Shares of Oil and gas firms declined after drill setback

Shares in three oil and gas firms that are active in the North Sea declined following a disappointing update on drilling in an area where they have made big finds.


Nautical Petroleum, Encore Oil and Premier Oil lost ground following the Catcher North well in the Central North Sea finding a less hopeful oil and gas bearing area than expected.


The results of the well had been eagerly projected after the success of the Catcher and Catcher East wells in the last year.
Sector watchers stated that the first Catcher find was the biggest oil discovery in the North Sea for decades when it was made in the month of June.

WOLFSON Microelectronics, the manufacturer of chips for many of the world’s must-have electronic devices, sharply narrowed its 2010 losses, indicating that the Scottish firm’s drive into the fast-growing smartphone, gaming and e-book sectors has set it firmly on the road to recovery.

The chief executive, of the Edinburgh-based company, Mike Hickey yesterday also told The Herald he was quite comfortable with expectations that Wolfson would break back into a full-year profit by the end of 2011.

The company very recently has suffered from difficult times in the electronics market and could not bag a major contract of Apple. The firm, yesterday posted pre-tax losses of $11.2 million (£6.9m) for the year upto 2, January compared with a $14.8m loss for the fifty three weeks to January 3, 2009.

Issues of Health and Economy!

Earlier this month, there was a strong statement made by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, regarding its decision against the Reproductive health bill.

It is currently an issue for discussion by the representatives of the Lower House.

Roughly around the same time, Malacanang came out to say that it was no more supporting the RH bill to Congress, as the topmost priority. It also said that it would wait till the current talks with the Catholic Bishops came to a conclusive end.

There have been assurances made by the Palace that it would go forward with the law. It is now clear that these were mere promises and that it has yet again given into the powers of the Roman Catholic Church.

Public Appeal Against Dengue By Queensland Officials

Health officials of Queensland have sent a word of caution indicating the expected outbreak of dengue fever in cyclone-hit areas.

Reportedly there are 33 cases of people affected with dengue in Townsville itself. A sharp spur is observed in the cases, with the number doubling itself from the last week.

Though, health experts ruled out the contribution of Yasi but they emphasized that people still in cyclone devastated areas are at the higher risk of contracting the fever, and thus are advised to take special care of themselves.

Interest rates kept same despite of rising inflation

The monetary committee of the Bank of England decided to keep the interest rates at 0.5% which is a 315 year low notwithstanding the rising inflation which drew stern criticism from all quarters. The bank also decided to go on with its program of quantitative erasing, which is nothing but injecting money directly into the economy to speed up the recovery process. The current amount stands roughly at 200 billion pounds.

The decision by the Bank came even though there were great pressures that demanded the rise of the interest rates to curb the growing inflation. The bank's decision instead coincided with the mixed news from the real economy. Weaker manufacturing output was reported by the Office for National statistics for the month of December.

Disappointment regarding Rio’s proposal of buyback

The proposal made by Rio Tinto has caused dissatisfaction among the investors. It has also resulted in the decline of the shares of the miners in the stock exchanges of London and Australia. In spite of bumper profits the shares of the miners have been losing grounds. There has been a huge amount of cash which has been generated as a result of booming commodities in the markets. This allowed Rio Tinto to provide returns of about five billion US dollars to the shareholders. Rio Tinto did so by buying back the shares which were priced lower in the stock exchange of London. According to the reports of global miner there has been a rise in the net profit which has tripled in the year 2010 and has reached to 14.32 billion US dollars which is a record in itself. The net profit has increased by 194 percent in terms with the previous year.

IPOs of Russia being pulled

NORD GOLD has placed its name among the Russian firms who have scrapped plans for the London IPO i. e. Initial Public Offering. NORD GOLD is the unit of gold mining under the steel giant, Severstal. The decision of the NORD GOLD to scrap its plans for the public offering led to the dejection of the Russian issuers who were already hoping for a comeback from London. Nord gold along with its peers namely the Chelpipe and the Koks were reported to be blaming the conditions of the market. There has been a renewed interest of the country being a market that is emerging. But the cancellations made in the last minute clearly show that the investors are highly concerned about the Russian IPO (Initial public Offering). It was a few hours before the Chelpipe pulled their flotation, the chairman of Chelpipe made a statement.

