The Financial Times enumerates Gazprom's problems: are its ambitions to increase production any more than pipe dreams?  Competition for energy reserves in the Arctic Circle could prompt friction between Russia and NATO, a new commander at the alliance has warned.  Bloomberg reports that the holder of the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, Turkmenistan, is ready to export natural gas to European collaborators if they build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea to transport the fuel.  According to Oil and Gas Eurasia, Russia needs a total of $310 billion to fully carry out its program for the analysis and exploration of its continental shelf, a deputy natural resources minister has announced.  Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko has said that Russia has been invited as an observer to the December meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.  Finnish environmental ...

The dollar pushes back! FOMC plays battleship? Norges Bank meets this week…Precious metals give back too…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! Here we go… Starting a new week all over again… I have a blank page to start each day, and then 2 hours later… The Fabulous Pfennig! A work of art, I must say! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Well… Recall on Friday, I said that the non-dollar currencies would probably just follow whatever the stocks did, since the data cupboard was empty? Well, the non-dollar currencies didn’t even follow that theme, as stocks pretty much wallowed around in the mud all day… The dollar began to push back at the gains the other currencies had made during

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DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

Wednesday August 26, 2009

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Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited (Nasdaq: SNDA), a leading interactive entertainment media company in China, will announce its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2009 on Thursday, September 3, 2009 after the close of the U.S. market, which is Friday, September 4, 2009 Beijing/Hong Kong time.

EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. (NASDAQ: EXFO) announced today the integration of powerful multiservice testing capabilities across its portfolio of transport and datacom modules, enabling comprehensive and simultaneous per-service measurements for more efficient QoS assessment and SLA validation.

The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has presented a Commander’s National Award to Lockheed

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This story of the disappearing "lumber" freighter just keeps getting stranger and stranger, as this excerpt from the Moscow Times shows.  At least we know that it wasn't a completely inside job - even though Russian officials are still acting awful cagey, NATO did assist them in tracking the ship down?  So one would assume that if the government were playing a role in a supposed arms trafficking transaction, which seems like the most plausible explanation, they probably wouldn't have to ask for help.

Yet the official version of what transpired is fraught with inconsistencies, prompting observers to suggest that Russian authorities are trying to cover up a smuggling or trafficking operation.

When Swedish police first said the ship had been hijacked near the island of Gotland on July 24, they cited the crew as saying masked men had bound and beat them before fleeing in

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TODAY: Shock reverberates around Chechyna NGO worker murder; Kadryov reacts with attack on Estemirova.  NATO-Russia relations warming up; new kind of space race? Medvedev pulls no punches on Ukraine leadership. 'Merchant of Death' won't be extradited. Art attack. 'We thought that after Natalya's [Estermirova]death there would at least be a lull', says the deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Russia on the murder of Save the Generation director Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband.  The organization's former director was also murdered in 2005, the Washington Post reports.  'Is a death squad roaming Grozny under official sanction or are these horrible but unrelated killings?' asks the Times.  'Why aren't Western governments doing more to ...

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

Tuesday August 11, 2009

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The Orchard (NASDAQ: ORCD) announced that it has entered into an exclusive, multi-tiered marketing and licensing partnership with China’s leading next generation mobile infrastructure and services provider, ZTEMT. Utilizing The Orchard’s top one hundred thousand songs, ZTEMT and The Orchard will power and program the English language genre sections of China Telecom’s new version of the service, iMusic. With this deal, The Orchard becomes the first international digital music distributor to introduce such a large selection of western music to China’s massive 388 million internet and mobile internet users.

Today, Occam Networks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: OCNW), announced that Stayton Cooperative Telephone has purchased Occam’s BLC 6000 FTTH

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TODAY: New NATO chief asserts Russia needs to acknowledge sovereignty; nuclear chief fired; Uzbekistan wary of Kremlin's Kyrgyzstan plans.  Moscow-appointed judge in Yukos case to step down. Anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's death. The new head of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has said that the alliance will attempt to pursue a 'strategic partnership' with Russia, whilst 'insisting on Russian compliance with her international obligations including respect of the sovereignty and integrity of her neighbors'.  The Commander of the strategic nuclear missile forces, Nikolai Solovtsov, has been fired after the repeated failures of the Baluva missile.  He will be replaced by General Andrei Shvaichenko.  Russia has renewed its backing for UN sanctions against North Korea, initiated to deter it ...

I regret to pull such a long excerpt, but Tom Parfitt's column at the Guardian is very interesting today, and contains a number of personal observations you won't find in any of the wire reports on the recent tragic events in the Caucasus:

It is some time since strategists in the Kremlin have been pulling out their hair, wondering how they created the monster which is Kadyrov. Installed as a fixer who could stamp out the rebels and rebuild Grozny, he has largely done both things while turning the republic into his own personal fiefdom. Chechnya, traditionally an egalitarian society in which no individual is considered above his peers, is now full of risible billboards of Kadyrov clutching smiling children like some modern day

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A country that still hasn't come back home from the war

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

"...The wizard in the light-blue helicopter has already arrived, the helicopter turned out to be military." - Viktor Shenderovich. * * *

Once upon a time on a combat ship, where I had come on assignment from my editorial board, the commander, who was angry over something or other, said to me:  "Journalist, why have you come? I am not obligated to talk with you. There's not one word about journalists in this ship's Charter."  Naturally, I replied to him that he was mistaken, as I had come under orders from his superiors.

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