Discovery safely home after California detour. Image: NASA.
The Discovery space shuttle has successfully touched down after its return from the International Space Station (ISS) was temporarily delayed by poor weather conditions and a close call with some potentially problematic orbiting space junk.
However, while the shuttle is now safely back on terra firma, the enforced 24-hour delay left NASA with little option but to divert the landing of its stalwart orbiter from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Landing smoothly on Runway 22 at Edwards on Friday, the shuttle’s arrival ended NASA’s latest supply and maintenance mission to the ISS, during which the shuttle delivered some nine tons of equipment and a fresh crewmember for the orbiting scientific team.
The U.S. space administration opted for a landing at its Mojave Desert back-up strip after Entry Flight Director Richard Jones deemed persistently poor weather conditions in Florida to be too much of an issue.
“Welcome home, Discovery,” trumpeted Colonel Eric A. Boe of the U.S. Air Force as the shuttle rolled to a stop at Edwards. “Congratulations on an extremely successful mission, stepping up science to a new level on the International Space Station.”
While docked with the ISS, the crew of the Discovery completed three space walks, and delivered a sample freezer, a sleep station, and a carbon dioxide removal system. They also helped install a new ammonia coolant tank, retrieve two external experiments, and paved the way for the arrival of a new crew module in 2010.
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Sep 20, 2009
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Space shuttle Discovery begins flight to Florida
(AP) -- The space shuttle Discovery is on a cross-country flight to Florida after landing from space earlier this month in Southern California. The Discovery departed from Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles at about 6:20 a.m. Sunday. It is being ferried atop a modified 747 aircraft, known as a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
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The space shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a modified Boeing 747 shuttle carrier, lifts off from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009. The space shuttle Discovery is on a cross-country flight to Florida after landing from space earlier this month in Southern California. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
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NASA says the shuttle should reach Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday. Shuttle managers plan to make at least one fueling stop - scheduled to happen at Rick Husband International Airport in Amarillo, Texas, Sunday afternoon - as well as an overnight stop at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La.
The Discovery landed at Edwards on Sept. 11 after completing a two-week, 5.7-million mile mission to the international space station.
Number of failed US banks hits 94
Another two US banks have been closed by the federal regulator, taking the total number of American banking failures this year to 94.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which controls the banking sector, has shut Irwin Union Bank & Trust and Irwin Union Bank.
The move comes after their parent firm - Irwin Financial - was unable to meet an FDIC demand to boost their capital.
The failure of the two banks is likely to cost the FDIC $850m (£522m).
This will come from the regulator's banking failure insurance fund, which has fallen this year from $45bn to $10.4bn, due to the number of banks that have failed.
However, while some analysts have questioned whether the FDIC will need to press for more funds from the government, the regulator says its insurance scheme has $42bn in reserves to handle failures over the next year.
The accounts held by Kentucky-based Irwin Union Bank and Indiana-based Irwin Union Bank & Trust are being taken on by rival First Financial Bank.
The FDIC insures each bank account at a failed bank up to $250,000
Barack Obama changes American missile plans in Europe, causing fear among allies
For the Czech prime minister Jan Fischer, the news came in a call hastily placed by President Barack Obama, shortly after midnight on Thursday in Prague.
By Philip Sherwell in New York, Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 8:00AM BST 20 Sep 2009
Barack Obama delivers a statement oulining America's missile defence plans in Europe Photo: AP
In Warsaw, his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk initially declined to answer the phone from the White House - as he guessed the purpose, from the unusual timing, and wanted to prepare a response.
Mr Obama last week unveiled the most dramatic national security reversal of his presidency by scrapping his predecessor George W Bush's planned anti-ballistic missile shield in eastern Europe.
With this volte face, the Obama administration has brought the curtain firmly down on the Bush doctrine of defiant diplomatic unilateralism and ushered in a new era in which America will seek partners and make compromises on the world stage.
Not coincidentally, the move precedes next week's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, where Mr Obama will try to put this new approach into practice as he pushes a strikingly ambitious agenda on climate change, the Middle East and nuclear non-proliferation.
And it follows on the heels of the administration's recent commitment to talk to Iran and North Korea about their illicit nuclear activities.
Mr Obama calls this as an "era of engagement" while his neoconservative critics dismiss the strategy as dangerously naïve appeasement. John Chipman, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think-tank, characterises the new Obama approach as "No we can't" go-it-alone any longer - a reference to his campaign slogan last year, "Yes we can".
What unites his supporters and critics is the belief that the Star Wars re-think was a historic watershed for the US. Yet the White House badly flubbed the delivery of the news to its allies in Poland, which was due to house the missile interceptors, and the Czech Republic, where the radar would have been based.
Although they had been warned that the re-think was on the cards, Mr Obama wanted the confirmation to be delivered in person.
So he dispatched a series of top officials from the State Department and Pentagon on Wednesday to Warsaw and Prague to meet those country's leaders. But that evening, aides told him that the story had leaked while his messengers were en route - provoking the flurry of rushed calls that followed.
The tenor was quite different on Thursday morning when a senior State Department official phoned Russia's ambassador to the US with what, for Moscow, was very good news.
Mr Obama has been establishing a growing rapport with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev since their first meeting in London in April on the sidelines of the G20 summit. But the Bush missile defence scheme was a burning thorn in the side of that relationship, as Russian leaders have repeatedly drummed home to Mr Obama.
The Kremlin has been fiercely opposed to the plans to deploy missiles in what it considers its backyard, even if they were designed to protect the US from attack by long-range rockets from Iran.
The Obama administration says it reached the decision after new intelligence indicated that Iran was further away from developing long-range missiles than previously thought - but posed a growing threat from its arsenal of 1,200-mile-range rockets that could strike Israel, the Arab world and south-east Europe.
As a result, the US will instead build up a defence system of mobile, ship-based SM-3 interceptors, geared to protecting the region from short- and intermediate-range missile.
Acutely aware that he would would be accused of sacrificing the defences system for political calculations, Mr Obama has deployed his defence secretary Robert Gates, a Republican, to explain the decision. In a striking U-turn, the Pentagon chief, who previously fronted Mr Bush's plans, now insists he was been won round by the new analysis.
But away from that military rationale, Mr Obama is also - and more controversially - courting Moscow, without whose support there is little prospect of a breakthrough in containing the threat from Iranian's nuclear ambitions.
The timing is clear. The president will host a meeting on nuclear proliferation at the UN on Thursday and then on Oct 1 the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and China will resume stalled talks with Iran.
This gesture of apparently old-fashioned realpolitik has come under fire from conservatives as weak and misguided, with little initial sign that Russia will give ground on Iran.
"Russia was never going to give ground on Iran at this stage, so to give this away now just seems like an impotent concession," said George Friedman, a leading US defence consultant and head of the Stratfor global intelligence company.
"The Russians will see this as an attempt to buy them on the cheap, the Poles see it as a sell-out and the Iranians are laughing at the guys who cannot shoot straight. It was a clumsily executed exercise and a very odd time to try it."
He said that as long as Russia felt threatened by US support for the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia, the Kremlin would not surrender its influence over policy on Iran. "To hope otherwise would be naïve and unrealistic," he said.
Dan Goure, a long-time Pentagon consultant, was equally sceptical.
"The administration's policy seems to be to give away first and negotiate second," he said. "That's not how it works with the Russians."
In fact, the true test of Mr Obama's gambit may only become clear after he meets Mr Medvedev in New York this week. In an early sign of some flexibility, Russia has already shelved plans to arm its western enclave of Kaliningrad with a rocket battery and nuclear bombers. But policy on Iran remains the true litmus test.
After their first meeting in London, the two men agreed to negotiate major cuts in their nuclear arsenals. The US had declared it wanted to "reset" relations with Moscow after the souring between Mr Bush and former President Vladimir Putin.
In July, Mr Obama flew to Moscow to continue the dialogue. At the time, the results seemed meagre. A slightly nervous US President was pictured sipping tea at Mr Putin's official residence just outside Moscow, and striding through the Kremlin's gilded corridors.
