New York Times Mediasaur Downgraded to Junk. "When Gordon hits rock bottom he will start drilling
FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2008
New York Times Mediasaur Downgraded to Junk
Warren Buffet famously said the internet was good for capitalism, not capitalists. The New York Times is supposedly the world's premier newspaper and is learning the meaning of that truth. The internet will kill newspapers, Guido has been telling sceptical dead tree hacks this for years. The Guardian's expensive shiny new HQ being built in Kings Cross will be a museum eventually. This affirmation has come across the wire
NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's)-- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today placed its ratings for The New York Times Co., including the 'BBB-' corporate credit rating, on CreditWatch with negative implications.
Just in case some old hacks from the non-profit sector of journalism don't understand what that means, Guido will spell it out slowly - the "Gray Lady" is going to non-investment "junk" status. J - U - N - K. 98 Pulitzer prizes, "All the news that's fit to print" and they are trying to cut costs to survive. Blogalypse.
UK threat assessment
UK threat assessment
24 Jul 2008
http://www.policeprofessional.com/news.aspx?id=7032
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) last month published an unrestricted version of the UK Threat Assessment of Serious Organised Crime 2008/2009.
Drawn from a restricted version that is produced each year based on intelligence from a wide range of sources and intended for law enforcement agencies and wider government use, the report describes the threats posed to the UK by serious organised criminals.
The key findings of the assessment are:
Criminal Business Structures – most people involved in organised criminal activity affecting the UK are British Nationals and the most serious of those criminals are involved in more than one area of criminal activity. Most activities require a certain amount of collaboration and infrastructure and this is what lies behind the formation of organised crime groups and networks.
Firearms – the majority of recorded firearms offences in England and Wales are linked to street gangs. Since 2006 firearms are being seized in larger quantities and there has been an increase in the number of converted weapons.
A political earthquake. We should be happy about Obama's performance but ...
Friday, July 25, 2008
A political earthquake
"No-one can possibly underestimate the scale of the disaster which hit Gordon Brown and the Labour Party in the Glasgow East constituency in the early hours of this morning," writes Angus Macleod, Scottish political editor for The Times.
He is one of the many journos hyper-ventilating over the result, declared long after most sensible people had gone to bed. This had the SNP overturn Labour's 13,507 majority to bring in the hitherto unknown John Mason into prominence as the victor.
He, if he excels in nothing else, certainly has a good line in hyperbole, declaring: "This SNP victory is not just a political earthquake, it is off the Richter scale. It is an epic win, and the tremors are being felt all the way to Downing Street."
In the round, however, this does nothing more than confirm that which we already knew – that the political tide has turned and, short of an electoral miracle, in 2010 we will see the Labour government turfed out of office, to be replaced with an equally lacklustre administration which, by all accounts, will continue as before.
If you want a real "political earthquake", however, look not to Glasgow East but to Geneva, where it appears, the latest talks in the Doha round of WTO negotiations are going belly-up.
Why are the bees disappearing?
A Staff Report by the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mvanishingbees.htm
Why are the bees disappearing?
29-May-2007
Dear Straight Dope:
What in blazes is going on with the world's bees? I keep reading all these stories about how a significant percentage of the world's beehives are failing and that all the bees are dying. No one seems to know why, but there are explanations aplenty, ranging from global warming to mites to, of all things, cell phones! What's worse, some of these stories quote Albert Einstein's predictions that if the world's bees were ever to die off, owing to the lack of pollinators, humanity would follow about four years later. Is there anything we can do about this? If the bees all die, are there any substitute pollinators we can use? Or is Einstein right and we're all doomed? —Rich Swank, Orlando, FL
SDSTAFF Doug replies:
Not to brag, but thanks to Wikipedia I've become the #1 authority on disappearing bees. Type "colony collapse disorder" into Google and hit return – the top hit is the Wikipedia page I maintain on the subject. (In real life I'm an entomologist with the University of California at Riverside.) Here's a summary.
Bee Disease Spread From Commercial Hives, Study Finds (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aTRSdWWGdLOE&refer=h...