Euro hit hard by sovereign debt fear

The inability of Portugal to follow Ireland and Greece and ask for a bailout from its euro zone partners to improve its finances made the investors worried about the economy of the euro zone and that in turn put the Euro under a lot of pressure as it fell against other currencies. In New York at the closing the euro fell 1% to $1.3598 when compared to the dollar and was weaker against the pound by 0.9% at 0.8447 pounds. The yen on the other hand was weaker against the euro at y113.24.
Kathleen Brooks who is associated with Ferox. com said that when the market thought that the officials of the euro zone had the problem under control and that the euro would soon resume its upward trend the sovereign debt problem had once again came up to smash any such recovery chances. The return on the ten year Portuguese bonds rose to great heights which actually forced the European Central Bank, which temporarily stopped the bond buying policy in the last month, back to the money market to buy the Lisbon papers.

Chief of Blacks, Gills decide to step down

The chief executive officer of the Blacks Leisure, Neil Gills, is known to be resigning from the group of outdoor retail. The decision of resignation came just 2 weeks after the termination of the process of selling the company. Gills will resign from the retail chains of the Blacks & Millets within the next six months thus dropping the curtains on what has been tenure full of events. Neil Gills joined the company in the month of November in the year 2007. It has been under the leadership of Gills that the Blacks and Millets were the target of many approaches of a takeover. The critical financial situation of the Blacks & Millets compelled it to carry out the CVA which means company voluntary arrangement. The company voluntary arrangement i. e. CVA is a procedure of insolvency which allowed the company to reduce the number of shops by 101 and also helped the company to avoid the collapse in the year 2009.

WASHINGTON -- A judge has denied a Chinese-Mexican businessman's attempts to block extradition from the United States to face drug charges in Mexico.

Zhenli Ye Gon has been jailed in the United States since July 2007 when authorities seized more than US$205 million from his Mexico City mansion. At the time, U.S. authorities said it was the largest drug-related cash seizure in world history.
He had been charged with importing methamphetamine into the United States, but the U.S. charges were dismissed after a witness recanted and another refused to testify.
Ye Gon claimed chemicals he imported were for use in legitimate prescription drugs. He fought to stay in the United States because he said he cannot receive a fair trial in Mexico. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola denied his request Wednesday.source

US corn reserves hit lowest level in 15 years

LOUIS U.S. reserves of corn have hit their lowest level in more than 15 years, reflecting tighter supplies that will lead to higher food prices in 2011. Increasing demand for corn from the ethanol industry is a major reason for the decline.


The United States' Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported Wednesday that the ethanol industry's projected orders this year rose 8.4 percent, to 13.01 billion bushels, after record-high production in December and January.
That means the United States will have about 675 million bushels of corn left over at the end of year. That's roughly 5 percent of all corn that will be consumed, the lowest surplus level since 1996.
One bushel of corn equals 25.4 kilograms, or 56 pounds.

SAN FRANCISCO, Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday announced that it is adding its own operating software to personal computers to augment the capabilities of Microsoft's Windows.

HP executives said webOS software from freshly-acquired Palm would complement Windows in machines designed to synch with the computer giant's smart phones, printers and a new TouchPad tablet computer built on the platform.
“It indicates, at least somewhat, a HP rejection of Microsoft,” said Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg.
“The fact that they said webOS is coming to PCs (personal computers) is indicative that there is something they are not getting from Microsoft right now.”
HP bought Palm last year in a US$1.2-billion deal evidently driven by a desire to get its hands on Palm's webOS software platform.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican officials have hit back at rumors swirling that Mexican President Felipe Calderon had a problem with alcoholism in the wake of the controversial firing of a radio journalist who reported the claims.

“During the four years of his administration (the president) has never missed any activity for health reasons,” Calderon spokesman Roberto Gil said Wednesday, describing the rumors as “lies.”
Radio journalist Carmen Aristegui of the media conglomerate MVS Comunicaciones was removed from her position Monday after commenting on a placard that opposition lawmakers held up in Congress last week alleging that Calderon was an alcoholic.

WASHINGTON -- A Missouri man was executed Wednesday for the 1991 kidnap, rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.

Martin Link was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m. (0615 GMT), 14 minutes after being given a lethal injection at Bonne Terre prison, the Missouri Department of Corrections said. It was the state's first execution in two years and its second since late 2005.
The 47-year-old was first sentenced to death in 1995.
Elissa Self-Braun had gone missing while walking to her school bus stop. Investigators later discovered her body along the St. Francis River, south of her hometown of St. Louis.
They subsequently found a jar of Vaseline inside Link's vehicle with traces of blood mixed with the petroleum jelly. A DNA test confirmed Link was a match with evidence found on the girl's body.source

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The Pentagon has reduced the sentence of an al-Qaida cook convicted at a war crimes tribunal at Guantanamo under a plea deal.

