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Erin Kutz wrote:

A123Systems, a Watertown, MA-based battery maker, announced today it will invest up to $23 million in Irvine, CA startup Fisker Automotive, in addition to supplying the batteries for the company’s luxury hybrid car, due to launch in late 2010. Fisker’s Karma Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) has a range of 50 full-electric miles on a single charge of A123’s lithium-ion battery, and a total range of 300 miles with an on-board generator powered by a fuel-efficient gasoline engine, according to A123’s announcement. A123’s investment in Fisker includes $13 million in cash and $10 million in A123 common stock, as part of a strategic partnership under which A123 will also supply batteries for another Fisker hybrid, Project Nina, set to launch in 2012.

The primate is better off dead

While it was very sad to read Sandi Doughton’s article about the little macaque at the UW who died of starvation [“UW monkey starved to death in lab last year,” NWSaturday, Jan. 9], he is now free from the further pain of cruel experimentation, from loneliness and from lingering for years in cages.

I am still thankful to the USDA for reporting this tragedy. It is bad enough for these animals to go through cruel experimentation, but to be denied food day after day is just as cruel and inexcusable.

When lives are at stake — be it for humans or non-humans — caregivers must be above reproach in their work. Excuses like “a change in staffing and confusion over responsibilities” are so lame. With all the new technology available, the UW and other institutions doing vivisection must find alternatives.

It is preposterous to read that they have 700 primates in their Seattle labs and about 3,000 in their primate-breeding colonies in Louisiana and Texas. This sounds more like a booming business, undoubtedly with large grants for researchers for caging and staff and so far there have been no promises to cure illnesses.

Yet, this little macaque is better off dead.

— Claudine Erlandson, Shoreline

Basic care a basic necessity

We are meant to believe that research on animals is an unfortunate necessity regretfully undertaken by compassionate researchers for the “greater good of mankind.

Even if that were so — which it is not — surely the very least one could expect would be that during their miserable lives, the animals are subjected to as little suffering as possible outside the experiments for which they are being used. Yet here is an animal whose most basic care was repeatedly neglected.

It is terrible to think of this small being, whose entire life had been nothing but pain and misery, being bypassed for food day after day until he or she died of starvation. And if this is one story that came to light, how many others died when no one was looking, recording or caring enough to make it public?

This is but a tiny fraction of the terrible wrongs involved in this area of so-called science.

— Franziska M. Edwards, Seattle

Article Tags: ClimateGate, Dexter Wright

The Climategate crowd successfully worked to obscure the connection between solar activity and climate. The leaked CRU e-mails reveal how.

In 2003, two Harvard-Smithsonian Professors, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, published a peer-reviewed paper in the scientific journal Climate Research which identified solar activity as a major influence on Earth’s climate. This paper also concluded that the twentieth century was not the warmest, nor was it the century with the most extreme weather over the past thousand years. These two scientists reviewed more than two hundred sources of data. The paper specifically examined climate variations observed to coincide with solar variations. One of the more notable correlations cited in this paper is the well-documented coincidence of the Little Ice Age and a solar quiet period, known as the Maunder Minimum, from A.D. 1300 to A.D. 1900. Soon and Baliunas asserted that the lack of solar activity resulted in cooler temperatures across the globe. The evidence they compiled also indicated that as the sun became more active global temperatures began to rise and the Little Ice Age ended.

In the past, the issue of the solar connection has always fallen down on one question; what is it about sunspots that cause a change in the climate? Soon and Baliunas identified the physical connection as solar wind, which varies on an eleven-year cycle similar to sunspots’. The solar wind is made up of high-energy particulate radiation and when strong enough, it has a visible effect upon the atmosphere in the form of auroral displays in the polar regions (e.g., the Northern Lights). Some instances of solar wind were so powerful that the aurora was seen even in lower latitude, as happened during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia during the War Between the States (Civil War). Both armies were so distracted by the intensity of the display that the battle actually paused as the soldiers, North and South, watched in awe.

Source: americanthinker.com

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Segway Inc., maker of gyroscope-powered, balancing scooters, has been sold to a U.K. firm and CEO James Norrod is no longer with the company.