Bee Disease Spread From Commercial Hives, Study Finds (Update1)
By Alan Bjerga
July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Wild bumblebees are probably contracting a disorienting and often fatal disease from their commercial cousins, contributing to the decline of pollinators in North America, a Canadian study concludes.
Managed bumblebees, which pollinate crops worth about $19 billion worldwide, are introducing illnesses that have ravaged wild populations of the same species, according to the study, which is being published online today in the science journal PLoS One.
http://www.plosone.org/home.action
Feral bee losses also harm commercial hives, which are built partly by collecting from the wild.
Bumblebees are the second-biggest pollinating insect in the U.S. after honeybees, which are threatened by Colony Collapse Disorder,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
a separate ailment marked by the sudden, massive disappearance of bees that occurred in at least 35 states and three continents last year. The study's findings point to a need for commercial beehives of all species to be managed more effectively, said co-author Michael Otterstatter of the University of Toronto.
http://www.utoronto.ca/
What Really Makes Gold Go Up? It's Happening Now...
What Really Makes Gold Go Up? It's Happening Now...
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
When Event X takes place, gold soars.
People buy gold for all kinds of nutty reasons... But Event X is what actually makes gold go up. Each time it's happened, gold has absolutely soared. So you simply look out for Event X, and then you buy.
It's really simple, as I'll show. It has nothing to do with end-of-the-World paranoia or complicated statistics...
Event X first happened in 1973-75, and gold tripled. Event X happened again in 1978-80, and gold had its steepest ascent ever, rising from $150 to peak at $850.
The only other time we've seen Event X is, well, now. And once again, gold has been soaring.
How high can gold go? Our two historical examples suggest that gold simply keeps going – almost infinitely. In short, as long as Event X is in place, gold just keeps going higher.
So what is Event X? It's simply when interest rates fall so low, they don't keep up with inflation. As long as we're in that situation, gold goes up. The logic is incredibly simple... As soon as people get paid less interest than the rate of inflation, they're willing to own gold (which pays no interest).
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BARRON'S Profiles Porter Stansberry
S&A founder Porter Stansberry predicts that prices of one investment could skyrocket starting next week... all thanks to a key announcement from the U.S. Treasury Dept.
Daily News.
Calamity for Labour in Glasgow
This was Labour's third safest seat in Scotland and its 25th safest in Britain, yet it has been lost easily to the Scottish National party, which started the short campaign more than 13,000 votes behind, writes Julian Glover. This was a defeat on the scale of the byelections of the 1990s, which saw the Conservatives lose a string of safe seats to Labour and the Liberal Democrats - and then lose the general election. On this result (admittedly unimaginable at a real general election) Labour would be reduced to 25 seats: Andy Burnham and Harriet Harman would be the only cabinet ministers to survive. They would share space in the Commons with the likes of Frank Field and David Blunkett - but Brown would lose his seat.
Julian Glover
The Guardian
Full article: For Brown, prospect is loss of leadership - and his own seat
Filed under: Labour
Margaret Curran was a good candidate, says Andrew Porter.
Daily News.
Cameron calls for general election after Brown's Glasgow disaster
The Conservative leader David Cameron today called on Labour to hold a general election following the party's humiliating defeat in the Glasgow East by-election yesterday. With a swing of more than 22 per cent, the Scottish National Party candidate John Mason stole the former Labour stronghold by a margin of 365 votes. At the 2005 general election, Labour had enjoyed an overwhelming majority of 13,507 votes.
The defeat - Labour's third by-election humiliation in nine weeks - is seen as a devastating blow to the authority of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is expected to face calls from within his own party to step down or risk leading Labour to disaster at the next general election. The pressure will begin today with union leaders and party activists gathering at Labour's national policy forum in Warwick.
David Cameron said this morning: "What I wonder is whether we can put up with this for another 18 months? Whenever people have had a chance to speak about this Government, whether at the local elections, whether in Crewe, whether in Henley, whether in the London mayor elections and now in Glasgow, they have said 'Look, we think you're failing and we want change'."
Gordon Brown's allies sought to play down any talk of Labour MPs seeking to unseat their party leader. Des Browne, Defence and Scotland Secretary, urging backbenchers to unite behind the PM, said Brown was "a man of known strengths - the country knows his strengths."
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