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VYGO post of interest:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=42590639&txt2find=vygo
Lots of new info on munsta's URST and AAA.V/ALLRF over on their respective boards...
URST>>>
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=7900
AAA.V>>>>
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=15409
ALLRF>>>
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=16085
MONEY FLOW PENNIES
RTGV will be in play again beginning of November.
NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwire) -- 09/30/09 -- RTGV (OTCBB: RTGV): The officers of RTGV and NMTV have announced that it has to defer the closing of the share exchange between RTGV and ANHL, NMTV et al, for a period not expected to be longer than six weeks in order for NMTV to complete the acquisition of BMC and to integrate all of the reporting required into the Super 8-K which has to be produced 4 days after the share exchange is completed. As announced on August 3, 2009, RTGV has met all of its Conditions of Closing, but because of the imminent acquisition of BMC, announced on September 24, 2009, NMTV is unable to meet its Conditions...........
Voyager Petroleum Commences Business Development Into Commodity-Based Brokerage Business
HINSDALE, Ill., Oct 1, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- In an effort to capitalize on establishing itself as an innovator and early adopter of manufacturing and distributing eco-friendly petroleum-based products, Voyager Petroleum, Inc. (Pink Sheets:VYGO) (Frankfurt:DXD) has launched a focus on procurement of various supply stream sources. The company intends to leverage its existing strong relationships with end-users, such as small to mid-sized fuel blenders and refineries, buying and selling products ranging from crude oil distillate, lube oil stocks, as well as byproducts from both the established oil industry to the renewable energy markets.
"Through our experience as a solutions provider to various companies we, have provided assistance in new blending processes, as well as innovation and ideas on alternative feedstock that can be brought in via tanker truck, rail, or ship," states Voyager CEO Sebastien C. DuFort.
About Voyager Petroleum
In its quest to manufacture and distribute eco-friendly petroleum-based products and services to the automotive and manufacturing aftermarket, the Company intends to promote its environmentally conscious processing methods for reclaimed used oil. Environmental concerns and sustainability are becoming more prevalent in the collective conscience of American consumers and government officials. Voyager is attempting to capitalize on providing solutions for the abundance of byproduct material that can be recycled and produced into marketable products.
This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com
SOURCE: Voyager Petroleum, Inc.
By Staff
CONTACT: CONTACT: Voyager Petroleum, Inc.
Sebastien C. DuFort
630-546-6672
sdufort@voyagerpetroleum.com
(C) Copyright 2009 GlobeNewswire, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wellington West Initiates Analyst Coverage on Allana Resources
Press Release
Source: Allana Resources Inc.
On Wednesday September 30, 2009, 12:43 pm EDT
Buzz up! 0
Print
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Sept. 30, 2009) - Allana Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE:AAA/pink ALLRF - News; "Allana" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that Wellington West has initiated analyst coverage of Allana.
For further information and access to the report, please contact Mr. Robert Winslow at Wellington West. Mr. Winslow can be reached by email at rwinslow@wwcm.com or by telephone at 416-847-3403.
Allana's Ethiopia Potash Project is comprised of three mineral concessions totaling approximately 150 square kilometers in Ethiopia's northeastern Danakil Depression, one of the largest evaporite basins in the world. The project area is approximately 100 km from the Red Sea coast and the sea port of Mersa Fatma, Eritrea and 600 km via road from the deep water port of Djibouti. Allana's concessions have an inferred resource estimate of 105,200,000 tonnes of potash mineralization (Sylvite and Kainite) with a composite grade of 20.8 % KCl (see News Release Sept. 17, 2008) that is open along strike and to depth. Potash deposits of the Danakil Depression are unique due to their shallow depth and may be amenable to open pit or solution mining and solar evaporation.
Peter J. MacLean, Ph.D., P. Geo., Allana's VP Exploration, is a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information presented in this release.
About Allana Resources Inc.
Allana is a publicly traded corporation with a focus on the acquisition and development of potash assets internationally with its major focus on a previously explored potash property in Ethiopia with 43-101-compliant Inferred Mineral Resource of over 100 million tonnes of potash mineralization (Sylvite and Kainite) with a composite grade of 20.8 % KCl. Allana has approximately 80.5 million shares outstanding and trades on the TSX-Venture exchange under the symbol "AAA".
Now I know what triggered the push ;)
VYGO now departing. All aboard!
Might tie in to this PR. Will wait and see what kind of rabbit they pull out of the hat...
HINSDALE, Ill., Oct. 21, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Voyager Petroleum, Inc. (OTC BB:VYGO.OB - News) (Frankfurt:DXDF.F - News) is pleased to announce that Monarch Petroleum, its wholly-owned subsidiary, will be working with a commodity-based brokerage firm to assist in procuring a variety of supply streams and delivering various petroleum-based products and materials for processing and packaging. TCMs' materials are placed into a wide array of recycling programs of petroleum-based products as well as in the biodiesel by-product arena. ``TCM is a tremendous asset to assist Voyager in exploiting our various processing methods for recycling reclaimed oil. We are excited about the new introductions and relationships TCM will help forge to build on an already established customer base,'' states Voyager CEO, Sebastien DuFort..........
commodity based brokerage operations?
Sorry, currently on net by cel phone. Look at the action the past few days. It's gonna pop real soon.
From the fact that you don't say why it must be momo..make dem bucks~
QASP
Posted by: db_s99 Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:42:38 AM
In reply to: None Post # of 31302
Email from Dean Bradley
----- Original Message -----
From: Dean Bradley
To: Fran
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:05 AM
Subject: Re: Shareholder Question
Fran: We are issuing shares for cancellation of inherited debt. If Deutsche Bank has our stock account open we will begin to buy back shares today. Dean
From: Fran
Subject: Re: Shareholder Question
To: "Dean Bradley" <deanbrad@bellsouth.net>
Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 9:15 PM
Mr. Bradley -
Do you intend to start the share buyback this week? The O/S keeps increasing, increased 9/08/09, again last week, and again today.
O/S share count:
9/17/09 354,122,206
9/21/09 354,122,206
9/22/09 365,385,206
The press release you issued last week said you would begin the buyback early this week. The 8/26/09 PR said Quasar had all the funds needed. Yet the company continues to sell shares.
Fran
Glad to see "Just" request stockcharts to put an ALLRF/AAA chart up. It will be a good October :)
I have a gift for the ALLRF and AAA boards which I will post there as well. I took this from an article about BHP Billiton wanting in on potash.
Could this be "China co" ?
Chinese state-run Sinochem Corp, whose Sinofert Holdings subsidiary is the country's biggest distributor of potash imports, is already staking out acquisitions offshore with talks going on to take over Australian farm chemicals group Nufarm Ltd.
ALLRF..maybe the biggest of em all~
That ALLRF looks like it could be huge. The Chinese government wants in. Enough said.
Posted by: RIGATONI Date: Friday, September 18, 2009 11:30:50 AM
In reply to: None Post # of 127840
~ALLRF .22 DD...
~ALLRF/ Pink
~AAA/ TSX
~TSX fact sheet...http://www.allanaresources.com/factsheet.asp
I took 20k starter yesterday, will be adding more...
Allana's Chinese Partner Successfully Completes Due Diligence and Receives Government Approval
Tue Sep 15, 12:25 PM
http://ca.news.finance.yahoo.com/s/15092009/28/link-f-ccnmatthews-allana-s-chinese-partner-successfully-completes-due-diligence.html
O/S 80.52 m
http://www.allanaresources.com/
http://www.allanaresources.com/docs/AAASept2009.pdf
http://www.ubikaresearch.com/report/Allana-Resources.aspx
Although over 150 nations import potash, only a dozen or so actually produce it
In recent months, plenty of headlines have been garnered by several intrepid and well-financed potash exploration juniors that are vying to muscle-in on Saskatchewan’s lucrative potash mining industry. The fact that uber-financier Robert Friedland is now the chairman of one of these mining juniors adds further sizzle to the emerging Prairie Potash Rush.
However, a couple of other potash explorers are also making impressive headway, but in more exotic locations. One of them is Toronto-based Allana Resources (TSX: V.AAA, Stock Forum), which is hard at work with the development of a potash deposit in Ethiopia. It already has an inferred resource calculation of 105.2 million tonnes of potash, averaging an impressive grade of 20.8%, that has been outlined by way of past drill results.
The other is MagIndustries Corp. (TSX: V.MAA, Stock Forum) which is in the early stages of developing a potash project in the Republic of Congo (ROC). MagIndustries’ early-stage efforts to develop rich potash supplies in Central Africa has already attracted the attention of the world’s fastest-emerging industrial nation, China. The company announced plans just last month that it was in preliminary negotiations with an unnamed Chinese multinational that may buy a large share position with a current valuation of up to Cdn. $280 million.
This impressive endorsement of MagIndustries’ flagship project acutely illustrates how very few undeveloped potash fields are dotted around the world. Indeed, even though over 150 nations import potash, only a dozen or so actually produce this indispensible agricultural nutrient (of which Canada, Russia and Belarus account for about 80% of global output).
Hence, government-owned Chinese companies with large treasuries are anxious to secure enough minerals to sustain their country's remarkable economic growth. So much so that they are willing to invest billions in ever-volatile, war-ravaged regions such as central Africa. ROC should not be confused with its much larger neighbor, Democratic Republic of Congo, which garners all the tragic headlines for its protracted humanitarian crisis.
Indeed, the world’s largest consumer of mineral resources is fast becoming a key source of mining capital for Canadian companies – large and small. This reality was underscored earlier this month when state-owned China Investment Corp. purchased a 17.2% equity stake in Vancouver-based Teck Resources – a diversified global mining powerhouse.
Such developments bode especially well for Allana Resources. It announced just this week its own preliminary joint venture agreement with a major state-run Chinese mining company to build a potash mine on Allana’s property in the potash-rich Danakil Evaporate Basin. The Chinese have also agreed to buy up to a 19.99% share position in Allana, which will infuse as much as Cdn. $4.5 million into the company’s treasury.
This is a milestone development that will put Allana “on the map,” according to one Toronto-based mining analyst who spoke to BNW News Wire on condition that his name is not used as he is not an official spokesperson for his investment bank.
“If the deal goes ahead, it will offer Allana considerable leverage concerning their efforts to expand and commercialize this deposit. And it also raises Allana’s profile in the investment industry,” he adds.
Much of Ethiopia’s appeal as a prospective future supplier of potash stems from its status as a politically stable developing economy with a democratic government. In recent years, Ethiopia has also implemented investor-friendly legislation, including legal safeguards for foreign mining companies, such as constitutional protection from expropriation.
Farhad Abasov, the president and CEO of Allana, says the Chinese are willing to bankroll 70% of the cost of the mine development project in return for the right to earn a comparable interest. And, though potash mines ordinarily have extremely high start-up costs (typically starting at the Cdn. $3 billion mark), Allana’s suitor has very deep pockets.
“Our future partner is one of China’s largest government–owned exploration and development organizations with over 10,000 employees and dozens of projects throughout China and a number of foreign countries, including Ethiopia,” he said in a July 20 company news release.
“We view this joint venture as a key strategic step in developing long-term partnerships with China-based mining and fertilizer organizations.”