TechCrunch: The statement on Segway’s website notes that a company backed by Jimi Heselden, a U.K. businessman and the chairman of Hesco Bastion, acquired Segway for an undisclosed amount on Dec. 24, 2009. Heselden is also an investor in the independent distributorship Segway U.K.

The news first leaked via a posting on a Segway users forum.

More at TechCrunch >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The GM-Segway PUMA Pod In Action (VIDEO)
• GM And Segway Team Up To Build Embarassing Pod-Mobile

Why Haiti? Undoubtedly, many are asking this question in the wake of the largest disaster of the new decade. One survivor simply expressed last night to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “We can only leave it in the hands of the almighty.”

This leads me to ask: Are you there, God? And if you are, are you their God? Truly if the old man is there, it appears he has abandoned Port-AU-Prince–probably too busy answering the all too frequent calls to ‘Bless America.’

In a world that allows me to make more in one month than the average Haitian does in one year, something seems to be out of focus. The God of our weary years appears to be asleep at the wheel–or is He?

2005 brought us Katrina, and 2010 has begun with a terrible bang, to say the least. However, in a span of five years, my prayer is that our world, our country and our campus are ready to uncheck the option of apathy for sake of–get this–action!

Time is out and up waiting for the Heavens to split, the bushes to burn and the rocks to cry out. While the world looks up to affirm through faith that God has not gone AWOL, let us not as members of collective faiths repeat the same patterns of apathy and passivism that have only allowed cycles of social justice to continue.

As someone who holds his faith dear to his heart, let me share with you the clear mandate I believe God has issued to His people. This will alarm many people, and others will be surprised to hear me utter these words. But family, it is simply not enough to pray.

I am a Christian, and I believe in the power of prayer, relying on it day in and day out. However, I charge you today to not only pray, but to be ananswer to someone’s prayer.

I am conscious of the blessings God has bestowed on all of us here at Stanford University. But now, we are reminded that it is not just about our being blessed. It is time to be a blessing.

I don’t want your money–Haiti needs your money. Plain and simple. More than TAP, the bookstore or, God forbid, Apple, hold off buying that STAT 60 text and consider giving to help someone whose struggles include more than finalizing a study list.

There is a HAITI RELIEF meeting being held today at the Black Community Services Center at noon. I encourage you to come find out how you might truly be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Are you there, God? I believe so. Where are YOU?

San Francisco’s acrimonious relationship with chain stores might be on the mend as empty storefronts pile up.

American Apparel: unwelcome in San Francisco even among its customers. (Getty Images)

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle notes that the Noe Valley neighborhood is rethinking a 1987 law that banned new restaurants on 24th Street, a commercial vein that runs through the community. The point of the law was to help out local businesses in the neighborhood, but that was before the recession left many storefronts empty.

The article notes that merchants on Union, Clement and Haight Streets — all of which are walkable neighborhood streets with restaurants, small gift shops and the like — have overturned similar restrictions on restaurants over the past three years as the economy has been ailing (the recession began in December 2007).

The restaurant law is one of many San Francisco laws that aim to restrict what kind of businesses can open where, the most restrictive of which was Proposition G, a measure that passed in 2006 — an economic peak — and makes it much harder for businesses with more than 11 locations to open up stores.

The San Francisco Business Times recently opined on the unintended consequences of the city’s harsh anti-chain laws, such as the pain inflicted on local landlords or how it has stunted the growth of local shops that have grown into chain status.

Of course not even the worst recession in a generation is likely to completely mend the long and thorny relationship San Francisco — a liberal bastion that elected its last Republican mayor in 1959 — has had with chain stores. On Valencia Street, just a short walk from 24th Street, protesters donning American Apparel T-shirts recently prevented American Apparel from opening in a vacant storefront.

Could the recent decision by Pope Benedict XVI to call for a comprehensive agreement on climate change deepen the centuries-old rift between Catholics and Protestants?  Yes, I’m kidding…but humor me.

In a January 11, 2010 address to foreign ambassadors to the Holy See, the Pope said he regretted that “economic and political resistance to combating the degradation of the environment” prevented what he called “an ambitious agreement” at December’s UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.  Benedict said political leaders should take action to stem climate change as part of a “solemn duty” to protect the Earth.

