Bradley Manning’s case and treatment is at the heart of a new U.S. government mission that equates the revealing of truth as aiding and abetting the enemy. It is a tactic which might end up backfiring. … Read More
Shell to invest $30bn in Australia, demands better tax regime
Shell announced the plan earlier this month, but has delayed going ahead with the project due to high inflation in the country.During his opening remarks at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Brisbane today, Voser reaffirmed his company’s intention to invest in Australia, but warned the country needs to adopt friendlier tax policies.”Rising costs have become a significant challenge for companies doing business here,” said Voser, The Australian reported. Most importantly Australia must enact “the right regulatory and tax policies to drive innovation and investment,” he added.Voser warned Australia risks losing $100 billion in potential new investments from Europe, the US, and Africa if it doesn’t find a way to regularize its tax regime and make itself more business friendly.The lion’s share of Shell’s new investment will be in liquefied natural gas (LNG), which it already has two ongoing projects in Australia.Royal Dutch Shell is a partner in Chevron Corporations’ LNG project and Woodside Petroleum Limited’s’ LNG venture, and is also developing their own LNG project in Australia called Prelude.Prelude is a $12 billion floating gas rig currently under construction in South Korea. When it is completed, it is expected to be the largest offshore floating facility in the world and could drill eight production wells. It is targeted to begin drilling in 2013 200 km off the west coast of Australia.The fields are expected to produce 3.6 million tonnes of LNG a year, offshoretechnology.com reported. According to Royal Dutch Shell, global demand in LNG is set to rise as much as five-fold to 500 million tons a year in 2025.The Prelude project will add about $43 billion ($45 AUD) to Australia’s gross domestic product and more than $12 AUD billion to tax revenue, Voser has said. The company also plans to provide LNG to Australia’s demanding ground transport industry.Voser, who rebranded the company into a leader in LNG under his tenure, has announced he will retire in the first half of 2014. Voser was appointed CEO in July 2009 and has played an active role in cutting costs and expanding projects.Shell announced another sudden restructuring strategy in Africa on Monday.Royal Dutch Shell’s East African discovery efforts have flopped, and they are now cancelling plans with Anadarko Petroleum Corp to explore coastal zones near Mozambique. Instead, Shell plans to deep water drill off the coast of Benin and Gabon in West Africa, believing it will drive more shareholder revenue. Anadarko is trying to sell as much as 10% in stake in Mozambique territories, which are estimated to hold as much as 1.84 trillion cubic meters of gas. … Read More
Winning-bid kid: Teen pledges $15mn for Coca-Cola secret formula
Georgia antiques dealer Cliff Kluge claims that he has obtained a document of one of corporate America’s secrets that has been guarded for 125 years. He says he discovered the formula among of stack of papers he recently purchased at the estate sale of a prominent Chattanooga chemist.The opening bid for the yellowing typewritten document of $5 million rose to a buy-it-now $15 million as the famed formula was sold to a teenager.”It would have been a wonderful thing if it had found a genuine buyer”, Kluge said, as quoted by AFP, “but some 15-year-old kid bid on it – and it’s not a legitimate bid”According to eBay rules, the buyer has a three-day period during which he has to pay for the item. Kluge said he will relist the ‘historic document’ if the kid doesn’t find the money.However Coca-Cola claims that its secret concocted over a century ago by Dr. John S. Pemberton is kept in a vault at its World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta.”We sleep well at night knowing the secret formula is safe and secure with us,” Coca-Cola spokesman Petro Kacur said.Coca-Cola denies the recipe is an original, but admits it may come close to it.“It’s for a cola. But not Coca-Cola,” said the company’s archivist, Ted Ryan, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.The antiques dealer acknowledges on eBay that “there is no doubt (at least in my mind) that whoever typed the letter had seen the original recipe for Coca Cola … more evidence and external factors are falling in place to bolster the fact that this could be the original, with an emphasis on the word ‘could’.”In 2011, the public radio show ‘This American Life’ claimed it had discovered a supposed handwritten original recipe for Coca-Cola within a photograph accompanying an article published 34 years ago. In its earliest form the beverage was believed to have had cocaine among its ingredients. The beverage company insisted that the recipe was not original.As it stands, no one can authenticate any alleged copy of the secret formula unless Coca-Cola shows the original recipe – and that will probably never happen. … Read More
Chicago Workers Open New Cooperatively Owned Factory Five Years After Republic Windows Occupation
http://www.youtube.com/v/PHzE2ZiXZAI?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Excerpt from: Chicago Workers Open New Cooperatively Owned Factory Five Years After Republic Windows Occupation
Fox News host on Benghazi: ‘We’re getting a little lopsided’ by favoring Republicans
Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks. Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of…
Queen’s Speech: UK government to crack down on EU migrants