Most of the time, aides said, was spent discussing the missile shield and Iran. For many, the visit seemed to be more about style than substance but it now seems the two meetings were more productive than anyone thought.
Mr Putin had made clear the depth of Russian opposition to the missile defence shield in a remarkable outburst at a security conference in Munich in 2007.
US delegates in the audience, including the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, could not believe their ears. Mr Putin accused Washington of bringing the world "to the abyss of one conflict after another" and declared: "Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations."
For Mr Bush's senior advisors, this was simply a sign that they could no longer do business with Mr Putin and would have to forge ahead to protect US interests without Moscow's co-operation.
Mr Obama and his team have unveiled a very different approach. Now the question will be whether do secure something significant from Moscow in return.
The young US president with a curriculum vitae notably short on international relations is certainly playing for high stakes over the next few days - first in New York at the annual UN jamboree and then as host of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
In contrast to Mr Bush, he has made clear that he will work closely with the world body. But that could make for some uncomfortable encounters. His schedule means he should be able to avoid Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but he will twice rub shoulders with Col Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator.
Col Gaddafi will address the General Assembly straight after the US leader on Wednesday morning. And when Mr Obama becomes the first US president to chair a Security Council session on Thursday, to discuss nuclear proliferation and disarmament, Col Gaddafi will also be in the room as Libya currently has one of the 10 rotating seats.
Tripoli has also just taken over the chair of the 192-member General Assembly so its presence will be inescapable - a possible embarrassment for both Mr Obama and Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, in the wake of the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber.
Relatives of US victims of the attack on PanAm 103 will be protesting outside the building.
In another example of Mr Obama's controversial new multilateralism, the discussion over which he will preside on nuclear disarmament will tackle broad global issues rather than focussing on the two usual targets for attention - Iran and North Korea.
Middle East peace is also an audacious early target for the president and he was hoping to announce the re-launch of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at a mini-summit in New York. But those prospects seem slim after a visit to the region by US special envoy George Mitchell ended in deadlock on Friday.
"President Obama's upcoming visit to the 64th UN General Assembly will be nothing if not entertaining," John Bolton, a former Bush UN ambassador and outspoken neoconservative hawk, wrote in the New York Daily News .
He predicted a "rapturous" reception for Mr Obama's speech at the UN - contrasting that with the treatment for his former boss Mr Bush, who described his annual UN remarks as a "visit to the wax museum" because of the audience's unenthusiastic response.
"Obama's UN appearances will showcase that he now unambiguously 'owns' (as he likes to say) our foreign policy," he said. "And why should we not expect a visible demonstration of Obamamania at the UN? He is giving them pretty much what they ask for..."
The Obama administration's new approach was summed up in a speech last month by Susan Rice, his senior foreign policy adviser during the campaign and current ambassador to the UN.
Miss Rice is working closely with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, an Irish-born Obama confidante who now oversees multilateral relations for the White House at the National Security Council.
The ambassador first listed a daunting array of global challenges faced by the US - including the international financial meltdown, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran and North Korea's nuclear programmes, al-Qaeda terror, cyber attacks, international crime and climate change.
She then outlined what amounts to an Obama doctrine for diplomacy.
"These are transnational security threats that cross national borders as freely as a storm," she said. "By definition, they cannot be tackled by any one country alone.
"If ever there were a time for effective multilateral cooperation in pursuit of US interests and a shared future of greater peace and prosperity, it is now. There will continue to be setbacks and frustrations. There will be differences that remain intractable and predicaments that feel hopeless.
"But we've seen the costs of disengaging. We have paid the price of stiff-arming the UN and spurning our international partners. The United States will lead in the 21st century-not with hubris, not by hectoring, but through patient diplomacy and a steadfast resolve to strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity."
It is a confident assertion of the new Obama order. And to the likes of Mr Bolton, it is the same dangerous "Kumbaya"' approach to international relations that preceded the Sept 11 2001 terror attacks on the US.
Obama Sees Signs Economy to Grow While Unemployment Stays High
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the U.S., while showing many signs of emerging from recession, will probably face high unemployment for some time.
“Probably the jobs picture is not going to improve considerably, and it could even get a little bit worse, over the next couple of months,” Obama said today in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “We lost so many jobs that making up for those that have already been lost is going to require really high growth rates.”
The unemployment rate reached 9.7 percent in August, a quarter-century high, and employers have eliminated almost 7 million jobs since the recession started, the biggest drop in any post-World War II economic downturn. Banks worldwide have recorded more than $1.6 trillion of losses and writedowns since the start of 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“All the signs are that the economy’s going to start growing again,” Obama said, citing improving manufacturing and financial markets. At the same time, he said he would “leave it up to” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to declare whether the recession is over.
The Fed chief said Sept. 15 that the worst U.S. slump since the 1930s has probably ended, while warning that growth may not be strong enough to quickly reduce the unemployment rate.
“Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time,” Bernanke said. The remarks were his most explicit statement that the contraction that began in December 2007 is over.
“We’re probably not going to start seeing enough job creation to” keep pace with “a rising population until some time next year,” Obama said. “You need 150,000 additional jobs each month just to keep pace with” population growth.
The economy will rebound at a 2.3 percent pace next year, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The growth rate won’t be fast enough to lower the unemployment rate below 9 percent, the economists predict.
Bernanke convenes the next meeting of Fed policy makers Sept. 22-23 in Washington.
Asda cuts fuel prices, starting fuel price war
Supermarket giant Asda has started a price war by slashing price of petrol by 2p and diesel by 1p-a-litre.
Earlier this month motorists witnessed arise in fuel prices following an increase in fuel-duty by government.
Asda claimed that it had trimmed down the fuel prices to the lowest in UK. Motorists will now pay a maximum of 102.9 for unleaded and 103.9 for diesel at Asda stores.
Tesco also hacked 2p-a-litre at most of its petrol stations. Tesco further said that all of its petrol stations will witness a fall of 1p-a-litre in the prices of unleaded as well as diesel.
Tesco has also said that those who would spend £50 in its stores will be provided with a discount of 5p-a-litre at its pumps.
David Miles, spokesman for Asda, said, "Once again we have led the way by passing on the benefits of lower costs to our customers as quickly as possible."
Other retailers are also expected to follow suit.
Job-cut figures in May strengthen signs of easing recession
In what can be termed as a strengthened sign of the easing recession, the May job-cut figures revealed by the Labor Department on Friday mark the lowest number in the past eight-month period! Though the 345,000 jobs slashed in the US in May increased the jobless rate to 9.4 percent, the job-losses remained much below the economists' expectations.
However, despite the lesser number of job losses in May, the jobless rate soared to its highest rate in more than 25 years, underlining fears that unemployment may likely touch double digits.
A complete economic recovery may still be a distant thought, with the plunge in wage rate growth bringing the annual rate of average hourly earnings growth to its lowest level since November 2005. As per the median of 76 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, payrolls were projected to plunge 520,000, with estimates ranging from declines of 450,000 to 600,000.
Predicting a "slow recovery" from the catastrophic downturn, economist David Malpass, who is the president of Encima Global in New York, said in a note to clients: "The rate of decline has slowed some, but the losses to date are causing sharp declines in U.S. per capita income."
Nonetheless, the better-than-anticipated job-losses report by the Labor department helped Wall Street stocks move moderately higher and then retreated later!
Pandit comments on Andrew Hall’s $100 million annual compensation in 2008
The statement passed by Mr. Pandit came as a reply to a question asked to him at the 92nd Street Y in New York Thursday night. The question related to Andrew Hall, the star Citigroup commodities trader, who received $98.9 million in 2008.
For Citigroup, Mr. Hall's compensation has become a political minefield; and Mr. Pandit specified that company is moving forward with restructuring Phibro LLC, the trading operation led by Mr. Hall.
The sources 'in the know' of the situation said: "Citigroup is considering a spin-off of Phibro so that the trader no longer is subject to pay restrictions and government scrutiny triggered by taxpayer-funded aid."
