US general booted for Afghan remarks

'They don't understand the sacrifices that America is making,' he said of Afghan leaders 

MSNBC, NBC, Nov, 4, 2011

Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller  /  U.S. Army

WASHINGTON — A top U.S. general in Afghanistan was relieved of duty Friday for "inappropriate public comments" after calling the Afghan government "isolated from reality" and President Hamid Karzai "erratic."

Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander for training Afghan security forces, blasted the Afghan government, military and Karzai in an interview with POLITICO published on Thursday.

He called Karzai "erratic" for recently saying Afghanistan would side with Pakistan if the latter declared war on the U.S.

"Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle!," Fuller was quoted as saying. "You’ve got to be kidding me … I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, 'I don’t really care'?"

Fuller also said he had trouble explaining to Afghan officials that Western funds were limited. 

"You guys are isolated from reality" he said he told Afghan generals. "If you're in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood."

"I actually had someone senior tell me, 'All I want to do is put them [tanks] on a flat bed and drive them around in a parade'," he added.

Fuller said Afghan leaders "don't understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that's part of my job to educate 'em."

Fuller was relieved of duty by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen.

"The Afghan people are an honorable people, and comments such as these will not keep us from accomplishing our most critical and shared mission: bringing about a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan," Allen said in a statement.

Story: Cash flows, but can Afghan training legacy last?

It was not clear what Fuller would do next, but such disciplinary action usually ends military careers.

In June 2010, Gen. Stanley McChrystal resigned as the top U.S. officer in Afghanistan after disparaging remarks about civilian bosses in a Rolling Stone magazine article. He retired from the Army a month later and went on to teach at Yale University.

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this report.

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... What Military Energy means if we use an analogy: it would be like putting grinding paste into the oil of your motor car. Once you release these energies you will begin to feel lighter as you disconnect from this reality, and, you will find it easier and easier to release any other negative emotions. Military Energies are the core of all your problems...."

Muslim cab drivers save Jewish bagel shop

'They want to keep the bakery kosher and I want to help them succeed,' worker says

  

msnbc.com, By Sevil Omer, Nov 4, 2011

One of New York City’s oldest Jewish bakeries has been rescued from closure by an unlikely source: a pair of Muslim cab drivers who promise to keep it kosher.

Peerzada Shah and Zafaryab Ali recently took ownership of the Coney Island Bialys and Bagels, a landmark fixture anchored at 2350 Coney Island Avenue for 91 years.

The bakery was about to shutter in September when Ali, a former staffer, learned of its demise and decided to save it — keeping it in the same spirit of its original owner, Morris Rosenzweig, a Jewish immigrant from Bialystok, Poland, who founded the shop in 1920.

The story was first reported by The Jewish Daily Forward.

Ali said he purchased the business six weeks ago for an amount he would not disclose.

The partners have been busy ever seen since.

“It’s the same bialys, but I don't have time to talk right now, we're busy,” Shah said by phone on Friday. “I have to make sure customers are taken care of, because they come first.”

"Many people are here in line, cameras are rolling, TV is calling for me now," Ali said. "It is a good day, a busy day."

Just weeks ahead of the purchase, the recession and continued financial difficulties had pushed Rosenzweig's grandson, Steve Ross, to call it quits.

Joseph Jackson, a bakery employee for 30 years, recalled his boss’s tough call.

“He said he was not pulling enough and couldn’t do anymore,” Jackson said, adding “I took it real bad.”

Jackson said he was retiring this year, but planned to stay on to help the new owners grow their business.

"The two men are very, very good-natured, well-intentioned and just good people," Jackson said. "They want to keep the bakery kosher and I want to help them succeed."

Shah and Ali grew up in Pakistan and met in New York City while they were working as cab drivers.

Ali worked at the bialy shop for a decade and when he learned of Ross'sdecision to call it quits, he called Shah. Shah attended a culinary arts school in Manhattan and the men had been roommates at one time.

Ali said the men tasted their first bite of a bagel from the bakery more than a decade ago.

Ali said he and his partner vow to use the same recipes and shop's kosher-certified equipment. They'll also serve the shop's popular kosher menu.

Most of the staff has stayed on to usher in the bakery's next chapter.

