LAS VEGAS - The Strikeforce postfight presser was unlike any we've seen in recent memory. The wins either came too easy or Scott Coker needs to bring in some new challenges.
Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal, Luke Rockhold and Tyron Woodley all sounded bored and uninterested about their future with the promotion. That's bizarre, since one of them has successfully defended his title just one time and the other two are without titles.
Lawal hammered on Gegard Mousasi, his possible challenger for the vacant 205-pound title. He was also asked about a crossover fight with UFC and PRIDE legend Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. King Mo responded by calling him a bum, washed up and a B-level actor.
At least King Mo got his dander up a bit. Rockhold couldn't get past the fact that he fought a guy in Jardine, who'd never fought for the promotion before, or down at middleweight.
"He was pretty tough. He was stronger than I thought he'd be in the clinch. I thought I could dominate a little more in the clinch," shrugged Rockhold. "It was somewhat of a test. A lot of guys couldn't finish him and I told you guys I was going to do what nobody else had done."
Rockhold also gave a half-hearted endorsement of Tim Kennedy being a worthy opponent suggesting he wasn't a very good stand-up fighter.
- Coker seemed to the suggest that the Strikeforce to UFC crossovers will no longer happen.
"The crossovers happened when there was a gray area over whether the Showtime contract was going to be renewed," Coker said. "Now that that's out of the way we're committed to building this league. We're going to continue to do that. That means bringing great fighters here. I think that's what you're going to see all year."
- Woodley vehemently defended his winning fight approach. A media member asked the welterweight contender why he was "reluctant" to stand with Jordan Mein.?
"When you coming forward especially with that kind of range you just don't want to engage in crazy combinations. So when he got within my range, I thought I did what I needed to do, take him down, ground and pound him," Woodley said. "I got the Compustrike [numbers] in my pocket if you want to check it out. I don't think I was reluctant to strike with him."
- Lawal and Rockhold, training partners at AKA, have quickly become pals. King Mo warned that if they're fighting on the same card again in the future, it's an automatic two wins. King Mo threw out nicknames like "Cookies and Cream" or "Domino."
- Strikeforce announced it'll be returning on Mar. 3 in Columbus, Oh. Four fights are officially booked for the Nationwide Arena. Ronda Rousey will challenge Miesha Tate for her 135-pound women's title. KJ Noons will battle Josh Thomson while Paul Daley faces Kazuo Misaki. Sarah Kaufman, another 135-pound contender will face Alexis Davis.
- Coker said the female title fight will not be the main event. The hope was that Strikeforce could finish off its heavyweight Grand Prix that night. Coker didn't sound optimistic about Daniel Cormier's broken hand being ready in time. The fight is eight weeks out and Cormier still hasn't been cleared by doctors.
- Some in the media were surprised that Daley was still fighting under Zuffa management. Coker simply said sometimes fighters lose their cool in the heat of the moment, referencing the sucker punch that Daley landed on Josh Koscheck at UFC 113. Daley was cut by Dana White, who said he'd never fight for the UFC again.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Yahoo Inc named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its chief executive on Wednesday, hoping the well-regarded Internet technology and e-commerce expert will replicate his success at eBay Inc and turn around the struggling company.
Thompson, credited with driving growth at eBay's online payments division PayPal, joins Yahoo during a period of turmoil, as the company plows ahead with a strategic review in which discussions have included the possibility of being sold, taken private or broken up.
Yahoo shares finished Wednesday's regular trading session down 3 percent at $15.78, as Wall Street assessed how Thompson's hiring would affect the hopes of some investors that Yahoo would be sold or spin off its Asian assets, as well as how Thompson's background fits in with Yahoo's core online media business.
"It's a positive outcome, but not as positive as a sale of the company," said Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO investors, which owns Yahoo shares.
"The risk element is that his background was in payments. And this is not a payment company; it's a marketing, technology company," he said.
Thompson, a former Visa payments software platform designer, joins the company four months after the firing of previous CEO Carol Bartz as the one-time Web powerhouse Yahoo struggles to compete with newer heavyweights Google Inc and Facebook.
"I'm from Boston, we're the underdogs since the beginning of time. Hopefully that spirit has held through. I like doing complicated, very difficult, very challenging things," Thompson said in an interview.
