...stripped of media role

Oil Spill Effects May Be Negligible
Ken Feinberg is a lawyer and not a scientist . It was surprising to hear him say that the long-term effects of the BP plc (NYSE: BP) Oil Spill may be very little over time. He told USA Today that “the Gulf is likely to fully recover from the April oil spill.” Feinberg says that he bases his assessment on talks with biologists and other experts on chemical spills and the environment. Many, if not most of the predictions, about the spill itself and its future impact have been wrong. Th...

Investor Demand for Diversification Pushes Depositary Receipts to New Records in Trading and Program Availability
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- American and global depositary receipts (DRs) proved their value as a preferred vehicle for portfolio diversification and cross-border investing in 2010, surging an estimated 30% in trading value and 11% in trading volume.   BNY Mellon's Depositary Receipts business estimates that DR trading volume will rise 11% to 150 billion DRs in 2010, an all-time high(1).  An estimated $3.5 Trillion of DRs are expected to trade on U.S. and non-U.S....

Major indexes poised for double-digit gains for the year
U.S. stocks rose modestly Tuesday but managed to close at their highest levels in more than two years as investors set their sights on 2011. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 55 points, or 0.5%, led by gains in shares of American Express, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The blue chip index finished at 11,533, its highest level since August 29, 2008. The S&P 500 added 8 points, or 0.6%, with Adobe and Jabil Circuit among the biggest winners. The broader index closed at its highest lev...

Stocks Mixed on 1st Day of Holiday Week
NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks are closing mixed as light trading volume marks the first day of a short holiday week. American Express had the largest move Monday of any of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones industrial average. The card issuer fell 3.5 percent after analysts downgraded the company because of rules proposed by the Federal Reserve that would cap the fees it can charge merchants. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was unchanged at 3.33 percent. According to early figures, the Dow...

By the numbers: The Big Board
What's an investment guide without a look at the floor of the New York Stock Exchange? As this 1962 photo suggests, not much has changed since then. Though still the largest exchange in the U.S., the now publicly traded company is grappling with the fallout from electronic competitors such as NASDAQ and Direct Edge. --Anne VanderMey 35% of the trading volume of all NYSE-listed stocks happens on the exchange today. In 1962 the Big Board accounted for 90%. 507 non-U.S. companies are now traded on ...

By the numbers: The Big Board
By the numbers: The Big Board Posted by Fortune Editors December 22, 2010 5:00 am What's an investment guide without a look at the floor of the New York Stock Exchange? As this 1962 photo suggests, not much has changed since then. Though still the largest exchange in the U.S., the now publicly traded company is grappling with the fallout from electronic competitors such as NASDAQ and Direct Edge. --Anne VanderMey 35% of the trading volume of all NYSE-listed stocks happens on the exchange toda...

No, WikiLeaks Has Not 'Confirmed' It Will Target Bank Of America
In the furious storm of speculation over which institution will be the subject of Wikileaks’ next document dump, the media’s definition of “confirmed” just got a little blurrier. But calm yourselves, Bank of America executives: your secrets are no more or less certain to be exposed than they were yesterday. On Tuesday, the Times of London published the first newspaper interview with Wikileaks’ Julian Assange since his release from Wandsworth Prison in London. In it,...

Bank of America Prepares to Get WikiLeaked by Buying Up Negative Domain Names
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Bank of America isn't waiting around for the media to confirm whether or not it's the target of Wikileaks's next leak. The company has been trying to hoover up negative Domain Names about its CEO, Brian Moynihan, registering BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com — in some case, the .net and .org versions as well, all in the last month. Oh, Bank of America, you vastly underestimate the Inter...

Screw America, Traitors Deserve the Right To Destroy the Country!
If an American betrays this nation and is held Prisoner for despicable traitorous acts, the darling must be treated with utmost dignity and respect.  After all, traitors deserve the right to destroy America!  That is the perception of some writers who think it’s horrible Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held at Guantanamo Bay without a well-furnished cell.  After all, Manning exposed America for the nasty warmongering, torturing, money-grubbing empire we are. And he gave Top Secret

Lawyer attacks Biden over Assange remarks
An Australian Human Rights lawyer has been angered by comments made by US vice-president Joe Biden, in which he described Julian Assange as being more Terrorist than Whistleblower. The remarks also prompted Kellie Tranter to accuse Prime Minister Julia Gillard of standing by while an ally takes away Mr Assange's presumption of innocence. In a weekend television interview Mr Biden confirmed the US government was trying to find a way to charge the Wikileaks founder with Espionage for his part in ...

New at Reason: Jacob Sullum on WikiLeaks and the First Amendment
Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agree that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has published thousands of confidential Pentagon and State Department documents on his group's website, is "a high-tech Terrorist." But assuming that President Obama is not ready to drop a bomb on Assange, punishing him for disseminating Military records and diplomatic cables will require specifying what crime he committed under U.S. law. That won't be easy, notes Senior Editor Jacob...

Banks Face a Tough Legal Fight With Wikileaks
If Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange is to be believed, then an impending document dump from his organization will significantly cripple a major U.S. bank In a late-November Forbes interview, Mr. Assange promised a leak containing tens of thousands of documents that would reveal a major U.S. bank operating in an "ecosystem of Corruption." More recently, Mr. Assange said that the dump contained enough information to force the Resignation of a bank CEO. Speculation swirls that the data in questi...