---

By contrast, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is fond of saying that the threat of global warming is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."  Indeed, in his January 4, 2005 remarks to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Sen. Inhofe stated that for "environmental extremists and their elitist organizations" the notion of man-induced climate change is "article of religious faith."  Moreover, these extremists consider those who challenge "the central tenets of climate change" to be guilty of "heresy of the most despicable kind."

If I’m not mistaken, Sen. Inhofe is a Presbyterian.  So, connecting the dots leads me to conclude that Sen. Inhofe must now regard the Pope (and presumably the pontiff’s "elitist organization" the Catholic Church) as no better than the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — just another environmental extremist, a "climate alarmist," as he likes to call them.  But it would be wrong for Sen. Inhofe to dismiss the Pope’s perspective on climate change as an "article of religious faith."  As the Pope noted in his January 11, 2010 address, the "causes" of climate change are "evident to everyone."

General Motors Company’s line of pickups have not been upgraded since 2006. Looking to become more competitive in the segment, the Detroit automaker has approved a major overhaul of its full-size pickups, a move that had been delayed during the company’s financial crisis.

The move is expected cost GM several hundred million dollars and will take about two to three years to complete. Both, the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra, will receive brand new exteriors and interiors. Both pickups will also feature better aerodynamics and better fuel-efficiency.

GM sold a total of 1.2 million trucks last year, about 30 percent less than it sold in 2008.

The update was initially approved in November by Chairman and acting CEO Ed Whitacre Jr.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Detroit News

Yesterday, I woke up on my floor.

Apparently I’d walked home from downtown Palo Alto after a friend’s 21st birthday party and had only mistaken one other room for mine before I found it. I just didn’t find the bed.

All night, I spent what brain function I still had converting drink prices into Euros and being impressed at how “little” I was spending. It may have invited me to buy a few more drinks than necessary, but I still enjoyed it. The decidedly blue tint to the lighting tried to add to the ambiance, but all told it was still a Tuesday, and places open until 2 in the morning on Tuesdays are short on elegance. When my friend called a cab and then wasn’t allowed back in to tell me it had arrived, my fate was sealed: I would stay there until closing time.

Ah, and those few hours! They’re a pleasant blur, involving an Indian, flush after starting some sort of new business venture, and an aging Brit who had at some point played professional soccer for an impressive sounding team. Oh, and a cute bartender. Not the kind of cute you’d find dancing on a platform in oddly stitched together white lace garments at a beachside club in Barcelona, but she might have been once upon a time. At one point, she walked over to me while I was mid-sip and asked me if I was visiting. Promising, I thought. “No, I go to school here,” I said, pointing helpfully in the direction of Stanford. Left, I think.

“Oh,” she replied, a twinge of a smile on her face. “Well, just so you know, if you want to get along with the bartenders around here, you should probably leave tips.” Less promising. After she walked away to take an order, I fished around in my pockets but found all I had was a dollar bill, a few quarters and, for some reason, a condom. I elected not to put any of those objects on the bar.

Oh, America. Tipping was something that I’d really almost forgotten after a few months away. Sure, in a culture where good service is not compensated with extra money, there’s likely to be less of it, but it seems more honest, too. I always feel pained watching waiters or bartenders go through the motions of conviviality in anticipation of a monetary reward. Some pull it off of course, and regardless, I normally oblige, having once been instructed in the ways of restaurant work. But four months away was refreshing.

Though I enjoy some of our restaurant customs–offering water (for free!) and providing refills (mostly for free!), for instance–sometimes, it is nice to simply be left alone, given space to breathe and time to talk. You could stay in a small Spanish cafeteria until they were about to close before they’d think to say anything to you. Plus, the only cute girls who ever expected me to pay them for their company was the girls at George Payne’s (see previous columns) selling over priced Jell-o shots and signing people up to their mailing list. Also, actual prostitutes.

As my reintegration into American society continues, I imagine, dear reader, there will be more bumps in the road like this. More times where the minutiae becomes all that matters. The anxieties that bubble up in those moments will find expression here, so thanks in advance for sticking with me.

So, remember, folks, I’ll be here all quarter, the veal is excellent and don’t forget to tip your waitress–or not, depending on which practice is culturally appropriate.

