The Obama administration promised a Hollywood filmmaker unprecedented access to the top-secret Navy unit that killed Osama bin Laden to help her make a feature film on the operation at the same time it was publicly ordering officials to stop talking about the raid.
The Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Michael Vickers, offered Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow interviews with a member of the SEAL team that helped plan last year’s assault on bin Laden’s compound, according to a transcript of a July 15 meeting that was released yesterday by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based legal organization.
The summary was among hundreds of pages of material on the Obama administration’s cooperation with Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal on their proposed movie that Judicial Watch obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents illustrate a conflict between the administration’s public calls for shielding classified information related to bin Laden’s death and its private effort to assist the filmmakers.
During the meeting with Bigelow, who directed the Academy Award-winning Iraq War movie “The Hurt Locker,” Vickers also divulged the name of the normally secret Navy commando unit known as SEAL Team Six.
“Well, the basic idea is they’ll make a guy available who was involved from the beginning as planner, a SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander,” said Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, according to the transcript.
‘Point of Contact’
Lieutenant Colonel James Gregory, a Vickers spokesman, said in an e-mail last night that Vickers was not referring to a SEAL Team Six member.
“The identity of a planner, not a member of SEAL Team 6, was provided by the U.S. Special Operations Command as a possible point of contact for additional information if the DoD determined that additional support was merited,” Gregory said. “No additional official DoD support was granted, nor to our knowledge was it pursued by the film makers,” he said. “This was a meeting to explore possibilities about supporting the film endeavor.”
Judicial Watch sued the Defense Department in January for release of the records and received the material on May 18, the group said in a news release yesterday. The organization is also pressing for the publication of post-mortem photos of bin Laden and video, which the U.S. government has refused to release citing national security concerns.
‘Talking Too Much’
The July meeting between Vickers, Bigelow and Boal, which was sanctioned by the White House, came two months after then- Defense Secretary Robert Gates and then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen urged military officials to stop talking about the raid on May 2, 2011.
“My concern is that there were too many people in too many places talking too much about this operation,” Gates said at a at a May 18 news conference. “And we had reached an agreement that we would not talk about operational details. That lasted about 15 hours,” he said.
At the July 15 meeting, Boal told Vickers he had already met that day with CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell and earlier with White House Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, according to the transcript.
‘Simply False’
Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s National Security Council, declined to comment on the documents and referred to the response given by White House press secretary Jay Carney on Aug. 10, when Republican Representative Peter King of New York called for an investigation into whether the filmmaker was given access to classified information.
“We do not discuss classified information,” Carney said at the time. “The most specific information we’ve given from this White House about the actual raid I read to you from this podium. So it’s simply false” that any special access was granted.
King’s request was prompted by an Aug. 7 New York Times column by Maureen Dowd that said: “The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history.”
The Pentagon routinely provides technical assistance and location access to filmmakers, including the science-fiction movie “Battleship” that was released last week. In exchange for such access, equipment and personnel, filmmakers must modify a script if requested by the Pentagon or military service.
‘Gutsy Decision’
A summary of a June meeting between Vickers and Boal, the writer and producer of “The Hurt Locker,” offers a glimpse of the Obama administration’s possible motives for assisting the filmmakers -- aside from preventing inaccuracies and disclosures of classified information.
Vickers said that based on the intelligence, there was a “60 to 80 percent certainty” that bin Laden was in the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and that ordering the raid “was a ‘gutsy decision by the POTUS,’” shorthand for President of the United States, according to the summary. Vickers also “recommended” that the filmmakers look at the raid from the Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon and White House vantage points.
“White House involvement was critical,” according to the summary of Vickers’ discussion.
Bigelow is out of the country filming and can’t be reached for comment, her publicist Susan Ciccone said yesterday.
SEAL Team Six
Pentagon and special operations officials have never publicly acknowledged the official designation of the Navy unit known informally as SEAL Team Six and formally as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru, based in Dam Neck, Virginia.
When 17 members of the unit were killed last Aug. 6 in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter crash, the fact that they were members of that unit was not disclosed though their names were released.