Mr. Pandit, who said that Citigroup employees need to be paid competitively, replied in the affirmative when asked if $100 million in annual compensation is excessive. His response gave rise to some whispers among the audience, which included Citigroup employees.
Kenneth Feinberg, Citigroup had specified in its submission to the Obama administration's pay czar that since Mr. Hall's contract was signed prior to a deadline specified by Congress, it is exempt from Mr. Feinberg's jurisdiction.
Mr. Feinberg would be asked to push the bank to try to renegotiate the contract with Mr. Hall, if he agrees.
Apple's Snow Leopard gets a Third-Party OpenCL GCD boost
Yesterday Apple announced that they were opening up the Grand Central Dispatch code. So, of course today we see the first of the “third-party” applications developed for it.
Interestingly it is a video encoding application that makes use of the OpenCL libraries found in Snow Leopard. The name of the application is called movie gate. It was developed by Christophe Ducommun and shows roughly a 50% performance increase over non-OpenCL performance. When I read this news I started to have flash backs to when NVIDIA released their Cuda API. At the time they called it WhoopAss, a rather goofy name for a bundle of demo applications and a single Video encoding app that was not much faster than CPU encoding (back then).
Despite this flash back I was actually impressed when I read further down in the article. You see although I dislike Apple as a company the one thing that I will always give them for is their Video Editing/ Authoring Applications. I still use FinalCut and DVD Studio for my authoring and NLE Editing. So with this new development I am starting to wonder if it is time to build me a hackintosh complete with some third-party OpenCL plugins.
Promises, promises
It's been an interesting week for Apple watchers, full of promise. Promise in all sorts of ways: in future Mac hardware that will really take advantage of the goodness incipient in OS 10.6.x Snow Leopard, and hardware promises in the iPod touch: where's the camera? A tear-apart clearly showed there was space for one. But there's even more promise than that.
I've been saying for a while that Apple needs to update its iMac line. Well, 'needs' might be too strong a word. It may just be my own hope, I must admit.
For perhaps Apple doesn't 'need' to release a new iMac. Maybe it's only me who wants one. Since no magical Apple tablet/netbook/thingy has showed up to fill a perceived device gap underneath Apple's MacBook range (despite sometimes fervid speculation), and despite no new iMac, Apple's Mac computer sales have still managed to rise recently - in the US, anyway.
Industry watcher the Silicon Alley Insider has reported on data from the research firm NPD showing that US Mac sales were up 7 per cent year-over-year for July and August. Needless to say, this is ahead of most analysts' projections.
Aren't Macs 'overpriced' already? Isn't there a recession on? Despite the odds, Apple still seems almost unaware of recession woes. (Back-to-school sales in the first few months of this quarter would have helped the figures.)
Meanwhile, HP seems to be envious. While not exactly building 'green' PCs, HP has placed an 'Envy' moniker on its latest notebooks. I wouldn't think anything of that except that PC World (not a Mac site) reckons HP is trying to get "as close to replicating a MacBook Pro is it could without stamping an Apple logo on the classy aluminum [sic] chassis."
Whatever, the only Mac computers currently available that really benefit from the new processing tech in Snow Leopard are great big Mac Pro towers with lots of RAM and lots of processing and video power. In the Snow Leopard climate, it stands to reason a multi-core iMac with a really good video card would be a justifiable offering.
And then there are the products Apple has released lately. According to iFixit, the site that regularly gets new Apple equipment as close as possible to release, then pulls it apart, there is a hole in the board where the camera would be if there was one.
At the same time, Microsoft is set to roll out its new Zunes. Spec for spec, even us Apple fans have to admit the new Zune HD looks good. On paper.
Ginny Miles at PC World has written that the new Zune HD, which replaces all other previously released models of Microsoft's player, got a complete makeover.
It has a 3.3-inch multi-touch OLED display and has a single, slim hardware home button lying below it. Sound familiar? Microsoft says the Zune HD can play music for up to 33 hours and video for up to 8.5 hours, which is impressive. The iPod Touch offers 30 hours of music playback and 6 hours of video.
Macworld, quoting a PC World article (the two magazines are under the same publisher), reckons other iPod competitors are also closing in.
And then there's the 'missing' capabilities inside the new iPod touch. iFixit speculates that, at the very least, a iPod Nano type 640x480 video-only camera would fit nicely in a space left in the new touch, and leaked pictures of prototype iPod touch cases did clearly show a lens hole.
Steve Jobs said that the camera was left out to make the iPod touch an inexpensive, affordable gaming device. Hmm, what do you think? I bet that camera doesn't cost much. It's already in the cheaper nanos. It smacks more of some technical issue we don't know about, to my mind.
The new touch CPU is a 339S0075 ARM. This appears to be a higher/newer CPU, and an improvement over the previous iPod, and better even than the iPhone 3GS' processor.
But there's even more promise in that latest iPod touch case. iFixit's tear-down also revealed a Broadcom BCM4329FKUBG wireless chip. According to Broadcom's own data, the BCM4329 supports the 802.11n wireless protocol, sure, but it also supports FM radio transmission and reception. All three of these features are currently not active in the iPod touch.
Even the iPhone 3GS doesn't yet support the newer, faster 802.11n protocol, which has finally been ratified fully by the IEEE. The iPhone 3GS only has a BCM4325 wireless chip, which supports 802.11 a/b/g but not /n.
But Apple hasn't even mentioned these potential functions in the touch, even though the lower-priced nano has FM radio. A software patch or a new OS 3x could enable these features, assuming the touch contains a suitable antenna.
What's Apple waiting for that will prompt the enabling of FM radio? With transmission, an iPod touch could link to a car stereo, for example, without using any third party hardware. If reception is enabled in the touch, you can listen to FM radio broadcasts as with a transistor radio of old, and with some cell phones and even the new nano.
I guess we'll find out one day.
In other Mac news, Mac OS X Snow Leopard has already moved to version 10.6.1, only 13 days after Snow Leopard's release. This addresses some printer driver compatibility, random issues with DVD playback, some issues with Mail and certain SMTP servers, and compatibility with Motion 4 (the 3D component in Final Cut Studio).
OS 10.6.1 also includes the latest 10.0.32.18 version of Adobe's Flash Player plug-in.
Security Update 2009-005 came out too, addressing potential security vulnerabilities. Snow Leopard users, just run Software Update - think of it as a vaccination against potential malware.
Sony Ericsson C903 [Review]
While all camera phone manufacturers have got into the megapixel race, Sony Ericsson seems to have realized that it's better to improvise on something they already have before moving ahead. Sure enough they have 8MP camera phones but then coming back to redefine 5MP camera phones is a wise decision.
Today we have the Sony Ericsson C903, a 5MP camera phone. The phones rear resembles a digital camera when held horizontally. Another trump card of this new CyberShot series phone from SE is the inclusion of the Facebook app.
Real-Time Top 40: What Twitter Users Are Listening to Right Now
The Vodafone venture goes hand-in-hand with marketing the telecommunications company’s cell phone service. According to the site, all the tracks in the top 40 found can also be found in their music store, with customers able to download DRM free tracks at “49p per track and £7.99 per album” to their mobile phones.
Twitter’s trending topics play an important role in the Twitter (Twitter) ecosystem by highlighting the most popular subjects that people are tweeting about in real-time. We’ve seen plenty of different real-time search engines play with and tweak this concept, but we’ve yet to see trending tracks. Until now.
Vodafone has just launched Real-Time Top 40, to answer the question, what are you listening to? The automatically updating top 40 music chart (designed for the UK) is based on your tweeting behaviors, and provides a nifty look at the most popular artists and songs being talked about. The site also provides a quick way to vote for and buy tracks, and influence music trends.
Real-Time Top 40 instantly updates based on tweet activity, which means that you can tweet with the artist and track you’re listening to and directly affect the dynamically updating chart.
Climate activists dump manure on Jeremy Clarkson's lawn
Seven climate protesters dressed as suffragettes dumped horse manure on the Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s front lawn yesterday under a banner reading: “This is what you’re landing us in”.