Regina Hackett poses some provocative questions on her blog Another Bouncing Ball at Arts Journal:

When is a quote a steal? When is it an homage? Are the rules different in writing and in visual art? Bill Eppridge, the photographer who caught this terrific aerial shot in 1971 (it’s called Barstow to Vegas Motorcycle Race) is steamed because Seattle artist Deborah Faye Lawrence appropriated it to use as the sky image in her 2008 collage The Mysterious Allure of Rural America. Click on Another Bouncing Ball to see Lawrence’s work and compare for yourself.

I won’t repeat Eppridge’s argument, or Hackett’s response to it. (Lawrence isn’t quoted). The post is short, and you can get it all there — plus an interesting string of comments. I’ll just say, this is tricky ground. Nothing’s original, but some things are more original than others.

***************

Also worth checking out: Theatrical luminaries Mr. Mead at Blogorrhea and Steve Patterson at Splattworks have hooked into the release of the new book Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, which gets down to some of the deep dark issues of how … well, plays fit into the contemporary American theater scene. Well worth reading, and also the followups at Parabasis. (And don’t miss Chicago Trib critic Chris Jones’s review of the book.)

Filed under: Truck, Chevrolet, GMC, Design/Style

While the current economic forecast includes much wailing and gnashing of teeth, it will eventually turn around. When it does, truck sales are likely to increase as truck-dependent industries look to replace their wares. General Motors wants to be right there on the tip of the spear with the most recently updated product. To that end, GM Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre has given a McMahon-sized YES to redesigning the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks. The effort is likely to ring up a $1 billion price tag.

While the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra aren’t exactly old (they were thoroughly redone in 2006), Ford and Dodge have revised their trucks in the ensuing time. While domestic rivals are the biggest competition for the Sierra and Silverado, Toyota’s latest Tundra debuted in 2007, intent on mounting a serious challenge, as well. Only the Nissan Titan, enjoying a precipitous drop in sales lately, is longer in tooth. Things happen fast in truck-land. Full-size SUV sales are down and not likely to bounce back strongly, and new fuel economy provisos are coming on strong, too, but the need for working vehicles has merely waned, and General Motors is anticipating that a turnaround in industries like housing will spike truck sales. This proactive funding of a redesign will put GM’s new wares in showrooms for 2012-2013.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]

Report: GM to shell out $1B to update Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hybrid, Sedan, Videos, Hatchback, Chevrolet, GM, Electric

Having just returned from the frigid Motor City for our ongoing coverage of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, the idea of hot-weather testing the 2011 Chevrolet Volt seems like an oddly foreign concept. But there are quite a few areas in the United States where the sun beats down with a vengeance year round – like, for instance, in Phoenix, where this particular writer happens to live.

This being the case, General Motors needs to make sure that the Volt doesn’t melt when left out in the hot sun. No, really – every automaker tests its products to make sure that no individual parts show any signs of warping or sagging when subjected to high temperatures. How high? According to GM, up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, while it may not be the most interesting minute-and-a-half of footage you’ve ever laid eyes on, this video still represents an important test of one of the most important cars scheduled to debut in November of this year. Click past the jump to see for yourself.

[Source: Chevrolet VoltAge]

Continue reading Video: Chevrolet Volt baked at over 200 degrees in durability test

Video: Chevrolet Volt baked at over 200 degrees in durability test originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Podcasts, Buick, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, GM, GMC, Honda, Lincoln, Toyota, Volkswagen

It’s a North American International Auto Show recap for Episode #161 of the Autoblog Podcast. Chris, Sam and Dan mull the top five of the show before speaking more in depth about some unveilings. The new Chevrolet Aveo gets us started before we move on to another sharply styled General Motors concept, the GMC Granite. We touch briefly on the Honda CR-Z, and then Toyota’s FT-CH comes up next before we call it a night with the Volkswagen New Compact Coupe Concept.