Vickers had no such reticence when meeting with the filmmakers, though.
“He can probably give you everything you would want or get” from the top U.S. Special Operations Command Commander or direct raid commander, Vickers said, referring respectively to then-Admiral Eric Olson and Admiral William McRaven.
According to the documents, McRaven, then head of the Joint Special Operations Command, and Olson would not speak with the filmmakers because military officials were concerned “that it’s just a bad example if it gets out -- even with all sorts of restrictions and everything.”
‘That’s Dynamite’
The SEAL Team Six planner whose name was blacked out in the transcript will “speak for operators and he’ll speak for senior military commanders” because they are all “the same tribe and everything,” Vickers said during the July meeting.
The commanders tell their troops never to talk about operations, and doing so now would jeopardize their leadership, Vickers told the filmmakers, according to the documents.
Still, filmmakers were ecstatic. “That’s dynamite by the way,” Boal told Vickers, according to the transcript. “That’s incredible,” Bigelow said.
Officials at the CIA also went to unusual lengths to cooperate with Bigelow and Boal. In a June 30 e-mail to a recipient whose name was redacted, then-CIA spokesman Marie Harf, who now works for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in Chicago, said:
“As a Agency, we’ve been pretty forward-leaning with Boal, and he’s agreed to share scripts and details about the movie with us so we’re absolutely comfortable with what he will be showing.”
‘A Bit Quiet’
“I know this is a little outside what we typically do as CIA officers,” she continued later, “but Boal seems committed to representing the Agency well in what is a multi-million dollar major motion picture.
‘‘(... we’re trying to keep his visits at HQs a bit quiet, because of the sensitivities surrounding who gets to participate in this types of things. I’m sure you understand ...)”
Preston Golson, a CIA spokesman, said in an e-mail yesterday that “on some occasions, when appropriate, we arrange visits to the Agency for unclassified meetings with some of our officers.”
The Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Michael Vickers, offered Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow interviews with a member of the SEAL team that helped plan last year’s assault on bin Laden’s compound, according to a transcript of a July 15 meeting that was released yesterday by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based legal organization.
The summary was among hundreds of pages of material on the Obama administration’s cooperation with Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal on their proposed movie that Judicial Watch obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents illustrate a conflict between the administration’s public calls for shielding classified information related to bin Laden’s death and its private effort to assist the filmmakers.
During the meeting with Bigelow, who directed the Academy Award-winning Iraq War movie “The Hurt Locker,” Vickers also divulged the name of the normally secret Navy commando unit known as SEAL Team Six.
“Well, the basic idea is they’ll make a guy available who was involved from the beginning as planner, a SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander,” said Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, according to the transcript.
‘Point of Contact’
Lieutenant Colonel James Gregory, a Vickers spokesman, said in an e-mail last night that Vickers was not referring to a SEAL Team Six member.
“The identity of a planner, not a member of SEAL Team 6, was provided by the U.S. Special Operations Command as a possible point of contact for additional information if the DoD determined that additional support was merited,” Gregory said. “No additional official DoD support was granted, nor to our knowledge was it pursued by the film makers,” he said. “This was a meeting to explore possibilities about supporting the film endeavor.”
Judicial Watch sued the Defense Department in January for release of the records and received the material on May 18, the group said in a news release yesterday. The organization is also pressing for the publication of post-mortem photos of bin Laden and video, which the U.S. government has refused to release citing national security concerns.
‘Talking Too Much’
The July meeting between Vickers, Bigelow and Boal, which was sanctioned by the White House, came two months after then- Defense Secretary Robert Gates and then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen urged military officials to stop talking about the raid on May 2, 2011.
“My concern is that there were too many people in too many places talking too much about this operation,” Gates said at a at a May 18 news conference. “And we had reached an agreement that we would not talk about operational details. That lasted about 15 hours,” he said.
At the July 15 meeting, Boal told Vickers he had already met that day with CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell and earlier with White House Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, according to the transcript.
