974-8304, [email protected])

Kerri Killgore Lovegrove (865-974-5455, [email protected])

About a week ago, I speculated on Gen. James Mattis’ future in the military, now that Gen. Ray Odierno is set to take over for him at Joint Forces Command. Mattis is a four-star Marine general. He’s leaving a major command. The military is an up-and-out system — you either get promoted or you call it a day. I wondered if he was going to become Commandant of the Marine Corps, the most obvious position open to him. So, Marine Corps Times asked, is Mattis retiring?

“This fall my tour at JFCOM is complete,” he said in an e-mail to Marine Corps Times. “At this rank, my future is up to the DOD leadership/Cdr in Chief, so I’ll see what, if anything, they intend for me to do.”

Coy as it may seem, that’s the equivalent of posting his resume for the next job. And Marine Corps Times pretty clearly wants Mattis’ next job to be Commandant of the Marine Corps, as you can see from the article produced. It’s not surprising: Mattis is one of the most respected generals in the entire military; easily the most respected Marine general; a commander of Marine infantrymen in Iraq; and a counterinsurgency scholar-practitioner.

This is all via Richard Allen Smith of VetVoice, who observes, “For anyone who has an interest in COIN, this is a good thing.”

North Dakota is bucking the downsizing trend by overflowing with jobs — many of them in the oil industry — the New York Times reports. Problem is, the state doesn’t have adequate housing to keep up with would-be carpetbaggers.

The Times sent a reporter to Williston to take the lay of the no-vacancy land:

The same forces that have resulted in more homelessness elsewhere — unemployment, foreclosure, economic misery — have pushed laid off workers from California, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming to abundant jobs here, especially in the booming oil fields.

But in this city rising from the long empty stretches of North Dakota, hundreds are sleeping in their cars or living in motel rooms, pup tents and tiny campers meant for weekend getaways in warmer climes. They are staying on cots in offices and in sleeping bags in the concrete basements of people they barely know.

The majority of Big Sky country job seekers must not have seen There Will be Blood.

A State With Plenty of Jobs but Few Places to Live [New York Times]

After months of private on-the-side development, Internalz, the first and only file manager for the webOS, has been released with 1.0 status. Along with it, the custom service powering Internalz, FileMgr service, has also been release at version 1.0.

Internalz made its first public appearance way back on August 18th. Back then, it was essentially a proof-of-concept application, with that early FileMgr being my first attempt at custom webOS service. And after a few minor revisions, I decided to switch to private development and testing. This is the result.

The above video show much of the central features: full device browsing, file/directory moving and copying, easy deletions with optional swipe-to-delete feature, simple renaming, built-in image viewer, built-in text editor and more.

However, there were a few features I forgot to mention in the above video. First off, Internalz supports many international languages. It fully supports English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. As well, tapping on the "Name" header toggles sorting by name, and tapping on "Size" toggles that respective sorting. In addition, tapping and holding on the "Size" label will toggle it to a label for filetype.

FileMgr, the custom service that powers Internalz, is also hitting version 1.0. As a result, I’ve released a public API specsheet for developers to freely use. Among other things, this allows developers to write data to files locally on the device. Such a feature is already employed in at least one app, MapTool, by Metaview.

Internalz 1.0 is now available here and FileMgr service is available here. Both are also on the PreCentral feed for OTA installation. Huzzah for homebrew!

A "buy" rating is not high enough for Goldcorp Inc., according to TD Newcrest analyst Greg Barnes. After visiting the company's brand new Peñasquito mine in Mexico, he is more confident than ever about its growth prospects. He upgraded the stock to "action list buy" from "buy".

In a lengthy research note, Mr. Barnes wrote that the start-up at Peñasquito is going well so far.

"The project is largely on budget and schedule and most key operating aspects are meeting or exceeding expectations — no small feat in the mining industry, especially given the scale and complexity of the project," he wrote.

Peñasquito will be Goldcorp's main growth driver over the next few years as the company aims to produce 3.8 million ounces of gold a year by 2014. Looking beyond that, Mr. Barnes believes Goldcorp should be able to boost output to 4.5 million ounces by 2015 or 2016 through the Eleonore and El Morro projects (though it faces a major legal challenge regarding ownership of El Morro).

"Reaching 4.5 million ounces by 2016 would be almost double the 2009 production of 2.4 million ounces and represents a compounded annual growth rate of almost 12%. In our view, this is far superior to Goldcorp's large-cap peers," Mr. Barnes wrote, adding that the company should be able to fund its growth through its own operating cash flow.

His target price on the stock is US$55.00 a share, roughly 40% above current levels. He noted that Goldcorp already trades at multiples that are well ahead of its peers: 1.76 times net asset value and 16.1 times estimated cash flow per share in 2011. However, he feels the premium valuation is justified given Goldcorp's strong growth profile, low-cost production and low political risk.