They said that they objected to his “blasé attitude” and a drive he had made in the Arctic, claiming that it emitted 1.7 tonnes of carbon.
The activists from the environmental group Climate Rush unloaded the bag-loads of manure at Clarkson’s home in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. It was part of their month-long horse-and-cart road show around the south west of England to raise awareness of climate issues.
The group’s spokeswoman, Tamsin Omond, 24, said: “I love Jeremy, I love fast cars, I love progress, but I’ve learnt some things and those things terrify me.
“I learnt that climate change will make my future unrecognisable. I know I’ll not have the same choices that Jeremy has now.
“If we keep on loving the fossil-fuelled lifestyle then by the time I hit 49, the world will be too busy coping with the impact of climate change to bother about how big an engine is possible.
“I’m dumping dung at Clarkson’s gates so he might understand that his attitude will land us all in the s***.”
Geithner ends money market guarantee program
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER,AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said an emergency program that had guaranteed as much as $3 trillion in assets in money market mutual funds was being allowed to expire Friday.
"As the risk of catastrophic failure of the financial system has receded, the need for some of the emergency programs put in place during the most acute phase of the crisis has receded as well,' Geithner said in a brief statement.
Geithner had said last week that the financial system was healthy enough to begin unwinding some of the programs put in place a year ago after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the worst financial crisis in seven decades.
The program to guarantee assets in money market mutual funds had originally been established in September 2008 to last for three months but was then extended through Sept. 18 of this year.
Treasury said it had suffered no losses under the guarantee program and had earned about $1.2 billion in participation fees paid by money market mutual funds.
The program had been established after a large money market fund called the Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck" - meaning the value of its underlying assets fell below $1 for each investor dollar put in.
The funds are a mainstay of financial management for U.S. families and companies, regarded as safe and easily accessible investments that offer returns exceeding those of conventional savings accounts. They generally invest in the safest types of debt such as Treasury bonds.
Google unveils new DoubleClick exchange
The offices of Google in Seattle, Washington, US. Google has revamped its DoubleClick Ad Exchange in a bid to further challenge Yahoo's share of online display ads.
San Francisco: Google unveiled a new advertising exchange that draws on its search prowess to challenge Yahoo's grip on the market for online display ads.
The new DoubleClick Ad Exchange introduced on Thursday is the first major overhaul of the system since Google acquired DoubleClick for more than $3 billion (Dh11 billion) in March 2008.
It represents a key plank in Google's plan to supplement its market-leading business of serving text-based ads alongside web search results with the more visual, graphical ads that appear on websites - a market dominated by online rivals Yahoo and Time Warner's AOL.
Google Says Apple Flatly Rejected Voice App for iPhone
When Apple sent a letter to the government in response to an inquiry about its treatment of Google Voice’s proposed iPhone application, it seemed as if Apple had opened a pinhole in the curtain of secrecy that usually surrounds its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.
Now Google is arguing that the image Apple projected may have been only as real as Pixar animation.
To recap, Apple told the Federal Communications Commission that it hadn’t rejected the application, but that it was “still pondering” what to do with Google’s service. It said it was afraid Google Voice, which offers its own calling and voice mail features, might confuse users of the official Apple and AT&T call features and voice mail.
In response, Google withdrew its request that the commission keep secret certain elements of its response. On Friday, the commission published the full letter on its Web site.
In it, Google described “a series of in-person meetings, phone calls, and e-mails between July 5 and July 28.” On one phone call, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for marketing, told Alan Eustace, a Google senior vice president for engineering, that the application was rejected, Google wrote.
Google said that Apple told the company that the Google Voice app was rejected “because Apple believed the application duplicated the core functionality of the core dialer functionality of the iPhone. The Apple representatives indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality.”
Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, said an in an e-mail message on Friday, “We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter. Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google.”
Facebook accounts hacked for $100
Facebook accounts hacked for $100. New customers get a free toaster!
If you've ever wanted to crack open the Facebook account of an ex, or a boss that you just loathe, then there is a service that will do just that, for as little as $100 USD. Ok, no not really, but it will take your money. That fact is certain, according to Luis Corrons of Panda Security.
Corrons, with some help from another researcher at Panda, Sean-Paul Correll, discovered a Facebook Hacking business that promises, “any Facebook account can be hacked.” The cost for the Facebook compromise is $100 USD, paid by Western Union.
“The service’s real purpose may be hacking Facebook accounts as they say, or profiting from those that want to try the service. In any case, the Web page is very well designed. It is easy to contract the service and become either the victim of an online fraud, or a cyber-criminal and accomplice in identity theft,” Corrons said in a statement.
“Once an intruder hacks into a Facebook account, all personal data published on the site can be stolen. Similarly, those accounts can also be used to send malware, spam or other threats to the victim’s contacts. In the case of celebrities of other well-known entities, they can be used to defame the account holder, spread information in their name, etc. In any event, this is criminal activity.”
It is likely that the cybercriminals behind this operation are members of an Eastern European Internet mafia, Panda said, because payments are conducted online through Western Union to a payee in Ukraine. The domain that hosts the service is registered in Moscow, providing further evidence of this theory.
Oddly, to back the service and offer a level of legitimacy, the company promising the Facebook hacking claims to have been offering this service for four years, with only one percent of accounts hack-proof, thus the customer gets their money back. However, the domain is just a few days old.
While Corrons knew the site was a scam from the start, that didn’t prevent him from setting up a dummy Facebook account to test the service. Entering the Facebook user ID number, the service reported a successful hack. However, to get access Corrons needed to fork over $100 USD.
Once you pay the money, entering the information to use Western Union to wire funds to Nikita Volgin, the funds are promised to hit your site account instantly. The service even offers bonuses if you pay more than the base fee. Yet, will the money really appear into your account?
“Of course it won't, as this is all about taking the money from users. And at the end, as the user wanted to hack an account, he won't call the police,” Corrons said, proving that criminals scamming criminals is sometimes the easiest money of all.
Images of the site, and some added details and thoughts are on the Panda Security
Feds balk at Google book deal, hopes for changes
Everything at Frankfurt was massively overshadowed by Bugatti's new four-door concept, the Galibier 16C.
Wonderfully striking, it uses the Veyron's W16 engine with twin mechanical superchargers, plus four-wheel drive.
The gorgeous body and chassis are a combination of aluminium and carbon fibre and there are no less than eight canted exhaust pipes.
Bugatti insiders say they want to build the world's fastest, most accelerative saloon, so power is likely to be over 800bhp, with a top speed of nearly 240.
I love the detailing. Like the tight '57 Atlantique-inspired central spine that runs along the roof and rear window. You can even take the Parmigiani clock out of the dash and wear it on your wrist.
And then there's the bonnet that opens up on both sides from a central hinge like a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Compared to the heroically clumsy Porsche Panamera, this Bug is an absolute stunner.
And so it should be at a rumoured price of £900,000. Quite rightly, Bugatti owner VW has to gauge customer reaction before committing to production. But the proposed run of just 300 cars wouldn't even satisfy the Saudi market.
There are enough bling-obsessed multi-millionaires in the world to create a waiting-list measured in years, not months.
UK housing market suffers 'summertime dip' in mortgage lending
Mortgage lending fell by 13% during August as the market suffered its usual seasonal dip, figures showed today.
A total of £12.6 billion was advanced during the month, down from £14.5 billion in July and 37% lower than in August last year, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
The group said a fall in lending was to be expected during August when activity in the market slows down as potential buyers go away on holiday.
But it added that despite the dip, underlying lending levels appeared to have stabilised during the summer.
The group said stronger levels of lending for house purchase continued to be offset by a lower number of people remortgaging.
Low interest rates mean many homeowners are better off sticking on the standard variable rate they reverted to when a deal came to an end, rather than taking out a new one.
It said this trend was likely to continue for the rest of the year, although the pick-up in housing market activity would be checked by funding constraints.
Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) economist Paul Samter said: "The likelihood of a significant pick-up in lending remains weak, but the prospects for wholesale funding markets are improving.
