By Ashoka
The 2008 financial crisis left the economy in shambles and ushered in a period of instability and mounting debt for many families around the Unites States. However, in the wake of financial instability lies an alternative path to more equitable growth: through impact investing. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Markets
A Florida man allegedly kidnapped his two young sons last week after a judge ruled that his parental rights had been revoked.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday that it received information that the Hakken family had arrived on the island nation. Joshua Michael Hakken, the alleged kidnapper, is believed to be travelling with his wife, Sharyn Hakken. Authorities say it is unclear if his wife is a suspect or victim.
A Spanish-language newspaper, El Nuevo Herald, reported that the couple is on the island and in custody of immigration officials. Investigators in the U.S., however, say they’re working with the FBI and the State Department to verify these reports.
Authorities say Joshua Michael Hakken entered his mother-in-law‘s house north of Tampa early Wednesday, tied her up and fled with his young sons. The children were sleeping at the time, Cristal Bermudez, a sheriff spokeswoman, told FoxNews.com. He was not armed at the time.
Bermudez said there is an arrest warrant for Joshua Michael Hakken.
Authorities had been searching by air and sea for a 25-foot sailboat Hakken recently purchased. The truck the family had been traveling in was found late Thursday, abandoned in a parking garage in Madeira Beach.
It is unclear why the couple would flee to Cuba. But The Tampa bay Times reported that the 330-mile trip by sailboat would have been arduous. The temperature during the day reaches 90 degrees and some of the swells at sea could reach up to 6 feet.
The boys, ages 4 and 2, had been living with their maternal grandparents, who were granted permanent custody last week.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that police say in June, Joshua Michael Hakkan was acting bizarrely inside a Louisiana hotel room while attending an ‘antigovernment’ rally. Police say they found marijuana, a gun and a knife in the room.
The boys were put in foster care and police say Joshua Michael Hakken showed up at a foster home in Louisiana waving a gun, the report said. The children, in turn, were sent to live with Sharyn Hakken‘s mother, the report said.
The alleged kidnapping occurred a day after the couple was told by a judge that their parental rights had been revoked, The Tampa Bay Times reported.
Tampa attorney Daniel Fernandez said it may be difficult for U.S. authorities to bring the Hakkens back.
“There are fugitives from the United States in Cuba, hundreds of them, that we can’t get back to prosecute. So, it’s going to be tough,” he told MyFoxOrlando.com.
But he added that diplomacy may improve those chances, because Cuba doesn’t have much to gain.
“I think from a diplomatic perspective, they’ve got nothing to gain and they’ve got a lot to lose in terms of public relations around the world. So there’s a chance that with the right diplomacy the child (children) could be returned,” he said.
The last time that the Unites States and Cuba clashed over a custody issue made headlines around the nation and around the world. Elian Gonzales was 6 years old in 1999 when his mother and 12 …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
By Malcolm Wheatley, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
LONDON — I’ve long been a fan of Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) as tax-efficient wrappers for equity holdings. Quite simply, if you’re going to buy and sell shares — especially as a long-term investor — then it makes sense to do so inside an ISA.
There’s no further income tax to pay on dividends; no capital gains tax to pay at all; and total freedom from the burden of reporting both income and capital gains to the taxman. Want to know more? Start here.
And simply put, from both the capital gains and income perspectives, I reckon National Grid makes an ideal ISA share. Why? Let’s take a look.
Decent yield
Trading today on a forecast yield of 5.5%, an investor making full use of his or her £11,280 annual ISA allowance for 2012-2013 to buy National Grid could earn £620 in dividends next year — without having to pay a penny more in income tax. Which is especially useful if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer, of course.
Better still, National Grid is a cash cow with a long-term track record of throwing off juicy dividends — and juicy dividend growth — year after year. Which is why, of course, it’s long been a share that’s popular with income investors.
And just look at what that growth has delivered. Back in 2008 — the start of the worst recession in 60 years, you’ll remember — National Grid investors were rewarded with an annual dividend of 29.67 pence per share. For 2012, the dividend was 39.28 pence per share.
Over the period 2008-2012, that’s an annual growth rate of 7.3% — comfortably ahead of the rate of inflation over the period, and a decent return from a dull, boring utility.
And as a utility, what’s more, National Grid is also a strongly defensive share. Owning and operating networks that deliver electricity and gas across the U.K., the business also has millions of customers in the northeastern Unites States, with revenues split roughly 50-50 between the U.K. and the United States.