We’ll be back again next week with more Autoblog Podcast goodness. Until then, fill in with Joystiq and Engadget. Let us know what you think of our podcast by dropping us an email at Podcast at Autoblog dot com, reviewing the show in iTunes, filling out our survey, or even leaving us a voicemail on our Google Voice line 734-288-8POD (734-288-8763). Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Autoblog Podcast #161 – Detroit Auto Show recap

Autoblog Podcast #161 – Detroit Auto Show recap originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You probably know of the band Ok Go’s famous treadmill video:

It helped attract a ton of attention to the band. The band’s lead singer, Damian Kulash, has been quite outspoken about why bands need to be fan friendly, and even took to the pages of the NY Times to discuss the evils of DRM, and has spoken before Congress on music industry issues as well. The band has always done quite a lot to try to connect with fans and not hinder them in any way — which is part of why it has such a huge following.

So, with the band coming out with a new quirky video, you would think that it would be readily available all over the place. However, Martin points us to the news that the video was put up on YouTube by the band’s label, Capitol Records, a subsidiary of EMI, but it did so with geoblocking and with embedding disabled. In fact, if you go to the original treadmill video, you’ll see that Capitol Records has disabled embedding on that video as well. Notice that I have it embedded above? That’s because I used the embed code from an earlier post back when embedding was allowed. Yet now, go and click on the video… and it gives you an error message saying embedding has been disabled. All those people who helped spread that video? Capitol Records broke them all. Nice of them. It’s impossible to fathom what the folks at EMI/Capitol are thinking here. They are making it more difficult to make a viral video viral. Both blocking it from being viewed in various regions and blocking embeds makes no sense at all.


Of course, the band recognizes this and are pissed off about it:

As for the issue of geoblocking, we’re incredibly upset that the youtube versions of our videos can’t be embedded. Just one more example of major labels accelerating their own demise. We (and every individual band out there) have exactly zero leverage in this particular battle, however. So we post to other sites as well.

In fact, the band itself has now put the video up on Vimeo as well, which does allow embedding:

Of course, given that Vimeo has these bizarre and nonsensical rules against commercial use, and this is obviously a commercial video, you have to wonder why this is allowed. Oh yeah, also, it’s worth remembering that Capitol Records just sued Vimeo for copyright infringement — so I can’t see the label being all that thrilled about this. Either way, the video is going up in a variety of other places in embeddable format, but not by Capitol Records, meaning that it gets more fragmented, less viral, and hurts Capitol Records. And people wonder why EMI and the other major labels are collapsing.

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Once upon a time (and a very good time it was) men were happy and free, hardly paid taxes and almost certainly never swore. If they did wish to curse another, their tongues would revolt and instead they would mutter such invectives as, “May my foe live into blessed old age” or, “Let him eat cake, preferably with cream cheese frosting.” Such was the state of things until various and sundry market forces, etc. etc., led the people to determine the best course of events was to devalue the very currency of their souls. From this Golden Age, as Hesiod and Vergil et al. name it, man slowly sank to silver, then base iron. No conspiracy of either politics or alchemy has brought this spirit of unabashed human potential back as more than a passing shade, a slippery dream that is precisely a dream and nothing more.

Yet, it persists. Let us plumb history first to see how this has played out and then take account of how today we are still troubled by a past that never was. Fun fact to remember the next time a misguided news anchor decries the insidious effects of rap music and Grand Theft Auto: Hesiod already was lamenting the decline of the human race in the eighth century B.C. Cranky Roman senators complained about the same thing basically the whole time the Republic existed (which, for those of you who don’t think it matters, was longer than the existence of the United Sates). They then got a taste of occasionally brilliant, often megalomaniacal leadership under the Empire. Naturally, Edward Gibbon referred to this as the happiest period for mankind in history. Looking back, French revolutionaries took the Roman Republic as their model, despite the fact we know retroactively it had a 100 percent chance of leading to disastrous civil war. Obviously, their attempt for a Republic worked out much better under Robespierre, and did not immediately collapse into a state led by a single venerated military leader.

Only by the peculiar mixture of vainglorious self-consciousness and deliberate pattern blindness toward contrary evidence that characterizes the human brain do we suppose any of these ages support our conviction that heaven on Earth is possible. In short, to be malcontent with your age is what propels the entire human experiment forward. As one chemistry professor of mine put it, life is a redox reaction and equilibrium is death. There’s a good reason we “rest in peace” but live in anger, resentment, fury and ultimately in a state of constantly having hopes dashed.