Abasov told BNW News Wire that the Chinese are most interested in the ‘big picture’ potential of his company’s project, which is located in a potash basin that has similar geology to and is twice the size as the prolific Urals potash basin in Russia.
“Though we have 105,200,000 tonnes of potash already outlined in the inferred category, we’re ultimately targeting a potential resource up to four to five times this size, based on an independent technical study that is compliant with Canadian regulatory requirements,” he says.
“This would be world-class. And we’re confident that a future mine in this geological environment could be one of the lowest cost producers in the world.”
This project’s compelling economic dynamics are largely due to the fact that it is amenable to low-cost solution extraction (involving the flooding of drill holes with hot water to dissolve the potash for extraction), according to Vikas Ranjan, managing director of the Toronto-based investment research firm, Ubika Research.
“Solution extraction mines also involve significantly shorter developmental timelines than conventional brownfield potash mines (which can take 5-7 years to build), and this offers Allana another major competitive advantage,” he adds.
Your own dd and buying decisions a must!
~Rig
Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. Announces Start of Share Buy-Back Program
Company will immediately begin a Buy-Back of a Quasar Common Shares in the Open Market
JACKSONVILLE, FL, Sept. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. (OTC Pink Sheets: QASP) (formerly) Equus Resources, Inc. (EQUR), announces the beginning of a the share buy-back program. The two major banks that the company does business with are setting up brokerage accounts to facilitate this program, which should begin early next week.
The company has allocated funds through a $15 Million dollar bridge loan, and intends to move forward on the buy-back of common shares of Quasar stock in the open market without further notice. During the buy-back, the company anticipates buying back somewhere between 10% and 20% of the company's common shares. The shares purchased in the buy-back will return to the company as treasury stock.
CEO Dean Bradley commented on the share buy-back, "I am very pleased that we can initiate a share buy-back. I do not believe the current price in the market reflects the value I see in the company and its shares. I think it is very good for the company to go in and return shares to the treasury."
As mentioned in the August 26, 2009 press release, the company has sufficient capital and is eager to use some of the proceeds of this $15 million dollar bridge loan to purchase common stock. Additionally, the company has previously announced four planned acquisitions of well established aviation and aerospace related businesses that will add an estimated $150 million to Quasar's revenue and $33 million in EBITDA for the Company's fiscal year 2010.
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and Equus Resources, Inc. and Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. under take no obligation to update such statements.
DATASOURCE: Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc.
CONTACT: Investor Relations Inquiries should be directed to:
Keep an eye on RTGV. It was around this time yesterday it went bananas
Nice one~
RTGV on fire now.
This one had some very promising news..keep an eye~ Global Ecology Corporation and SureWater Solutions Announce Sale of Water Purification System to Nigeria
KEASBEY, NJ -- (Marketwire) -- 09/10/09 -- Global Ecology Corporation (GEC) (PINKSHEETS: HSYN), and SureWater Solutions, LLC announced today the sale of their first Mobile Water Purification System to Nigeria.
The unit will be deployed through a distributor in Lagos under the direction of SureWater as a first step in a plan to provide drinking water for residents in certain parts of the country. The initial unit will undergo a number of tests. After the initial trial, the distributor is expected to begin deploying additional units as quickly as they can be manufactured.
The water purification carts have varying capacities with some units able to provide sufficient drinking water for up to 5,000 people daily. Global Ecology and SureWater believe there could be demand for hundreds of units in Nigeria, where a lack of potable water is a serious national problem.
Under an exclusive distribution agreement, Global Ecology will provide the proprietary biocide necessary to safely operate all models of the carts.
The models include a pickup bed-based unit, large and small trailer mounted units and a large stationary system mounted in a large shipping container.
The amount of clean water produced from the various models ranges from 15 to 50 gallons a minute.
SureWater Solutions is Global Ecology's strategic alliance partner and licensed manufacturer and distributor of the water carts.
About Global Ecology Corporation
Through its extensive network, Global Ecology Corporation (GEC) has obtained licensing rights to technologies in the water treatment and soil remediation fields that have been EPA and Health Canada approved. These proprietary technologies help reduce algae, bottom sludge and harmful bacteria and are able to provide "green" and if needed, transportable methods to recover the usability of water, soil and land. For more information, please visit www.geco.us.
An investment profile on Global Ecology may be found at http://www.hawkassociates.com/profile/hsyn.cfm.
Investors may contact President & CEO Peter Ubaldi at 732-738-8031 or Frank Hawkins, Hawk Associates, at 305-451-1888, e-mail: global.ecology@hawkassociates.com. To receive future releases in e-mail alerts, sign up at http://www.hawkassociates.com/about/alert.
This news release includes forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, the company's business and financial plans, strategies and prospects. Although the company believes that its plans, intentions and expectations reflected in or suggested by these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot provide assurance that it will achieve or realize these plans, intentions or expectations. Many of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release may be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, should, planned, will, may, intend, estimated, and potential, among others.
Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made in this news release include market conditions and those set forth in any reports or documents that the company may publicly file from time to time.
Contact:
Peter Ubaldi
President & CEO
732-738-8031
Frank Hawkins
Hawk Associates
305-451-1888
e-mail: Email Contact
EDWY.PK Explains Their Business Revenue Model
eDoorways Corp. envisions itself as a revolutionary web-based consumer problem solving gateway. The company’s goal is to completely change the way that consumers and both on-line and off-line businesses find each other by matching consumer needs with businesses that offer the best possible solutions.
Chairman and CEO of eDoorways, Gary Kimmons, recently described the company’s business revenue model in a nutshell, “eDoorways will provide a host of attractive free services and features to users that will organically build our platform and provide myriad revenue opportunities.”
When the company’s SOLVE doorway is launched October 1st, consumers will have free access to real-time problem solving and be able to garner competitive information from service providers that bid for their business. These users can also generate communities of like-minded consumers for the purpose of the open exchange of information.
Business owners will also receive free services, including complementary record keeping and sales tracking support, free business listings, and general marketplace information. eDoorways plans on monetizing its services in an organic fashion, by charging for premium connectivity to “gold nugget prospects”, storefront upgrades, private label licensing, targeted marketing, back office support services and more.
For example, while small business owners can access eDoorways for free, “PowerKey” renters will have exclusive claim on “gold nugget” sales prospects, providing these small businesses with conceivably unlimited opportunities for new business generation.
If certain PowerKey categories prove to yield huge business volume, eDoorways reserves the right to raise the “rent” on those PowerKeys based on market demand and an algorithm of usage statistics. PowerKey retailers will have the right to rent or sublease the keys, and transfer their contracts, thereby creating a marketplace within the platform, outside the selling of advertising or individual buy-sell events.
that is disturbing
Traders and brokers have been subjected in recent months to increasing levels of violent ''persuasion'' and punishment--threats and beatings. Among the firms that have been subject to Mob intimidation, sources say, is the premier market maker in NASDAQ stocks--Herzog, Heine, Geduld Inc.
THE MOB ON WALL STREET--PART 1
Business Week Archives 12/16/96
A three-month investigation reveals that organized crime has made shocking inroads into the small-cap stock market
In the world of multimedia components, Phoenix-based SC&T International Inc. has carved out a small but significant niche. SC&T's products have won raves in the trade press, but working capital has not always been easy to come by. So in December, 1995, the company brought in Sovereign Equity Management Corp., a Boca Raton (Fla.) brokerage, to manage an initial public offering. ''We thought they were a solid second- or third-tier investment bank,'' says SC&T Chief Executive James L. Copeland.
But there was much about Sovereign that was known to only a very few. There were, for example, the early investors, introduced by Sovereign, who had provided inventory financing for SC&T. Most shared the same post office box in the Bahamas. ''I had absolutely no idea of who those people were,'' says Copeland. He asked Sovereign. ''I was told, 'Who gives a s---. It's clean money.''' The early investors cashed out, at the offering price of $5, some 1.575 million shares that they acquired at about $1.33 a share--a gain of some $5.8 million.
By mid-June, SC&T was trading at $8 or better. But for SC&T shareholders who did not sell by then, the stock was an unmitigated disaster. Sovereign, which had handled over 60% of SC&T's trades early in the year, sharply reduced its support of the stock. Without the backing of Sovereign and its 75-odd brokers, SC&T's shares plummeted--to $2 in July, $1 in September, and lately, pennies. The company's capital-raising ability is in tatters. Laments Copeland: ''We're in the crapper.''
A routine case of a hot stock that went frigid. Or was it? Copeland didn't know it, but there was a man who kept a very close eye on SC&T and is alleged by Wall Street sources to have profited handsomely in the IPO--allegedly by being one of the lucky few who sold shares through a Bahamian shell company. His name is Philip Abramo, and he has been identified in court documents as a ranking member, or capo, in the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante organized crime family.
James Copeland didn't know it. Nobody at SC&T could have dreamed it. But the almost unimaginable had come true: Copeland had put his company in the hands of the Mob.
Today, the stock market is confronting a vexing problem that, so far, the industry and regulators have seemed reluctant to face--or even acknowledge. Call it what you will: organized crime, the Mafia, wiseguys. They are the stuff of tabloids and gangster movies. To most investors, they would seem to have as much to do with Wall Street as the other side of the moon.
But in the canyons of lower Manhattan, one can find members of organized crime, their friends and associates. How large a presence? No one--least of all regulators and law enforcement--seems to know. The Street's ranking reputed underworld chieftain, Abramo, is described by sources familiar with his activities as controlling at least four brokerages through front men and exerting influence upon still more firms. Until recently, Abramo had an office in the heart of the financial district, around the corner from the regional office of an organization that might just as well be on Venus as far as the Mob is concerned--the National Association of Securities
Dealers, the self-regulatory organization that oversees the small-stock business.
A three-month investigation by BUSINESS WEEK reveals that substantial elements of the small-cap market have been turned into a veritable Mob franchise, under the very noses of regulators and law enforcement. And that is a daunting prospect for every investor who buys small-cap stocks and every small company whose stock trades on the NASDAQ market and over the counter. For the Mob makes money in various ways, ranging from exploiting IPOs to extortion to getting a ''piece of the action'' from traders and brokerage firms. But its chief means of livelihood is ripping off investors by the time-tested method of driving share prices upward--and dumping them on the public through aggressive cold-calling.
In its inquiry, BUSINESS WEEK reviewed a mountain of documentation and interviewed traders, brokerage executives, investors, regulators, law-enforcement officials, and prosecutors. It also interviewed present and former associates of the Wall Street Mob contingent. Virtually all spoke on condition of anonymity, with several Street sources fearing severe physical harm--even death--if their identities became known. One, a former broker at a Mob-run brokerage, says he discussed entering the federal Witness Protection Program after hearing that his life might be in danger. A short-seller in the Southwest, alarmed by threats, carries a gun.
Among BUSINESS WEEK's findings:
-- The Mob has established a network of stock promoters, securities dealers, and the all-important ''boiler rooms''--a crucial part of Mob manipulation schemes--that sell stocks nationwide through hard-sell cold-calling. The brokerages are located mainly in the New York area and in Florida, with the heart of their operations in the vicinity of lower Broad Street in downtown Manhattan.
-- Four organized crime families as well as elements of the Russian Mob directly own or control, through front men, perhaps two dozen brokerage firms that make markets in hundreds of stocks. Other securities dealers and traders are believed to pay extortion money or ''tribute'' to the Mob as just another cost of doing business on the Street.