‘Simply False’
Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s National Security Council, declined to comment on the documents and referred to the response given by White House press secretary Jay Carney on Aug. 10, when Republican Representative Peter King of New York called for an investigation into whether the filmmaker was given access to classified information.
“We do not discuss classified information,” Carney said at the time. “The most specific information we’ve given from this White House about the actual raid I read to you from this podium. So it’s simply false” that any special access was granted.
King’s request was prompted by an Aug. 7 New York Times column by Maureen Dowd that said: “The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history.”
The Pentagon routinely provides technical assistance and location access to filmmakers, including the science-fiction movie “Battleship” that was released last week. In exchange for such access, equipment and personnel, filmmakers must modify a script if requested by the Pentagon or military service.
‘Gutsy Decision’
A summary of a June meeting between Vickers and Boal, the writer and producer of “The Hurt Locker,” offers a glimpse of the Obama administration’s possible motives for assisting the filmmakers -- aside from preventing inaccuracies and disclosures of classified information.
Vickers said that based on the intelligence, there was a “60 to 80 percent certainty” that bin Laden was in the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and that ordering the raid “was a ‘gutsy decision by the POTUS,’” shorthand for President of the United States, according to the summary. Vickers also “recommended” that the filmmakers look at the raid from the Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon and White House vantage points.
“White House involvement was critical,” according to the summary of Vickers’ discussion.
Bigelow is out of the country filming and can’t be reached for comment, her publicist Susan Ciccone said yesterday.
SEAL Team Six
Pentagon and special operations officials have never publicly acknowledged the official designation of the Navy unit known informally as SEAL Team Six and formally as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru, based in Dam Neck, Virginia.
When 17 members of the unit were killed last Aug. 6 in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter crash, the fact that they were members of that unit was not disclosed though their names were released.
Vickers had no such reticence when meeting with the filmmakers, though.
“He can probably give you everything you would want or get” from the top U.S. Special Operations Command Commander or direct raid commander, Vickers said, referring respectively to then-Admiral Eric Olson and Admiral William McRaven.
According to the documents, McRaven, then head of the Joint Special Operations Command, and Olson would not speak with the filmmakers because military officials were concerned “that it’s just a bad example if it gets out -- even with all sorts of restrictions and everything.”
‘That’s Dynamite’
The SEAL Team Six planner whose name was blacked out in the transcript will “speak for operators and he’ll speak for senior military commanders” because they are all “the same tribe and everything,” Vickers said during the July meeting.
The commanders tell their troops never to talk about operations, and doing so now would jeopardize their leadership, Vickers told the filmmakers, according to the documents.
Still, filmmakers were ecstatic. “That’s dynamite by the way,” Boal told Vickers, according to the transcript. “That’s incredible,” Bigelow said.
Officials at the CIA also went to unusual lengths to cooperate with Bigelow and Boal. In a June 30 e-mail to a recipient whose name was redacted, then-CIA spokesman Marie Harf, who now works for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in Chicago, said:
“As a Agency, we’ve been pretty forward-leaning with Boal, and he’s agreed to share scripts and details about the movie with us so we’re absolutely comfortable with what he will be showing.”
‘A Bit Quiet’
“I know this is a little outside what we typically do as CIA officers,” she continued later, “but Boal seems committed to representing the Agency well in what is a multi-million dollar major motion picture.
‘‘(... we’re trying to keep his visits at HQs a bit quiet, because of the sensitivities surrounding who gets to participate in this types of things. I’m sure you understand ...)”
Preston Golson, a CIA spokesman, said in an e-mail yesterday that “on some occasions, when appropriate, we arrange visits to the Agency for unclassified meetings with some of our officers.”
 |
| Tradeshift.com |
That's because the invoicing application is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that the company, Tradeshift, is envisioning--one that leverages big data to reinvent how credit ratings are set for small- and medium-sized businesses.
Its most potentially disruptive idea is Instant Payments, a service which allows suppliers to get paid immediately once a customer accepts an invoice on the Tradeshift system, instead of having to wait the usual 30, 60, or 90 days.