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan pleaded guilty in July to supporting terrorism by providing logistical support to al-Qaida. The terms of his plea deal were not released at the time. A military jury recommended he serve 14 years in prison.
But the final say in the matter comes from the Pentagon's Convening Authority for Military Commissions. The Pentagon said in a statement Wednesday the authority suspended 12 years of al-Qosi's sentence, reducing it to two years.
Al-Qosi's sentence does not include the more than eight years he spent at Guantanamo before his conviction.read more

WASHINGTON -- The FBI has opened a preliminary probe into ousted Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his circle to determine whether they have any U.S. assets, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is teaming up with a new anti-kleptocracy squad at the Justice Department that is searching for fraudulent proceeds foreign officials have stashed away abroad, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
A week after a popular uprising toppled Ben Ali on Jan. 14, the U.S. Treasury warned financial institutions of a possible “flow of illicit assets” out of Tunisia, fearing government officials would seek to take proceeds from corruption out of the country.

NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey -- A former chemist killed her estranged husband by poisoning him with a “lethal and massive dose” of a highly toxic metal that a nurse's sharp eye helped identify, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

Tianle Li, a former employee of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., pleaded not guilty to murdering Xiaoye Wang by poisoning him with thallium, and not guilty to hindering the prosecution. The plea was entered by her attorney, and Li did not speak during the brief arraignment Wednesday afternoon in front of state Superior Court Judge Michael Toto.
“The state's allegation is that the defendant administered a lethal and massive dose to the victim and caused his death,” Deputy First Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Nicholas Sewitch said.
Sewitch declined to say how much poison was administered and over what period of time, citing the ongoing investigation and incomplete toxicology tests. Thallium was once used in rat poison, he said.

CLARENCE, New York -- A married upstate New York congressman accused of sending a shirtless photo of himself to a woman abruptly resigned Wednesday, saying he regretted the actions that had hurt his family and others.

By Carolyn Thompson, AP

The gossip website Gawker reported Wednesday that Rep. Christopher Lee, a two-term Republican with a young son, had e-mailed the photo to a woman he met on the Craigslist classified-ads website.

Lee said in an e-mailed statement that his resignation was effective immediately. The statement offered no confirmation or details of a Craigslist posting.

“I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents,” Lee said in a statement posted on his congressional website. “I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.”

LOS ANGELES -- U.S. lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords has begun speaking as she continues her stunning recovery a month after being shot in the head — and one of her first requests was for toast.

The 40-year-old, shot at point-blank range by a reportedly unstable gunman on Jan. 8, is talking more and more every day as she undergoes intensive rehabilitation in a hospital in Houston, Texas, said a spokesman Wednesday.
“All I can tell you is that she requested toast ... she asked for it at breakfast the other day. And she's speaking more and more and doing more and more with each passing day,” said the spokesman, C.J. Karamargin.
“Needless to say we are jubilant at this news ... We've said many times that the congresswoman is improving in all areas, and this is one of them,” he told AFP.

Mubarak/Suleiman status quo a no-go for pro-democracy groups

by Tony Esposito for USA News Port
Tension has returned to the streets of Cairo, this time all the way to the parliamentary buildings of President Mubarak’s ironically named National Democratic Party.

Although Mubarak claims to have plans to leave office in September the government protesters do not trust him based on past experience. Furthermore, his handpicked vice-president and probable successor, Omar Suleiman, has been a rock-solid supporter of the Mubarak regime and has recently been its spy chief. As if to confirm the fears of the pro-democracy groups, Suleiman warned of a coup and said that the crisis must end, adding, "We don't want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools." 

US intel director calls al-Qaida top threat

Updated Friday, February 11, 2011 12:28 am TWN, By Kimberly Dozier, AP

WASHINGTON -- Amid criticism that U.S. intelligence services missed the signs of an Arab revolt in Tunisia and Egypt, the U.S. nation's top intelligence official will tell Congress that the threat from al-Qaida and its affiliates remains his No. 1 priority, U.S. officials said.

In testimony scheduled Thursday before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, will stress that counterterrorism to keep Americans safe is the focus of the intelligence community, according to one of those officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

Intelligence officials warn of new terror threats

By the CNN Wire Staff

February 11, 2011 -- Updated 0030 GMT (0830 HKT)

Washington (CNN) -- A rapidly evolving terrorist threat will continue to dominate U.S. security concerns over the course of the next year, top intelligence officials told members of Congress on Thursday.
While al Qaeda and its allies have been dealt a series of setbacks by America and its allies, they are having success finding new recruits in the United States and Europe, the officials warned. They are also tied to a troubling insurgency in Pakistan that poses a danger not only to the government in Islamabad but also to U.S. troops in the region.
The officials warned that a congressional failure to renew key provisions of the Patriot Act could cripple vital intelligence-gathering operations. In addition, they noted the growing importance of cybersecurity to the United States.