"We all worked together for many, many years and the bakery owner is a very, very good man," Ali said. "We want to make this business as the same, a good business." 

NBC NewYork contributed to this report.

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(Subjects:Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Muhammad, Jesus, God, Jews, Arabs, EU, US, Israel, Iran, Russia, Africa, South America, Global Unity,..... etc.) (Text version)

"If an Arab and a Jew can look at one another and see the Akashic lineage and see the one family, there is hope. If they can see that their differences no longer require that they kill one another, then there is a beginning of a change in history. And that's what is happening now. All of humanity, no matter what the spiritual belief, has been guilty of falling into the historic trap of separating instead of unifying. Now it's starting to change. There's a shift happening."

Mass. Catholic journal withdraws gay devil column

Yahoo/Associated Press, Wed, Nov 2, 2011

BOSTON (AP) — The oldest Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States has retracted an opinion column suggesting the devil may be responsible for gay attraction.

The column, which appeared Friday in the Archdiocese of Boston's official newspaper, The Pilot, was titled "Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction." It was written by Daniel Avila, an associate director for policy and research for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In the column, Avila says "the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil."

It also says "disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart." It says that when "natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God."

The 182-year-old newspaper withdrew the column from its website on Wednesday, saying it had failed to recognize the "theological error" before publication. It posted an apology from Avila saying the column didn't represent the position of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose stated purpose is to "promote the greater good which the Church offers humankind," and wasn't authorized for publication.

Avila said he deeply apologized for the "hurt and confusion" the column caused.

Archdiocesan officials said Avila's apology would appear in the issue of The Pilot to be published this week, The Boston Globe reported.

The Boston archdiocese, the bishops' group and Avila were involved in communications leading to the decision to retract the column, said archdiocese spokesman Terrence Donilon, who called Avila "passionate about his faith and passionate about his church."

"This one," Donilon said, "clearly just got away from him."

Several gay rights organizations, including DignityUSA, an association of gay Catholics, and MassEquality, a Massachusetts group organized to support same-sex marriage, didn't immediately return telephone or email messages seeking comment Wednesday night.

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Obama tops Forbes most powerful list, Putin No. 2

Reuters, NEW YORK | Wed Nov 2, 2011

President Obama tells Congress to pass the infrastructure piece of the 

American Jobs Act while at the Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, 

November 2, 2011. (Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing)

(Reuters) - Barack Obama topped Forbes' list of the world's most powerful people in 2011, as the U.S. leader's clout rose after the deaths of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Obama bumped Chinese President Hu Jintao from the No. 1 spot on the magazine's annual rankings.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel remained the most powerful woman at No. 4 on the list, as Europe's largest economy continued to wield its influence over the troubled European Union.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is running again for president, was No. 2 and Hu came third as he gradually manages the transition of power to others in China.

"The U.S. remains, indisputably, the most powerful nation in the world, with the largest, most innovative economy and the deadliest military," Forbes wrote.

Obama's approval ratings have fallen at home as he struggles with stubbornly high unemployment and a tepid economy, but his fortunes on the world stage have been quite different.

Under orders from Obama, bin Laden, who helped orchestrate the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was tracked down in Pakistan and killed in May after 10 years in hiding.

The United States joined the NATO-led intervention in Libya, which began with air strikes in March and led eventually to Gaddafi's death in October.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates at No. 5 was the first corporate executive on the list, thanks to a malaria vaccine backed by his charitable foundation that recently passed a key clinical trial.

"Gates' goal is to eliminate infectious disease as a major cause of death in his lifetime. He may succeed," Forbes wrote.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 27-year-old head of social networking site Facebook, shot into ninth position from No. 40 in last year's vote, sandwiched between U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (No. 8), who overseas monetary policy for the world's biggest economy, and British Prime Minister David Cameron at No. 10.

"What the CIA failed to do in 60 years, Zuck (Zuckerberg) has done in 7: knowing what 800 million people think, read and listen to," Forbes wrote.

The king of the world's largest oil producer Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud, came in at No. 6 and Pope Benedict XVI was No. 7.

For a full list of the world's most powerful people go to www.forbes.com/power.

(Reporting by Edward McAllister; Editing by Mark Egan and Paul Simao)

Shocking amount of money US spent on weapons after 9/11

RT.com, 02 November, 2011

AFP Photo / Dmitry Kostyukov

How did America keep the terrorists from winning? Three words: Very. Expensive. Tanks.