"This could result in a gradual easing in constraints on the supply of funding over time.
"However, demand from consumers and a prudent approach to lending criteria are likely to mean that the market remains subdued."
There have been recent signs that the housing market has stabilised, with most major house price indexes now reporting price rises.
But economists are predicting a fresh round of price falls next year, triggered by rising unemployment and continuing problems in the mortgage market.
Andrew Montlake, director of independent mortgage broker Coreco, said:
"The August decline in mortgage lending was always on the cards, so this is by no means a setback.
"Looking at the bigger picture, the mortgage market is slowly picking itself back up after being KO'd by the credit crunch.
"There are more products available now. However, there is still a dearth of products at higher LTVs (loan to value ratios) and this will continue to act as a drag on the property market."
The Bank of England, which also released its monthly report on lending trends today, said net mortgage lending, which strips out redemptions and repayments, picked up slightly during August, after being negative in July for the first time since its monthly data series began in 1993.
It said lending was boosted by higher advances to people buying a property, although demand from homeowners remortgaging continued to fall.
There was also a slight increase in the proportion of lending being done at loan-to-value ratios of between 76% and 90%, but lending to people with less than a 10% deposit has fallen since the beginning of the year.
The average rate charged on a new mortgage remained at around 4% during August, with the rate charged on two-year fixed-rate deals remaining unchanged despite a fall in two-year swap rates.
The Bank warned that the major lenders remained cautious about the prospects for house prices and unemployment, and with specialist lenders remaining absent from the market, they did not expect a significant reduction in the margins they charged on home loans in the near term.
The report also said that net lending to UK businesses fell further during August, after reaching its lowest level in July since the series began in 1998.
Lenders reported that many companies were paying back debt, but keeping the size of their facilities unchanged, suggesting they were trying to create "headroom" to enable them to respond quickly to future investment opportunities, without having to negotiate new loan facilities.
Cruise deals: 2010's best offers
Whether it's sheer luxury or pure economy you are after, there's a cruise package to suit your wallet. Jane Archer looks at the choices.
Cruising has come a long way from the days when it was for the well-bred and nearly dead, when only toffs with money could afford a holiday at sea. These days everyone can go on a cruise, whatever their budget.
Things started to change in the mid-Nineties, when the mass-market tour operators Airtours (now part of Thomas Cook) and Thomson launched their own cruise lines, targeted at people who travelled on their bucket-and-spade land-based holidays. If that had worked, why not an affordable cruise, they reasoned.
Their ships were old, but offered a winning formula of good food, good service, not too much formality and plenty of British-style entertainment.
It was like being in a hotel in Benidorm – except that this one moved.
The result? People who would never have considered a cruise because it was expensive and stuffy flocked to their ships, forcing the conventional cruise lines to think again. They suddenly realised that to grow, they had to appeal to this new casual cruiser who was less concerned about traditional pomp and ceremony, and more worried about their pocket. Prices began to fall.
Last year, P&O Cruises worked out that a two-week cruise was about £2,000 per couple cheaper than a decade ago – but the price still includes all food (unless you go to the speciality restaurants) and entertainment while on board.
So, just as there is a ship out there to suit everyone – one for families, one for people who like formality, one for those who prefer a casual break, and so on – there is now also a cruise to suit every pocket.
There are some amazing deals – and not just as long as you stay close to home. You can have three nights sailing around the Greek Islands for under £300, or seven nights in the Caribbean for £500. Don't forget these prices include as much food as you can eat, and entertainment where offered. Or how about a week cruising the Canary Islands this winter for under £550? That includes flights and transfers as well.
If you can afford to up the ante, there are more luxurious ships cruising the Med or further afield, from Panama to the Far East. Add another few thousand and you could be cruising to the ends of the earth – literally. To the Arctic or Antarctica.
To help bookings along in this recessionary year, some lines have come out with such great financial incentives that you can't really afford not to book.
P&O Cruises has on-board credit to take pressure off the budget, while ultra-luxury line Regent Seven Seas Cruises is offering free shore excursions on all cruises next year, worth at least £60 per person per day.
In St Petersburg, where there is so much to see that ships stay two or three days, you can pack in two or three trips ashore a day (there are evenings at the ballet or opera as well as morning and afternoon excursions) and save up to £550 per person.
The offer, available on selected cruises only this year but on all voyages in 2010, led to a 48 per cent hike in bookings in Britain between January and May this year compared with the same time in 2008. "It's already created huge demand for cruises next year," said the company's British managing director, Graham Sadler.
Having decided to cruise, the big question is whether to book now and take advantage of any early-booking discounts, or hang on in the hope of better last-minute deals.
The best advice is that if you want a particular cruise on a specific ship, staying in a certain cabin, book now: there is no point waiting and buying a holiday you don't want. If you don't care about any of that and only want a low-cost cruise in the cheapest cabin available, hang on, as there will always be last-minute deals to fill the ships, and you'll do better by waiting.
Cruises listed here show the published prices, based on two people sharing an inside cabin, unless otherwise stated, and include all meals and entertainment. Other inclusions are as indicated. Prices were correct at the time of going to press, but are subject to change.
No-fly cruises from the UK
Under £1,000
Voyages of Discovery has an eight-day Norwegian fjords cruise from Harwich on Discovery departing May 24 2010, visiting Bergen, Alesund, Hellesvit/Geiranger and Flam. From £898 per person, cruise only (0845 018 1808; www.voyagesofdiscovery.co.uk)
Join Princess Cruises for a seven-night Scandinavian Interlude cruise on Ocean Princess departing Dover on August 14 2010, visiting Amsterdam, Lubeck, Copenhagen and Oslo. From £849 per person, cruise only (0845 3 555 800; www.princess.com)
Visit the Norwegian fjords and Scottish Highlands on an eight-night cruise from Dover on Holland America Line's Eurodam departing on June 21 2010. From £949 per person, cruise only (0845 351 0557; www.hollandamerica.co.uk)
Cruise to the Canary Islands on a 10-night voyage from Southampton on Royal Caribbean International's Independence of the Seas departing May 5 2010, visiting Madeira, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Vigo, Spain. From £936 per person, cruise only (0844 493 2061; www.royalcaribbean.co.uk)
Under £1,500
Spend two-and-a-half days in St Petersburg on a 14-night Baltic cruise on Fred Olsen Cruise Lines' Black Watch departing Southampton on June 8 2010. From £1,499 per person, cruise only (01473 742424; www.fredolsencruises.co.uk)
Royal Caribbean International has a 14-night Mediterranean Treasures cruise from Southampton on Independence of the Seas departing July 3 2010, visiting Gibraltar, France and Spain. From £1,468 per person, cruise only (0844 493 2061;
www.royalcaribbean.co.uk)
Under £2,500
Celebrity Cruises has a 14-night Scandinavia and Russia cruise from Southampton on Celebrity Eclipse departing July 10 2010, visiting Stockholm, Helsinki, St Petersburg, Tallinn and Copenhagen. From £2,018 per person, cruise only, in an Aqua Class cabin (0845 456 0523; www.celebritycruises.co.uk)