Thompson, who takes over on January 9, will also join Yahoo's board. He ran eBay's PayPal since early 2008, and was previously its chief technology officer. Under his leadership, Yahoo said PayPal increased its user base from 50 million to more than 104 million active users. PayPal processed $29 billion in payments in the third quarter of 2011.
EBay's shares fell 3.8 percent as analysts said the online retailer would miss the respected Internet executive.
EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe told staff in an internal memo that Thompson's move was a "shock."
"Scott informed me Tuesday afternoon, saying that despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take," Donahoe said.
At PayPal, Thompson was known as a leader who was not afraid to make bold strategic bets. He came up with the idea of taking PayPal beyond its online stronghold and into the physical world by allowing PayPal payments in retail stores -- an opportunity analysts believe could prove much bigger than its existing business.
That kind of strategic risk-taking could be particularly useful at Yahoo. The Sunnyvale, California-based company, whose services include mail, search, news and photo-sharing, was a Web pioneer that grew rapidly in the 1990s. But in recent years, Yahoo has struggled to maintain its relevance and advertising revenue in the face of competition from rivals Google and Facebook.
"They really need that push to the next level," said Ryan Jacob, chairman and chief investment officer of Jacob Funds, which includes the Jacob Internet Fund and counts Yahoo as one of its largest positions.
"Ideally what they would do is rather than just follow where today's Internet leaders are moving, try to really be on that front edge," he said, citing Yahoo's need be better positioned in mobile, social networking and other fast-growing technology trends.
During a conference call on Wednesday, Thompson cited mobile as a key area that he expected to focus on at Yahoo, and he said he viewed the company's treasure trove data about its users as one of Yahoo's key assets. But he said it was too early to comment on his overall vision for the company.
NOT GOING PRIVATE
Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock told analysts on the joint conference call with Thompson that Yahoo has no intention of being taken private.
"If you want to look at it in a practical way, if you and I were to sit down tomorrow and say let's take this Company private, I think we have one hell of a challenge on our hands to do that," said Bostock.
The decision to appoint a new CEO is not expected to impact the strategic review, which includes Yahoo's ongoing dialogue with both China's Alibaba Group and its Japanese affiliate to slash its stakes in the two companies, sources close to the matter said.
Under the "cash rich split" plan being discussed, Yahoo would effectively transfer most of its 40 percent slice of Alibaba back to the Chinese company and all of its stake in Yahoo Japan to Softbank Corp in return for cash and assets.
A preliminary term sheet has been drawn up that broadly outlines the deal concept, said one of the sources.
"Everyone seems to be in agreement over it," the source said.
The question is whether a definitive agreement can be signed between the parties ahead of March 25 deadline when activist shareholders can submit director nominees to Yahoo's board and waging a proxy battle.
Alibaba has also hired a Washington lobbying firm in a sign that the Chinese e-commerce company would be willing to make a bid for all of Yahoo in the event that talks to unwind their Asian partnership fail.
"If they can successfully complete the Asian asset transactions, in a way that is beneficial to Yahoo shareholders, I think it will buy them some time and they'll have a chance to build for growth," said Jacob, of the Jacob Funds.
In 2008, Yahoo rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp worth about $44 billion. Its share price was subsequently pummeled during the global financial crisis and its current market value is about $20 billion.
Co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down in late 2008 after being severely criticized by investors for his handling of the bid. The company cut thousands of jobs and later agreed to an advertising and search partnership with Microsoft.
RALLYING THE TROOPS
One of Thompson's first orders of business at Yahoo may be to try to rebuild morale inside the nearly 14,000-person company, which has been beset by layoffs, management reorganizations and a revolving door of executive departures.
The company cannot compete with hot Web companies such as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to luring the most sought-after engineers and many of the staffers within the company have tired of the seemingly endless reorganizations and lost their competitive drive, said one Yahoo employee, speaking anonymously.
"There are fundamental cultural issues, there are people who are not motivated to do big things," the Yahoo employee said.
Thompson, 54, who speaks in a thick Boston accent, is described as calm under pressure and adept at energizing his team.
One of his signature management styles involves creating different groups, each tasked with achieving the same goal and pitting them against each other, said one PayPal manager who asked to remain anonymous.