The money still comes with an interest rate, but the size of that rate gets determined based on the buyer's credit rating, not the supplier's. Which is good news for small- and medium-sized suppliers, which often get hit with higher rates because they are perceived to be riskier bets.
Large companies, however, often have better credit ratings. And when you combine that with the fact that Tradeshift can see that a buyer has accepted an invoice (thereby declaring that they do intend to pay the bill), the risk for Tradeshift (and its financing partners) plummets.
Instant Payments is currently being beta tested in England and Denmark and is slated to be available in the U.S. in the fall. The long-term implications of the real-time visibility Tradeshift now has are powerful. "You cannot even begin to imagine what big data will do to finance," Lanng says. "As we get more data on transactions, that changes the whole credit picture."
Lanng and his cofounders, Mikkel Hippe Brun and Gert Sylvest, came up with the idea for the e-invoicing service while building a similar system system for the Danish government. The initial goal was simply to help businesses around the world become more productive. Invoices are still largely delivered in paper or PDF format, which means parties on the receiving end have to spend time retyping the details into their own systems. (The Danish government estimated that this costs 15 minutes of worker time per invoice.)
Since businesses of all sizes and shapes share the same challenge, Lanng, Brun, and Sylvest decided to tackle the problem on a global scale. Tradeshift launched in 2010, with Morten Lund, one of Skype's early investors, helping to arrange seed funding. (Lund is now chairman of Tradeshift's board.)
The company initially launched just in Scandinavia, Germany, and the U.K. But since companies frequently do business trans-nationally, the system rapidly swept across the globe.
Today 100,000 businesses in 190 countries use Tradeshift, including the U.K.'s National Health Service, the French government, and Kuehne+Nagel, one of the largest transportation and logistics companies in the world. About 2,000 new companies join every week, up from 1,000-1,500 a week six months ago.
With 20,000 companies on the system, the United States has the largest number of users (including Dell and Accenture). India and Malaysia are fast-growing countries, though, and CEO Lanng tells Fast Company India could soon overtake the U.S.
The company won't disclose the exact number of transactions processed, but Lanng says that Fortune 500s are sending "millions" of invoices through the system annually, and that the overall volume of transactions in the system has tripled since January.
The service is free to use. Tradeshift makes its money off its developer ecosystem. The company quickly saw that the main value they were creating wasn't solely in productivity. All of a sudden, its databases contained massive amounts of real-time data about economic activity that businesses would want to access and put to use beyond simply checking the status of invoices.
About 30 third-party apps have been built on top of Tradeshift so far (with 20 more on the way), Lanng says, including ones that create heat maps of your suppliers and customers and others that integrate with Google Docs and PayPal. In addition to public apps that anyone can use, individual companies can build proprietary apps to use just with their own supply chain.
"This is what happens when you take the Facebook model and apply it to business," Lanng says. "You get some very powerful business possibilities."
Privacy is not an issue, Lanng says, because the apps don't give users access to all the data in the system, only to data relating to their own businesses. "A lot of this data is data they share with their business partners anyway," he explains. But instead of delivering it manually and partners having to re-key it into their own systems, they can now access it in real-time through the centralized system.
Tradeshift takes a percentage of the fees charged by paid public apps (30%, on average) and negotiates independent deals with companies that build proprietary apps.
If the developer ecosystem expands, the Tradeshift model could one day steal market share from business software stalwarts like Intuit's QuickBooks, as small and medium-sized businesses choose to work on Tradeshift and use its app ecosystem because of the convenience of connecting real-time with their business partners elsewhere.
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Nifty Trading Tips & Outlook Today:
Yesterday, we recommended a Sell on Rise strategy on Nifty and Nifty retreated after morning bounce( From 4940 to 4860 ). While most of the analysts were expecting a bounce on Nifty to above 5000 levels. Today we expect a quiet session with a mild positivity on Nifty, Small buy positions at lower levels ( around 4820-4830 Spot ) might help. The main reason for weakness is Government policies and Rupee weakness. Some were expecting that UPA II government might fall soon and early Lok Sabha polls eyed.
