[Quote]:

Apple doesn’t have enough iPads and iPhone 4s to meet consumer demand, doesn’t know when it will, and doesn’t know how many more it needs.

And, no, it didn’t create an artificial shortage of either device to hype up a buzz storm.

"We do not purposely create a shortage for buzz," Apple COO Tim Cook to analysts and reporters after announcing Cupertino’s $15.7bn third fiscal quarter on Monday. "I’m not sure where that comes from, but that is not our objective. We would like to fill every customer’s orders as quickly as we can."

But they can’t.

After telling a questioner that Mac and iPod supplies weren’t constrained, Cook said: "The iPad and the iPhone are significantly different. Both of these products — the iPad and specifically the iPhone 4 — we had backlog [of orders] at the end of last quarter that we were not able to fill, and currently we are still selling both of those products as fast as we can make them."

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Five days ago, in the northeastern port city of Dalian, China, two oil pipelines exploded, sending flames hundreds of feet into the air and burning for over 15 hours, destroying several structures – the cause of the explosion is under investigation. The damaged pipes released thousands of gallons of oil, which flowed into the nearby harbor and the Yellow Sea. The total amount of oil spilled is still not clear, though China Central Television earlier reported an estimate of 1,500 (400,000 gallons), as compared to the estimated 94 – 184 million gallons in the BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast. The oil slick has now grown to at least 430 square kilometers (165 sq mi), forcing beaches and port facilities to close while government workers and local fishermen work to contain and clean up the spill. (29 photos total)

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Two workers try to rescue their co-worker (left) from drowning in the oil slick while he was attempting to fix an underwater pump during the oil spill clean-up operations at Dalian’s Port on July 20, 2010. (REUTERS/Jiang He/Greenpeace) #

[Quote]:

China’s largest reported oil spill more than doubled in size to 165 sq. miles (430 sq. kilometers) by Wednesday, forcing nearby beaches to close and prompting one official to warn of a "severe threat" to sea life and water quality.

The oil slick started spreading five days ago when a pipeline at a busy northeastern port exploded, sparking a massive fire that took more than 15 hours to contain. Hundreds of boats have been deployed to help with the cleanup.

[Quote]:

Microsoft has told TechRadar that it’s not sure whether users want copy and paste or ‘true’ multi-tasking on Windows Phone 7.

Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Microsoft, told us that the user experience has been prioritised over certain other elements of the platform:

"I’m not so sure users necessarily expect [copy and paste and multie-tasking] on Windows Phones – what they want is a user experience that does what they want it to do.

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Some of Exxon’s largest donations were to groups that lobbied against a global deal on emissions being reached at last December’s climate summit in Copenhagen. The value of Exxon’s oil and gas investments could fall sharply if governments adopt aggressive plans to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

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The energy giant had indicated it was pulling back from funding sceptics. In its 2007 corporate citizenship report, it stated: "In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to several public policy groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner."

Exxon also gave reassurances last year that it had no funding links with the sceptics’ biggest annual conference, the International Conference on Climate Change.

Guess what. They lied.

[Quote]:

Mithoefer and his colleagues surveyed 20 patients suffering from PTSD for an average of 19 years who weren’t responding to antidepressants and psychotherapy.

With nearly 20 percent (pdf) of soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan with PTSD or major depression, TIME reports, "The idea for using ecstasy in PTSD treatment is that the drug dramatically reduces immediate anxieties, allowing you to open up emotionally, even as your body and brain are energized by the drug."

The results of the study have also been reported by U.S. News and World Report:

At the end of the trial, more than 80 percent of the patients who received a combination of MDMA and psychotherapy no longer met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, compared with only 25 percent of the placebo group. In addition, the three patients who reported being unable to work due to post-traumatic stress disorder were able to return to work following treatment with MDMA.

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Tony Hayward, the embattled CEO of BP, will soon be stepping down from his post, according to a report in The Times of London.

“You would be hard-pushed to find anyone within the company who does not think he is irreparably damaged – both by his own performance and by the event itself,” a company insider was quoted as telling the paper.

Hayward is expected to step down within ten weeks –possibly as soon as next month– according to the report.

Oddly enough, the article doesn’t mention in which jail Tony will be serving his well-deserved sentence… did I miss anything?

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In the hours before the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, BP pumped into the well an extraordinarily large quantity of an unusual chemical mixture, a contractor on the rig testified Monday.

The injection of the dense, gray fluid was meant to flush drilling mud from the hole, according to the testimony before a government panel investigating the April 20 accident. But the more than 400 barrels used were roughly double the usual quantity, said Leo Lindner, a drilling fluid specialist for contractor MI-Swaco.

BP had hundreds of barrels of the two chemicals on hand and needed to dispose of the material, Lindner testified. By first flushing it into the well, the company could take advantage of an exemption in an environmental law that otherwise would have prohibited it from discharging the hazardous waste into the Gulf of Mexico, Lindner said.

The procedure mixed two substances. "It’s not something we’ve ever done before," Lindner said.

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Here’s how bad it has gotten: Not long ago, an Amtrak representative did an interview with local TV station Fox 5 in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station to explain that you don’t need a permit to take pictures there–only to be approached by a security guard who ordered them to stop filming without a permit.

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A couple who took a yacht for a quiet sailing trip were stunned when a 40-ton whale crash-landed on their boat off Cape Town. The pair were enjoying calm seas off the South African coast when the animal flipped into the air and smashed into their mast. Ralph Mothes, 59, and Paloma Werner, 50, were helpless as the beast thrashed around on their 33ft vessel before slipping back into the water…

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Police say a California man arrested after a freeway shootout with authorities was planning to attack people at the American Civil Liberties Union and another nonprofit group.

Oakland police Officer Jeff Thomason says Byron Williams was upset with the ACLU and Tides Foundation for their left-leaning political views.

And, of course, that’s reason to start shooting.

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Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

[..]

“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network.

“If you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point,” Woods says.

[Quote]:

Foreign oil giant BP is on a spending spree, buying Gulf Coast scientists for its private contractor army. Scientists from Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and Texas A&M have “signed contracts with BP to work on their behalf in the Natural Resources Damage Assessment NRDA process” that determines how much ecological damage the Gulf of Mexico region is suffering from BP’s toxic black tide. The contract, the Mobile Press-Register has learned, “prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.”

[..]

The lucrative $250-an-hour deal “buys silence,” said Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs environmental lawyer who analyzed the contract. “It makes me feel like they were more interested in making sure we couldn’t testify against them than in having us testify for them,” said George Crozier, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who was approached by BP.