"He's not afraid to experiment," the person said.
"He'll build teams that are both going after the same thing," the person said. The idea is "you guys go after the same thing, whoever does it better wins," the PayPal manager explained.
Thompson said in an interview that Yahoo was in a strong position with its large user base of more than 700 million people.
"The traffic itself that these sites generate is a very big number, the collection of assets that sit below this core business I think are not well understood and clearly have tremendous opportunity to be leveraged as we look forward to the future." (Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Nadia Damouni; editing by Maureen Bavdek, Gunna Dickson, Bernard Orr and Andre Grenon)
Source: commons.wikimedia.org --- Wednesday, January 04, 2012 removed Category:Military units and formations of the United States Marine Corps ; added Category:23rd Marine Regiment (United States) using HotCat ? Older revision Revision as of 04:10, 5 January 2012 Line 16: Line 16: [[Category:CH-53E Super Stallion]] [[Category:CH-53E Super Stallion]] ? [[Category:Military units and formations of the United States Marine Corps]] + [[Category:23rd Marine Regiment (United States)]] [[Category:M16 rifle]] [[Category:M16 rifle]] ...
Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
Robots, like lizards, need a tail to remain upright when they stumble during leap
Leaping lizards have a message for robots: Get a tail!
University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers including undergraduate and graduate students studied how lizards manage to leap successfully even when they slip and stumble, and found that swinging the tail upward is the key to preventing a forward pitch that could send them head-over-heels into a tree.
The scientists subsequently added a tail to a robotic car they named Tailbot and discovered that it's not as simple as throwing your tail in the air. Robots and lizards have to adjust the angle of their tail just right to counteract the effect of the stumble. Given an actively controlled tail, even robots can make a leap and remain upright.
"We showed for the first time that lizards swing their tail up or down to counteract the rotation of their body, keeping them stable," said team leader Robert J. Full, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. "Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards."
Agile therapod dinosaurs like the velociraptor depicted in the movie Jurassic Park may also have used their tails as stabilizers to prevent forward pitch, Full said. Their tail movement is illustrated in a prescient sequence from the 1993 movie in which the animated animal leaps from a balcony onto a T. rex skeleton while chasing the lead characters.
"Muscles willing, the dinosaur could be even more effective with a swing of its tail in controlling body attitude than the lizards," Full said.
Full and his laboratory colleagues, including both engineering and biology students, will report their discoveries online on Jan. 5 in advance of publication in the Jan. 12 print edition of the journal Nature. The paper's first author, mechanical engineering graduate student Thomas Libby, also will report the results on Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Charleston, South Carolina.
From gecko toe hairs to tails
Full's research over the past 20 years has revealed how gecko toe hairs allow the animals to climb smooth vertical surfaces and, more recently, how their tails help keep them from falling when their feet slip and allow them to right themselves in mid-air. The research reported this week shows how the tail is used in leaping, providing inspiration for robots that can deal with tumbles that are inevitable if, for example, they are exploring rubble during search and rescue operations.
The new research tested a 40-year-old hypothesis that the two-legged theropod dinosaurs the ancestors of birds used their tails as stabilizers while running or dodging obstacles or predators. In Full's teaching laboratory, students noticed a lizard's recovery after slipping during a leap and thought a study of stumbling would be a perfect way to test the value of a tail.
In a research-based teaching lab associated with UC Berkeley's Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER), Full and his students used high-speed videography and motion capture to record how a red-headed African Agama lizard handled leaps from a platform with different degrees of traction, from slippery to easily gripped sandpaper.
They coaxed the lizards to run down a track, vault off an obstacle and land on a vertical surface with a shelter on top. When the friction on the obstacle was reduced, lizards slipped, potentially causing their body to spin out of control.
When the researchers saw how the lizard used its tail to counteract the spin, they created a mathematical model as well as Tailbot to better understand the animal's skills. With a tail but no feedback from sensors about body position, Tailbot took a nose dive when driven off a ramp, which mimicked a lizard's take-off. When body attitude was sensed and fed back to the tail motor, however, Tailbot was able to stabilize its body in midair. The actively controlled tail effectively redirected the angular momentum of the body into the swing of the tail, just as with leaping lizards, Full said.