Check out our previous Recommendation Here
The much awaited IPO of Facebook Inc, created a lot of hype on a Wall Street and might get a premium valuation than its actual valuation. Stock has started a loosing streak since day one of its trading session. After opening above $42 on the first day, it has started a steep sell off and continued to be down on the third trading session and loose more than 15 % of its value. How long will the loosing streak be extended, nobody knows, but the valuation was certainly high that is for sure. We have recommended a Sell rating on Facebook before the IPO when it was just priced $28, due to lack of convincing fundamentals of the company.
Company had offered more shares than previously announced and also revised offering price too. At this levels, we recommended a Sell on Facebook. Its a one of the notable flop listing on Nasdaq. It may not be good for investment purpose as well.
Company had offered more shares than previously announced and also revised offering price too. At this levels, we recommended a Sell on Facebook. Its a one of the notable flop listing on Nasdaq. It may not be good for investment purpose as well.
Airbnb Now Comps Hosts Up To $1 Million For Those Pesky Partiers
Airbnb just announced it's upping its host guarantee system from $50,000 to $1 million. The home-tel business, a cornerstone of the new Sharing Economy, has partnered with prestigious insurance firm Lloyd's of London to offer hosts increased protection against potential property damages caused by guests. It's a cushy upgrade from Airbnb's original $50,000 host guarantee, which the company installed in response to last year's PR fiasco, in which a San Francisco host reported her guests had vandalized her home. But don't get too excited: You can't just cash in on a few rogue Solo cups. Claimants are subject to an online documentation process and potential inspection.
American Express Tries New Incentive Scheme: Farmville In-Game Rewards
American Express is already experimenting with its next-gen mobile payment system Serve, testing the waters for the future of how we'll buy things. Now it's taken an interesting step that taps into current social gaming mores: It's launched a rewards scheme that doesn't give users of its pre-paid Serve cards airmiles or discounts in stores...instead it offers virtual rewards that can be spent in Zynga's wildly popular game Farmville. The Zynga Serve Rewards system will soon also plug into other Zynga games, and crucially it'll also operate the other way around...with Zynga planning on letting the games act as marketing tools themselves as brands will be able to pop offers into games that lead to benefits that can be redeemed using Serve-powered credit cards.
Google Closes Its $13 Billion Purchase Of Motorola Mobility
Following final approval by Chinese authorities over the weekend, and subsequent SEC filings by Motorola, Google has just finalized its largest ever purchase with a nearly $13 billion payout to buy Motorola Mobility. The deal has been on the cards for many months, and has spurred many discussions about the future of Android handsets. The Chinese officials even insisted that Google maintain Android as an open-source and free OS as part of their conditions, demonstrating the unease the deal has caused. Motorola has been rumored to prep significant staff layoffs which are likely an inevitable consequence of overlap with Google facilities.
New UberConference App Brings Social Smarts And A Graphical UI To Conference Calling.
Conference calling is often a hit-and-miss affair, no matter what system one uses--and there's inevitable juggling with PIN numbers and awkward moments when you don't understand who's logged into the call. Which is why UberConference wants to change this 1990s-feel tech into a 21st Century experience, with its web-based system that has a powerful graphical UI to reveal who's logged in, and comes with the ability to scan callers' social media info, mute selected callers and even apply "ear muffs" to block some participants from private side-chats. Bringing a bit of an iOS-like feel to phone conference calls? That sounds like an innovation we've been waiting for, even as players like Skype and Apple themselves try to improve video conferencing.
A 4-Inch iPhone Looks More And More Likely
According to sources speaking to 9to5Mac.com, Apple is indeed deeply involved in the testing process of a next-gen iPhone with a larger screen. Multiple devices are under test, and "at least one" of them sports a screen that's said to be 3.9 inches across its diagonal with 1136 by 640-pixels resolution. That's a big change from the iPhone's long-maintained 3.5-inch screen size, and 960 by 640 resolution. The information suggests that Apple is going to maintain, pretty closely, the high "retina" density of its display and still increase its size. It also implies a screen ratio change, more closely approaching TV-widescreen shape versus the traditional 4:3 aspect Apple's kept for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad until now.