P&O Cruises' new ship Azura, launching April 2010, has a 16-night cruise from Southampton to the Mediterranean departing July 23 2010, calling at Malaga, Katakolon, Corfu, Dubrovnik, Venice, Korcula and Gibraltar. From £1,894 per person, cruise only (0845 3 555 333; www.pocruises.co.uk)
Cruise & Maritime Voyages has a 42-night Amazon and Orinoco Discovery cruise from London Tilbury on Marco Polo departing February 1 2010. It spends eight days in the Amazon and also visits Brazil, French Guiana and Venezuela. From £1,999 per person, cruise only (0845 430 0274; www.cruiseandmaritime.com)
Over £2,500
Hebridean Island Cruises has a seven-night Castle and Gardens of the North cruise around the Scottish Islands from Oban, departing April 29 2010, on the 49-passenger Hebridean Princess. From £2,822 per person, including drinks, shore excursions and gratuities (01756 704 704; www.hebridean.co.uk)
Be the first to cruise on over-fifties specialist Saga's new ship, Saga Pearl II, on its 18-night inaugural cruise from Southampton to the Norwegian fjords departing March 15 2010, including calls at Bergen, Tromso, Narvik, Trondheim, Alesund and Flam. From £2,623 per person, cruise only (0800 505030; www.sagacruise.com)
Join Yachts of Seabourn's Seabourn Sojourn on its 14-night maiden voyage from London Greenwich to Dover on June 6 2010, visiting Scotland, Iceland and Norway. From £5,599 per person, cruise only, including drinks and gratuities (0845 070 0500;
www.seabourn.com)
Crystal Cruises is offering a seven-night cruise from Dover to Ireland on Crystal Symphony, departing June 14 2010, visiting Guernsey, Waterford, Dublin, Belfast and Liverpool. From £2,535 per person, cruise only, including soft drinks and gratuities
(020 7287 9040; www.crystalcruises.co.uk)
Europe
Under £1,000
Norwegian Cruise Line has seven-night Mediterranean Treasures cruises departing weekly from Barcelona on Norwegian Jade between April 19 and November 14 2010, calling at France, Italy and Spain. From £649 per person including flights and transfers (0845 201 8900; www.ncl.co.uk)
Join easyCruise for a three-night Greek Isles and Turkey cruise from Piraeus, the port for Athens, on easyCruise Life, departing April 30 or May 28 2010, and visiting Mykonos, Kusadasi, Patmos, Heraklion and Santorini. From £299 per person, cruise only (0871 210 0001; www.easyCruise.com)
Louis Cruises' six-night Mediterranean Highlights voyage from Genoa on Louis Majesty departs on December 20 2009, and visits France, Spain, Tunisia, Malta and Sicily. From £369 per person, cruise only (0800 0183883; www.louiscruises.com)
Casual cruise line Ocean Village has a seven-night cruise from Heraklion (Crete) on Ocean Village departing on June 17 2010, visiting Istanbul and Kusadasi in Turkey, Piraeus and Santorini. From £979 per person, including flights and transfers (0845 358 5000; www.oceanvillageholidays.co.uk)
Under £1,500
Princess Cruises has 12-night Grand Mediterranean cruises between Barcelona and Venice on Ruby Princess from May to September 2010, calling at Italy, Turkey, Greece and France. From £1,299 per person, including flights and transfers (0845 3 555 800; www.princess.com)
The fjords will come alive to the sound of music on Hurtigruten's seven-night opera-themed cruise from Tromso to Oslo on the Trollfjord departing January 4 2010. From £1,230 per person, including flights, transfers and all concerts (020 8846 2666;
www.hurtigruten.co.uk)
Viking River Cruises has an eight-day Danube Waltz from Passau in March, November and December 2010 that calls at Linz, Salzburg, Melk, Durnstein, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. From £1,465 per person, including flights, transfers and guided tours (020 880 7900; www.vikingrivercruises.com)
Enjoy a 13-day Mediterranean Spring cruise with Swan Hellenic, sailing from Cadiz to Piraeus on April 7 2010. You'll be cruising on Minerva and visiting ports in Spain, Italy and Malta. From £1,395 per person including flights, transfers, excursions and gratuities (0845 017 0017; www.swanhellenic.com)
Under £2,500
Windstar Cruises has a seven-night Spanish cruise from Lisbon to Barcelona on the 315-passenger yacht Wind Surf departing on April 4 2010, visiting Morocco and Spain. From £1,961 per person, including flights. Book through The Cruise Portfolio (020 7292 2387; www.windstarcruises.com)
Ultra-luxury line Regent Seven Seas Cruises is offering a seven-night Russia and the Baltic cruise from Copenhagen to Stockholm departing on July 4 2010. You'll cruise on Seven Seas Voyager and spend three days in St Petersburg. From £2,413 per person for a balcony cabin including flights, shore excursions and drinks (023 8068 2280; www.rssc.co.uk)
AMAWaterways has a 14-night Ultimate River Cruise from Budapest to Trier on the Amalyra departing November 2 2009, visiting cities including Vienna, Bratislava, Passau and Regensburg. From £2,284 per person, cruise only, including wine with dinner (0800 389 9811; www.amawaterways.co.uk)
Over £2,500
Italian line Costa Cruises has an eight-night Eastern Mediterranean cruise from Venice on Costa Serena departing on August 8 2010, visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey and Croatia. From £2,589 per person for a grand suite with balcony including flights and transfers (0845 351 0552; www.costacruises.co.uk)
Oceania Cruises is offering a 36-night Grand Circle of the Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona to Marseilles on Insignia on April 18 2010, visiting Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Malta and Corsica. From £5,399, cruise only, including bottled water and soft drinks (01344 772344; www.oceaniacruises.co.uk)
SeaDream Yacht Club has a 10-night cruise from Venice to Civitavecchia (for Rome) on SeaDream I, departing on July 3 2010, visiting Croatia, Corfu, Sicily and Italy. From £3,994 per person, including all drinks and gratuities but excluding flights (0800 783 1373; www.seadream.com)
Elegant River Cruises, part of Titan HiTours, has a 15-day Grand France cruise on the Seine and Rhône departing on March 21 2010. From £3,095 per person, including flights, British and overseas transfers, and wine and soft drinks with meals (0800 988 5867; www.elegantrivercruises.co.uk)
MSC Cruises has an eight-day Western Mediterranean cruise from Genoa on MSC Spendida departing on June 5 2010, visiting France, Spain, Tunisia and Malta. From £2,680 per person, including flights and transfers, Yacht Club butler accommodation and all drinks (0844 561 1955; www.msccruises.co.uk)
Scenic Tours has a 12-day Black Sea Explorer cruise on the Danube from Budapest to Bucharest visiting Serbia and Bulgaria and cruising through the Iron Gate gorge. From £3,145 per person, including flights or rail travel, transfers, excursions, wine or beer with meals and gratuities (0161 236 2444; www.scenictours.co.uk)
Caribbean
Under £1,000
Carnival Cruise Lines has a nine-night Exotic Western Caribbean cruise from Port Canaveral on its new ship, Carnival Dream, departing on December 11 2009, calling at Mexico, Belize and Nassau. From £979 per person, including flights and one night in a hotel (0845 351 0556; www.carnivalcruise.co.uk)
Norwegian Cruise Line is offering a seven-night Western Caribbean cruise from Miami on its new ship Norwegian Epic departing weekly from July 2010, calling at Costa Maya and Cozumel in Mexico, and Roatan. From £479 per person, cruise only (0845 201 8900; www.ncl.co.uk)
Thomson Cruises has a seven-night Coral Islands cruise from La Romana in the Dominican Republic on Thomson Destiny departing on December 20 2009, calling at St Lucia, Grenada, Antigua, St Maarten and Tortola. From £999 per person, including flights and transfers (0871 231 3253; www.thomson.co.uk/cruise)
Under £1,500
Costa Cruises has a seven-night cruise from Guadeloupe on Costa Mediterranea departing on January 16 2010, visiting St Maarten, the Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands, Antigua and St Lucia. From £1,099 per person, including flights and transfers (0845 351 0552; www.costacruises.co.uk)
Celebrity Cruises is offering a 12-night Ultimate Caribbean cruise on Celebrity Equinox from Miami departing on December 3 2009, calling at St Maarten, St Lucia, Barbados, St Kitts and St Thomas. From £1,489 per person, including flights, transfers and a night in a hotel (0844 493 2061; www.celebritycruises.co.uk)
Join Regent Seven Seas Cruises for a seven-night Western Caribbean cruise on Seven Seas Navigator departing from Fort Lauderdale on February 19 2010, visiting Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. From £1,383 per person, cruise only, for an ocean-view suite including shore excursions (02380 682280; www.rssc.co.uk)