Inertial assisted robotics
Tailbot's design pushed the boundaries of control in robotics in an area researchers call inertial assisted robotics, Full said, which drew the attention of attendees at last October's meeting of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Their paper, presented by Libby and fellow mechanical engineering graduate student Evan Chang-Siu, was one of five finalists in a field of more than 2,000 robot studies presented at the meeting.
"Engineers quickly understood the value of a tail," Libby said, noting that when he dropped Tailbot nose-down, it was able to right itself before it had dropped a foot. "Robots are not nearly as agile as animals, so anything that can make a robot more stable is an advancement, which is why this work is so exciting."
Full and his students are now investigating the role of the tail in controlling pitch, roll and yaw while running.
Full is enthusiastic about the interplay between biologists and engineers fostered in the CiBER lab, which provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research in teams with graduate students where each team experiences the benefits of how biologists and engineers approach a problem.
"This paper shows that research-based teaching leads to better learning and simultaneously can lead to cutting-edge research," Full said. "It also shows the competitive advantage of interdisciplinary approaches and how involvement of undergraduates in research can lead to innovation."
Last year, Full briefed the United States House of Representative's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Caucus on this very topic.
"Learning in the context of original discovery, finding out something that no one has ever know before, really motivated me," wrote former UC Berkeley integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. "This research-based lab course showed me how biologists and engineers can work together to benefit both fields."
###
UC Berkeley coauthors include Full, Libby and Chang-Siu, along with the Department of Integrative Biology undergraduate Deborah Li; former integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University; and graduate students Ardian Jusufi in the Department of Integrative Biology and Daniel Cohen in the Department of Bioengineering.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, including NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and the Micro Autonomous Systems Technologies (MAST) consortium, a large group of researchers funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory that is focused on creating autonomous sensing robots.
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Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
Robots, like lizards, need a tail to remain upright when they stumble during leap
Leaping lizards have a message for robots: Get a tail!
University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers including undergraduate and graduate students studied how lizards manage to leap successfully even when they slip and stumble, and found that swinging the tail upward is the key to preventing a forward pitch that could send them head-over-heels into a tree.
The scientists subsequently added a tail to a robotic car they named Tailbot and discovered that it's not as simple as throwing your tail in the air. Robots and lizards have to adjust the angle of their tail just right to counteract the effect of the stumble. Given an actively controlled tail, even robots can make a leap and remain upright.
"We showed for the first time that lizards swing their tail up or down to counteract the rotation of their body, keeping them stable," said team leader Robert J. Full, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. "Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards."
Agile therapod dinosaurs like the velociraptor depicted in the movie Jurassic Park may also have used their tails as stabilizers to prevent forward pitch, Full said. Their tail movement is illustrated in a prescient sequence from the 1993 movie in which the animated animal leaps from a balcony onto a T. rex skeleton while chasing the lead characters.
"Muscles willing, the dinosaur could be even more effective with a swing of its tail in controlling body attitude than the lizards," Full said.
Full and his laboratory colleagues, including both engineering and biology students, will report their discoveries online on Jan. 5 in advance of publication in the Jan. 12 print edition of the journal Nature. The paper's first author, mechanical engineering graduate student Thomas Libby, also will report the results on Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Charleston, South Carolina.
From gecko toe hairs to tails
Full's research over the past 20 years has revealed how gecko toe hairs allow the animals to climb smooth vertical surfaces and, more recently, how their tails help keep them from falling when their feet slip and allow them to right themselves in mid-air. The research reported this week shows how the tail is used in leaping, providing inspiration for robots that can deal with tumbles that are inevitable if, for example, they are exploring rubble during search and rescue operations.
The new research tested a 40-year-old hypothesis that the two-legged theropod dinosaurs the ancestors of birds used their tails as stabilizers while running or dodging obstacles or predators. In Full's teaching laboratory, students noticed a lizard's recovery after slipping during a leap and thought a study of stumbling would be a perfect way to test the value of a tail.
In a research-based teaching lab associated with UC Berkeley's Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER), Full and his students used high-speed videography and motion capture to record how a red-headed African Agama lizard handled leaps from a platform with different degrees of traction, from slippery to easily gripped sandpaper.
