Long-shot Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is not such a long shot anymore. His short declarative sentences, resonant voice, and plain-spokenness is a style that’s apparently striking a chord among the GOP faithful. The latest Fox News Poll shows Cain has tripled his support to 17 percent — up 6 percent from before this month’s [...]
Federal Reserve officials are hitting the public-speaking circuit this week to defend their latest attempt to boost the economy, describing the action as prudent and necessary. The central bank said last week it would sell $400 billion of its U.S. Treasury securities maturing in the next three years and replace them with longer-term bonds maturing [...]
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that for the first time they have designed a much simpler method of preparing ordered magnetic materials than ever before, by coupling magnetic properties to nanostructure formation at low temperatures. The innovative process allows them to create room-temperature ferromagnetic materials that are stable for long periods more [...]
The Iranian navy plans to move naval vessels out of the Persian Gulf and into the Atlantic Ocean, “near maritime borders of the United States,” the Tehran Times reported Tuesday. According to the English-language paper based in Tehran, the announcement came from a top Iranian naval officer on Tuesday. “As the global arrogance (forces of [...]
It’s very hard to swim the Florida Straits from Havana to Florida, there are so many physical obstacles that could hamper and abruptly halt the attempt entirely. The Associated Press report on Diana Nyad’s 2nd attempt on this feat explains, in detail, how unpleasantly treacherous it is and was. Unfortunately Nyad failed again as she [...]
THE horns have sounded and the hounds are baying. Across the developed world the hunt for more taxes from the wealthy is on. Recent austerity budgets in France and Italy slapped 3% surcharges on those with incomes above €500,000 ($680,000) and €300,000 respectively. Britain’s Tories are under attack for even considering getting rid of Labour’s [...]
A week after an effort to gain the release of an American jailed in Cuba ended in recriminations, the Cuban foreign minister said Friday that the door remained open to free him on humanitarian grounds, but only with a reciprocal effort from the United States. In an interview with editors and reporters at The New [...]
The Republican-controlled House on Friday took another swipe at the government’s ability to control air pollution, passing a bill that would delay or scrap rules to reduce mercury and other harmful air emissions. The 249-169 vote sent the legislation to the Senate, where Environment and Public Works Committee chairman Barbara Boxer vowed to defeat it. [...]
New developments announced by Facebook at its F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco on Thursday might give the social networking king new advantages over Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) as the two battle for dominance. They may also create a world of hurt for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Timeline, which lets subscribers store [...]
Well, I’ve reached the end of my personal tribute to trumpeter Lee Morgan. This is Part Four and the Final Part of the “Lee Morgan Project.” A chronological presentation of all the albums he produced as a front man. It is an abruptly sad ending and unjustly similar to the sudden end of his life, [...]
A New Jersey town is canceling a visit by Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa scheduled for Friday because of his alliances with leftist world leaders, its mayor says. “It is evident that President Correa has associated with Fidel and Raul Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela,” said Union City Mayor Brian Stack in a [...]
Newport Fersan Jamaica Limited, the island’s sole manufacturer of ferlilizers, has secured a deal to supply 98,000 bags or 4,600 metric tonnes of the product to Cuba. Financing for the fertilizers, valued at Can$3 million, will be undertaken through the Export-Import (ExIm) bank’s Cuban line of credit. The product will be sent in two shipments, [...]
The good news? Cuban energy officials are taking the lessons of the BP oil spill disaster very seriously, according to a group of oil drilling and environmental experts just back from Cuba, including the co-chairman of the Bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (also former EPA administrator), the [...]
In October 2010, Proton OnSite’s subsidiary SunHydro opened a hydrogen fuel station near its Wallingford, Connecticut, headquarters. The station was the first of at least nine that the company planned to build up and down the East Coast to supply hydrogen-powered fuel-cell electric vehicles. Yet SunHydro has not built a single additional station since. Despite [...]
After more than two years in custody, the two American hikers jailed as spies in Iran were released on $1 million bail Wednesday and flown out of the country, the state’s news agency reported. Iran’s state news agency IRNA said the two left Iran just as darkness fell in the capital. An Omani official told [...]
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve is expected to announce a plan on Wednesday to swap shorter-maturity government securities for longer-dated ones in another stab at jolting the slow-moving U.S. economy, analysts said on the eve of a key meeting. The Federal Open Market Committee of the central bank on Tuesday [...]
Small businesses, freer to tout services after President Raul Castro’s economic reforms, are hanging advertisements in Cuban cities that vie for attention with patriotic communist slogans. The number of neon business signs in a city like Havana, population 2.2 million, is still small compared to other Latin American cities, and light years away from, say, [...]
The movie “Two de Force“ is in its final stages of post-production, and will be in theatres, near you, very soon. It is categorized as an action packed movie, featuring a head to head confrontation between the United States of America and The People’s Republic of China. It could be classified as an update of [...]
A bail-for-freedom deal for two Americans jailed as spies in Iran has hit a snag because a judge whose signature is needed on the bail papers is on holiday. The prisoners’ lawyer, Masoud Shafiei, said he could not complete the paperwork on the $1m (£630,000) bail deal because a second judge who must sign the [...]
WHEN is anything going to go right for Barack Obama in the Middle East? The president came to office hoping to deliver a two-state solution in Palestine, and wasted a lot of political capital failing to do so. He wanted dearly to put America on the right side of the Arab spring, though this entailed [...]