Ocean Village has a seven-night Caribbean cruise from Barbados on Ocean Village departing December 16 2009 and calling at Tortola, St Maarten, St Kitts, Antigua and Dominica. From £1,049 per person including flights and transfers (0845 358 5000;
www.oceanvillageholidays.co.uk)
Under £2,500
Star Clippers has a six-night cruise from Barbados on the sailing ship Royal Clipper departing January 2010 and calling at Grenada, Tobago, St Lucia and Bequia. From £2,175 per person, cruise only (01473 292029; www.starclippers.co.uk)
Silversea is offering a nine-day cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Barbados on Silver Shadow departing on December 2 2009, calling at the islands of Tortola, St Kitts, St Barts, St Lucia and Grenada. From £1,622 per person, cruise only, including drinks and gratuities (0844 770 9030; www.silversea.com)
SeaDream Yacht Club has a nine-night cruise from Barbados to Puerto Rico on SeaDream I departing March 14 2010, visiting the Grenadines, St Lucia, St Barts, Dominica, Guadeloupe and St Martin. From £2,125 per person, cruise only, including drinks and gratuities (0800 783 1373; www.seadream.com)
Holland America Line has a 22-night Southern Caribbean Wayfarer and Seafarer Collector cruise from Fort Lauderdale on Noordam departing April 23 2010, visiting St Maarten, St Lucia, Barbados and Martinique. From £2,119 per person, including flights and a night in Miami (0845 351 0557; www.hollandamerica.co.uk)
Over £2,500
Join ultra-luxury Seabourn Odyssey on its 14-day maiden Caribbean cruise from Fort Lauderdale on November 14 2009, visiting Turks and Caicos, Antigua, Barbados, Guadeloupe and Dominican Republic. From £3,099 per person, cruise only, including drinks and gratuities (0845 070 0500; www.seabourn.com)
Windstar Cruises has a nine-night cruise from Barbados on the yacht Wind Surf on November 22 2009, visiting St Kitts, Nevis, St Martin, St Barts, Guadeloupe, Iles Des Saintes and St Lucia. From £2,746 per person, including flights. Book through The Cruise Portfolio (020 7292 2387; www.windstarcruises.com)
Crystal Cruises has a seven-night cruise from Miami on Crystal Serenity departing January 4 2010, visiting Turks and Caicos, Grand Cayman and Key West. From £3,283 per person, including flights, transfers, an ocean-view stateroom, soft drinks and gratuities (020 7287 9040; www.crystalcruises.co.uk)
Rest of the world
Under £1,000
Thomson has seven-night Red Sea Magic cruises on Thomson Celebration between November 2009 and April 2010, sailing from Sharm el Sheikh and visiting Jordan and Egypt. From £669 per person, including flights and transfers (0871 231 3253; www.thomson.co.uk/cruise)
Sail from Brazil to Dover on an 18-night voyage on MSC Cruises' ship MSC Orchestra departing May 3 2010, visiting Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Mindelo, Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, Cadiz, Lisbon and Vigo in Spain. From £749 per person, cruise only (0844 561 1955; www.msccruises.co.uk)
Island Cruises has seven-night Canary Islands cruises from Tenerife this winter on Island Escape, visiting Gran Canaria, La Palma, Madeira, Morocco and Lanzarote. From £534 per person in December 2009, including flights and transfers. Book through Thomson Cruises (0871 231 3253; www.thomson.co.uk/cruise)
Under £1,500
Cruise through Vietnam and Cambodia on La Marguerite on an eight-day Mekong River voyage with AMAWaterways from Ho Chi Minh City to Siem Reap in Cambodia, between November 2009 and March 2010. From £1,377 per person, cruise only, including wine or beer with dinner and excursions (0800 389 9811, www.amawaterways.co.uk)
Oceania Cruises is offering an 18-night Christmas and New Year cruise from Singapore to Sydney on Nautica departing December 20 2009, visiting Bali, Java, Komodo, Darwin and Brisbane. From £1,499 per person, cruise only, including gratuities (01344 772344; www.oceaniacruises.co.uk)
P&O Cruises has a 15-night Panama Canal cruise on Oceania from Acapulco to Barbados departing November 22 2010 and including calls at Huatulco, San Juan del Sur and Curaçao. From £1,488 per person, including flights, transfers and £50-per-person on-board credit (0845 3 555 333; www.pocruises.com)
Under £2,500
Spirit of Adventure has a 13-night Africa's Red Sea cruise from Aqaba to Mumbai, India, departing December 1 2009, with calls in Jordan, Egypt, the Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Oman. From £1,830 per person including flights, transfers, excursions, wine with meals and gratuities (0800 300 432; www.spiritofadventure.co.uk)
Viking River Cruises has 11 and 12-day cruises on the Dnieper from Kiev to Odessa (or vice versa) in Ukraine from May to September 2010, visiting Kremenchuk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Sevastopol and Yalta. From £1,795 per person, including flights, transfers and excursions (020 8780 7900; www.vikingrivercruises.com)
Silversea's luxury expedition ship Prince Albert II is departing Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen for a seven-day voyage around Svalbard in the Arctic on June 22 2010. From £2,151 per person, including drinks and gratuities but excluding flights (0844 770 9030; www.silversea.com)
Fred Olsen Cruise Lines has a 16-night ArtsClub music-themed transatlantic cruise from Barbados to Dover on Braemar departing April 15 2010. From £1,729 per person for a balcony cabin, including flights and transfers (01473 742424;
www.fredolsencruises.co.uk)
Swan Hellenic is offering a 16-day Arabian Nights cruise from Aqaba to Dubai on Minerva on December 4 2010, visiting Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman. From £1,285 per person, including flights and transfers, excursions and gratuities (0845 017 0017; www.swanhellenic.com)
Over £2,500
Quark Expeditions has a 20-day cruise to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia from Ushuaia on Clipper Adventurer departing December 1 2009. From £6,556 per person, including shore landings, one night in Ushuaia and transfers, but excluding flights. Book through Discover the World (01737 218 800; www.discover-the-world.co.uk)
Lindblad has 10-day Land of the Ice Bear exploration cruises in Svalbard on National Geographic Explorer between June 19 and July 31 2010. From £4,528 per person, including flights, UK and international transfers, soft drinks and two nights in Oslo. Book through Titan HiTours (0800 988 5175; www.ngjourneys.co.uk)
Hurtigruten has a seven-day Glaciers and Icebergs of Greenland cruise from Kangerlussuaq on Fram departing July 29, August 5 or August 12 2010. From £2,801 per person, including flights from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq and transfers in Greenland, but excluding international flights (020 88462666; www.hurtigruten.co.uk)
Australian cruise line Orion Expedition Cruises has a 10-night cruise along New Zealand's South Island Pacific Coast from Invercargill to Auckland on expedition ship Orion departing February 3 2010. From A$8,175 (£4,073) per person, cruise only (020 8545 2617; www.orionexpeditions.com)
Sample life on one of the last working mail ships on this 22-day St Helena Line round-trip voyage from Cape Town to the island of St Helena, where you'll stay for eight days. Departs April 18, May 28 or July 8 2010; from £2,521 per person, cruise only (0207 575 6480; www.rms-st-helena.com)
Cruise week competition
To celebrate National Cruise Week, Telegraph Travel has teamed up with the Passenger Shipping Association (PSA) to offer readers the chance to win a luxury cruise every day next week.
P&O Cruises is offering a two-week Mediterranean or Caribbean holiday for two on its new superliner Azura, to be launched in April 2010. Azura will offer talks by the wine expert Olly Smith and fine Indian dining supervised by the Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochhar.
Fred Olsen Cruise Lines is providing a trip for two of up to 14 nights on any of its cruises that depart fromBRitish ports. Accommodation in an outside two-bed cabin and all meals and entertainment are included.
MSC has an 11-night Mediterranean cruise on MSC Splendida for two, departing on December 8, calling at Genoa, Katakolon, Piraeus, Rhodes, Alexandria, Marmaris, Heraklion, Messina, Naples and Genoa. The prize includes return flight.
Holland America is offering an eight-night cruise through the Norwegian fjords and Scottish Highlands for two, sharing a deluxe stateroom (with balcony) on board the MS Eurodam, departing from Dover on June 21.