So investors can be reasonably assured that the revenues, earnings and dividend growth the share has delivered in the past, will continue into the future.
Capital upside
Now, the principal charm of safe and boring utilities is clearly for income investors, via the sector’s safe and predictable earnings.
But National Grid is a utility with a difference: here in the U.K., it leaves others to sell directly to consumers, restricting its own offerings to operating the networks through which gas and electricity flow. Which in terms of regulatory supervision, gives it a little more wiggle room, and scope for capital growth.
In the last week, for instance, National Grid‘s shares have hit a 52-week high, on the back of its announcement that it has agreed price controls with Ofgem for the next eight years, helping to pave the way for the company to decide on its future dividend policy.
In short, while the upside in National Grid‘s share price is never going to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Although there is no official confirmation in the Unites States, Mexico or Guatemala that Mexican billionaire Drug …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
BMW is conducting a voluntary safety recall involving nearly 505,000 vehicles in the Unites States over concerns that a battery connector cable can fail and cause engines to stall. A notice on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) lists the number of vehicles potentially affected in the U.S. at 504,545. A report in The Detroit… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The Car Connection
Iran says it is willing to ease Western concerns about Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for pledges from the Unites States and others about its ability to enrich uranium.
Iran‘s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says an “opportunity” awaits at the nuclear talks next week between Iran and world powers in Kazakhstan.
Mehmanparast told reporters on Tuesday that Iran seeks a “show of goodwill” by the U.S. and its allies to recognize Iran‘s nuclear “rights,” which include enriching uranium. Mehmanparast says Iran would respond with proposals to address Western concerns.
Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said Washington was prepared to talk directly to Iran. Tehran rejected the offer.
The West suspects Iran‘s enrichment program could eventually produce material for a nuclear weapon, a charge Iran denies.
By Kris Zane
By most accounts, the Arab Spring went horribly wrong. The democratic elections that swept away dictators—for the most part friendly to the United States—have produced Islamic totalitarian governments.
Mohammed Morsi, president of Egypt, is probably the example par excellence. He quickly nullified the constitution, neutered the judiciary, shut down any media that was critical of his government—branded as critical of Allah—and set up a macabre torture chamber.
Barack Obama, who championed this Arab Spring and even helped the Arab Spring along by arming and supporting the Libyan “rebels” (who were for the most part linked to Al Qaeda), apparently didn’t see this coming.
But Barack Obama is only human. He didn’t envision, like many others, that the people throughout the Middle East and North Africa would elect totalitarian Islamists that would become the Unites States’ enemy, right?
Although it is odd that Obama has embraced Mohammed Morsi with open arms. Mohammed Morsi is part of an organization—the Muslim Brotherhood—that has vowed to destroy the United States. In the words of one of their key documents:
The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…
Mohammed Morsi has called for the invasion of Jerusalem and annihilation of the Jewish people and for a worldwide caliphate that places every country—including the United States—under the thumb of a Muslim caliph.
And it is odd that Obama is sending F-16s to Egypt headed by a man who has vowed to destroy the United States and Israel.
Barack Obama couldn’t have planned to install Islamists throughout the Middle East and North Africa, could he?
That is something that can’t be imagined. A sitting U.S. president who is working with the enemy?
No.
Yet that is exactly what happened.
According to Tony Cartalucci, who was the first to report in his Land Destroyer Report on the database hacking scandal of defense contractor giant Britam, linking Barack Obama to a proposed false flag chemical weapons attack in Syria, the Obama administration was indeed behind the Arab Spring. The so-called “spontaneous grassroots movement” was nothing but a sham. Cartalucci describes in his recently published book War on Syria, Gateway to World War III:
…Local dissidents…received training, funding and material assistance from foreign powers through organizations funded largely by the US State Department…One of the organizations involved in recruiting, training, and supporting youth activists ahead of the “Arab Spring”…was Movements.org, or Alliance of Youth Movements, [who] would later be described admitting to US funding and involvement in the “Arab Spring” uprisings.
Now it all makes sense. The Obama Administration’s hundreds of meetings with Muslim Brotherhood front groups CAIR and ISNA. Obama calling for long-time ally Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to step down. The illegal war in Libya. Arming of the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt with tanks and F-16s. And now backing the Syrian “rebels” (Muslim-Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
