Top News Facebook's high tax rate likely to drop Fri, Feb 03 16:28 PM EST By Nanette Byrnes (Reuters) - Facebook, the social network giant on the verge of a huge initial public stock offering, pays an unusually high tax rate, but that is likely to change soon, analysts said. At 41 percent on an effective basis, Facebook's tax rate is well above rates paid by larger, more mature high-tech groups, and above the top U.S. corporate income tax rate of 35 percent. But the exercise by investors of millions of stock options after the IPO, along with the opportunity for Facebook to shift more earnings overseas like other tech firms, will pull down its tax rate almost immediately, experts said. "This is going to ... Continue reading →

Werner Kunz/Flickr Poor, urban and minority residents are most at risk for health problems linked to climate change, according to a new California Department of Public Health analysis of Los Angeles and Fresno counties. The department examined social and environmental factors ranging from the rising sea level to public transportation access and found that African Americans and Latinos living in these counties are more likely to be exposed to health and safety risks related to poor air quality, heat waves, flooding and wildfires stemming from climate change. “Clearly, climate change risks are not equal across the state or within individual counties,” according to the report [PDF]. “Identifying communities at greatest risk is a necessary step in efficiently employing limited resources to protect public health.” In ... Continue reading →

Wind Power: Plummeting natural gas prices now make this option comparatively expensive.Photo: Dan Forbes John Doerr was crying. The billionaire venture capitalist had come to the end of his now-famous March 8, 2007, TED talk on climate change and renewable energy, and his emotions were getting the better of him. Doerr had begun by describing how his teenage daughter told him that it was up to his generation to fix global warming, since they had caused it. After detailing how the public and private sectors had so far failed at this, Doerr, who made his fortune investing early in companies that became some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names—Netscape, Amazon.com, and Google, among others—exhorted the audience and his peers (largely one and the same) to band ... Continue reading →

Firing a legal salvo directly at the White House, a House committee voted along party lines Thursday to subpoena President Barack Obama’s inner circle for its deliberations over the administration’s failed $535 million investment in a California solar panel maker that was backed by a political fundraiser for the president.The subpoena, which has not yet been issued, would direct the chiefs of staff of the president and vice president to turn over internal correspondence on the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc.After securing its half-billion dollar taxpayer financing in 2009, the fledgling firm this year shut its doors, fired 1,100 workers and filed for bankruptcy.Its collapse gave a black eye to the Energy Department, which has issued billions of dollars in federal support ... Continue reading →

Top News Exclusive: Hacked companies still not telling investors Thu, Feb 02 10:13 AM EST By Joseph Menn SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - At least a half-dozen major U.S. companies whose computers have been infiltrated by cyber criminals or international spies have not admitted to the incidents despite new guidance from securities regulators urging such disclosures. Top U.S. cybersecurity officials believe corporate hacking is widespread, and the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a lengthy "guidance" document on October 13 outlining how and when publicly traded companies should report hacking incidents and cybersecurity risk. But with one full quarter having elapsed since the SEC request, some major companies that are known to have had significant digital security breaches have said nothing about the incidents in their regulatory ... Continue reading →

(Page 2 of 2) Documenting the delays, the Defense Department filed a report for the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 2010, showing that a dozen of the requests that were still open went back to the last century, and several other federal agencies show unresolved requests going back at least 10 years. The National Security Archive, a nonprofit group based in Washington that is a heavy user of the Freedom of Information Act, reported last July 4, on the 45th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the law, on some older cases that were still open. Those included a 1995 request for information on Pakistani surface-to-air missiles and a 1998 request to the George Bush Presidential Library for documents relating to the ... Continue reading →