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Independent and interdependent
Published in Haaretz, Fri., April 02, 2010 By Sam Bahour and Bernard Avishai The latest rift between the United States and Israel, which began with Israel’s announcement of more planned construction planned in Ramat Shlomo – a Jewish-only neighborhood -…


United States – Ramat Shlomo – Israel – United States and Israel – Middle East

The Fed in Hot Water
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/political_opinion/The_Fed_in_Hot_Water’; The Fed has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns – taking on tens of billions of dollars of the bank’s bad loans – in order to smooth Bear Stearns’ takeover by…


Bear Stearns – JPMorgan Chase – Federal Reserve System – Lehman Brothers – Congress

ExxonMobil paid no federal income tax in 2009. (Updated)
Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year […]

Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS:

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein notes that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. Pat Garofalo at the Wonk Room notes that big corporations’ tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers. In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.”

ThinkFast: April 6, 2010
Twenty-five coal miners died and four others remain missing in a “huge underground explosion” at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine yesterday, making it “the worst U.S. mining disaster in more than two decades.” The tragedy is the latest deadly disaster involving coal baron Don Blankenship’s Massey Energy, which has been repeatedly cited for “serious […]

Twenty-five coal miners died and four others remain missing in a “huge underground explosion” at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine yesterday, making it “the worst U.S. mining disaster in more than two decades.” The tragedy is the latest deadly disaster involving coal baron Don Blankenship’s Massey Energy, which has been repeatedly cited for “serious safety violations.”

President Obama said Monday that the nation’s new nuclear guidelines will “substantially narrow the conditions under which” the weapons will be used. The Nuclear Posture Review, to be released today, “renounces the development of any new” weapons and represents “a sharp shift” from “his predecessors.”

American taxpayers are making an 8.5 percent profit off bank bailouts, according to a new survey. The profits come from 49 companies that have already repaid their portion of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund, and the Treasury Department predicted Friday that the bailout would be a net profit to taxpayers once all of it is returned.

In a speech before a group of supporters yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took a jab at Sarah Palin. “I was going to give a few remarks on the people who were over here a week ago Saturday, but I couldn’t find it written all over my hands.” He added, “You betcha.”

“Bombs hit apartment buildings and a market in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 45 people,” in a series of attacks that have killed more than 100 people over the last week. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose bloc came out slightly ahead of current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s in the recent elections, blamed the violence on political gridlock.

Democrats and Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) “traded barbs” Monday over who was responsible for the expiration of unemployment benefits for thousands of Americans. Bunning insists that Democrats are responsible for not paying for the extension, while Democrats claim the benefits qualify for “emergency spending” that does not need to be immediately paid for.

“The panel established by Congress to investigate the causes of the financial crisis has been hobbled by delays and internal disagreements and a lack of focus,” the New York Times reports after interviewing “a majority of its members and government officials briefed on its work.” “We lost a fair amount of time on the front end,” said commissioner Keith Hennessy, a former economic adviser to President Bush.

“Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s top political advisers announced Monday evening that they are parting ways with the embattled committee following Chief of Staff Ken McKay’s dismissal.” Curt Anderson of OnMessage Inc., who advised Steele’s 2006 Senate run, “confirmed in a statement that his firm is ending its relationship with the committee and the chairman.”

State Department legal adviser Harold Koh attempted to articulate a legal rationale for the use of drone attacks, which many experts consider to be a violation of international law. “In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law…to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks,” Koh said.

And finally: President Obama’s thoughts on his pitching performance at yesterday’s Washington Nationals game.

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West Virginia mine has been cited for myriad safety violations
The West Virginia mine where at least 25 workers died Monday in an explosion was written up more than 50 times last month for safety violations. Twelve of the citations involved problems with ventilating the mine and preventing a buildup of deadly methane.

Bomb blasts kill at least 35, wound scores in Shiite areas of Baghdad
BAGHDAD — A series of at least seven bombings ripped through mostly poor Shiite Muslim neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital Tuesday, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 140, security officials said.

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Britain’s Brown sets May date for election
LONDON — The starting gun has been fired at last.

Let’s get a rather important fact out of the way first: it’s just a concept. Little boys reading this should cross it off their list to Father Christmas now, before their hopes rise even higher. More »

Actress Winona Ryder is set to launch a comeback by playing funnyman Kevin James’ adulterous wife in a still-untitled comedy directed by Ron Howard and featuring Vince Vaughn, Entertainment Weekly said this week.

The Little Women star — one of the highest-paid stars of the ’80s & ’90s — hasn’t appeared on the big screen since landing a bit role playing Spock’s mother in Star Trek last year.