Hurtigruten is offering a three-night “Northern Lights: Taste of the Arctic” cruise for two, including return flight from Heathrow for depart
and March 25. Excludes Christmas and New Year.
Recovery hopes lift Wall Street
Stock markets in the United States rose for a third day yesterday, hitting fresh 2009 highs in a broad-based rally after economic data suggested a stronger-than-anticipated global recovery.
Energy and manufacturing companies were among the strongest, benefiting from data indicating improved industrial demand and a falling dollar, which makes American exports more competitive in world markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 108.30 points, or 1.1%, at 9791.71. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 16.13 points, or 1.5%, at 1,068.76. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 30.51 points, or 1.5%, at 2,133.15.
The benchmark S&P index is now up 58% since hitting 12-year lows in early March and is up 18% since the start of the year.
ENRC agrees to buy CAMEC for £584 million in effort to diversify
iversified mining group Eurasian Natural Resources (LSE: ENRC) agreed to acquire Central African mining and Exploration Co (CAMEC) (AIM: CFM) in a £584 million cash-only deal.
The offer of 20 pence per share for the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of CAMEC represents a 67% premium to its price on 15 July this year, the day before CAMEC said it had received a preliminary approach which may or may not lead to an offer.
The acquisition, which is pending on shareholder approval, would give ENRC access to CAMEC’s copper/cobalt resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo, thus providing entry into copper, which ENRC said had “attractive fundamentals.”
“The attractive assets of CAMEC fit well with our strategic ambition to grow and diversify ENRC. CAMEC offers all of our key requirements including scale and scalable assets, low cost and extensive growth opportunities. We firmly believe that CAMEC offers value accretion for all shareholders,” said ENRC Chief Executive Felix Vilus.
CAMEC reported profits of £54 million for the year ended 31 March 2008, possessing £800 million worth of assets with cash reserves of £17.8 million.
The company’s directors unanimously recommended the shareholders to accept the offer, saying the valuation was fair and that ENRC’s financial and operational resources would help CAMEC develop its asset portfolio.
The announcement helped ENRC to a 1.8% climb on the London Stock Exchange, while CAMEC rallied 7.5%
Fed seeks to police pay on banks that reward risk Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/09/19/2009-09-19_fed_seeks_to_police_pay_on_banks_
Entering uncharted waters, the Fed is drafting a plan in which it would police banks' pay policies to make sure they don't encourage excessive risk-taking.
The proposal is the Fed's latest response to criticism that it failed to crack down on lax lending, reckless gambles and other practices that led to the nation's financial crisis.
The central bank's more activist stance carries a risk, though: It could intensify accusations from lawmakers and other critics that the Fed is overstepping its bounds and should be reined in.
The Fed would not actually set compensation, but the proposal is far-reaching: Officials would review salaries, bonuses and other compensation for CEOs and senior management and could reject those pay plans, people with knowledge of the proposal said. It also would cover certain employees, such as traders, who can take big risks on behalf of a firm, they said.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/09/19/2009-09-19_fed_seeks_to_police_pay_on_banks_that_reward_risk.html#ixzz0RdgmYhR7
Arts crisis: Theater, TV and movies tackle causes and costs of global financial meltdown
LONDON - Greed, hubris, vast fortunes erased at a stroke - the financial crisis is dramatic gold dust for writers.
One of Britain's leading playwrights, David Hare, is tackling the world of toxic securities and subprime mortgages in his new play at the National Theatre in London. Author Sebastian Faulks has a new best-seller about a swashbuckling hedge fund trader. And the BBC has made a TV drama about the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
You may think stocks, derivatives and collateralized debt obligations are not the natural stuff of drama. Think again, says National Theatre artistic director Nicholas Hytner, who commissioned Hare's play, "The Power of Yes.
* Business * British Land British Land to sell half of Broadgate stake to Blackstone
• Broadgate site valued at £2.13bn, down from last year
• Sale places British Land 'in a very strong position' to invest
Broadgate Centre, London. Half of British Land's prime site is to be sold to US private equity firm Blackstone. Photograph: Barry Lewis/Corbis
British Land has secured a £1bn deal to sell a 50% stake in its Broadgate complex to US private equity firm Blackstone.
The two companies are forming a joint venture in which each will own half of the 30-acre site near Liverpool Street train station, following weeks of negotiations.
Broadgate is British Land's largest single asset and one of its most prestigious, situated in the heart of the City. The move cuts British Land's exposure to the financial sector, at a time when rents have come under severe pressure from the recession. It also gives the company more muscle to acquire new property assets.
In a statement, the company said the deal "realises our strategic objective of reducing exposure to large single asset concentrations. It puts British Land in a very strong position ... allowing it to take maximum advantage of market opportunities as the cycle develops." The company is the UK's second largest property firm.
Having fallen sharply during the economic downturn, there is now optimism that property values have stabilised. Prudential's director of investment, John Betteridge, said yesterday that prices are starting to increase.
Work on Broadgate began in 1984, two years before the so-called Big Bang shook up the City. Its main tenants are UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland and law firm Herbert Smith, with Deutsche Bank, Henderson, Reed Smith, Mayer Brown and ICAP all also operating from the site.
The deal values Broadgate at £2.13bn, slightly less than the £2.195bn valuation British Land put on the site last month. A year ago the site was valued at £2.845bn. Under the deal, Blackstone will take on £987m of debt – half the total and pay £77m cash.
British Land had admitted a month ago that it had received several expressions of interest in the site. Shares in the company slid by 1.1% this morning to 505p.
Chris Grigg, chief executive of British Land, said the Broadgate deal was the climax of his strategy to cut the company's exposure to large single assets.
"The transaction increases our capacity for profitable investment opportunities elsewhere as we reinvest in more diversified, liquid assets. We have selected Blackstone as a valued partner with excellent financial strength and real estate capabilities," said Grigg, who joined the company in January.
2009 US bank failures reach 94: FDIC
WASHINGTON — Two more US banks have closed down -- including the sixth largest bank bankruptcy this year -- to bring the total number of bank failures this year to 94, according to the government banking insurer.
The Indiana-based Irwin Union Bank was shuttered with a total of 2.7 billion dollars in assets and total deposits of some 2.1 billion dollars, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said in a statement Friday
In the same group, the Kentucky-based Irwin Union Bank failed with assets of 493 million dollars and total deposits of some 441 million dollars.
The institutions were banking subsidiaries of the Columbus, Indiana-based Irwin Financial Corporation.
With 27 branch locations between them, the two banks are set to reopen under regular business hours Saturday as branches of First Financial Bank, with deposits continuing to be insured by the FDIC.
After suffering no bank failures at all in 2005 and 2006, the US banking system saw three banks going under in 2007, followed by 25 in 2008.
With the bankruptcies Friday, the institutions brought the number of bank failures this year to 94 -- highlighting the extreme stress that the global financial crisis has placed on US banking institutions.
The FDIC said it estimated the transactions would cost the government's Deposit Insurance Fund 850 million dollars.
Gmail Down? Outage Spreads Confusion
-E-mail Outage Affects 'Majority' of Users; Google Explains, Apologizes
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It only lasted for an hour and a half, but yesterday's Gmail outage was an online hiccup felt 'round the world.
he popular e-mail service offered by Google, went down for a "majority" of users yesterday. By late afternoon, eastern time, the company said, "We've fixed the issue, and Gmail should be back up and running as usual."
Google said it made a mistake during some routine system maintenance, and apologized profusely: "Today's outage was a Big Deal, and we're treating it as such," said Ben Treynor, a Google vice president who is Site Reliability Czar (yes, Googlers have titles like that).
What happened? "We took a small fraction of Gmail's servers offline to perform routine upgrades," wrote Treynor in an explanation on Google's Gmail blog, which the company e-mailed to ABCNews.com. "This isn't in itself a problem -- we do this all the time, and Gmail's web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.
"However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers -- servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system 'stop sending us traffic, we're too slow!'."
From there it was a cascade effect, and pretty soon most of the system was down.