-- Traders and brokers have been subjected in recent months to increasing levels of violent ''persuasion'' and punishment--threats and beatings. Among the firms that have been subject to Mob intimidation, sources say, is the premier market maker in NASDAQ stocks--Herzog, Heine, Geduld Inc.
-- Using offshore accounts in the Bahamas and elsewhere, the Mob has engineered lucrative schemes involving low-priced stock under Regulation S of the securities laws. Organized crime members profit from the runup in such stocks and also from short-selling the stocks on the way down. They also take advantage of the very wide spreads between the bid and ask prices of the stock issues controlled by their confederates.
-- The Mob's activities seem confined almost exclusively to stocks traded in the over-the-counter ''bulletin board'' and NASDAQ small-cap markets. By contrast, New York Stock Exchange and American Stock Exchange issues and firms apparently have been free of Mob exploitation.
-- Wall Street has become so lucrative for the Mob that it is allegedly a major source of income for high-level members of organized crime--few of whom have ever been publicly identified as having ties to the Street. Abramo, who may well be the most active reputed mobster on the Street, has remained completely out of the public eye--even staying active on the Street after his recent conviction for tax evasion.
-- Mob-related activities on the Street are the subject of inquiries by the FBI and the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, which is described by one source as having received numerous complaints concerning mobsters on the Street. (Officials at both agencies and the New York Police Dept. did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
-- Overall, the response of regulators and law enforcement to Mob penetration of Wall Street has been mixed at best. Market sources say complaints of Mob coercion have often been ignored by law enforcement. Although an NASD spokesman says the agency would vigorously pursue reports of Mob infiltration, two top NASD officials told BUSINESS WEEK that they have no knowledge of Mob penetration of member firms. Asked to discuss such allegations, another high NASD official declined, saying: ''I'd rather you not tell me about it.''
-- The Hanover, Sterling & Co. penny-stock firm, which left 12,000 investors in the lurch when it went out of business in early 1995, is alleged by people close to the firm to have been under the control of members of the Genovese organized crime family. Sources say other Mob factions engaged in aggressive short-selling of stocks brought public by Hanover.
-- Federal investigators are said to be probing extortion attempts by Mob-linked short-sellers who had been associated with the now-defunct Stratton Oakmont penny-stock firm.
Mob manipulation has affected the markets in a wide range of stocks. Among those identified by BUSINESS WEEK are Affinity Entertainment, Celebrity Entertainment, Beachport Entertainment, Crystal Broadcasting, First Colonial Ventures, Global Spill Management, Hollywood Productions, Innovative Medical Services, International Nursing Services, Novatek International, Osicom Technologies, ReClaim, SC&T, Solv-Ex, and TJT. Officials of the companies deny any knowledge of Mob involvement in the trading of their stocks, and there is no evidence that company managements have been in league with stock manipulators. These stocks were allegedly run up by Mob-linked brokers, who sometimes used force or threats to curtail short-selling in the stocks. When support by allegedly Mob-linked brokerages ended, the stocks often suffered precipitous declines--sometimes abetted, traders say, by Mob-linked short-sellers. The stocks have generally fared poorly (table, page 99).
Not all of the stocks were recent IPOs, and they were often taken public by perfectly legitimate underwriters. International Nursing, for example, went public at $23 in 1994 and was trading at $8 in early 1996 before falling back to pennies. Short-sellers who attempted to sell the shares earlier this year were warned off--in one instance by a Mob member--market sources assert. International Nursing Chairman John Yeros denies knowledge of manipulation of the stock.
What this all adds up to is a shocking tale of criminal infiltration abetted by widespread fear and silence--and official inaction. While firms and brokerage executives who strive to keep far afield of the Mob often complain of NASD inaction, rarely do such people feel strongly enough to share their views with regulators or law enforcement. Instead, they engage in self-defense. One major brokerage, which often executes trades for small-cap market makers, keeps mammoth intelligence files--to steer clear of Mob-run brokers. A major accounting firm keeps an organized-crime expert on the payroll. His duties include preventing his firm from doing business with brokerages linked to organized crime and the Russian Mob.
In the pages that follow are the results of BUSINESS WEEK's investigation.
THE BOX
At about 3 o'clock in the afternoon of Sept. 25, 1996, three men appeared on the 28th floor of 120 Broadway, Manhattan. They walked into the offices of Sharpe Capital Inc., a dealer in over-the-counter stocks. They were burly. ''Like lumberjacks,'' said an eyewitness soon after. A gun was in the belt of one of the men.
The confidential police report of the incident (Complaint No. 10530, First Precinct) reads as follows:
''At that point they asked the victim what he was trading in. Then they slapped him in the head and stated again, 'What the f-- are you trading in.' Then he slapped the victim in the head again.''
A witness recalls one of the men saying: ''Don't f-- with our stock.'' The stock: Crystal Broadcasting Inc. After the men left, Sharpe stopped trading in Crystal Broadcasting.
To the New York Police Dept., the incident at Sharpe was about as serious as a scuffle over a parking space. A police source says that the assault, categorized as a low-grade misdemeanor at best, is considered closed and is not being investigated because the victim was not seriously hurt, no gun was displayed--even though one was observed--and the perpetrators were unknown. (However, one witness ruefully notes, police did nothing to ascertain their identity--such as examine a security-camera surveillance tape.) Sharpe's CEO, Lawrence Hoes, declined to discuss the matter.
But BUSINESS WEEK learned that the assault at Sharpe was not an isolated incident. Rather, it was part of a systematic pattern of intimidation. By eliminating competing market makers and allowing only cooperating brokers to bid on stocks, the result is a kind of rigged auction--with the prices where desired, and the spreads between bid and ask prices kept as wide as possible. In Street parlance, this process of rigging the market in a stock is known as ''boxing'' a stock. It is part of the lexicon of the Mob's dominion on Wall Street (page 99).
The box is the heart of most stock-manipulation schemes. In the case of Crystal, the trader at Sharpe was suspected of ''cracking the spread.'' According to market sources who were familiar with the trading in Crystal that day, Sharpe was blamed, in effect, for doing what a market maker is supposed to do--get the best possible price for its customers and keeping the spreads as narrow as possible. During the day, Crystal traded as low as 4, well below the 5 1/8 closing price of the day before, and the spreads narrowed as well, to a relatively reasonable 4 3/8 bid and 4 7/8 ask. Sharpe was blamed for that benign--to most people--market action.
In the weeks following the Sharpe incident, Crystal shares were trading at the kind of spreads that can only happen when the market is tightly controlled. If you buy it from a dealer, you pay the ask price, $3.50. But when you sell it, you get the bid--56.2 cents. (Crystal's president, Joseph Newman, said he had no knowledge of coercion of market makers in his stock.)
Sometimes the maneuvering involved in creating and exploiting the box can be as subtle as a bison in a china shop. One West Coast investor, who requested anonymity, says that brokers at a small New York firm, Monitor Investment Group, convinced him that two small-cap stocks--International Nursing Services and Beachport Entertainment--were about to be pushed upward. Says the investor: ''They said they had a handle on all this stock. They said they'd run it up and get me out of it in a week.''
So sometime around last New Year's Day, he bought warrants and a big block of the stock--100,000 shares of International Nursing and 85,000 of Beachport. When he tried to sell, he says, his brokers flatly refused. The shares, which had started heading southward almost from the moment he bought them, plummeted. They're now worth one-fifth of what he paid. Monitor Chairman William F. Palla denies the firm was involved in stock manipulation but concedes a broker may have promised a runup but not really meant it.
Sometimes, of course, thinly traded stocks can be run down by aggressive short sellers, and the Mob is alleged by Street sources to have profited from that as well. One target of investigators, sources say, is a coterie of brokers formerly associated with the defunct penny-stock brokerage of Stratton Oakmont. Sources familiar with the investigation say that authorities are exploring charges that some of these brokers, after Stratton's demise, may have extorted money from their former colleagues in the business--allegedly threatening to short-sell stocks underwritten by those firms. According to sources, the Stratton brokers allegedly shared their profits with a member of a New York crime family.
Among the trading being investigated, sources say, are stocks underwritten by a penny-stock firm called State Street Capital Markets. Stocks brought public by the New York-based firm--Fun Tyme Concepts, U.S. Bridge of N.Y., and Cable & Co. Worldwide--were pummeled in the market last August, and trading in the stocks is allegedly being probed. At the time, State Street maintained that its shares were victimized by concerted short-selling. State Street officials did not return phone calls, and Stratton officials could not be reached for comment.
''YOU'VE MADE A FRIEND''
First Colonial Ventures Ltd. is a minor venture-capital firm whose stock trades on the OTC bulletin board--so small that it is not required to file more than token disclosures with the Securities & Exchange Commission. But for market makers in small-cap stocks, First Colonial looms huge. It is an object lesson: When the Mob speaks, market makers obey.
The incidents took place early in October, one week after the assault at Sharpe. First came a beating. A trader at Naib Trading Corp. in Fort Lauderdale was summoned to the office of a man by the name of Roy Ageloff. The trader has told associates that Ageloff had beaten him once before with a nail-pierced baseball bat. This time, he said, Ageloff left the room. Then a 400-pound hoodlum knocked him down and kicked him while he was on the floor. The message: Stay away from First Colonial.
The trader at Naib was not the only one to suffer ''persuasion'' over First Colonial. Sources say that four other firms were approached with warnings to cease trading in the stock. To be sure, it was not a total success. There was one rebuff: A market maker in the little town of Hurst, Tex., Anthony Elgindy of Key West Securities Inc., says he ignored warnings that traders who did not comply would soon be ''facing the ceiling''--and has received numerous threatening phone calls since then. But at two other market makers, the intimidation worked. They ceased making a market in First Colonial.
The market makers dropping the stock were William V. Frankel & Co. in Jersey City, N.J., and the biggest name in NASDAQ stocks: Herzog, Heine, Geduld. Sources say traders at both firms quit trading the stock after receiving menacing visits at their offices. ''We decided we shouldn't get involved in a stock like that,'' says Herzog's head trader, Irwin Geduld. Was anyone at his firm threatened? ''We weren't,'' said Geduld. ''Someone else was.'' (A Frankel trader, who declined to give his name, says: ''We have no comment whatsoever about First Colonial Ventures.'') Even a brokerage that was not a market maker, D.L. Cromwell Investments Inc. in Boca Raton, received a visit from a thug, a source says. The visitor left after demanding, and being shown, proof that the firm was not a short-seller in the stock. Cromwell officials declined comment.
Sources say that traders who caved in to coercion later received expensive bottles of liquor with a note that read: ''You've made a friend.'' But the market makers who dropped First Colonial were making no new pals among investors. Since the incident, the ask price paid by the public for buying First Colonial stock has climbed--from a low of $1.13 on Oct. 2 to as high as $4.13 in recent trading. But the bid price that the public gets when selling the stock back to the Street has been far less buoyant. The bid promptly rose from a low of 87 cents on Oct. 2 to $1.50 and has stayed at about that level, even as the ask price has skyrocketed to almost three times that figure. (On Oct. 4, according to a letter sent to market makers obtained by BUSINESS WEEK, the NASD launched an inquiry into the dropping of First Colonial stock by market makers. The NASD declined comment on the investigation.)