A new report reveals that in the decade since the September 11 attacks, the Department of Defense spent around $1 trillion on weaponry for troops in Iraq in Afghanistan.

Conservative lawmakers and most of the GOP front-runners meanwhile have insisted that making any cuts to the US Military budget would be detrimental to the defense of the nation. As the country continues to hemorrhage money abroad and a financial crisis is causing a second recession in just as few years, however, the United States have wasted $1 trillion on wars that a recent poll showed that even those who served didn’t think was worth it.

In the recently released report from the Stimson Center, "What We Bought: Defense Procurement From FY01 to FY10,” it is revealed that rather than investing the Pentagon’s massive budget in the troops themselves, the United States spent colossal amounts on modernizing its army with tanks, ships, jets and other warcraft. In addition to the allocated budget for the DoD, the Pentagon also dipped deeper into the taxpayers’ pockets by spending over $232 billion in supplemental funds bulking up its line of defense.

As RT reported last month, a third of the men and women who served in the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars told pollsters at the Pew Research Center that they while they support America, they did not feel like those two wars were its toll.

At the same time that the Stimson Center released their report this week, the chiefs of the US military, including heads of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, all testified before Congress to say that proposed cuts of $1 trillion over the next decade would destroy America’s defense as we know it. Marine Corps Commandant James Amos said in a statement that his troops would not be able to sustain “even on major contingency” if cuts to that degree are carried out.

In a joint statement from Russ Rumbauh of the Stimson Center and Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, however, they say that proposed budget cuts would reduce the DoD’s fiscal cash flow for the year 2013 to the same amount the America was working with back in 2007, adjusted for inflation.

“A decline in the base budget of this magnitude — returning to the same level of funding as FY 2007 – does not have to be a disaster,” Harrison writes to Business Week.

According to his, not only has the military’s procurement funding nearly doubled between the 2001 and 2010 fiscal years, but that the major weapons program that constitutes that hearty of the services’ capabilities was modernized with an astounding purchasing of machinery. And as far as the current state of the country’s economy goes, it doesn’t seem that the military is all that concerned either. The report reveals that, taking into account price changes for inflation, the United States spent 800 percent more on each of the 25 jets it purchased last year when compared to the fleet it bought back in 1980.

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MF Global’s Collapse Exposes Prop-Trading Risk That Volcker Wants to Curb

Bloomberg, By Christine Harper, Michael J. Moore and Silla Brush - Nov 1, 2011 

Jon Corzine’s failure “is OK because MF Global is not such a large institution

 that it’s going to bring down the entire financial system with it,” Neil Barofsky,

 a former special inspector for the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief

 Program, said on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.”

Photographer: Richard Perry/The New York Times/Redux

Jon Corzine’s risk appetite helped destroy his firm. It also provided an object lesson for Paul Volcker’s campaign against proprietary trading on Wall Street.

Nineteen months after former New Jersey Governor Corzine became chairman and chief executive officer, MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) yesterday filed for bankruptcy. Corzine’s decision to boost risk-taking, including a $6.3 billion wager with the firm’s own money on European government debt, triggered the collapse.

Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, pushed to curb wagering by financial firms that have federal guarantees or are so entrenched in markets that they’re deemed too big to fail. Regulators and the industry are wrestling over the fine print in the so-called Volcker rule, which takes effect in 2012. Now, three years after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) failed, MF Global’s implosion and a probe into whether client money is missing may buttress the argument for tighter trading limits.

“In the wake of 2008, when we all should have learned a lesson, Jon Corzine told me himself that it was a relatively staid, not risk-oriented firm and he needed to ratchet up the risk,” William Cohan, author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” said on Bloomberg Television. “Well, he does that and it blows up in his face and for the first time he can’t unwind the trade. Honestly I’m still shocked and it should not have happened.”

MF Global, with 2,894 employees and $2.5 billion in capital as of Sept. 30, wouldn’t have been affected by the rule, unlike larger rivals such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) or JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

‘Bad Bets’

Corzine’s failure “is OK because MF Global is not such a large institution that it’s going to bring down the entire financial system with it,” Neil Barofsky, a former special inspector for the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, said on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” “If this is Goldman, if this is JPMorgan, if this is any of those institutions, we’re going to have to go in and bail them out and we’re going to bear the brunt of their bad bets, not the shareholders and possibly the debt holders.”