For obvious reasons, the Golden Age must always be not now, or, at the very least, not here. Another planet might be acceptable, but it’s also fashionable for Americans to locate it on the European continent. Hence, we have the glories of European universal health care and civilized tolerance. One is at least partially true, but comes with the caveat of such glories as doctors’ strikes in Germany; to give just a little sense of scale, one deal in 2006 was reached after 12 weeks of striking in which up to 13,000 doctors participated. The other seems questionable in light of the ongoing rebuff of “Muslim” Turkey by the E.U. and the Swiss ban on minarets (seriously, have you seen the ads?).

So, then, what about going back to the simple ways of our ancestors? This is what et in Arcadia ego is all about–Arcadia is this mythical pastoral land where people are unsophisticated and by dint of this, happy in a way high-strung, latte-sipping New Yorkers can only envy. They have home births with midwives and eat organic only, which I needn’t remind anyone are all the rage now in such backwoods as Palo Alto. Of course, this comes with the deaths in childbirth and food shortages that are part and parcel of such traditions. In fact, I seem to have neglected that et in Arcadia ego is a memento mori, if we’re talking Latin phrase usage.

This all brings us to that distasteful phrase: “Ignorance is bliss.” In a baffling affront to human logic, presumably rooted in Romantic excess sown by a certain Rousseau, the Holden in all of us yearns for the “innocent” state before knowledge. This is, incidentally, also the infantile state. But not only is this not possible; it’s not even desirable. Since this phrase has gained currency particularly in situations where one person finds out their significant other has cheated, let’s take Tiger Woods’ many women/mistresses/girlfriends/paramours as our case study. Is the problem (a) that his wife found out, or (b) that he was cheating? Only in a perverted move toward blaming the victim does “ignorance is bliss” make sense. Knowledge was never the real problem.

Uh oh, Motorola Droid – you better look out! The Nexus One is going to cut you — Wait, no, that’s not right. The Nexus One is going to snag one of your flagship features. I always get those two mixed up.

Google didn’t make any mention of accessories when they were launching the Nexus One, but the proof is in the pudding – and by pudding, I mean this Google support document.

You can use Car Home whether or not you have a Nexus One car dock (coming soon).

There’s just about no room for interpretation there – but what about other accessories? A gent over at the Nexus One Forum asked about the availability of “docking station, car dock, or other accessories”, and got this response from a Googler:

The docking stations for Nexus One are not available at this time. Stay tuned though, they should be available soon.

While the helpful responder may very well have been talking about the same car docks mentioned in the support documentation, the original question distinctly separated “docking stations” and “car docks” into two categories. The guys over at Slashgear are assuming that this means desktop docking stations are on the way soon – and you know what? We’ll have to agree.

We first saw the car dock and docking station mentioned in some pre-release product page leaks. At least according to those leaks, the docking station would set you back $39.99, while the car docking station would come in at $49.99.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

If spending money to build a satellite phone network reminds you of a few financial debacles, you’re not alone. But regardless of its past foibles, Globalstar is announcing today that it is preparing to spend $1.29 billion on its satellite phone network.

Tony Navarra, president of global operations at Globalstar in Milpitas, Calif., said in an interview that this new investment could be far more cost effective. For $1.29 billion, Globalstar will be able to launch 24 satellites into orbit and build another 24 for the future. These satellites should last for 15 years, until 2025 and beyond, compared to just 7.5 years for the company’s first-generation satellites.

The last network cost $4.5 billion to complete and the debt load was so heavy that it drove Globalstar, founded in 1994, into bankruptcy in 2004. It restructured its debt and then went public in 2006. In the summer of last year, it did a debt financing of $738 million. Competition includes Inmarsat, Iidium Satellite, SkyTerra Communicaitons and Orbcomm.

Navarra said the satellites in the first network are becoming weaker. The low-earth orbiting satellites circle the globe about 850 miles in the sky. As they age, Globalstar takes them up about 1,000 miles above the earth and then replaces them with new satellites.

Since the technology has improved, the second-generation network will be able to handle duplex voice and data at a rate of 256 kilobits per second, compared to just 9.6 kilobits per second earlier. It has high quality and the data transfer speed will now be better.