They coaxed the lizards to run down a track, vault off an obstacle and land on a vertical surface with a shelter on top. When the friction on the obstacle was reduced, lizards slipped, potentially causing their body to spin out of control.
When the researchers saw how the lizard used its tail to counteract the spin, they created a mathematical model as well as Tailbot to better understand the animal's skills. With a tail but no feedback from sensors about body position, Tailbot took a nose dive when driven off a ramp, which mimicked a lizard's take-off. When body attitude was sensed and fed back to the tail motor, however, Tailbot was able to stabilize its body in midair. The actively controlled tail effectively redirected the angular momentum of the body into the swing of the tail, just as with leaping lizards, Full said.
Inertial assisted robotics
Tailbot's design pushed the boundaries of control in robotics in an area researchers call inertial assisted robotics, Full said, which drew the attention of attendees at last October's meeting of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Their paper, presented by Libby and fellow mechanical engineering graduate student Evan Chang-Siu, was one of five finalists in a field of more than 2,000 robot studies presented at the meeting.
"Engineers quickly understood the value of a tail," Libby said, noting that when he dropped Tailbot nose-down, it was able to right itself before it had dropped a foot. "Robots are not nearly as agile as animals, so anything that can make a robot more stable is an advancement, which is why this work is so exciting."
Full and his students are now investigating the role of the tail in controlling pitch, roll and yaw while running.
Full is enthusiastic about the interplay between biologists and engineers fostered in the CiBER lab, which provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research in teams with graduate students where each team experiences the benefits of how biologists and engineers approach a problem.
"This paper shows that research-based teaching leads to better learning and simultaneously can lead to cutting-edge research," Full said. "It also shows the competitive advantage of interdisciplinary approaches and how involvement of undergraduates in research can lead to innovation."
Last year, Full briefed the United States House of Representative's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Caucus on this very topic.
"Learning in the context of original discovery, finding out something that no one has ever know before, really motivated me," wrote former UC Berkeley integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. "This research-based lab course showed me how biologists and engineers can work together to benefit both fields."
###
UC Berkeley coauthors include Full, Libby and Chang-Siu, along with the Department of Integrative Biology undergraduate Deborah Li; former integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University; and graduate students Ardian Jusufi in the Department of Integrative Biology and Daniel Cohen in the Department of Bioengineering.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, including NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and the Micro Autonomous Systems Technologies (MAST) consortium, a large group of researchers funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory that is focused on creating autonomous sensing robots.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russian police detained about 60 protesters during an anti-government demonstration on Saturday in Moscow, hours after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered a conciliatory message to the opposition in a televised New Year's Eve address.
Reuters witnesses said they saw police surround and detain protesters who were shouting slogans such as "Putin Must Go!" and "Free the Political Prisoners!."
Police said about 200 people took part in the rally, with 60 detained. Gathering in near-freezing temperatures at a major thoroughfare in the capital, many protesters wore the white ribbon that has become a symbol of the protests.
Putin has faced massive demonstrations following a December 4 parliamentary election that protesters and international observers said was marked by fraud and violations. Despite the mounting pressure, Putin is expected to comfortably win a presidential election in March and return to the Kremlin.
"Of course, I want to wish all of our citizens, independent of their political leanings - those who sympathize with the forces of the left, and those on the right, those on top and those below, as you like - I want to wish everyone happiness and prosperity," he said in his address.
He made a passing nod to political tensions but said they were "the inevitable cost of democracy," especially in election time.
"At such times, politicians always try to manipulate the voters' feelings, everything is a little shaken up and seething, but that is the inevitable cost of democracy. There's nothing unusual here," he said.
Saturday's protest took place at Moscow's Triumfalnaya Square, a traditional rallying point for the opposition that also served as the birthplace of the demonstrations that have swept Russia this month.
Police and other law enforcement officers were deployed in the area well before the protest began at 5 p.m., their buses and vans lining the streets surrounding the square.
The protest was organised by the "Strategy 31" movement, which since 2009 has staged rallies to mark the right to peaceful assembly guaranteed in Article 31 of the constitution. They gather on the final day of every month with 31 days.