Corzine, 64, learned the strategy of making big trading bets during his 24 years at New York-based Goldman Sachs, which he ran from 1994 to 1999 before being forced out. It was the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history before converting to a bank holding company in 2008, when smaller rival LehmanBrothers went bankrupt.

‘The Big Leagues’

“Jon Corzine made his bones at Goldman Sachs by going big,” said Cohan, a Bloomberg View columnist who interviewed Corzine for his book on Goldman Sachs. “I see this as a case of Jon Corzine ramping up the risk that MF Global was taking, trying to put it into the big leagues of investment banking, make it more like Goldman Sachs.”

While Corzine sought to recreate the Goldman Sachs that he remembered, the firm’s current management was reducing risk- taking -- in part in response to the Volcker rule. It closed Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies, a prop-trading team that bet primarily on equities, and the Global Macro Proprietary Trading desk, which wagered on bonds, currencies and commodities.

The Volcker rule also will require Goldman Sachs to reduce investments in private equity and hedge funds to no more than 3 percent of each of the funds -- or 3 percent of Goldman Sachs’s Tier 1 capital. In the latest quarter, such investments were responsible for the firm reporting its second quarterly loss since going public in 1999.

‘Implemented Quickly’

“Mr. Corzine’s activities at MF Global are exactly what the Volcker advocates wanted to protect against,” Richard Bove, a bank analyst at Rochdale Securities LLC, wrote in a note to clients. “It is exactly why they were so adamant that the regulators were not enough to stop speculative activities and a strict law had to be passed to stiffen regulator actions.”

Bank executives including Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David A. Viniar and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, 53, have noted their firms’ cooperation in shutting down stand-alone prop-trading businesses while warning of reduced market liquidity if the rule is interpreted too strictly.

“The Volcker rule needs to be fully implemented quickly to ensure that banks can no longer put taxpayers at risk for making the kind of proprietary trades MF Global made,” U.S. Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who pushed for the rule, said in an e-mailed statement.

U.S. regulators are investigating whether hundreds of millions of dollars are missing from client accounts at MF Global, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Corzine and Tiffany Galvin, an MF Global spokeswoman, didn’t respond to e-mail and phone messages requesting comment.

‘Up in Smoke’

A version of the Volcker rule released by regulators last month already has been criticized by banks and analysts. Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said the rule may shave 25 percent from fixed-income trading desks’ revenue. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency estimated that it will cost banks $917 million for raising more capital and an additional $50 million in compliance and legal expenses.

Arthur Levitt, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and adviser to Goldman Sachs, said Wall Street lobbyists will fight to postpone and weaken the regulations.

“This is going to be a long slog, and much of that rule that you see today is going to go up in smoke,” Levitt, a Bloomberg LP board member, said on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt on Oct. 13. Levitt said he was speaking for himself and not expressing the views of Goldman Sachs.

Avert Failure

MF Global’s board had met through the weekend in New York to consider options including a sale to avert failure, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. Following a record loss announced last week, MF Global was suspended yesterday from doing new business with the New York Federal Reserve, according to a statement on the regulator’s website. Trading in MF Global’s stock also was halted.

MF Global shares declined 67 percent last week and its bonds started trading at distressed levels amid its disclosures of bets on European sovereign-debt. MF Global held talks with five potential buyers for all or parts of the company, including banks, private-equity firms and brokers, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private.

Early yesterday, MF Global told regulators it didn’t have a deal “and reported possible deficiencies in customer futures segregated accounts held at the firm,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and SEC said in a joint statement. The regulators said they decided a bankruptcy led by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. would be the best way to safeguard customer accounts and assets.

‘A Risk-Taker’

“MF was highly leveraged and I think Corzine came in trying to do what he did at Goldman Sachs,” Levitt said yesterday on “Bloomberg Surveillance.” “He was a risk-taker, and the markets went against him.”

Stand-alone proprietary-trading groups at six bank holding companies -- Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- had a net loss of about $221 million from June 2006 through the end of 2010, according to a July 13 Government Accountability Office report.