Winona nailed the part — and torpedoed fellow actresses Carla Gugino, Kate Beckinsale, and Uma Thurman — after wowing producers in a two-part audition.

Filming is set to begin in Chicago, Illinois in May.

Even in Loss, Butler Gives Hope to Little Guys
Bob Kravitz, Indy Star
This is not the way the fairy tale ends. Little Red Riding Hood doesn't get mauled by the big, bad wolf. Cinderella doesn't show up two hours late for the ball because of traffic on I-65. The Three Little Pigs don't get evicted from their home before the dyspeptic fox even thinks about blowing their house down.Duke 61, Butler 59.Where were Norman Dale and Jimmy Chitwood when you needed them? Where was Hollywood when Gordon Hayward's fall-away jumper from the corner, on line but slightly long, bounced off the rim and out? Where were the writers when Hayward's…

Putin’s Chavez Gambit

Still Waiting for that ObamaCare Bounce
Kyle Wingfield, Atlanta JC
Yet another opinion poll indicates the public wasn’t sighing in relief after ObamaCare passed. The latest is from CBS News, which calls the American public “increasingly skeptical” about the new health laws:Fifty-three percent of Americans say they disapprove of the new reforms, including 39 percent who say they disapprove strongly. In the days before the bill passed the House, 37 percent said they approved and 48 percent disapproved.Republicans and independents remain opposed to the reforms, and support has dropped some among Democrats. Now 52 percent of…

The White House and the Writedowns
James Klein, Wall Street Journal
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke had it backwards last week on these pages when he cited the “hype and overheated rhetoric” of U.S. corporations that have reported large writedowns in response to health-care reform.In fact, the companies' accounting announcements were written in the most bland prose imaginable. It was the Obama administration that created the controversy by suggesting that these legally required filings were politically motivated. Mr. Locke himself publicly criticized the companies for being “premature” in making these disclosures, even though rules…

Obama’s 17-Minute Non-Answer Answer
Debra Saunders, SF Chronicle
In June, comedian Bill Maher complained of President Obama, “You don't have to be on television every minute of every day — you're the president, not a rerun of 'Law & Order.'”I get paid to listen to politicians tell the same old jokes, repeat the same canned sound bites and — as often occurs — not answer questions. But I do not think it too much to ask that, now that Obama has signed legislation to overhaul the health care system, he ditch the health care spiel.  

We see a lot of crazy funding deals (ahem: Zynga, Foursquare) these days for Internet startups, but here’s one on a more standard path. Box.net, the cloud-based content management platform, has brought in $15 million in Series C funding led by the SaaS-focused firm Scale Venture Partners, and including Draper Fisher Jurvetson and U.S. Venture Partners. It brings the company’s total funding since 2005 to $29.5 million.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Box uses a combination of freemium product marketing (including a new iPad app) and “the traditional kind that takes more money,” according to CEO Aaron Levie. It has four million customers including new additions the Oprah Winfrey Network, Volvo and Nokia Siemens Networks — and even banks sending around secure transactions in the cloud, Levie said. He added that the company had a record first quarter with enterprise revenue up 300 percent year-on-year, but that the company isn’t on track to be profitable until 2010.

Levie is happy to play into the cloud computing trend. “It’s less that people are becoming looser with their data and more that people can understand the cost, usability and access of the cloud,” he said.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why the iPad is Right for the Enterprise

The new BMW 5 Series Touring model will not be going stateside from Europe according to Jim O’Donnell of BMW America. The 5 Series model that will appear, however, will be the 5 Series GT with more space than the sedan version, and for customers who don’t want to opt for the BMW X5 and BMW X6 models.

The current BMW 3 Series Touring will continue to be sold until the sedan is replaced by the new F30 generation, when a BMW 3 Series GT will take its place. The new BMW 5 Series sedan will debut on the US market in May this year, appearing alongside the current 5 Series Gran Turismo crossover already on sale. BMW joins Volvo in abandoning sales of station wagons in favour of SUV and crossover models.

Source | AutomotiveNews

Duncan Green introduces the latest video from the Robin Hood Tax campaign for a tiny tax that could have a massive impact on poverty and climate change.

Here’s the latest Youtube treat from Richard Curtis for the Robin Hood Tax campaign (whose Facebook fan club just topped 150,000 people). OK, we oldies recognise Ben Kingsley, but test your ‘yoof’ credentials by naming the rest of them… See here for more considered (if less enjoyable) posts on the subject.

More on the Robin Hood Tax

This post originally appeared on Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power blog.

The technicals are starting to look shaky, for all sectors, according to Bespoke Investment Group (BIG).