Who was behind the wave of intimidation over First Colonial? NASDAQ trading figures point toward a New York-based firm called PCM Securities Ltd. PCM was the largest market maker in First Colonial in September, with 48% of the trades. By October, however, this rose to 75%. PCM completely dominated the market in First Colonial.
Although he is not listed in NASD records as a control person or even as an employee of PCM--or of any other brokerage--Street sources say that the power behind PCM is the 37-year-old Ageloff. He did not respond to numerous messages left at PCM's office in Boca Raton. An employee there said Ageloff nowadays spends most of his time there, punctuated by frequent visits to New York. Asked about Ageloff, Steven Edelson, PCM's principal, denied that Ageloff has any role in the firm and says he has met him only once. Edelson had no comment on its trading in First Colonial, and First Colonial President Murray Goldenberg said he was ''shocked'' to hear reports of intimidation of market makers.
A TALE OF TWO MARKETS
Even though NASD records show Ageloff has not been officially associated with any brokerage firm over the past two years, he is a widely known figure in small-cap stock circles. Why would market makers drop a stock just because Ageloff tells them--even when he is not accompanied by ''persuasion''? Street sources say the fear he inspires is justified: The force that drives Ageloff, they maintain, is a 59-year-old man who, on official record at least, has never set foot on Wall Street. He is Alphonse Malangone, otherwise known as ''Allie Shades,'' and his few appearances in the public record pertain almost exclusively to another market--the Fulton Fish Market.
''Allie Shades'' Malangone is the Zelig of the Mob's Wall Street coterie. For years, he has been observed by investigators in lower Manhattan, ensconced in the twin worlds of the Fulton Fish Market and the stock market. To law enforcement he is an alleged loan shark and gambler, a longtime power behind Mob control of the Fulton market, and he is described in court proceedings by federal and state law enforcement officials as a capo in the Genovese crime family.
But to the very few Wall Streeters who know him, he is a sophisticated market player who is an expert at ''working the spreads''--getting in at the bid price and exiting at the ask price, with the help of cooperative traders. ''He's very smart, very articulate,'' says one investigator. ''When you hear him on the wire, he would couch what he would say in gambling phrases'' to mislead investigators.
Investigators are not fooled, but despite close surveillance and wiretaps dating back to the 1980s and perhaps before, they have been unable to make a case against Malangone and other reputed Fulton market mobsters for their suspected activities on Wall Street. One longtime Malangone-watcher recalls that the Fulton market was believed by law-enforcement authorities in the early '80s to be a clearinghouse for stolen bonds. But nothing was ever proven.
Investigators thought they were on to something, finally, in 1985. They had in their sights two big fish, so to speak--Malangone and Vincent Romano, also identified in court papers as an alleged Genovese family member who was suspected of involvement in the Fulton market. Malangone and Romano were probed by federal and local authorities for their alleged manipulation of a pharmaceutical company stock, Nu-Med Inc., a company that later declared bankruptcy. Investigators believed that the two men had a position in Nu-Med shares. The investigation was never made public, for authorities couldn't build a case against Malangone and Romano. Efforts to reach the two men were unsuccessful.
Sources on Wall Street say that Malangone was a behind- the-scenes player in the biggest penny-stock fiasco of recent years: Hanover Sterling. According to sources, Malangone controlled Hanover through his right-hand man, Alan Longo, who has been identified by federal authorities in court filings as a member of the Genovese family. Longo, who is described by acquaintances as a heavy gambler, is said by sources to have worked directly with Ageloff in Hanover and other market ventures.
Ageloff--in concert with his alleged Mob contacts--is believed by market sources to have been the hidden control person at Hanover. It went out of business in early 1995 and resulted in the demise of the firm that it cleared through, Adler, Coleman & Co. An attorney for the trustee in the Adler Coleman bankruptcy, Mitchell A. Lowenthal, says that his firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, has discovered evidence that 65% of Hanover's profits were shared by Ageloff and another Hanover official. Efforts to reach Hanover execs were unsuccessful.
Street sources say that the Mob was involved in both sides of the Hanover-Adler imbroglio. The Malangone-Longo-Ageloff faction, they say, profited from the runup in Hanover stocks, while other mobsters allegedly sold short the Hanover stocks and pushed their prices downward--to the chagrin of the Malangone faction. This internecine dispute, sources close to Hanover say, was eventually resolved without bloodshed, but only after some tense meetings between Mob factions. Lowenthal says that his firm's investigation has shown that ''Ageloff and some of the shorts were all connected [to the Mob] in one way or the other,'' but nothing was proven.
According to people close to the Hanover Sterling machinations, the Mob was represented on the short side through Falcon Trading Group and Sovereign Equity Management Corp. And those brokerages, sources say, are controlled by the alleged SC&T profiteer--a silver-haired, 51-year-old resident of northern New Jersey named Philip C. Abramo.
Abramo's name has never surfaced in any of the thousands of pages of deposition testimony taken by the adversaries in the Hanover-Adler Coleman legal warfare. Nor have his recent legal troubles--a federal fraud indictment-- resulted in exposure of his Street ties or alleged Mob membership. Abramo's stunning success at avoiding publicity has helped make him the most active reputed Mob honcho on Wall Street. ''He is educated. He sounds sincere,'' says one source. ''He's gotten all these wiseguys to work together.''
THE ''CONSULTANT''
In court records and corporate filings, Philip Abramo gives his business address as 176 Saddle River Road, South Hackensack, N.J. The address applies to not one but several buildings, forming a kind of cul de sac on a dreary street in an industrial town in northern New Jersey. It is a quiet area. A cemetery is next door. Faded lettering shows that one of the buildings was once used many years ago to process meat. Today they house an auto-body shop, a construction company, and other little offices with ambiguous names.
Listed in no official records is another address for Phil Abramo--one that is far more apropos for a man who is a hidden power in the brokerage industry. Until a couple of months ago, sources say, Abramo maintained an office on the 14th floor of 90 Broad St. in lower Manhattan, directly adjoining the New York office of Sovereign Equity Management. A door linked the two offices, and it was always open. ''I knew him as a stock promoter who always had stock deals. We hired brokers who were friends of his,'' says one Sovereign employee who requested anonymity. Sovereign CEO Glen T. Vittor denies that Abramo had any role in the firm.
But sources describe his role as central--as the hidden control person behind Sovereign, a prominent name in the micro-cap stock business, its sister firm Falcon Trading, and two other firms that are major penny-stock brokers and market makers, Toluca Pacific Securities Corp. and Greenway Capital Corp. He is also described by Street sources as controlling other dealers in small-cap stocks through brokers and traders owing allegiance to him.
On paper, Abramo is respectability personified. Over the past decade he has been listed as president or top shareholder of four publicly held investment companies. He is married, with a grown daughter. He has been a ''restaurant consultant,'' auto dealer, and construction company operator. He has had four years of college and may even have training as an accountant.
But inquiries about Abramo bring far from routine reactions. At Greenway Capital, President John Margiotta is asked if he knows Abramo. Margiotta replies: ''Who?'' and hangs up the phone. A person answering the phone at Greenway, moments later, says that Margiotta is ''very busy'' and ''not in the office.'' Toluca Pacific President Paul Fiorini, when asked about reports of Abramo's control of his firm, calls them a ''total farce.'' He says he owns 100% of the firm and goes on to say: ''Who is this person? I don't want my name associated with this. I don't know this person. I don't know Phil Abramo.''
The reason for the reticence is understandable. According to federal court records in recent tax-evasion proceedings against Abramo in Newark, the Saddle River (N.J.) resident lists his occupation as ''consultant.'' But elsewhere in the court file, the FBI gives a different version of his livelihood. In 1994, in an affidavit filed with the court in a bail hearing, the FBI identified him as a frequent visitor to reputed New York Mob boss John Gotti prior to his imprisonment in 1992, and alleged that Abramo held the rank of capo in the New Jersey organized crime family once headed by Sam ''the Plumber'' DeCavalcante. But sources say that since then, Abramo has risen in the ranks to No.2 in that crime family--underboss.
Abramo is easily the highest-ranking reputed mobster to be engaged full-time in Wall Street activities. His lawyer, Harvey Weissbard, declined comment on Abramo's alleged ties to organized crime. Asked about Abramo's possible role on Wall Street, Weissbard said he had ''no information of which I can respond one way or the other, and I doubt if I did know one way or the other that I would respond.''
Little is known about Abramo's early life, such as which college he attended. Except for a conviction for possession of stolen property in 1971 and another in 1973 for conspiracy to distribute heroin--which yielded him a seven-year prison sentence--he has stayed out of the limelight. Even when he was indicted in 1994 in New Jersey for allegedly swindling 300 people nationwide out of $1 million--they were sold phony ''lines of credit''--he received no publicity and continued to work on the Street.
Indeed, by the time he was indicted in the credit-line scheme, Abramo already had a lengthy, ostensibly legitimate track record. In the late 1980s Abramo founded publicly-held investment companies with names such as Cambridge Investment Service Corp. and American Acquisition Corp. (SEC filings by these companies show they did little but file papers with the SEC.) According to papers filed by Abramo with the SEC for the investment companies, Abramo was a ''restaurant consultant to Northern Roses Inc. (Miami, Fla.),'' during 1982, and ''was also a restaurant consultant to Bagel Nosh Inc. (1983 and 1984--New York, N.Y.).'' Abramo's Bagel Nosh connection is significant, because the company was brought public by Thomas J. Quinn.
Quinn was one of the most prominent figures in the penny-stock world, but his association with Abramo has never been made public, although regulators have long suspected it. When Quinn was jailed in France in 1988 for securities fraud, investigators say, Abramo's name was prominently displayed in a notebook that was seized from him. Calls in 1995 from Quinn's telephone to Abramo's unlisted home phone number also appeared in phone records that were recently subpoenaed by investigators seeking Quinn's assets. (He was successfully sued by the SEC for securities fraud in 1989 and owes millions of dollars in civil penalties.) Indeed, Abramo was subpoenaed to testify before the SEC in 1989 during a probe of Quinn, but he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Efforts to reach Quinn for comment were unsuccessful.
The Quinn-Abramo connection could become significant in the months ahead because of an ongoing federal grand jury probe in California into possible irregularities in the trading in Solv-Ex Corp., an Albuquerque-based company that claims to have a process for retrieving oil from tar sands. (Solv-Ex officials denied knowledge of any trading irregularities and claimed that a private investigator's report, which they refused to release, indicated there was no manipulation.) According to sources close to the grand jury probe, Abramo and Quinn are among those who have been a subject of the investigation.
Today, Abramo faces a one-year prison term for tax evasion. It was a plea bargain--the guilty plea to tax evasion in return for dropping of the loan-scheme charges. He is scheduled to report to prison on Jan. 7. While he may well handle his Street interests while incarcerated, in some quarters there is concern that his departure will mean an increase in violence.
The level of violence is becoming worrisome. Early in November, a broker at a New York-area brokerage was severely beaten, his arm broken, in the lobby of the firm. As so often happens in such situations, he did not notify the police. His offense: He moved from a Mob-controlled firm, taking his customers with him, and dared to sell their stocks. Sell pressure on stocks is just what the Mob despises (unless, of course, they are short). It can sour a deal--and the often immense profits that can come with it.