The business of betting money for banks’ own accounts produced positive net revenue in 13 of the 18 quarters examined, totaling $15.6 billion, and generated losses of $15.8 billion in the other five quarters, according to the report. The study didn’t address prop trading conducted in other groups besides the stand-alone desks.

‘Exceptions and Loopholes’

Regulators including the SEC, Federal Reserve, OCC and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., issued a 298-page proposal of the Volcker rule on Oct. 11. The agencies are seeking public comment on the draft and may make changes before it takes effect July 21.

The Volcker rule, as written in the Dodd Frank Act, had “so many different exemptions and exceptions and loopholes that it almost became nearly impossible for the regulators to fashion a rule that can live up to its original intent,” said Barofsky, a Bloomberg Television contributing editor.

Among the exceptions are trading of U.S. government and government agency obligations and anything that assists a firm in making markets for clients or hedging those positions. While Wall Street lobbyists have helped to water down the bill, the Treasury Department didn’t fight hard enough for it after the Volcker rule was added to the Obama administration’s original financial-reform proposal, Barofsky said.

‘Late Add-on’

“Remember, this was sort of a late add-on to what was originally proposed in regulatory reform and I don’t think that their heart was necessarily in the legislative process,” Barofsky said. “So you see all these exemptions that really are going to enable a lot of different types of trading to go forward even under the Volcker rule.”

Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin supported the rule when he testified with Volker, an Obama administration adviser, during a February 2010 hearing before the Senate Banking Committee. Barofsky didn’t work on the Volcker rule during his tenure as special inspector for TARP.

“The Volcker rule is an important component of the reform of America’s financial system and a provision that would not have been in the legislation but for the strong advocacy of the president and the Treasury Department,” Colleen Murray, a department spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement.

The bankruptcy also may influence debates related to other parts of financial-industry rulemaking. MF Global, alongside hedge funds and brokers, had succeeded in urging the CFTC to open access to derivatives clearinghouses for firms with less net capital than Wall Street’s largest swaps dealers.

The CFTC completed a rule on Oct. 18 that would require clearinghouses to open access to firms with at least $50 million in net capital. Clearinghouses would still be able to scale a member’s participation depending on how much capital a company holds above $50 million. Wall Street’s largest derivatives- dealers have said members need experience and adequate resources to manage defaults.

To contact the reporters on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net; Michael J. Moore in New York at mmoore55@bloomberg.net; Silla Brush in Washington at sbrush@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net

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Did accounting help sink Corzine’s MF Global?

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Chinese Shenzhou craft launches on key space mission

BBC News, By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent,  31 October 2011

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It will be a couple of days before Shenzhou 8 is in
a position to attempt the docking

China has taken the next step in its quest to become a major space power with the launch of the unmanned Shenzhou 8 vehicle.

The spacecraft rode a Long March 2F rocket into orbit where it will attempt to rendezvous and dock with the Tiangong-1 lab, launched in September.

It would be the first time China has joined two space vehicles together.

The capability is required if the country is to carry through its plan to build a space station by about 2020.

The Long March carrier rocket lifted away from the Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert at 05:58, Tuesday (21:58 GMT Monday). TV cameras relayed the ascent to orbit.

Shenzhou separated from the rocket's upper-stage about nine minutes into the flight. Confirmation that its solar panels had been deployed was received a short while after.

It will be a couple of days before Shenzhou is in a position to attempt the docking, which will occur some 340km above the Earth.

The vehicles will be using a radar-based system to compute their proximity to each other and guide their final approach and contact.

The pair will then spend 12 days circling the globe before they separate and attempt a re-docking. Finally, Shenzhou 8 will detach and its re-entry capsule will head back to Earth.

This will allow experiments carried into orbit to be recovered for analysis. The German space agency has supplied an experimental box containing fish, plants, worms, bacteria and even human cancer cells for a series of biological studies.

  

• Tiangong-1 was launched in September on a Long March 2F rocket
• The unmanned laboratory unit was put in a 350km-high orbit
• Shenzhou 8 will will try to rendezvous and dock with Tiangong-1
• The project will test key technologies such as life-support systems
• China aims to start building a 60-tonne space station by about 2020

Assuming the venture goes well, two manned missions (Shenzhou 9 and 10) are likely to try to make similar dockings in 2012.  