Peter Koven

Filed under: Motorsports, Marketing/Advertising

For years Marlboro has been nearly synonymous with Penske, its racing cars (in open-wheels especially) adorned with the tobacco company’s red-and-white color scheme for decades, even if their name hasn’t appeared on the cars since 2005. But after 19 years in racing together, Marlboro parent company Phillip Morris ended its sponsorship of the motor racing dynasty earlier this year. Now it appears that Shell Oil could be taking its place.

The deal, which comes into effect next season, encompasses Penske Racing teams in several series, including the Indy Racing League and both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series in NASCAR, but does not appear to extend to Penske’s American Le Mans Series team.

In the Sprint Cup, the Shell deal comes at the expense of Richard Childress Racing (pictured above), which brought in Shell to replace Jack Daniels sponsorship which it lost last year. The Shell and Pennzoil logos will instead adorn the #22 car of Penske’s former champion Kurt Busch, while teammate Brad Keselowski’s #2 Dodge will continue with Miller Lite sponsorship. In Indy, meanwhile, the sponsorship replaces Penske’s longstanding deal with ExxonMobil.

[Source: Autosport]

Shell signs multi-series sponsorship deal with Penske Racing originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On Wednesday, Life & Style Weekly published a scoop which claimed that its been more than a year since cranky Kate Gosselin’s had her corn shucked (Use your imagination….) by a member of the opposite sex. Proving that desperate times call for desperate measures, Kate’s reportedly resorted to scraping the bottom of the barrel in her search for steady lovin’ — and she’s already got her eyes set on a pair of Hollywood staples: David Hasselhoff and Jeff Goldblum.

The D-level Octomom’s developed a greater interest in showbusiness and acting during the weeks she spent in Hollywood training for her deflated Dancing With The Stars dreams. She’s now convinced that dating a notable male celebrity is just the boost she needs to achieve the brand of stardom she craves.

A Gosselin gossip spills to PopEater’s Naughty or Nice Column: “Kate is serious about going Hollywood and thinks dating a celebrity is a great idea. When Kate sees how Tom Cruise changed Katie Holmes life, it became clear that she needed to do the same. Obviously, she knows she’s not yet ready to date a George Clooney, but she thinks she would be the perfect partner for a Jeff Goldblum or someone like David Hasselhoff.”

Enquanto não é apresentado no Salão do Automóvel de Pequim 2010, o sedã superluxuoso Maybach 62 2011 pode ser mais apreciado nesses vídeos e na galeria de fotos logo abaixo, no qual podemos comprovar que em matéria de conforto e espaço o novo modelo não fica devendo pra nenhum outro do mercado.

E não é pra menos pois se por fora o que chama a atenção no Maybach 62 2011 são suas dimensões avantajadas, seu interior impressiona pelo espaço, nível de conforto e acabamento oferecidos principalmente pelos passageiros traseiros, que recebem um tratamento digno de um interior de jatinho particular. Em breve teremos novas informações do modelo, direto do Salão do Automóvel de Pequim 2010.

Maybach 62 2011

Fonte: EMercedesBenz

Well, where do I begin? First of all, it’s great to become a contributing member of TheAppleBlog. I’ve been a TAB fan for quite some time so it feels pretty surreal to be part of the team. I look forward to hearing about your projects and ideas!

I’ll start off by letting you know that I hail from The Emerald City (yeah that’s Seattle). Most folks think we are an unassuming bunch who drink too much coffee while working on our Windows PC’s. While I do like a good a mocha, I’m also part of Seattle’s growing Mac community that’s building some pretty cool stuff for the iPhone and iPod touch.

As a self-described geek and software engineer I’ll be writing articles to help unravel the mystery of developing apps for iPhone OS. In addition to writing code, I’ll examine various aspects of the software development process including planning, testing and design. If you’re planning the next great app hopefully I can provide the “secret sauce” to help move your concept from idea to the App Store.

Don’t think coding is for you? Even if you are a project manager, sales person or business type, learning about the technology that has captured world attention may prove useful to your company or career.

My Background

I’ve spent my entire career in software development, with a primary focus on building web-based applications. Over the years I’ve worked in project management, coding, database development and quality assurance. I also ran my own software consulting company for 5 years.

In 2009 I took notice of iPhone OS as a legitimate development platform when Apple announced they had 50,000 apps in its app store. Like many iPhone developers I’d spent most of my career immersed in other technologies so I spent many months learning a new set of tools, processes and programming language.

This past year I released my first iPhone app called Jingle! that integrates music and social media. I also have an interest in education, mapping and GPS systems and plan to develop new titles for the iPad.

I didn’t know Oliver Wendell Holmes thought the odors of boxwoods “carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past.” I didn’t know that the necks of daffodils bulge when their ova are fertilized. At least, I didn’t know such things before my wife Grace started to garden, and then to chronicle her experiences in a new blog. I think it’s delightful, but don’t take my spousal word for it–check it out!