THE DEAL
Mama Tish's International Foods is a Chicago-based company that makes Italian ices. But when it went public last month, it was red-hot. The IPO went for $5, but on the first day of trading, the shares moved as high as $9.75--a sure sign of ''flipping,'' in which favored investors cash out of the stock immediately. Alas, the Mama Tish IPO was canceled--wiping out all the trades--when the underwriter, a Long Island firm called Landmark International Equities, got into a heated dispute with the firm that clears its trades. The company and underwriter were disappointed--and so were some people who hate to be disapppointed.
Even before the deal began, traders began receiving phone calls warning them not to short the IPO, which might have driven down prices. According to Wall Street sources, among the people who would have profited heavily from the Mama Tish IPO is John Gotti Jr., reputed acting boss of the Gambino family and son of the imprisoned Gambino crime family chieftain. According to Wall Street sources, ''Junior'' Gotti is the hidden owner or control person of one of the brokerages--other than Landmark--that was active in the Mama Tish deal. Had the deal gone through, any Gotti people involved in the deal would have profited handsomely from the 80% difference between the offering price and the trading price of the shares. Gotti was unreachable for comment. A company official said he did not know of any Mob involvement in the IPO.
If ''Junior'' Gotti represents the younger generation of reputed mobsters on the Street, the older generation would be epitomized by John ''Sonny'' Franzese. Franzese has been described by law-enforcement authorities for decades as an influential, feared mobster who allegedly was the former underboss of the Colombo crime family. Sources say Franzese joined the Mob's rush to the stock market after his release on parole from a 50-year term for bank robbery in 1994. According to sources, the 77-year-old reputed Mob elder described himself to associates earlier this year as controlling, through a confederate, Monitor Investment Group, whose brokers allegedly ripped off the West Coast investor by promising a guaranteed runup. Monitor chairman William F. Palla denies that Franzese or organized crime has ever played any role in the firm.
Monitor, which ceased active operations last June, is described by former employees as a center for widespread stock manipulation--specifically involving boxing of International Nursing Services, Beachport Entertainment, and Innovative Medical Services. Officials of the three companies say they were unaware of any irregularities in the trading of their stocks. International Nursing Chairman John Yeros, however, concedes he felt something was amiss at Monitor when he attended a presentation the brokerage sponsored for International Nursing at a downtown hotel--and found that Monitor had hired a hooker to ''service'' the brokers in attendance. Palla says he heard of the ''hooker incident'' but denies Monitor retained that person.
If Franzese in fact became involved in the penny-stock business, it would be a potent sign of the lure of the penny-stock business to the Mob. But like Abramo, Franzese may have to cool his interest in the market for a while. He was recently found to have violated the terms of his parole and was ordered back to prison.
THE FUTURE
There are plenty of young mobsters ready to take the place of any old-timers who might fall victim to any future law-enforcement crackdown. One Brooklyn-based prosecutor, a specialist in the Mob, observes that ''there are a lot of wannabes getting jobs on the Street, working in these places, cold-calling.'' That might explain why there seems to be no shortage of people willing to carry guns into brokerage houses and beat up traders in front of witnesses, or telephone threats to traders.
One reputed up-and-comer in the Street's Mob contingent is Dominick ''Black Dom'' Dinassio, who is said by Street and law-enforcement sources to hold sway over Euro-Atlantic Securities, a Manhattan brokerage that is active in penny stocks. According to a source in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, Dinassio is allegedly an associate in the Colombo crime family.
Law-enforcement sources say that Dinassio has lately been observed in the company of Longo, Malangone's longtime partner. Sources say a short-seller who was active in shorting Hanover stocks, John Fiero, told police recently that Dinassio threatened him for his trades in one stock brought public by Euro-Atlantic, Hollywood Productions Inc. Fiero refused comment and company officials did not return phone calls. Contacted at Euro-Atlantic's office in lower Manhattan, Dinassio declined to discuss his role at the firm. Asked about the allegations that he was connected to organized crime, he replied: ''What? I think you're crazy, buddy. I'll talk to you later,'' and hung up. Euro-Atlantic officials did not return phone calls.
Although whistle-blowers in Mob-run firms are rare, the increasing violence is beginning to enter the public record. At Monitor, the firm Franzese allegedly claimed to control, an incident last January led to a rarity in this world--a lawsuit. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, former broker Robert Grant contends that he was ''maliciously and violently struck, battered, beaten, pummelled, pushed, punched, and attacked'' by Monitor employees at the instigation of Palla and another manager. At one point, the suit says, Grant was beaten with a chair. The lawsuit does not say so, but witnesses say that another broker was also viciously assaulted. Neither Grant nor the other broker would comment, and Palla says he was in Philadelphia at the time of the incident, which he describes as a ''fight.'' One witness says Monitor management suspected that the two brokers may have been short-selling Monitor's favorite stocks.
Some of the most violent, crudest elements to come to the Street are part of its fastest-growing contingent--the Russian Mob, based in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. ''Over the past couple of years, they've put people in the [brokerages], kids with clean records, and they're washing money legitimately,'' says one law-enforcement official who is intimately familiar with Russian organized crime. The offspring of two major Russian mob figures, he notes, have been active on Wall Street.
The Mob's fascination with Wall Street is understandable, for they have had little to fear from law enforcement or regulators. If the authorities, finally, act against Mob members who are active on the Street, it will be the first such prosecution since 1973, when three major Mob figures were imprisoned for securities fraud. At the time, the Mobsters were vanquished because one of their confederates became a government witness. ''It's practically impossible to prosecute these people unless you have a turncoat, somebody who can walk you through all those transactions,'' notes Ira Lee Sorkin, a former SEC regional director who was involved in the 1970s prosecutions. So long as the Street continues to keep silent on the Mob in its midst, organized crime will continue to be the silent partner of the financial markets.
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Silver Reaches 13-Month High
Gold Rises as Dollar Extends Drop; Silver Reaches 13-Month High
By Claudia Carpenter
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Gold rose in London and New York, heading for a fourth consecutive weekly advance, as a weaker dollar and speculation inflation may accelerate spurred demand for the metal as a hedge. Silver climbed to a 13-month high.
The Dollar Index, a six-currency gauge of the greenback’s value, has dropped for six consecutive days and to its lowest level in almost a year. U.S. consumer prices will drop 1.6 percent this quarter compared with the same period last year before rising 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter and 2 percent in each of the subsequent two quarters, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Gold’s gains may continue “given concerns over rising inflation and our expectations for the dollar to weaken further,” Suki Cooper, an analyst at Barclays Capital, wrote in a report today. The bank expects prices to average $940 an ounce this year and $970 next year.
Gold futures for December delivery climbed $6, or 0.6 percent, to $1,002.80 an ounce at 8:22 a.m. on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, bringing this week’s gain to 0.6 percent. Prices jumped 5.1 percent the previous three weeks. Metal for immediate delivery rose $4.05, or 0.4 percent, to $1,000.65 an ounce.
December silver futures rose as much as 1.8 percent to $16.97 an ounce, the highest since Aug. 5, 2008. Manufacturing demand for silver, including electronics and other industrial applications, photographic film, jewelry and silverware, will rise 0.2 percent next year, the first increase in three years, according to Barclays.
‘Positive Investment Demand’
“Silver has benefited from positive investment demand and a potential recovery in industrial demand” on signs of economic growth, Barclays said in today’s report.
Stockpiles of the metal in warehouses monitored by Comex dropped 16 percent in the past year while gold stockpiles increased 6.8 percent.
Comex asked traders to refrain from trading for one minute at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. in New York, when airplanes crashed into the two World Trade Center towers eight years ago and again at 9:59 a.m. and 10:29 a.m., the times when each tower collapsed, according to a notice to members.
Gold rose to $998.25 an ounce in the morning “fixing,” used by some mining companies to sell production, from $990.75 at the afternoon fixing yesterday.
Demand for gold through exchange-traded funds will rise to 700 metric tons this year, from 322 tons last year, Barclays Capital said in the report. Gold assets in ETF Securities Ltd.’s exchange-traded commodities rose to almost 8.2 million ounces yesterday from 8.1 million on Sept. 9, the company said on its Web site today. That is a record, according to Bloomberg data.
Silver ETF demand will be 3,500 tons this year compared with 2,339 tons last year, Barclays forecast.
Among other precious metals, palladium for December delivery climbed 0.2 percent to $294 an ounce and platinum for October delivery gained 0.6 percent to $1,297.80 an ounce.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ahXC1C.r.2q8
spark, i thought this video presentation today by the fellas at URST was tremendous.
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Oil..is time to look for little gems now..not when oil is hot~
OPEC Maintains Oil Quotas as IEA Raises Global Demand Forecast
By Fred Pals and Alexander Kwiatkowski
Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- OPEC said it will keep oil production quotas unchanged, banking on a recovery in the world economy to maintain prices near today’s $72 a barrel as the International Energy Agency raised its global demand forecast.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to maintain total production quotas at 24.845 million barrels a day and will urge members to adhere to targets, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri said. The IEA raised its global oil demand estimate for next year for a second month, citing growth in Chinese consumption and stronger-than-expected U.S. oil use.
“Holding production was the prudent thing to do,” Jason Schenker, president of Texas-based consultants Prestige Economics LLC, said in an interview in Vienna.
The producer group, which accounts for about 40 percent of global crude supply, had been expected by analysts and most ministers to keep output unchanged after prices rallied. Oil has gained 62 percent this year, last month reaching the $75 level identified by Saudi King Abdullah as satisfactory for consumers and producers. It’s the third time in 2009 the group has met without changing output.
Crude oil advanced for a fourth day. The contract for October delivery climbed as much as $1.13, or 1.6 percent, to $72.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
“This $65-to-$75 range seems amenable to both producers and consumers,” Schenker said. “If they’d cut when production is above quotas, and prices are amenable, it may not have been received well.”
IEA Forecast
World oil consumption is likely to rise 1.3 percent next year to 85.7 million barrels a day next year, helped by Chinese demand and stronger-than-expected oil use in the U.S., the IEA said in a report today. That’s 450,000 barrels more than the energy adviser to 28 industrial nations forecast last month.
Algerian Oil Minister Chakib Khelil and Qatari Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah confirmed the decision as they left OPEC’s headquarters at about 1 a.m. Vienna time today, after closed door talks lasting three hours.
“OPEC has played its cards very well,” considering that there has been a significant economic slowdown in some of the major consuming nations and regions, said Toby Hassall, a research analyst at CWA Global Markets Pty in Sydney. “They were probably correct in not cutting output further at the beginning of this year. They have to be relatively happy with where prices are.”
OPEC agreed late last year to cut production targets by 4.2 million barrels a day after prices crashed more than $100 a barrel from a record set in July 2008. Oil dipped to $32.40 in December before recovering this year. In the past five months, production has risen from the 11 OPEC members bound by quotas.
OPEC Compliance
The 11 members bound by quotas pumped 26.055 million barrels a day in August, according to estimates in a Bloomberg survey, which indicates quota compliance of about 71 percent.
Supplies rose by 80,000 barrels a day in August, to 26.25 million barrels a day, signifying compliance of about 66 percent, from 68 percent in July, the IEA said today.