BIG:

The light red and green regions represent between one and two standard deviations above (or below) the 50-day moving average (DMA), while the dark red (and green) shading represents more than two standard deviations above (or below) the index’s 50-DMA. As shown in the chart, the S&P 500 and all ten sectors are currently trading at overbought levels, so the recent strength in equities has been a tide that has lifted nearly all boats. To further illustrate this point, we would note that as of yesterday’s close, 92.4% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are trading above their 50-DMA while 77.4% are overbought (1+ standard deviation above 50-DMA).

A commenter on Bespoke’s site replies:

OB [over-bought] conditions can remain for an extended period of time. It is important to note this condition but itself is not sufficient to be a trigger for going Short.

One challenge with technicals is that while some would agree with Bespoke’s take of the data above, some could also see the above data as a sign of substantial momentum. At the very least, the technicals remind us of just how quickly and broadly the S&P 500 has snapped up since early February.

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Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood has scored its best premiere yet.

The current season of the Oxygen reality series — which follows Hollywood socialite Tori Spelling, husband Dean McDermott and their two children on a cross-country road trip — scored its best season premiere among total viewers when it premiered on Monday night. About 816,000 tuned in for the season opener, up 7 percent from the audience that watched last year’s Season 4 premiere.

In related news, the former 90210 star and her spouse are adding the title of wedding planners to their resume – the couple will be organizing couples’ dream weddings for a new reality show. Tori & Dean: Weddings will follow the pair as they plan lavish bashes for brides and grooms.

“Our new pilot (is) Tori & Dean: Weddings. My party planning skills and Dean’s take it to the wall attitude, we plan UR DREAM wedding,” Tori Tweeted Tuesday.

No premiere date has been set for the new show.

Following our recent story about copyright on Mardis Gras costumes, it seems that now we’re hearing more and more about costume copyrights. THREsq points us to the news of a lawsuit involving the maker of those “gorilla holding a cage” Halloween costumes (pdf) claiming that a competing gorilla-holding-cage costume maker was violating its copyrights:

While there may be arguments over the copyrightability of the costume itself, notice that the lawsuit takes this even further, and throws in the claim of copyright inducement in asking retailers to sell the costume, with the argument being that the maker of the costume is now “inducing” the retailers to infringe.

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It makes sense for Disney to be planning a sequel to Tron: Legacy (which is itself a sequel) based on web popularity alone—but it’s reassuring they’re placing enough trust in the film’s success that they’ve already hired screenwriters. More »

Article Tags: Stephen Wilde

The problem with existing climate models:

Even those who aver that man’s activity affects climate on a global scale rather than just locally or regionally appear to accept that the existing climate models are incomplete. It is a given that the existing models do not fully incorporate data or mechanisms involving cloudiness or global albedo (reflectivity) variations or variations in the speed of the hydrological cycle and that the variability in the temperatures of the ocean surfaces and the overall ocean energy content are barely understood and wholly inadequately quantified in the infant attempts at coupled ocean/atmosphere models. Furthermore the effect of variability in solar activity on climate is barely understood and similarly unquantified.

As they stand at present the models assume a generally static global energy budget with relatively little internal system variability so that measurable changes in the various input and output components can only occur from external forcing agents such as changes in the CO2 content of the air caused by human emissions or perhaps temporary after effects from volcanic eruptions, meteorite strikes or significant changes in solar power output.

If such simple models are to have any practical utility it is necessary to demonstrate that some predictive skill is a demonstrable outcome of the models. Unfortunately it is apparent that there is no predictive skill whatever despite huge advances in processing power and the application of millions or even billions of man hours from reputable and experienced scientists over many decades.

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KABUL — For months U.S and NATO military commanders have been preparing for an upcoming assault on the Southern Afghan providence of Kandahar – even publicly saying it will happen sometime during the first part of the summer.

Thousands of American, Canadian and Afghan troops have begun assembling in the area preparing for the looming operation.

But Sunday, during a meeting with 1,000 local and tribal leaders in Kandahar, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appeared to contradicted Western officials, telling village elders “there will be no operation without your cooperation and consultation.”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, and other NATO officials, have said repeatedly said that an operation in Kandahar cannot succeed without local support. But according to several NATO and Western officials, no one is suggesting, outside of Karzai, that the operation will be placed on hold or canceled if local leaders object.

Instead, NATO and Afghan officials are trying to convince Kandahar’s citizens to invite coalition and Afghan forces into their towns and communities in an effort to improve security. Slowly injecting security forces into communities that request them.

“This will not be a military assault like other operations,” said Lt. Col Tadd Sholtis, Gen. McChrystal’s spokesman, “but instead a slow rising tide of security.”