"Strategy 31" rallies do not enjoy official approval, and participants are subject to arrest. Among those detained on Saturday was National Bolshevik Party leader Eduard Limonov, Russian media reported.
Tens of thousands have taken to the streets this month in the biggest opposition demonstrations since Putin rose to power in 1999. The last massive rally was held on December 24. in central Moscow.
On Saturday, a separate protest attracted about 100 people in St. Petersburg, with city police reporting about 10 arrests.
Russia's Echo Moskvy radio also reported that about 200 people, including Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, participated in a rally in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod that went off without incident.
(Writing by Alfred Kueppers; additional reporting by Mikhail Voskresensky in Moscow and Liza Dobkina in St. Petersburg; Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)
The presidential primaries and general election will be more melodramatic than an episode of Jersey Shore.
MTV producers in their wildest dreams couldn't come up with some of the stuff we've seen already: Ni*gerhead, vaccine-induced retardation, Herman Cain.
Wait 'til it's down to just two.
But 2012 will be interesting for more than the free entertainment of the election...
After all, either winner will be controlled by special interests, as has been the tradition for decades.
It'll be fascinating because oil's already at $100. Brent is at $108.
The Energy Bull You Don't Want to Miss
Our analysts have traveled the world over, dedicated to finding the best and most profitable investments in the global energy markets. All you have to do to join our Energy and Capital investment community is sign up for the newsletter below. You'll also get our free report, Oil Outlook: Investing in 2011 by our resident energy expert, Keith Kohl.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that both India and China are increasing their reserves, and that will put upward pressure on prices.
India said it's more than tripling the size of its reserve from 39 million to 132 million barrels.
China's going to 500 million barrels from 103 million.
That'll add a nice 490 million barrels of global demand over the next few years...
Oh, and Iran's threatening to block the daily flow of 15 million barrels through the Strait of Hormuz. The Telegraph notes the implications:
If the ayatollahs'?carried out their threat,?Iran could, at?a stroke,?choke the main artery for the West's energy supplies.
The Iranians have been planning for such an eventuality for the past twenty years. Unlike the late 1980s, the last time Iran seriously disrupted shipping passing through the Gulf,? Iran now has the equipment, in terms of anti-ship missiles, to enforce the threat.
The U.S. Navy, which has two aircraft carrier groups permanently stationed in the area, would, of course, be forced to intervene, thereby leading to open hostilities between Washington and Tehran.
But if you think that is an alarming prospect, just imagine the mayhem that would erupt if Israel decided that it had had enough of Iran's prevarication over its nuclear program and decided to launch unilateral air strikes to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities.
Happy New Year!
Hello $150
High oil isn't the enemy. It's a profit catalyst.
When geopolitics send the price soaring, production costs stay the same for those with access to oil.
And of course, the Bakken comes to mind...
It's awash in oil at a time when global supplies are in question.
It won't be a global panacea, but it will be a hell of an investment as oil ticks higher.
Call it like you see it,
Nick Hodge
@nickchodge on Twitter
Nick is an editor of Energy & Capital and the Investment Director of the thousands-strong stock advisory, Alternative Energy Speculator. Co-author of the best-selling book Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's page.
Recession-Proof Secret: Why There'll Be No Unemployment in the New Year in North Dakota There's a small town in the heart of the United States where there are more jobs than people. And what's driving this boom is bigger than just a small town, a zip code, or a single state... It's an industrial expansion the likes of which we haven't seen since the early 20th century.
More Precious than Gold: Revolutionary Profits Ahead Locked away since the Manhattan Project, one of the earth's most powerful materials is going to revolutionize everything from energy to circuit boards.
Dangerous Rare Earth Supply Risk: Urgent: U.S. Energy Department Issues Stark Warning Analyst Ian Cooper takes a look at the latest warning out of the U.S. Department of Energy and offers a way to profit handsomely.
2012 Energy Stock Predictions: Domestic Oil to Reign in 2012 Editor Jeff Siegel offers his energy predictions for 2012.
The One Answer Smith Really Wanted: Will Next Year Be Better? Washington and Wall Street can't stop the rest of us from doing biz!