In her annual speech to parliament, Queen Elizabeth II began by saying the government’s priority is to “strengthen Britain’s economic competitiveness.” She also announced a cap on social care costs and a single state pension of £144 a week, in contrast to the cuts which have dominated government policy since coming to power.However, there was no mention of changes to Chancellor George Osborne’s controversial austerity program, despite comments on Wednesday from the Trade Union Congress (TUC) that the UK is facing a “lost decade of growth.”The Gracious Speech – as it is also known – takes place every year in Britain, and is part of the official State Opening of Parliament. It allows the government to set out its proposed bills and the problems it wants to address for the next parliamentary session. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were also present, which is seen symbolically as a sharing of the Queen’s duties now that she is growing older.In this year’s Speech there were a number of new measures aimed at curtailing immigration to the UK, especially from poorer EU nations such as Romania and Bulgaria.Private landlords will be required to snoop on their tenants and report those that do not possess the documents required to live in the UK. Landlords who do not will face fines running up into the thousands of pounds. The proposal has prompted criticism that ordinary people are being made to police the immigration system where the UK Border Agency (UKBA) has failed.There will also be measures enacted to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driving licenses and to make it harder to access the National Health Service (NHS) for those who aren’t entitled to use it, by making EU member-states pay for their citizen’s medical treatment.There will also be a six-month restriction to the jobseeker’s allowance, which will apply to all EU nationals who are not actively seeking employment and are unable to show they have a genuine chance of getting work.There will also be a new residence test requiring residents to have lived in the UK for at least a year before they gain access to civil legal aid.An immigration bill was also announced that will make it easier to deport criminal and terrorists, such as Muslim preacher Abu Hamza. Home Secretary Theresa May, who has been unable to deport Hamza despite repeated attempts, will make it impossible for such figures to use Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – the right to family life – to stay in the UK.May believes only a full change in the law will persuade UK judges not to defer to the Human Rights Act in cases such as Hamza’s. “We want to attract people who will add to our national life, and those who do not should be deterred,” the Queen announced.Other proposed bills include a cap in social care costs, a raise in state pensions from £107 to £144 per week, and the scrapping of means-tested top-ups.Preliminary funding of the second stage of the HS2 high-speed rail link between Birmingham and Leeds and Manchester was also announced, allowing funding to be made available for the early design stages.A bill to monitor mobile communications was dropped due to objections from the Liberal Democrats, the government’s coalition partners.Plans to impose a minimum charge on alcohol and to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes were also left out, although this does not mean they will not become law at a later date.Euroskeptics on the rise?The new laws designed to curb immigration will be viewed by many as a reaction to the rise of UKIP and their recent successes in local elections. However, the Speech was written before polling day.Cameron will also hope that the new tougher measures on immigration will help to quell the growing clamor in his backbenches for a referendum on EU membership in this parliament. Cameron has said this would be impossible because he has an agreement with pro-EU Liberal Democrats not to hold a referendum on the issue, although he has promised to hold one in the next parliament if the conservatives win the elections in 2015.The Prime Minster vowed he will be able to secure real changes in Britain’s EU membership terms by negotiating with the body. “I want to give people a proper choice between Britain remaining in a reformed EU or leaving that EU,” Cameron said on Tuesday at a London conference on the future of Somalia.The festering issue was given game-changing status by the intervention on Tuesday of 81-year old Lord Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s longest-serving chancellor. In the Times, he urged Britain to completely quit Europe, saying it was a “bureaucratic monstrosity” which damaged the interests of the City of London. No-growth BritanniaIn a further blow to Chancellor George Osborne’s unwavering austerity program, the TUC warned the government that they are facing a “lost decade of growth,” and that the UK is lagging behind its rivals. A recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) showed that Britain was experiencing a slower economic recovery than 23 of its 33 rival economies.The TUC report comes as the IMF visit London on Wednesday for their annual report on the state of the UK economy. … Read More
“The Reluctant Fundamentalist”: Is the Princeton grad a jihadi?
People who show up for “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” expecting an exotic and morally murky thriller about terrorism, somewhat in the “Homeland” and “Zero Dark Thirty” vein, will get it – at least for a while. No doubt it would be good for business if I told you that Mira Nair’s film, adapted from a novel by Mohsin Hamid, was about an American-educated young man who turns to violent radicalism. But this story only seems to be about that, and not for long. “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” begins with a classic opening sequence of misdirection and disorientation, in which we see an American academic kidnapped off the streets of Lahore, Pakistan, while a handsome young Pakistani receives text messages and photos that seem to link him to the crime. All this bewildering night action is set to a hypnotic traditional Pakistani folk tune, performed live in the street around a bonfire.Continue Reading… … Read More