It's also thought that Apple is testing variations of its upcoming iOS6 software for the device that makes the most of the increased screen real estate by adding another row of homescreen icons and also enabling more content to be seen in apps UI's.
Yesterday GigaOM spoke to several iOS developers and found that on the whole the notion of a larger iPhone screen wasn't a problem for them. There was also a high degree of confidence that Apple would assist in any screen size change by providing migration tools--to avoid an Android-like screen fragmentation issue.
With the rumor that the screen will be the same width, there's likely to be even less of an issue: Existing apps will run as they stand, with just 88 unused pixels at the top and bottom of the new screen--not something even iPhone users will particularly care about because that amounts to fractions of an inch.
Meanwhile 9to5Mac's contact, who seems familiar with the actual hardware under test internally at Apple, notes the phone also sports a smaller docking port.
Hulu Adding 10 New Original Shows This Summer
Hulu is making good on its promise of more original TV content of its own, and has revealed it'll be screening 10 new original shows on both its free and paid streaming TV service over the summer. Everything from comedy to sci fi and "even a little magic" is en route, with Kevin Smith's movie review show Spoilers as perhaps the early gem in the mix. Hulu has also just updated its iOS apps to make the most of the iPad 3's retina-scale display and various other tweaks that improve its performance including, crucially, a new video engine.
McDonalds Tries Out Contactless Pay In Austria, Via The Cloud
The Kernel says McDonald's is beginning a trial of wave-and-pay systems in Austria that skirts many of the existing efforts. Instead of using a bank-based NFC payment card or a credit card-based one like MasterCard's or Visa's, it uses cloud-based verification of a customer's ID through a system called Paybox, run by local telecom firm Telekom. Users sign up to Paybox separately feeding in detalis of their credit cards, and then simply download an app that connects over NFC to McDonald's cash registers--it's more secure as there's no payment data stored on the phone. The idea is similar to Apple's EasyPay system that uses iTunes as a back-end user verification route, and develops on McDonald's earlier experiments in Portugal's drive-thru restaurants with that country's ViaVerde automated motorway toll payment system.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Successfully Launches Toward ISS
At 3:44 a.m Eastern time private space company SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket, carrying its Dragon space capsule system toward the International Space Station--the upper stages are even now whirling above your head in a sequence of orbits that'll see a rendezvous with the station in a couple of days. The capsule is carrying non-essential supplies for the astronauts and also a mystery "joke" cargo, continuing a tradition started with earlier tests of the rocket. If all goes well, Dargon is destined to be the first commercial ship to dock with the ISS as part of the COTS tests, part of the government's new push for private space vehicles. An earlier launch attempt on Saturday was aborted due to an engine fault at the moment of liftoff, and SpaceX's engineers have demonstrated admirable speed in diagnosing a stuck valve and fixing it in time for today.
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An unmanned rocket owned by privately held Space Exploration Technologies blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday for a mission designed to be the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.
If this unmanned flight and others like it succeed, commercial The 178-foot (54-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:44 a.m. (7:44 GMT) from a refurbished launch pad just south of where NASA launched its now-retired space shuttles.
Less than 10 minutes later, the rocket delivered its cargo — a Dragon capsule with 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of supplies for the station crew — into orbit.
"Feels like a giant weight just came off my back," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter after Dragon deployed its solar panels, the first of several key milestones that must be met before the spacecraft is cleared to dock at the station. "Falcon flew perfectly!!" Musk wrote.
NASA is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over the task of flying cargo — and eventually astronauts — to the $100 billion space station, which orbits about 240 miles (390 km) above Earth.
Currently, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than $60 million per person. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly cargo to the station.
If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.
SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences, already hold contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the station. SpaceX also is among four firms vying to build space taxis to fly astronauts, tourists and non-NASA researchers.
Separately, NASA contributed nearly $400 million to SpaceX's $1.2 billion commercial space program, which includes development and up to three test flights of Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules.
An analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that a similar program under traditional NASA procurement would have cost four to 10 times as much, said NASA's Alan Lindenmoyer, who manages the agency's commercial spaceflight initiatives.