The Top World News Websites of 2010
Just when it seemed impossible to blur the lines between old and New Media any further, 2010 witnessed the Controversial rise of info-anarchist Julian Assange and Wikileaks. By publishing raw intelligence on its own site and leaking excerpts to major News Media outlets, WikiLeaks nearly obliterated the neat boundaries between the media and motivated, tech-savvy individuals. With each year the differences between a topical news story and a trending topic become fewer, as Internet tools like Twi...

The WikiLeaks strategy: Bank of America buys up abusive domain names
© unk Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive Domain Names for its senior executives and Board Members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing Website Wikileaks. According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering Domain Names including its board of Directors' and senior executives' names followed by "sucks" and "blows". For example, the company registered a number ...

Irony Defined [Reader Post]
I find many things ironic. However, I came across and article recently regarding the well known Julian Assange. As many of us know, he has a website called Wikileaks. WikiLeaks’ sole purpose is to take confidential information and make it public. Prior to this year, many of the leaks were based upon companies. Since this spring, many of the leaks have originated from the US government. Now, to look at the situation from an organizational level and relate it to a human is fairly simple. Th...

Confirmed: WikiLeaks next target is Bank of America, Assange says
Stumble This! Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday the Swedish women who have accused him of Sexual Assault had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility they had caught a sexually transmitted disease from him. Assange told the BBC that one account of what happened in August -- the month at the centre of allegations against him -- was that the two women had panicked when they found out they had both slept with him and went to police who "bamboozled" them....

Moore: Assange has to answer questions about sex allegations
Stumble This! A seemingly contrite Michael Moore on Wednesday walked back his dismissal of the sex allegations against Julian Assange, saying the Wikileaks founder should answer questions about the claims made against him by two women. Appearing on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, the filmmaker behind Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 said that "every woman who claims to be raped has to be taken seriously, and those charges have to be investigated to the fullest extent possible." Moore came ...

Smearing Private Manning
My eyes are on the riveting Assange, but I noticed that the smearing of his presumed source, Private Bradley Manning, has begun. Just read this report by Matt Taibi out of his hometown of Crescent, Oklahoma, for NBC the other night. My house filled with hoarse profane cries of outrage as I watched the targeted character Assassination... You will see that Manning did it because he was closeted and gay, or he had suffered abuse, or was ignored, he was undersized and used big words no one underst...

Gulf oil spill voted the top news story of 2010
The Gulf Oil Spill was the top news story of 2010, according to a poll of news editors conducted by The Associated Press. The Oil Spill beat out other major news events including this year’s Midterm Elections, passage of the Healthcare Bill and the ailing U.S. economy, according to the AP. Here’s a list of the top 10: 1.    The Gulf oil spill 2.    Passage of the healthcare bill 3.    The midterm Elections 4.    The U.S. economy 5.

Gotta Watch: Holiday double-take; Haiti quake; $27B museum; 'Conan' redux
Hang in there, guy - This video conjures up images from National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation." CNN affiliate WPRI shows us one guy's Christmas display that would make even Clark Griswold tremble. Haiti: One year later - We are just shy of the 12-month anniversary of the Earthquake that killed some 230,000 people in Haiti. CNN looks at what Haiti looked like after it happened and what has - and hasn't - been done help the Island Nation recover. $27 billion m...

Adoptive parents arrive in Haiti to fetch children
French families arrived in Haiti late Tuesday to fetch a group of Haitian Children they adopted in the wake of a devastating Earthquake that ravaged the impoverished country nearly a year ago. "What a relief. These families have waited for a year after the Earthquake and some no longer believed it would happen," French Ambassador Didier Le Bret said as he welcomed the adoptive parents arriving aboard a government-chartered plane in Port-au-Prince. The group of 105 parents is due to return to P...

Mexico Crude Oil Blast Death Toll Rises to 29
Like this Story? Share it: Learn about the people, economy and history. (AP) The death toll from a massive crude-oil Explosion that laid waste to parts of a central Mexican city has risen to 29. Authorities in Puebla state say they located the remains of a baby in the arms of one of the other 28 Victims. Sunday's blast in San Martin Texmelucan, believed to be caused by oil thieves, also injured 52 and damaged or destroyed 115 homes. Puebla State Government spokesman Noe Torres said Tuesday th...

Adoptive parents arrive in Haiti to fetch children
French families arrived in Haiti to fetch a group of Haitian Children they adopted in the wake of a devastating Earthquake that ravaged the impoverished country nearly a year ago. "What a relief. These families have waited for a year after the Earthquake and some no longer believed it would happen," French Ambassador Didier Le Bret said as he welcomed the adoptive parents arriving aboard a government-chartered plane in Port-au-Prince. The group of 105 parents is due to return to Paris later Tues...

Haiti Adoption: Children Join Adoptive French Families
Paris — More than 100 Children from Haiti have arrived in France to start new lives with adoptive parents in time for the holidays. A charter plane carrying 113 Children arrived from the Caribbean country still reeling from a January Earthquake and now a deadly Cholera epidemic. The flight to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport Wednesday brought the first group of more than 300 children, which are expected to start a new life in France. Another flight is expected Friday. Adoptive father Bar...

Haiti earthquake: One third of Haiti orphans 'kidnapped' by American church group still have parents
At least ten of the 33 Children that an American church group tried to smuggle out of Haiti as orphans still have parents, it was revealed today. One eight-year-old girl told aid workers that she thought her mother had arranged a short holiday for her and sobbed: ‘I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.’ The disturbing development emerged as ten U.S. Baptists were set to appear in court in Port-au-Prince accused of trying to take the Children out of the Earthquake-ravaged count...