2011 Predictions Recap: What I Got Right, and a Few I Missed The fall of Chinese housing has been a slow motion train wreck for about six months now. Newly-built Chinese ghost cities are a common topic on the web. Real estate prices are down in most major cities.
What's Really Behind the Solar Sell-off: And Why Did Warren Buffett Just Buy Them Brian Hicks talks about what is really behind the solar stock sell-off and why Warren Buffett is buying them.
Another Date Which Will Live in Infamy?: This Could Be The Big One for the Middle East There are people hard at work to make sure that we never need to depend on things like the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, or any Middle Eastern oil-peddling nation ever again... right here in the Midwest.
Tesla Electric Car Investing: Is It Time to Buy an Electric Car? Editor Jeff Siegel discusses whether or not it makes economic sense to buy an electric car.
Taken for a Ride: Year-end Recap and 2012 Anticipation I think next year will be a year of drastic transformation, of political awakening, of balance sheet resetting, of a return to real value over hyped illusions.
Bullish on America in 2012: Don't Worry, Be Happy Brian Hicks reviews the year in commodities and comments on the bullish New Year ahead for investors.
Personal Responsibility: Taking Control and Moving Ahead Instead of remaining oblivious to global markets and continuing to wallow in a sea of self-loathing while continuing to blame everyone and everything but yourself... Why don't you read up, get invested, exploit tax loopholes, pay down debt, save, and take control of your financial destiny?
NAIROBI, Kenya ? Hundreds of Ethiopian troops poured into a western Somalia border town on Saturday, opening a new front against the militant group al-Shabab, which now faces hostile militaries on three sides.
Resident Mohammed Abdi said hundreds of residents fled Beledweyne on Saturday after hundreds of Ethiopian and Somali troops moved in. Capt. Hashi Nor of the Somali military confirmed that Somali and Ethiopian troops had moved in.
"I saw Ethiopian troops standing at the doors of neighboring homes. Somali soldiers are also searching the homes," Abdi said. "Al-Shabab retreated back to Bulo Burte and also many of the residents fled, and those who remained are in their homes."
The military movement appears to be a third front against al-Shabab, Somalia's strongest militant group. Kenyan troops moved into Somalia in mid-October in a push against the militants in the country's south. African Union troops from Uganda, Burundi and most recently from Djibouti have mostly pushed al-Shabab fighters out of the capital, Mogadishu.
"We are in full control of Beledweyne now and our troops will move forward in the coming hours," Nor, the Somali military officer, said by phone from Beledweyne.
Abdi said the sound of gunfire could be heard in Beledweyne but that he did not believe actual battle was taking place. However, al-Shabab on its official Twitter feed said that a battle that began at 6 a.m. was still "raging" in the city as of midday.
Al-Shabab said that a "majority" of Beledweyne residents joined al-Shabab "to thwart the offensive." It claimed that dozens of Ethiopian troops had been killed, but that was impossible to verify and was likely an exaggerated claim. It later said on Twitter that al-Shabab was executing a planned withdrawal and would surround the city.
Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said in a statement that Somalia's armed forces had taken over "strategic places" from al-Shabab in the central region of Hiran on Saturday. He did not make direct mention of involvement by Ethiopian troops.
"We are officially requesting the international community and the neighboring countries like Ethiopia to stand on our shoulders and help the Somali people and their government for the historic operation to liberate the country from this brutal terror group," he said. "We are also asking the humanitarian aid agencies to reach and help people living in the areas liberated from al-Shabab."
U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops moved into Somalia in 2006 at the invitation of the weak, U.N.-backed Somali government. But the incursion was seen by many Somalis as an unpopular invasion and actually helped give birth to the al-Shabab movement. Ethiopians pulled out in early 2009, and there are fears that a new push by Somalia could be a propaganda coup for al-Shabab.
Ethiopia in November said it was considering whether to contribute troops to the African Union force in Somalia. Kenya's parliament recently voted for its forces to join the AU force. That move is awaiting approval by the United Nations.
The central Somalia town of Beledweyne lies about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the border with Ethiopia. A commercial hub, it lies on a key road that links Mogadishu with northern Somalia. Control of the town has changed hands frequently in recent months as different militias push to seize control of it.
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A Somali employee of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Public release date: 4-Jan-2012
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