Shenzhou 8 carries experiments developed
 with the German space agency

Chinese astronauts - yuhangyuans - are expected to live aboard the conjoined vehicles for up to two weeks. There is speculation in the Chinese media that one of these missions could also include the country's first female yuhangyuan.

The 10.5m-long Tiangong-1 module was launched on 29 September and has been operating well, according to Chinese officials.

Its orbit has been lowered slightly and the vehicle turned 180 degrees in preparation for its upcoming union with Shenzhou 8.

Beijing sees the Tiangong and Shenzhou dockings as the next phase in its step-by-step approach to acquiring the skills of human spaceflight operations.

It is a learning curve China hopes will eventually lead to the construction of a space station, starting at the end of the decade.

At about 60 tonnes in mass, this future station would be considerably smaller than the 400-tonne international platform operated by the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan, but its mere presence in the sky would nonetheless represent a remarkable achievement. 

Tiangong-1 was launched in September

Concept drawings describe a core module weighing some 20-22 tonnes, flanked by two slightly smaller laboratory vessels.

Officials say it would be supplied by freighters in exactly the same way that robotic cargo ships keep the International Space Station (ISS) today stocked with fuel, food, water, air, and spare parts.

China is investing billions of dollars in its space programme. It has a strong space science effort under way, with two orbiting satellites having already been launched to the Moon and a third mission expected to put a rover on the lunar surface.

Next week should see its first Mars orbiter - Yinghuo-1 - begin its journey to the Red Planet.

The Asian country is also deploying its own satellite-navigation system known as BeiDou-Compass.

Bigger rockets are coming, too. The Long March 5 will be capable of putting more than 20 tonnes in a low-Earth orbit. This lifting muscle, again, will be necessary for the construction of a space station.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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$100 million bonus to Nabors boss for stepping aside

FeulFix, Tom Fowler, October 28, 2011

SEE ALSO:

• Nabors CEO Eugene Isenberg steps down; COO Anthony Petrello takes helm
• Tiller stepping down as Abound Solar CEO
• Asia’s Buffett Bonus For Energy, Mining
• Lundin boss joins fat cat ranks
• Former Chinese coal boss gets life in jail for graft

For most of us, taking on a job with less responsibilities might mean a pay cut. For Eugene Isenberg, the outgoing CEO of Nabors Industries, it means a bonus. A really big bonus.

 Eugene Isenberg, the outgoing
CEO of Nabors Industries

Isenberg will be given a $100 million cash payment as he drops the CEO title but remains chairman of the board.

As we noted earlier, the company said Chief Operating Officer Anthony Petrello will take the CEO post, a move that has long been expected because Petrello was considered the hand-picked successor to the 81-year-old Isenberg almost since the first day he was hired 20 years ago.

The drilling and oil field services company said in a filing with the SEC Friday night it will take a $100 million contingency liability in the fourth quarter related to the payment to Isenberg.

The filing makes reference to pay information on pages 29-31 of Nabors’ most recent proxy statement, where a table seems to indicate Isenberg also would realize another $10.1 million in stock options and $16 million in stock shares. Those values, however, are based on the difference between the company’s $23.46 closing stock price on December 31, 2010 and the exercise price of previously granted yet unvested options and shares.

Isenberg and Petrello have consistently ranked high on the Chronicle’s annual pay survey, with Isenberg taking the No. 1 spot three times since 2006.

But just to put the $100 million cash payment in perspective, that’s almost the same as the complete pay packages of the top 5 executives on the 2011 Chron 100 survey.

It’s also more than the $72 million in net income the company reported for the third quarter of this year.

Put as an hourly wage for a working stiff on a 9 to 5  job, that’s something like $48,000 per hour.

But as we noted back in 2007, Isenberg has been in line before for even larger payouts in the past for just leaving the company. Back then the company could have owed him up to $525 million just for walking away.

Apparently Isenberg doesn’t think $100 million is all that much. According to a transcript of a conference call this week with analysts, Isenberg discussed the impact of Nabors retiring 84 rigs and 60 trucks, plus another 13 rigs from Nabors International.

“The impact of all these is about $100 million of write-downs,” Isenberg said. “Which I suggest, again, we ignore.”

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