Terrorist threat may be at most 'heightened state' since 9/11, Napolitano says

War Against Terrorist by Pakistan USA

By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer 
Thursday, February 10, 2011

The terrorist threat to the United States may be at its most "heightened state" since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates are placing increased emphasis on recruiting Americans and other Westerners to carry out attacks, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

Napolitano spoke before the House Committee on Homeland Security, whose chairman, Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), is planning hearings on the threat posed by domestic radicalization and a growing incidence of U.S. citizens or legal residents involved in terrorist plots.

A Pakistani police chief has said a US citizen in custody over the deaths of two men in Lahore last month was guilty of "cold-blooded murder".

Lahore city police chief Aslam Tareen told a news conference that one of the men was killed while running away.

He spoke after Raymond Davis was remanded for another 14 days following an appearance in a Lahore court.

Mr Davis, 36, has admitted he shot the men, but says he acted in self-defence because they were trying to rob him.

The court has ordered the Pakistani government to clarify US embassy claims that Mr Davis has diplomatic immunity.

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has rejected criticism that US intelligence services missed warning signs of turmoil in Egypt.

Mr Clapper said intelligence previously pointed out political grievances that threatened Egypt's regime.

In testimony to Congress, Mr Clapper also warned of al-Qaeda's shifting threat to US security.

He also said the threat of cyber warfare was increasing and its impact was difficult to overstate.

The comments came a day after US Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said the threat of terrorism in the US was in some aspects at its highest level since 9/11.

The opening salvoes have been fired in a new political battle in the US over greenhouse gas emissions.

Having failed to pass legislation through Congress, President Obama wants the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate emissions.

But draft measures before Congress seek to squash the EPA's authority.

Testifying to a congressional committee, EPA chief Lisa Jackson said the bill ran counter to science and counter to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling.

An American teenager who took hostages in a botched bank robbery has been shot dead by police.

Police in Cary, North Carolina, said no hostages or officers were injured in the incident on Thursday, which unfolded live on television.

Devon Mitchell, 19, held seven people in the bank at gun point at the height of the encounter, police said.

"This is absolutely not how we wanted this to end," said police chief Pat Bazemore, who called it "very sad".

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said he wants to see an "orderly transition" of power in Egypt.

Talking to Nicky Campbell on BBC Radio 5 live, Mr Clegg said the process should lead to a more democratic and open future for the country.

He said he could understand the "intense frustration" of people who had hoped for more from last night's presidential address

But the UK government would not be giving a "running commentary", he said.

Meanwhile Foreign Offfice Minister Lord Howell has told fellow peers that the Egyptian army faces "grim options."

In the PC Wars, the Asians Have a Clear Advantage

As the balance of power in many domains shifts from the U.S. to China, computer makers are also refocusing their strategies to include a larger China component. China is critical as both a market and a supply base. And Asian vendors have become serious rivals to the top U.S. companies, many of which are beset by persistent management dramas and palace intrigue.

Egyptian military backs president

Egypt's military has thrown its weight behind President Hosni Mubarak's decision not to resign but to transfer most of his powers to his vice president.

The statement is likely to further enrage protesters who have marched to Mr Mubarak's Cairo palace and other key symbols of the regime in a new push to force the president out.

The statement - the second in two days - comes after a meeting of the military's Supreme Council, led by the defence minister. The military said it endorses Mr Mubarak's plan for a peaceful transfer of power and free and fair presidential elections later this year.

Egypt's army backs Mubarak plan

Egypt's military is backing President Hosni Mubarak's decision not to resign but to transfer most of his powers to his vice president.

The army's statement today is likely to further enrage protesters who have marched to Mubarak's Cairo palace and other key symbols of the hated regime in a new push to force the president out.

The statement - the second in two days - comes after a meeting of the military's Supreme Council, led by the defence minister.

The military says it endorses Mubarak's plan for a peaceful transfer of power and free and fair presidential elections later this year.

European Stocks Slide; Nokia, L’Oreal Decline, Michelin Gains

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- European stocks dropped, erasing their gain for the week, as Nokia Oyj slumped and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down immediately. U.S. index futures and Asian shares slid.

Nokia tumbled 8.2 percent after announcing that it will form a software partnership with Microsoft Corp. L’Oreal SA sank 5.2 percent after the world’s largest cosmetics maker reported profit that failed to beat analysts’ estimates. Michelin & Cie. climbed 1.3 percent as the world’s second-largest tiremaker announced that full-year profit exceeded analysts’ projections.