But gaining the trust of Kandahar’s people, let alone receiving an invitation from its leaders to expand NATO’s military presence, will likely prove difficult.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Many in Kandahar, while not explicitly members or even outright supporters of the Taliban, are still ideologically linked to the Taliban. They are deeply conservative Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, and maintain a fierce distrust of outsiders – both international and even Afghans from other parts of the country – particularly government officials from Kabul.

NATO officials hope President Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader from Kandahar, and his family’s connections will help bridge the divide. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai heads the local provincial council and is considered the main power broker in the region. But AWK, as President Karzai’s half-brother is commonly referred to, is also believed to be the largest drug dealer in Afghanistan – though Western officials admit they have little concrete evidence to substantiate their claims.

Sunday’s meeting was the first of many events scheduled between Karzai, NATO commanders and local leaders. But it wont be the last. NATO’s top civilian representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, regularly jokes that NATO’s plan is to hold so many meetings with tribal elders, that they are forced to work with the international community.

Moody’s just cut Los Angeles’ credit rating to Aa3 from Aa2 on yesterday.

It turns out that Los Angeles might have $73.5 million less future cash flow than expected, due to an unfortunate disagreement with the Department of Water and Power.

Los Angeles Times:

The downgrade also “partly reflects the likelihood that the city’s general fund reserves at the end of the current fiscal year could be materially weaker than we had previously expected, now that an expected transfer from the Department of Water and Power may be reduced.”

DWP on Monday took steps to withhold a promised $73.5-million payment to the city’s depleted general fund after City Council refused to give the utility the electricity rate increase it wanted.

Read more here >

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Jessica Simpson is going where few celebrities have gone before: fresh-faced and unairbrushed on the cover of a best-selling magazine.

The “Sweetest Sin” singer will appear on the cover of the May issue of Marie Claire with no retouching or makeup as part of her continuing campaign to encourage American women to embrace their natural beauty. It’s a concept featured prominently on Jessica’s VH1 docuseries, The Price of Beauty, and for the May issue of Marie Claire, the star went to the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles with her best friend and hairdresser Ken Paves to interview women on what feature of their body they loved most.

The issue hits newsstands Tuesday.

Flexible, UK, Acre Resources

Our client, a FTSE 100 global company operating in over 150 countries worldwide, is currently searching for a Head of Wind to drive their Renewable Energy program.

The high profile position will lead an ambitious programme of delivering large scale wind projects that will dramatically reduce the company’s environmental impact. This includes the scoping of the proposition, winning support for implementation across client and organisation and the ownership of all elements to deliver the projects objectives.

Key responsibilities of the position include:

• Manage a team of senior/project managers in the development of onshore wind energy
• Be the lead on project plan and budget on delivery of the wind projects through the planning process
• Responsible for planning and managing the resources, including EIA studies, engineering and technical support, grid studies, consultants, and commercial support

The ideal candidate will have expert knowledge and a proven track record in the wind energy field. Further to this they will be:

• Adept at engaging, influencing and communicating with various stakeholders
• Demonstrating an immediate capability to manage complex projects across large organisations

This position is a real opportunity to increase a large company’s renewable credentials in terms of energy consumption and thereby creating a model that will be at the forefront of sustainable big business.

Due to the high response we receive to adverts we are only able to respond to applicants closely matching the criteria.

Found under: Android, Social, Digg, Freeware,

Digg has released their android app in order to let you keep up with the latest popular content on the web. The application allows you to participate on Digg through the digging and burying of stories and comments while allowing you to flip back and forth between viewing story pages and comments.Were glad to be able to make an even greater commitment to bringing Digg onto mobile devices today and as always wed love your feedback so please tell us what you think. Well be working har

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The EU Commission  annoucned its plan to present the eU Energy Action Plan for 2010- 2014 this May as a follow-up to the 2007-2009 the approved  common European 20-20-20 energy policy and energy market policy in 2007 that resulted in the adoption of the energy and climate package. The Spanish eU presidency has presented a report on the prioritites for the Action Plan  taking the EU’s Second Strategic Energy Review as the basis.  While the 2007-2009 plan concentrated on sustainability and the internal market, the new roadmap would focus on security of supply issues and technology development, including a revision of the EU’s Energy Efficiency Action Plan. The new energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, said he would present proposals at the beginning of next year. The Commission is also considering  a new infrastructure package in November, which would seek to address the integration of renewable energies into the grid and the development of smart grids.

According to Commissioner Oettinger, Europe will need to replace half of its power generation capacity by 2030 and according to a draft of the Ten Year Network Development Plan of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E),  up  to 28 billion euros in investments in electricity infrastructure over the next five years to secure its key energy goals, including integrating renewable energies into the grid. More info on the DG Energy website