Compliance with existing production quotas is improving and prices may rise further by the end of the year, Algeria’s Khelil said. Late yesterday, Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister for Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest producer, told reporters “we are enjoying a good, fair price” for oil, so any slippage in compliance with production quotas is not a concern while prices are “perfect.”
Ministers from several OPEC member states including Kuwait and Venezuela had said this week they didn’t expect any change in allowed production volumes. Quotas were last changed in December. All 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News last week also forecast no change in quotas.
Quota Busters
Only Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar pumped less than their target last month, according to Bloomberg estimates. Iran, Angola and Venezuela were the biggest quota busters. Iraq is the only OPEC member which does not have production limits.
“Everybody should adhere to his production allocation,” OPEC’s el-Badri said. There are “positive signs” oil demand will pick up in 2010, he added.
World oil demand is expected to increase by 490,000 barrels to 84.4 million barrels a day this year, according to the Paris- based IEA.
The IEA left its estimates for non-OPEC production unchanged for 2009 and 2010, and therefore raised its “call on OPEC crude” by 500,000 barrels a day for 2009 and by 400,000 barrels for next year.
OPEC members will make $559 billion in net sales from crude exports this year, down 42 percent from 2008, the U.S. Energy Department reported. The figure was little changed from last month’s forecast of $555 billion. OPEC made $971 billion last year and is forecast to make $675 billion in 2010.
OPEC will meet next in Luanda, Angola, on Dec. 22, and again in Vienna on March 17 next year, the group said.
By 2015 LED Lighting will be Installed on the Streets
(update:June6.2966 29, 2009)
It is reported that Shenzhen government issued a series of policies to promote LED lamp used for the lighting on all the streets of Shenzhen Street. Shenzhen government takes it as the sample engineering of LED lighting and aims at establishing a global LED research and production base.
It is schedualed to replace all the lamps on the streets with LED by 2015 and expected to achieve the annual production value of 2.80 billion RMB by 2015.
For reaching the goal, the shenzhen government plans to provide 100 million RMB for supporting the project.
In early March at the PDAC, we talked to Rare Element Resources (RES.V, RRLMF), which has gold and rare earths in northeast Wyoming. They have partnered their gold prospects with Newmont, and are pursuing the REEs on their own, I believe.
I could have come back home and buy it for .60 in March. It was mentioned in the previous CNBC segment a week or so back on rare earths, so last week I checked on it again and it was making new highs over $3. Today it made a new high over $4 and closed at $3.90. (All C$)
Just saying, they are further along than SRSR, but at some point, I fully expect SRSR to have a similar run.
http://www.rareelementresources.com/s/Home.asp
Chinese Firm Offers to Buy Australia's Energy Metals
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125237950076691435.html
By ROSS KELLY
SYDNEY -- China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co., or CGNPH, Tuesday offered 83.6 million Australian dollars (US$71.6 million) for control of Energy Metals Ltd., adding to a wave of Chinese investment in Australia's natural resources.
State-owned CGNPH's offer to buy 70% of the operator of the proposed Bigrlyi uranium project in Australia's Northern Territory also signals China's first significant corporate move into one of the world's biggest uranium producing nations.
The offer comes amid a low point in relations between China and Australia following the detainment last month of four employees of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd., including Australian citizen Stern Hu, on charges of bribery and infringing on state secrets. It also comes as disquiet grows among some politicians and commentators about the amount of Chinese investment in Australia's mining sector.
Also Tuesday, China Railways Materials Commercial Corp. proposed to take substantial stakes of around 12% in two Australian iron ore juniors, United Minerals Ltd. and FerrAus Ltd.
Top 100 alt search engines:
. One Riot.com is one of the coolest and best new social search engines that searches the web in real time. Users find the freshest and newest social news, blogs and videos on OneRiot, because this real time search engine delivers results as they emerge.
2. Bing.com – in the course of writing this article, Bing went from almost ready to fully available as a search engine. It is what Microsoft is calling a “Decision engine,” fully equipped with intuitive features that will deliver more relevant and faster results for your “decision-making.” Like many other new search engines and sites, Bing can answer direct questions, such as “What is the capital of Moldova?” differentiate synonyms, and is equipped to compute human language, rather than just text or keywords of a search query.
3. Eeggi.com - an acronym that stands for engineered, encyclopedic, global and grammatical identities) and claims to be the world’s first “Information engine,” according to the website. With eeggi, searches can include synonyms, understand and differentiate between words such as “understand” and “comprehend,” and be able to analyze and work around the differences in their meanings. Eeggi also reduces irrelevant search results, providing only specific and detailed queries, as well as search several languages at once, find conclusive and deductive results, respond to users directing search magnitude, and respond to direct questions.
4. Powerset.com – this is the first search engine that developed a human language search function, meaning that it is an attempt to have computers understand the way we talk. Though Powerset for now, only searches wiki articles, it also answers questions directly, and can understand your words, instead of just text – you can express your search in keywords, phrases, or direct questions. Because of Powerset, several other “human language” search engines have been brought into the web search engine world.
5. SurfCanyon.com – this is a powerful new free browser extension that personalizes and optimizes your search on any search engine or directory, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, Craigslist, and more. The software “figures out” what you want, and them makes relevant suggestions, much like Jinni.com does for movies.
6. Imprezzeo.com – an image search engine that allows you to search for other images with examples of images – essentially, it is an image-oriented search engine, that uses images for both reference and results.
7. Yahoo! BOSS – the BOSS is an acronym for Build your Own Search Service. This is a project by Yahoo to encourage innovation in search engines. Using Boss, anyone can add their ideas, content, and data to Yahoo’s Boss system to create their own unique search engine, by utilizing Yahoo’s entire search index, crawling, page rank and relevancy algorithms.
8. Deep Web Technologies – in addition to being a search engine itself, it also has powered and created an enormous collective of research search engines under the name. Due to its powerful deep web reach, finding information and relevance that most search engines cannot reach, and also working in real time; Deep Web Technologies has created several search engines under its main name:
9. Biznar – re-searches for businesses
10. ScienceResearch.com – a science research engine, with multiple advanced options, and personalized options for customized research
11. Mednar – medical research engine
12. Scitopia.org – a science, technology and engineering search engine for researchers, focusing on scholarly documents
13. WorldWideScienceAlliance – a global search engine gateway that provides access to national and international databases and portals
14. Collecta.com – though they have not launched yet, their site claims to be the web’s most powerful real time search engine, posting photos and posts from sites like Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, and more. What makes them different from other real-time search engines remains to be seen.
15. Taptu.com – a search engine engineered specifically for mobile devices, like the iPhone and the iTouch.
16. Yottalook.com - a free medical imaging search engine that provides decision support at the point of care using proprietary relevance and ranking algorithms by iVirtuoso, and is designed to provide the practicing radiologists the most important and most relevant information they need at the time of patient care.
17. Cooliris.com – an imaging search engine, plug-in, browser add-on, and mobile imaging device that displays search images on a 3-D wall, and has many other very effective features that offer fast and colorful ways to both search and display images, photos and videos.
18. Tazti.com – a speech recognition search tool that can be downloaded to any browser for special needs and hands free searches
19. Viewzi.com – an image search engine that displays search results as a mini-screen that you can flip through as though they are a picture gallery – this means that page rank becomes less of an issue, because of how fast you can flip through results. Viewzi also can be downloaded as a plug-in or add-on.
20. LiveHit.com – a new “social service discovery” that is more than another social network site, it also features the use of many blog search engine tools, showing you what’s hot, and what will become hot, with a special news/events/topic prediction as part of its functions. As with any social networking, an account is required, but it is free.
21. Gazopa.com – a “similar image search service” which allows you to search images using your own photos, drawings, web images and keywords. You can also search for a similar image by extracting a color or shape from another image. Because many images are difficult to explain with text, GazoPa allows you to use partial images and image characteristics to find other images you’re looking for.
22. Kosmix – a general search engine that brings up a magazine-like search result when a search term, phrase or keyword is put in, everything definitions, to relevant links, videos about the topic, articles, photos, blogs, news, and more. Rather than bringing up one result on one topic, it interprets the searched word or phrase and brings up all areas of relevancy, in multiple web forms and media.
23. Worio – according to their site, “Worio is a discovery engine that works alongside keyword search to expose you to stuff you’ve been missing using search alone.” Worio also personalizes your search, and “learns” your interests through various methods. When a search term or keywords are input, many other popular results are provided with links to Youtube, Wiki, news sites, and so on, with relevance to the search term. Worio also offers a Library and a Friends page, both which require accounts, for which you can save all tagged pages, and socially network with friends on facebook.
24. SearchMe – According to their “about” page, SearchMe “lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through.” Effectively, SearchMe is a multimedia search engine that allows you to search for search topics in text, music, video, blogs, news, and more, and also displays its search results in the same multi-media presentation, with a combination of both multimedia and non-multimedia search results.
25. Pixsy.com – another search engine that has options of music, video, entertainment and news searches, but seems to require a certain download to be installed, in order to bring up relevant results. I typed in “Explosions in the Sky” under the music search, and it brought up a page with a bunch of explosions in Iraq; at the top of the page it said, “sorry, you have not installed AJAX..” I was looking for a band, not actual explosions, so I haven’t quite figured this engine out yet.
26. TheFindGreen.com – a shopping search engine that focuses on green products, stores, merchandise, and local searches that offer the same.
27. Truevert.com – another green search engine, that also focuses on context instead of just text. For instance, if you type in [hybrid cars], the results will be more about how to convert your car to run on vegetable oil or something, not a bunch of Acura and Honda advertisements.
28. Greenmaven – another green search engine that focuses on green and sustainable websites and topics. They also offer research tools, and an outspoken mission to strengthen the economy through opening the green collective to the web.
29. Videosurf – a free video search engine that searches CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN, Hulu, YouTube, and more for any video, including full t.v. episodes. It’s a step up from Hulu and Fancast, because of its search engine.About.com – an answer directory, sort of a mixture of an encyclopedia, search directory, and trend site.
30. Mytopia – an online gaming community that stretches across both web and mobile platforms, enabling users to have profiles, avatars, chat, messaging, leaderboards, tournaments and competitions in real-time on their iphones, Blackberrys, Razors, Windows mobile, and many other smartphones and mobile operating systems, as well as on Facebook and Open Social.
31. GoPlanit – a recommendation engine that plans a trip for you in advance or as you go, with flight, lodging, restaurant and activity recommendations. User account is required, but the site is free to use, and may take a little time to learn how to use the sight.
32. Tweegee – offers each tween-aged user to create their own personal website, message through email and chat, play online games, create their own characters, read news relevant to their age group, and write their own articles – all in all, an extremely unique and creative social networking site for tween-aged youngsters
33. Ấngströ – a people search site for businesses, something kind of resembling a background check, but it pulls from sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for information and profiling, for businesses and people needing information on companies and individuals.
34. Popego – a social/recommendation/browser/search that sets you up with your own interests on the web, by searching and filtering out specific videos, articles, news, blogs, and other things that match your personal interests.