Tuesday's launch followed a last-second cutoff of Falcon's planned liftoff on Saturday. Engineers later traced the problem to climbing pressure in an engine chamber due to a faulty purge valve.
"It looks like we probably could have flown with the condition," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during pre-launch mission commentary broadcast on NASA Television. "Once we separated from the ground, things would have settled down a bit, but it was still the right thing to do."
Dragon will take about a day to reach the space station's orbit. It will then spend another day practicing maneuvers and testing its communications systems and navigation aids.
If all goes as planned, NASA is expected to clear Dragon for berthing at the space station on Friday.
If this unmanned flight and others like it succeed, commercial The 178-foot (54-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:44 a.m. (7:44 GMT) from a refurbished launch pad just south of where NASA launched its now-retired space shuttles.
Less than 10 minutes later, the rocket delivered its cargo — a Dragon capsule with 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of supplies for the station crew — into orbit.
"Feels like a giant weight just came off my back," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter after Dragon deployed its solar panels, the first of several key milestones that must be met before the spacecraft is cleared to dock at the station. "Falcon flew perfectly!!" Musk wrote.
NASA is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over the task of flying cargo — and eventually astronauts — to the $100 billion space station, which orbits about 240 miles (390 km) above Earth.
Currently, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than $60 million per person. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly cargo to the station.
If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.
SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences, already hold contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the station. SpaceX also is among four firms vying to build space taxis to fly astronauts, tourists and non-NASA researchers.
Separately, NASA contributed nearly $400 million to SpaceX's $1.2 billion commercial space program, which includes development and up to three test flights of Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules.
An analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that a similar program under traditional NASA procurement would have cost four to 10 times as much, said NASA's Alan Lindenmoyer, who manages the agency's commercial spaceflight initiatives.
Tuesday's launch followed a last-second cutoff of Falcon's planned liftoff on Saturday. Engineers later traced the problem to climbing pressure in an engine chamber due to a faulty purge valve.
"It looks like we probably could have flown with the condition," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during pre-launch mission commentary broadcast on NASA Television. "Once we separated from the ground, things would have settled down a bit, but it was still the right thing to do."
Dragon will take about a day to reach the space station's orbit. It will then spend another day practicing maneuvers and testing its communications systems and navigation aids.
If all goes as planned, NASA is expected to clear Dragon for berthing at the space station on Friday.
Of course, the app doesn't work like Google Goggles. Hirsch says, "It's not like you can point this at someone on the street and make it work." Since the app uses your Facebook profile to scan people, it will only be able to identify people you have as friends on Facebook. For those who still have friends who are not on Facebook, the app comes with a learn mode with which it can learn the faces of those friends that you do not have on Facebook. Finally, as any good photo app should do, KLiK also contains Instagram like filters and photos can be shared via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.
The big issue that comes up with the way the app works is privacy. Hirsch, however says, "This system has been engineered from the get-go to preserve privacy and also deliver a social fun value and nothing creepy," in response to the privacy concerns that come up. Another service that Face.com has previously released is Photo Finder, which scans your friends' Facebook photos and finds pictures of you that you were never tagged in. The company also has technology for facial recognition, which does not come with privacy concerns, because while it can reveal gender, age and mood, it cannot reveal identity. KLiK is currently available from the iOS App Store for free. It can run on iPhones, iPod Touch and iPads running iOS 4.3 and later.
As promised, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is out with the white paper on black money, which attempts to give an elaborate backgrounder on the generation of black money in India and abroad.Black money, according to the white paper released today, can be generated mainly under two heads: generating it by manipulation of accounts and generating it in some vulnerable sections of the economy.
Under each of these heads, the paper lists 11 different ways to generate cash. Here are 22 ways to generate black money:
Manipulation of accounts
1. Out of book transactions: Not entering transactions that might result in taxation into the book of accounts. The taxpayer either maintains no book of record or reports partial transactions only.
