We have received countless leaked Shell internal emails over the years. On 21 December 2007, Reuters published a news story with the headline: “Shell to cut thousands of IT jobs”. It went on to say that an internal Shell email had been supplied to the “Shell protest website RoyalDutchShellPlc.com”. Most UK and International newspapers, including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal picked up the Shell IT outsourcing story.

A native of Michigan, Roger has had an interest in precious metals and futures since the commodity rallies of the late 1970s and early 1980s. His background in a 25-year real estate development and construction career specialized in forward planning, consulting, and using creative skills for conceptual project thinking. His present work is focused on the precious metals, currency, energy and interest rate markets for trading on the primary American exchanges. Experience in land, development and base material projects has evolved into consulting for mining companies and analyzing those markets. He has developed longer-term ideas for finance and mining marketing doing work on behalf of private and public mining companies. Roger’s consulting work is to focus on concepts and “big picture” forward planning for mining companies. His newsletters utilize the global news, and his personal research and knowledge for expressing personal trading ideas.

The future bioeconomy will rely on "extreme genetic engineering," a suite of technologies currently in early stages of development. It includes cheap and fast gene sequencing, made-to-order biological parts, genome engineering and design, and nano-scale materials fabrication and operating systems. The common denominator is that all these technologies — biotech, nanotech, synthetic biology — involve engineering of living organisms at the nano-scale. This technological convergence is also driving a convergence of corporate power. New bioengineering technologies attract billions of dollars in corporate funding from energy, chemical, and agribusiness giants, including DuPont, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Cargill.

In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number of intelligence services. Reality is becoming ever harder to disentangle.

It was Jimmy Carter, the most decent president Americans never knew they had and a central figure in the first part of The American Future: A History, four compelling, documentaries authored by historian Simon Schama that delve into the country's past for pointers to its future.

As of Friday, Oct. 10, several of the major refineries in Western Canada were shut down because of scheduled routine maintenance, but unexpected production problems have amplified the fuel shortage there.

The $35 billion plan would replace the current radar system with the kind of GPS technology that has become commonplace in cars and cell phones. Supporters say it would triple air traffic capacity, reduce delays by at least half, improve safety and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Oil prices have touched 13-month lows in a flight from risk and signs of slumping energy demand. The price fall has caused some members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to call for a production cut.

Talks between Chrysler's majority owner, Cerberus Capital Management LP, and GM began several weeks ago and were initiated by the private equity fund, according to the people familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

SkyFuel officially launched its low cost trough-shaped solar concentrators, dubbed SkyTrough, at an event in Colorado today. Parabolic troughs are an older solar technology, and while most are made out of glass, SkyFuel’s are made from the company’s own ReflecTech film material — sort of like mylar but sturdier — which it says can deliver the “world’s highest performance, lowest cost utility-scale solar power system.” The trough system, which we wrote about earlier this month, concentrates sun light onto a liquid-filled tube, which heats up and powers a steam turbine to produce electricity.

But that would depend on governments helping poor countries -- who are key to saving the planet's ecology -- tackle their problems, instead of spending most available money on rescuing the financial world, Yvo de Boer told reporters.

Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari called for "fundamental decisions" but did not spell out whether he believed OPEC should cut output at an emergency meeting scheduled for next month in Vienna, suggesting it would depend on the market situation.

"Right now, European refiners are enjoying strong margins, especially simple refiners, because fuel oil is strong and refinery maintenance shutdowns are supporting distillates as well," Olivier Jakob with Petromatrix said.

On Friday, the Paris-based International Energy Agency slashed its global oil demand forecasts for 2008 by 240,000 barrels per day, to 86.5 million barrels, and said demand would weaken in 2009 by a further 440,000 barrels per day, to 87.2 million barrels. (See " Commodities Get Crushed.") The agency said that tight credit conditions were also starting to cut into supply by slowing the investments of oil producers. The cuts come on top of ones the IEA made last month, which leave the forecast for global oil demand growth at 0.5% this year and 0.8% next year.

How far can it fall? People have been anxiously wondering as they watch the plunging stock market. But increasingly the same question is being asked about another crucial figure: the price of oil. It has plummeted nearly 40% in just three months, from about $147 a barrel in July to below $83 on Friday, with no obvious bottom in sight. If that sounds good, you are probably a driver who winces these days at filling your gas tank. But the downward spiral could mean trouble for oil-rich countries and for the environment.