35. Mixtt – a new social networking site focused on arranging social grouping and meeting according to city. Unlike most social networking sites that simply aim to enhance time spent online, Mixtt encourages users to meet offline, and mingle with those that would be normally “outside” their normal group of friends and acquaintances, not only regarding who they know, but regarding those that may otherwise be outside their typical subgroup or socially respective common interests. MIXTT is a great source for establishing a new and exciting social life, professional networking, dating, play-time, or any aspect of life that can benefit from an easier and creative way of meeting new and different people. MIXTT encourages people, albeit perhaps passively, to break down barriers of social, socioeconomic, and even racial barriers that may inhibit people from becoming friends, which is truly an admirable quest.
36. Grockit – this is a great combination of a learning and social site, where people learn information by teaching each other in a game-style platform. Grockit users can study for their GMATs, GREs, LSATs, SATs, ACTs, MCATs and more in a creative, fun, and social online environment. A great study and social tool for high school, college, and post-graduate users.
37. Bojam – a site that brings both professional and serious amateur musicians together by allowing them to upload their music, edit and team up with other musicians from around the world. It’s a combination of a both a web-recording studio, and a social platform for musicians to mingle, mix, and play music together with those that match their style and interests. A brilliant engine for providing outlets and searches for other musicians and music to enhance and employ any user’s musical ambitions.
38. Deepdyve – a deep web academic search engine that currently searches for scholarly research on medical and life sciences, and is working to expand their academic topics and broader research sources.
39. iSeek – is what they call a targeted discovery engine, and was voted by The Search Race to be the best Alternative Search Engine last year. iSeek can target and narrow your search results according to topic, source, place, time and date, locations, people, resources, definitions, and also has an additional education search engine. iSeek is definitely a search engine to keep on your favorites list to frequently use, as it is one o the best alternative search engines out there.
Some Middle Search Engines:
40. Ixigo – a travel, hiking, biking and bussing search engine, with features like blogs by experts about do’s and don’ts of a biking adventure or vacation, flight and ticket searches, and much more.
41. Joost – a television, music and video search engine that makes recommendations in addition to traditional title and name searches; it also features blogs, groups and a user-recommended list of shows, movies and music according to searched choices.
42. Jogli – a music search engine where you can search millions of artists, songs, lyrics, musicians, etc.
43. Kindernet – a search engine especially for children, which not only provides search results relevant to kids, but also provides a childproof search results index.
44. Myperfect.com.au – a “choice” engine that finds your perfect “thing” by asking you questions and providing a list of results, eventually narrowing it down until you find the perfect one. The home page starts you off by suggesting looking for your favorite beer, phone, camera, career, and so on, then takes you to a page where you are asked questions that help determine how to narrow the search results – a very innovative way to search for something you love, or even for something you are not quite sure how to find for yourself. I put this one on my favorites list immediately, I thought it was a fabulous search tool.
45. Nozasearch – if any of you have ever had any experience in non-profit organizations, you know how many of them struggle with funding. Nozasearch helps find charitable organizations and donors for non-profit organizations and charities, with features of advanced search and local searches. A fantastic search that is making a proactive contribution to world peace and prosperity.
46. Samepoint – a conversation search engine, which in my opinion, is a brilliant kind of search engine. It varies from regular blog search engines because it searches more than blogs for the conversations that contain your search, and it varies from other search engines because it searches pages that expire and/or are never indexed at all, due to their techie smarts.
47. RSS micro – an RSS feed search engine that offers narrowed results according to date and time the feeds were published in hours, days, weeks, or anytime. It also provides search results in real-time, allowing for the newest and freshest RSS feeds published.
48. Newstree.org – an alternative news search that searches your topic through news media that is not associated with major coporations. For example, when I searched “outsourcing,” it gave me search results from truthout.org, Democratic Underground, and World Net Daily. A great tool for finding little seen or heard news, as well offbeat topics.
49. Megaglobe – an international/global search engine, that not only focuses on global news, economy, politics, legal matters, top stories, and more, but also offers a feature that allows you to ask a question, which is then answered by other users – a pretty cool feature for a search engine.
50. Sproose – this is sort of like a reverse recommendation engine, or what Sproose calls a recommendation-voting engine, and is the only one of its kind. Users determine the page rank of results by voting on them when the input a search. Sproose also offers recommendation articles, videos and products based upon user searches.
51. Artcyclopedia – an art search directory, that allows you to search by title of work, artist, or the style of art, such as abstract expressionism, art nouveau, post-impressionism, Renaissance, and so on. For each stylistic search, it offers several past and contemporary artists to further research. Thus far, this is one of the best general art search sites I’ve found.
52. Swotti – a product search engine that allows you to search, rate and compare products in over 20 categories like music, entertainment, literature, movies, videos, and more.
53. Sensebot – an information search engine or browser plug-in that summarizes multiple web pages in your search results, for a quicker decision-making process to establish the results that are more relevant.
54. Swamii – the site calls itself “the what’s new engine,” but it is basically a “continual” search engine. The way it works starts with a user account, followed by the user entering any information or searches about stuff they want continuous alerts on, and Swamii then alerts the user on an ongoing basis about the input search. Actually, this is a great tool for someone that writes about stuff on an ongoing basis, or is doing research over a period of time, or even someone with a hobby or pursuit that wants to keep up with it.
55. Trovit – a classifieds search engine that serves 11 different countries, where users can find apartments, jobs, cars and more.
56. Twing – a search engine that searches forums, such as music forums, art forums, green forums, and more.
57. Zvents – an events search engine that provides local searches for festivals, live music, theater performances, shows and performances, concerts, and more. You can also promote an event on this search engine as well, or look for the ideal thing to that is in close reach of your local area.
58. USAspending.gov – a search engine that allows the user to find out exactly where their tax dollars are going, on either a federal or state level; for instance if you want to find out how your state used a grant or loan, or how monies are distributed for any federal government program, this site facilitates that, as well as provides information on grants and loans for various entities and individuals.
59. Zeadoo – a search tool that allows you to search all your favorites from one page; you can import your favorites list, or download the Zeadoo extension to your browser.
60. Zocdoc – this search site is especially handy if you’ve just gotten new health insurance and need to find a doctor and/or dentist in your area that accepts your insurance – Zocdoc searches just those kinds of things for you.
61. Cognition.com – an NLP search tool that has very sophisticated and advanced abilities to compute human language and semantics, while also retaining high relevance in results
62. Factbites – in addition to delivering search results for search queries, this search engine also lists the results in simple sentences, so that a user may more clearly understand what the web page is about, and how relevant it is to the search
63. Faroo – I feel slightly biased about this site, simply because it is one of the most idealistic out there, and I have not yet come across another one like it. This is a peer-to-peer website, where users passively decide page-rank algorithms, determined by which pages are looked at for a particular search. Not only that, but Faroo has a democratic, and almost even a socialist approach to their revenue – they share advertising revenue with users that have accounts. This is one of the best ways I’ve seen a company try to defeat the beast of monopoly.
64. BlogDimension – this blog search engine doesn’t just search blogs in its index, but also podcasts, online videos, images and microblogs, such as on Twitter.
65. Feefiefoefirm – a law firm search engine, something that could come in really handy when you want to sue MacDonald’s for getting a cup of hot coffee spilled on your arm.
66. Evri – this search engine is attempting to network contextually relevant information about a specific person, place or thing with other equivalent articles, blogs, etc found on the web; Evri also makes recommendation based upon searches
67. Exalead – the lay-out of search results on Exalead gives you several options – regular text lay-out, text and thumbnail lay-out, and text, thumbnail with extra info lay-out. Exalead also offers narrowed searches according to multimedia, directory, related links, related terms and more.
68. Hakia – hakia narrows down search results to the most credible web pages and web sites in your search results, in order to save time wasted on results that may appear relevant, or have related content regarding a particular search, but that stem from less-than-credible sites. Hakia strives to eliminate those through ontological and semantic NLP technology.
69. GenieKnows – this unique little search engine is sort of a cross between a local search and a travel search. It searches all over Canada and the U.S., allowing users to find things like “where to find antiques in Montreal,” or “the best plastic surgeons in NYC,” or even small town information about events, places and people.
70. iSearch – a free people search that simply allows users to search for people using their first and last names and location, their email address, phone number or even their screen name.
71. I’mVivo – a social search engine that is a social network as well; it searches social media and networks, regular media, and other content to produce search results, with the most popular social pages being the highest ranking.
72. LoanKrunch – a loan search engine that allows you to compare loan rates for real estate, cars, personal loans, and more, without divulging any personal information, so that you can find your ideal loan company or bank, without a bunch of difficult research.
73. KoolTorch – a search tool that can be added to your browser in order to organize and visually lay-out search results on a page in a neat, simplistic graph of up to 100 results per page.
74. Grokker – a sophisticated enterprise search engine management tool (whew that is a mouthful) for businesses and research that provides federated search to millions of databases for a huge index of search resources, as well as visualization techniques that allow users to understand and review their search results through things like narrowed topical columns, filters, graphs, and much more.
75. CrimeSpider – a crime and law enforcement search engine that categorizes crimes and their websites, so that you don’t have to go to each website looking for the one that fits your search.
..And some Older Favorites:
76. Clusty – Clusty is a meta search engine, but also delivers the search results in clusters for easier viewing – the best of both cluster and meta search engines
77. Scirus – a science search engine that is oriented more for everyday web users, rather than high-brow research; however Scirus only search scientific web pages and likewise with the search results.
78. Lyricsmode – a music lyrics search directory, that allows you to search according to keyword, artist, song title, or genre
79. AjaxWhois – a domain name search engine that will tell you right away if the domain name you want for your website is available or not.
80. EducationWorld – an educational search engine that not only focuses on educational material and websites, but also offers resources for teachers as well. This search engine has one of the broader education spans than some academic search engines with more focused topical circumferences.
81. Answers.com – a fact search and answer engine, and has also been around for a while.
82. Ask.com - one of the most popular alternative search engines; some of their features include search results that offer stock quotes, famous people, smart answers(answering direct questions) and a binocular-style preview at other websites.
83. Chacha – an older human-derived answer engine, that offers categories and can also be used from mobile phones by through text, or calls.
84. Demandbase.com – a business to business search engine that identifies which visitors are visiting a business site, targets those that fit in to the business’s target market, and helps to turn web traffic into sales leads.
85. Dmoz.org –the oldest and most comprehensive human-edited directory on the web, maintained and constructed by a vast global community of volunteer editors.
86. Dogpile – one of the older and well-known meta-search engines; it searches Google, Yahoo! Windows Live Search Ask.com, and delivers search results from a huge index of relevant pages.
87. FamousLocations – a movie location search, which comes in really handy when you want to go see a movie, and cannot for the life of you figure out how to find out movie theater times…much less where they are.
88. Firstgov.gov – The U.S. Government’s official web portal, and probably the biggest legal/law search sites available
89. GoshMe – a search engine that searches meta search engines, which search other search engines – in other words, a meta, meta search engine
90. Happyhour.com – a beer search engine! How cool is that.
91. Icerocket – a blog search engine, that offers some really cool features, such “Ice Spy,” that searches what other searchers are searching for, a host for RSS feeds, blog trackers, and top blog trends delivered on the home page that take no searching at all.
92. Indeed.com – a meta-search engine for jobs
93. Info.com - a meta-search engine that searches Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, Ask.com and About.com
94. Jinni– a movie search site that allows you type in a genre and basic plot of a movie, and either matches a movie to your description, or suggests movies that fit your taste. Great idea for movie buffs.