2. Parallel book of accounts: Adopted by those who are obliged under law to maintain books of account. The taxpayer maintains one book for their own use which records all transactions while another is submitted to concerned authorities reporting part of the transactions.
3. Manipulation of books of account: When tax payers have to maintain books under different acts like Companies Act, Income Tax Act etc, it is difficult to maintain multiple parallel books. In that case they just manipulate the books of account.
4. Manipulation of sales/receipts: A taxpayer is required to pay taxes on profit or income which is the difference between sale proceeds or receipts and expenditure. Thus manipulation of sales or receipts is the easiest method of tax evasion. They might also divert sales to dummy or associated entities.
5. Under reporting production: Manipulation of production figure may be resorted to for the purpose of evading central excise, sales tax, or income tax.
6. Manipulation of expenses: Since the income on which taxes are payable is arrived at after deducting the expenses of the business from the receipts, manipulation of expenses is a commonly adopted method of tax evasion. This means under reporting of income.
7. Other manipulations: Besides inflation of purchase or raw material cost, expenses like labour charges, entertainment expenses, and commission can be inflated or falsely booked to reduce profits, generally done through showing wrong bills.
8. Manipulation by Way of International Transactions through Associate Enterprises: Manipulation of profits and taxes payable thereon may involve using associated enterprises in low tax jurisdictions through which goods or other material may be passed on. This may lead to accumulation of black money earned from within India to another country which are typically tax havens.
9. Manipulation of capital: The capital of the taxpayer reported in the balance sheet is the accumulated wealth which is invested in the form of assets or as working capital of the business. Manipulation of capital can be one of
the ways of laundering and introduction of black money in books of accounts.
10. Manipulation of closing stock: Suppression of closing stock both in terms of quality and value is one of the most common methods of understating profit. This might include undervaluation of inventory, which means that while the expenses are being accounted for in the books, the value being added is not accounted for, thereby artificially reducing the profits.
11. Manipulation of capital expenses: Over-invoicing plant and equipment or any capital asset is an approach adopted to claim higher depreciation and thereby reduce the profit of the business.
Black money in vulnerable sections of the economy
12. Land and real estate transaction: The taxes applicable on real estate transactions in form of stamp duty and capital gains tax can be avoided by under-reporting of transaction price.
13. Bullion and Jewellery Transactions: Cash sales in the gold and jewellery trade allows the buyer to convert black money into gold and bullion, while the trader can keep his unaccounted wealth in the form of stock, not disclosed in the books or valued at less than market price.
14. Financial market transaction: Financial markets can generate black money, especially in IPOs by rigging of the markets.
15. Public procurement: The total public procurement figure for India has grown phenomenally and is currently estimates at around Rs 10-11 lakh crore per year giving ample opportunity for creation of black money.
16. Non profit sector: Taxation laws allow certain privileges and incentives for promoting charitable activities. These can be misused through entities claimed to be constituted for nonprofit motive and are among possible sources of generation of black money.
17. Informal Sector and Cash Economy:Dependence on agriculture, existence of a large informal sector, and insufficient banking infrastructure with large un-banked and under-banked areas have meant huge cash transactions in the economy making it vulnerable to more black money.
18. External trade and Transfer Pricing: More than 60 per cent of global trade is carried out between associated enterprises of multinational enterprises who function across geographies. They might manipulate to take use of different taxation regimes they work across giving rise to more black money.
19. Trade-based Money Laundering: This is the process of disguising the proceeds of crime and moving value through the use of trade transactions in an attempt at legitimising their illicit origins.
20. Tax Havens: These are typically characterised by no or very low taxes, lack of effective exchange of information, and lack of transparency about substantial activities. Though they have agreed to share more information over time, they can be used to generate more black money.
21. Off shore financial centres (OFC): Some of the old tax havens have adopted the more benign designation of OFC and tend to describe themselves as financial centres specializing in non-residential financial transactions. They generally can also generate black money with their array of secrecy provisions that lack regulation.
22. Investment through Innovative Derivative Instruments: With increasing sophistication of derivative instruments, new opportunities for investing and making profits without being subjected to taxes and regulations are also opening up, which might also lead to black money.