To further finance its new generation, Globalstar has raised $505 million in loans from a consortium of French banks and another $71 million from satellite maker Thales Alenia and rocket maker Arianespace.

While satellite phones seem quaint at a time of growing cell phone coverage, Navarra said that many of Globalstar’s 375,000 customers are in remote regions of the U.S. and Canada. The phones used to be the size of bricks, but they’re now about twice the size of typical cell phones, with a little antenna nub sticking out of them.

The company generates about $76 to $80 per subscriber per month for voice service and $10 per subscriber per month for data service. The company also makes money from engineering services. And its Spot division recently announced a satellite communicator to go with Delorme’s navigation handheld.

Navarra said the company will launch one or two rockets this year, using Arainespace. Each rocket will carry six satellites. Today, the company said it has begun to install upgrades at its gateway ground stations around the world to get ready to deploy the second-generation satellite constellation.

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A123Systems (AONE), the advanced battery maker best known for its surprisingly lucrative IPO in September of last year, has landed itself back on the industry’s radar. It’s just inked a deal to supply Fisker Automotive with batteries for its highly-anticipated plug-in hybrid, the Karma, slated to launch late this year.

This is great news for A123, which had been fairly quiet since its public sale, reporting deep quarterly losses and paring down its major supply deal with Chrysler — one of the only big automakers to slash its green car programs. With Panasonic snapping up a supply contract with Tesla Motors and Ford turning to competitor Johnson Controls-Saft, things looked pretty bleak for A123. But now, with another bright EV star hitched to its wagon — especially one that was officially blessed with $528 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy — A123 might be able to reclaim its title as the green battery company to watch.

The multi-year deal with Fisker includes a $23 million investment from A123 in the carmaker, including $13 million in cash. In return, it will not only be tapped to supply batteries for the $90,000 luxury Karma, but also for the stealthy Nina model Fisker has been talking about since last fall, assumed to be a more practical, moderately-priced sedan set to compete with Tesla’s Model S. As a result of the deal, A123’s stock price jumped from $20.05 to $21.74 from market close to market open today (though now it’s back down to $20.67).

Yesterday, VentureBeat reported that Fisker had dumped battery maker Ener1 as a possible supplier for the Karma. Already bound up in its deal with Norwegian EV maker Th!nk, that company just didn’t have the production capacity to meet Fisker’s needs, especially by its targeted 2010 launch date.

This is one reason A123 was probably so appealing to the company. It has the capital — not to mention $249 million in grant money from the Energy Department — and plans already nailed down to expand its battery assembly plant in Michigan, allowing it to churn out upwards of 24,000 plug-in hybrid battery packs. After all, Fisker is looking to grow too, spending 80 percent of its money from the DOE to convert an old General Motors plant in Delaware into a Fisker factory.

Now, with supply deals with both Fisker and the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) in its pocket, A123Systems may be on a roll. The company actually formed a joint venture with SAIC, China’s largest automaker, in mid-December, so that they could work on developing efficient, battery systems for both hybrid and fully electric vehicles together. At the time of its launch, the venture was valued at only $20 million, but it has incredible growth potential once EVs are rolling off the assembly line.

A123 may be celebrating, but it’s probably a dark day for both Ener1, which would have derived 28 percent of its revenue next year from the Fisker contract, and Valence Technologies, a smaller venture-backed battery maker that seems to be missing out on all the big supply deals. In December, it landed a $1.4 million agreement with Smith Electric Vehicles in the United Kingdom, but that may not be enough to keep it afloat.

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UNICEF Ambassador and teen sweetie Selena Gomez has issued an urgent request for Americans to lend a hand in to the disaster-struck island of Haiti.

Thousands were killed in the massive earthquake that hit the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday.

“By now, I’m sure you all know about the earthquake that has devastated Haiti. The first 48 hours after a natural disaster are the most critical,” the Wizards of Waverly Place star, 17, says in a YouTube plea uploaded Thursday. “UNICEF is on the ground right now to provide the children who are affected with the things they need to survive, like food and shelter and clean water.”

Selena adds, “We need your help. So please stop whatever you’re doing to visit UnicefUSA.org to make a donation. Please join me in praying for all of those who are affected. Thank you for your support.”