95. Kartoo – a clustering search; it delivers search results in a different visual presentation of side to side filtering, rather than in a single-file list; it also offers options to change the way the results are delivered
96. LinkedIn – a business to business social networking site, with features that allow business to link up under a similar business interest to attract clients, employees, advertisers, and more.
97. Nyfa.org – a directory of artistic jobs, juried and non-juried shows accepting submissions, fellowships, residencies, and opportunities that are available in NYC and other areas.
98. Quintara – a really unique search engine that offers visual manipulation and navigation; it has unique features like a list of visual search options on the left hand column and text results on the left, and a web search specifically just for kids, allowing them to search with visual skills, rather than having to read everything and become confused. Quintara is one of those search engines that has to be tried yourself in order to really understand, because as is the case with most visually-oriented things, its difficult to articulate the experience. You just have to experience it.
99. SearchEdu.com – one of the best and largest educational and academic search sites
100. SovLit.com – a search site for and about Russian Literature
101. Topix.net – a news search engine, that offers searches and home page listings of most recent news and top stories narrowed search results according to news sources, local news searches, and an easily navigable magazine style lay-out.
EDWY..get some before she's all but a faint star in the sky~
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=41266623
PHIG now up 225%. Guess I should have bought some this morning. Like watching a kids balloon after they let go of the string
did you catch this line from the URST PR?
The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
they are not currently listed on the TSX, but i have been told they will be sometime soon... slip up or confirmation??
I came across PHIG last night. On a tear this morning. Might be worth watching.
QASP looking mighty fine.
Water: A Rising Tide of Smart Investing Plays
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/apr2009/pi20090422_843804.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_investing
As water prices climb globally, companies are developing ways to conserve, clean, and meter consumption. Here are some promising contenders
By David Bogoslaw
With the yearly Earth Day celebration stretching into its fifth decade, water seems to have risen in the public consciousness as one of the planet's chief environmental concerns. There is growing recognition that this resource—which has no substitute—may turn out to be the hot commodity of the 21st century, much as oil has been for much of the past century.
The higher value ascribed to water has less to do with depletion and scarcity than cost. While there's as much water on the planet as there has ever been, cheap water is in short supply. "All the easily tapped sources have already been tapped," by damming up rivers and other methods, says Neil Berlant, lead manager of the PFW Water Fund (PFWAX), the only open-end mutual fund focused exclusively on water-related stocks. What remains are more expensive sources of water—from oceans, groundwater, or reclaimed used water—which require either desalination, chemical disinfectants, or other processes to be made suitable for drinking.
There's plenty of technology available to clean up water to meet increasingly strict public safety standards, but consumers will have to get use to paying higher rates to local water systems to pay for the necessary treatment. People in the developing world have long had little access to clean drinking water because of how much it costs.
Privatization wave is coming to water
Berlant predicts that water prices across the U.S. will double or triple over the next few years—though that's not as scary as it sounds because the increase will come off a fairly low base. He expects the higher cost to unleash a wave of business opportunities as people shop for products and services to improve water quality. This is compounded by the need for water of much higher purity than in the past for such sensitive manufacturing processes as the production of semiconductors, whose optimal performance depends on cleaner chips, he says.
Another trend in water is the move around the world toward privatization of local water systems as the costs of repairing infrastructure and providing clean water exceed what most municipalities can bear. Of nearly 60,000 local water systems in the U.S., the great majority serve fewer than 3,000 people and only 15% are owned by investors. Foreign-based companies such as Suez Environnement and Veolia Environnement have been expanding beyond their home territories to buy up public water companies in the U.S. and across the developing world.
The extended downturn in the U.S. housing market, by causing the tax base for many parts of the country to shrink, is likely speeding up the privatization process, says Judd Hill, a managing partner at Washington-based Summit Global Management, who focuses on new investment ideas in the water industry.
The thought of investing in privatized water utilities is sure to stir some uneasiness, if not revolt, among socially responsible investors who look not only at returns on their invested capital but also at the impact of management practices on a company's employees and customers. There has been a backlash against privatization in such places as Uruguay, where the local populace ousted a Suez subsidiary for not doing the work that had been contracted and for denying service to those who couldn't afford connections. The push to make access to water a human right is likely to intensify now that Canadian water activist Maude Barlow has been appointed the United Nations' first advisor on water.
Seeking pure-play water companies
Still, there's growing recognition of the need for further market-oriented solutions, since people lack sufficient motivation to use water more efficiently unless they're paying more for it.
The water industry is undergoing a transition that will result in a more clearly defined structure enabling the emergence of pure-play companies dedicated to resolving water challenges, says Steve Hoffmann, an analyst for the Palisades Water Indexes and author of a new book, Planet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource. Until then, investors have to decide whether or not big conglomerates have enough exposure to water, amid all their other businesses, to justify investing in them, he says. Despite their accumulation of water treatment expertise in recent years, Hoffmann excludes General Electric (GE), Dow Chemical (DOW) and similar companies from the Palisades indexes he helped to build because their exposure to water is too small a part of overall operations.
While the industry is now extremely fragmented, the number of companies investors can choose among is sure to increase over time as mergers and acquisitions occur, says Hoffmann. "Customer demands for comprehensive, cost-effective solutions discourage a segmented industry structure," he writes in his book.
Companies focused on instrumentation, regulatory compliance monitoring, membrane manufacturing, pumps, and environmental remediation will be among the candidates for consolidation in the years ahead, he believes.
Some cities still need water meters
Given the scarcity of cheap water, companies focused on water conservation are a natural place for investors to start. Since irrigation uses the majority of the planet's clean water, Lindsay (LNN) and Valmont Industries (VMI) are key components of Berlant's fund and the PowerShares exchange traded funds, which license and track the Palisades indexes. Lindsay and Valmont are the leading makers of more efficient irrigation equipment, controlling more than two-thirds of the U.S. market.
Metering is another critical way to reduce water usage, and some major cities remain only partially metered. Hoffmann recommends water meter manufacturers such as Badger Meter (BMI) and meter service providers such as Itron (ITRI) for direct conservation plays.
The rising need for desalination makes Consolidated Water (CWCO) a good bet, says Berlant. The company cleans up seawater to provide all of the water used by a number of Caribbean islands and is steadily expanding its customer base, he says. He also likes Energy Recovery (ERII), whose entire business is concentrated in making equipment that significantly reduces energy consumption in desalination plants.
As consumer demand for home-filtered water increases, Calgon Carbon (CCC) is in a unique position to benefit. Calgon is a leading supplier of activated carbon, the only element used to treat water in kitchen-sink filters and in refrigerator ice makers, as well as in big water treatment facilities.
Engineering and consulting plays
An estimated need for up to $1 trillion in infrastructure repairs in the U.S. over the next 20 years, after decades of neglect, make Mueller Water Products (MWA) a good investment, says Berlant. Mueller sells assorted components, from water hydrants to meters to pipes. And the need to replace old and leaky pipes will also benefit Northwest Pipe (NWPX) and Ameron International (AMN). Trading only on the pink sheets right now is Geospatial Holdings (GSPH), a small Pittsburgh-based company that uses Wi-Fi technology to map pipes so local water utilities can find them to make repairs. Hill at Summit likens the service to an underground Google Maps.
Most of the advanced technology options being developed to treat, and in some cases reclaim, wastewater are being driven by tougher and expanding regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hoffmann thinks some of the best bets for investors are a few of the engineering and consulting companies that already do a lot of water-related remediation. "They look at the management of water in a very comprehensive, integrated fashion and are at the forefront of knowledge-specific applications, like watershed regulations," he says.
He includes a number of these companies in the Palisades indexes, including Aecom Technology (ACM) and the Canadian company Stantec (STN), both of which specialize in using biological membrane reactors to remove polluting nutrients. He also likes Tetra Tech (TTEK), which follows the same integrated approach to wastewater management
One of the most pressing environmental issues concerns farm runoff of storm water loaded with nitrogen and other chemical fertilizer compounds and urban runoff of water full of oil and other pollutants washed off dirty streets and parking lots. Excessive runoff that can't flow back into groundwater ends up in the nearest rivers, lakes, and oceans, resulting in a profusion of algae and other plant life that suck up oxygen when they die, creating so-called dead zones that can no longer neutralize pollutants.
The Artemis Project: award to Abtech
A wellspring of creative solutions has emerged in response to this problem—from rooftop rain gardens to permeable asphalt to underground cells that allow tree roots to grow to full capacity and thereby absorb more rainwater—but most are in the early stages of development and not yet available for investment.
The Artemis Project, a San Diego consulting firm focused on the water industry, is trying to make private equity investors more aware of opportunities in new technologies aimed at solving complex water issues. This week, Artemis launched an annual competition that will give awards to companies judged to have the most investment potential. Its top choice this year went to Scottsdale (Ariz.)-based AbTech Industries, a privately held company that makes a relatively low-tech smart sponge that removes oil and grease from runoff water before it can harm large bodies of water.
Among other companies creating innovative technologies on the brink of public consciousness is BPL Global, which uses smart sensors to marry electronic devices that can measure a community's carbon and water footprints and enable better management both of water flow and energy consumption, says Hill at Summit.
If the 120 international companies that the Artemis Project has identified as having promising water solutions are any indication, the tide of innovation—and investing opportunities—should continue to rise for many years to come as the world's water worries grab the spotlight.
Bogoslaw is a reporter for BusinessWeek's Investing channel.
(RainEarth (RNER) Complies with Chinese Medical Service Reforms to Provide Better and Cheaper Blood Dialysis)
BEIJING, Sept 02, 2009 /PRNewswire-Asia via COMTEX/ -- RainEarth Inc. (OTC
Bulletin Board: RNER; "the Company") announced that in the second quarter of
2009, the Xinhua News Agency publicized the creation of "Opinions of the CPC
Central Committee and the State Council on Deepening the Reform of the Medical
and Health Care System" ("Opinion").
The "Opinion" proposed practical methods to enable people to go see a doctor
more easily. Reduced cost is the short-term goal and the long-term goal is to
establish a medical coverage plan for urban and rural populations that meets
their basic medical requirements more effectively and conveniently.
The Company's Chinese subsidiary, Beijing Rain and Earth Technology Development
Corp. Ltd. ("China RainEarth") not only complied with this system of medical
reform, but will also continue improving the quality of its products while
keeping prices competitive and affordable for patients.
China RainEarth's main product, blood dialysis, is an effective measure for
patients with acute and chronic renal failure (uremia) to sustain their lives.
Currently, there are about 60,000 renal failure patients, who spend more than
RMB six billion (approximately US$882 Million) every year on blood dialysis in
China.
Currently, imported products dominate the market. Comparatively, domestic
products only have less than 2% market share. With social and economic
development as well as the improvement of healthcare services, 15 million blood
dialyzers will be sold in China by 2012 and the market size will hit RMB 1.2
billion (approximately US$176 million). At that time, the market share of
domestic products will exceed 50%.
"Our blood dialysis is up to 40% cheaper than other imported dialysis. Of course
our dialysis maintains the same high quality," said Yongfu Zhu, CEO of the
Company. "Our dialysis has been used by several hospitals and as it is
recognized by more patients and hospitals, we will see continued growth for the
Company."
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