The annual charts have bee updated. CLICK HERE to view. The 360 day comparative price, line and histogram charts, page has been updated also. CLICK HERE to view.
Alexander and Baldwin (ALEX) 12-12-09
Monsanto (MON) 12-12-09
Syngenta (SYT) 12-12-09
DUPONT E I DE NEM (DD) 12-12-09
Active Property Management, Lease Extension Result in Advantageous Sale of Palm Desert Property
- Press Release
- Source: A&B Properties, Inc.
- On 8:00 am EST, Friday December 11, 2009
HONOLULU–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A&B Properties, Inc., the real estate subsidiary of Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. (NYSE:ALEX – News) (“A&B”), announced today that it has completed the sale of the Village at Indian Wells (“the Village”), a 104,600 square-foot retail and shopping center in the City of Indian Wells, California.
“A&B continues to make advantageous dispositions within its commercial property portfolio, as demonstrated by the sale of the Village at Indian Wells,” said Norbert M. Buelsing, president of A&B Properties. “Favorable pricing was achieved for the resort community shopping center, a reflection of a recent lease extension with an anchor tenant and active property management throughout our 11-year ownership of the Village.”
‘Agricultural disaster’ aid available for Maui County
By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer
POSTED: December 11, 2009
WAILUKU – For the second straight year, Maui County farmers and ranchers could receive federal aid after the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared the county an "agricultural disaster zone" Thursday.
U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka announced the disaster zone, which also includes Hawaii County and Kalaupapa on Molokai. The drought is headed toward a fourth year, although rainfall has increased this fall and winter.
The Agriculture Department’s Weekly Crop Report for Hawaii noted that the state’s crops overall were in fair to good condition with pasture fields slowly improving and orchards doing fine. But Molokai remains under a mandatory 20 percent water reduction for all water consumers, except those on homesteads. The county also still asks residents in Central and South Maui to conserve water consumption voluntarily by 10 percent.
Guam – Department of Agriculture Wildlife Biologist Diane Vice confirms that customs officials discovered a Coqui Frog inside a live plant shipment that came in from Hawaii yesterday. This is the fourth Coqui Frog spotted on Guam.
The frog is of particular concern to biologists like Vice because she says it can rapidly reproduce and that they are notoriously loud. The coqui frog is a proving to be an expensive problem in the state of Hawaii where there are efforts underway to try to curtail their growth, which have cost Hawaii millions of dollars.
Said Vice, "It’s really important we don’t get the coqui frog on Guam because they really make loud noises, which can affect our every day life, our sleep as well as economically it has been very detrimental in Hawaii."
Coqui frog discovered in Hawaii plant shipment – KUAM.com-KUAM News: On Air. Online. On Demand.
By Justin Nobel
YAP, Federated States of Micronesia (Alertnet) – Giant tides inundated the remote atolls of Micronesia last December, scouring beaches, damaging homes and inundating banana and taro crops. The President of the Federated States of Micronesia, Emanuel Mori, declared a nationwide state of emergency and relief rice was shipped in.
But on several atolls in Yap, one of Micronesia’s four states, taro planted in elevated concrete pits survived.
"This is a way to save the people here," said Stephen Mara, an agriculture teacher at a high school in Yap.
Devastating tides, called "king tides," are one way sea level rise will manifest itself across the western Pacific in the coming decades, said Charles Fletcher, a University of Hawaii coastal geologist and co-author of a recent report on food security and climate risks in Micronesia.
Long before Pacific islands drown, as politicians and the media often predict, the islands may become uninhabitable from a lack of food. Fletcher, in particular, doesn’t think life on the atolls can last without constant humanitarian aid. But concrete may provide a respite, at least temporarily.
Rentech (AMEX:RTK) and partner Clearfuels Technology will get $23 million in grants to add a gasifier to existing facilities. This will help in the process of turning woody biomass into diesel and jet fuel. Other partners in the Aiea, Hawaii plant include construction company URS Corporation (NYSE:URS) and utility Hawaiian Electric (NYSE:HE).
The United States recently moved one step closer to energy independence this past Friday as the Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, announced the first wave of grant money towards biofuel. While the corn ethanol dream in America is pretty much over, as many of the main producers have filed for bankruptcy or had their assets folded into more traditional oil companies (such as VeraSun into refiner Valero (NYSE:VLO)), biofuel from non-feed stocks or from waste are another matter.
Western lawmakers oppose CWRA
Dec 10, 2009 11:07 AM
In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., members of the House and Senate Western Caucuses cited concerns over job loss and regulatory overreach in expressing their strong objections to the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) (S. 787).
The letter, signed by 11 Western senators and 17 Western House members, stated, “In the West … where the frontier spirit of smaller government and individual liberty are still sacred traditions, there is overwhelming objection to this bill. We strongly object to any attempt to move this legislation, either as a stand alone bill or as an attachment to a bill, in the Senate or House of Representatives. More specifically, we cannot imagine any bill so important that we could support it with the Clean Water Restoration Act attached.”
The CWRA seeks to expand the jurisdictional sweep of the Clean Water Act, introduced in 1972, by granting the federal government authority over all U.S. waterways. Most notably, S. 787 removes the requirement that regulated waterways be “navigable,” as originally stated in the Clean Water Act. The deletion of the word “navigable” will allow all inland waters to be subject to federal regulation.
The letter further stated, “this legislation would grant the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, virtually unlimited regulatory control over all wet areas within a state. This bill attempts to trump state’s rights and pre-empts state and local governments from making local land and water use decisions. This bill will also build an even more expensive, cumbersome bureaucracy which will increase delays in securing permits and will slow or stop vital economic activities all across the country. Commercial and residential real estate development, agriculture, electric transmission, transportation and mining will all be effected. Thousands of jobs will be lost.”
Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros recently spoke up on climate change financing.
According the The Wall Street Journal, billionaire hedge fund manager and political activist George Soros is pushing for a $100 billion "Green" fund to be financed by special drawing rights (SDRs). Created by the IMF in 1969, SDRs are what The New York Times called a "virtual currency." They are the based on a basket of four key international currencies, and are normally used as a source of liquidity. Soros suggested the funds could be put to work planting new forests, expanding farming methods, and helping with adaption and energy programs in poor countries.
Back in October, Soros announced plans to invest $1 billion of his own capital in clean energy. He told Bloomberg that the investments "should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem."
As of the most recent regulatory filings Soros’ top-15 U.S.-listed equity holdings included just one alternative energy play, waste to energy firm Covanta (NYSE: CVA – News). However his sizable stakes in fertilizer plays Potash (NYSE: POT – News) and Monsanto (NYSE: MON – News) could see an uptick if billions were invested in the agricultural segment of developing nations.
Progress and health care
This morning driving to work I listened to a story on NPR Morning Edition. It described the effort to build Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine – a mechanical predecessor to today’s computer. Babbage died before he could ever complete his machine but modern engineers have recreated it.
The analogy with health care struck me. Congress is building a Babbage machine in an era of super computers.
And we dare to call it progress?