Illegal logging 'worth billions'

21 March 2012 Last updated at 01:11 GMT  By Richard Black Environment correspondent  Illegal logging has been blamed for a number of flooding incidents, notably in the Philippines Illegal logging generates $10-15bn (£7.5-11bn) around the world, according to new analysis from the World Bank.

Its report, Justice for Forests, says that most illegal logging operations are run by organised crime, and much of the profit goes to corrupt officials.

Countries affected include Indonesia, Madagascar and several in West Africa.

The bank says that pursuing loggers through the criminal justice system has made a major impact in some nations, and urges others to do the same.

It also recommends that aid donors should fund programmes that strengthen the capacity of law enforcement and legal authorities to tackle the illegal timber trade.

"We need to fight organised crime in illegal logging the way we go after gangsters selling drugs or racketeering," said Jean Pesme, manager of the World Bank Financial Market Integrity team.

The analysts calculate that an area of forest the size of a soccer pitch is illegally logged every second.

Chainsaws of supply

The report picks out a number of ways in which illegal timber is managed in a similar way to other prohibited commodities such as drugs.

Brazil's deforestation rate has risen and fallen in recent years, as enforcement has changed

But currently, it says, "most forest crimes go undetected, unreported, or are ignored.

"All too often, investigations - in the rare event that they do take place - are amateurish and inconclusive, and the few cases taken to court tend to be of trivial significance, prosecuting people whose involvement in crime is due to poverty and exploitation."

This last comment highlights the very differing scales of illegal logging, which encompasses everything from mechanised teams to individual villagers taking wood for fuel.

However, it says, a number of countries including Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are getting tougher, and starting to bring prosecutions higher up the criminal food chain.

Western countries, consumers and businesses can also play a significant role in cleaning up forestry, the report says.

Three years ago the US amended the Lacey Act, and now companies operating in the US are obliged to prove that their wood comes from legal sources.

A number of businesses are being investigated under the amendment, notably the iconic Gibson guitar company.

The EU has introduced similar legislation, and a growing number of companies will only buy wood that is demonstrably legal and sustainably harvested.

In 2010, a report from the London-based Chatham House think-tank concluded that these and other measures had reduced illegal logging by about a quarter over the preceding eight years.

It urged Japan, as a major timber consumer, to introduce its own legislation; and as Chinese consumption grows, campaigners are increasingly turning their attention there.

Two years ago the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) discovered that beds made of illegally obtained Madagascan wood were selling for up to $1m in Beijing.

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Is it worth reinventing the wheel?

Click's Peter Price looks at the evolution of driverless pods

Rail transport has not fundamentally changed in the 200 years since the invention of metal rails but a new wave of transport ideas - from ones already in development to "concept" contraptions - could change the way we commute forever.

A personal car that drives itself automatically to your destination may sound like science fiction but new "pods" at Heathrow Airport in London have achieved just that - taking passengers from car park to terminal quickly, easily and driven entirely autonomously.

The idea of Personal Rapid Transit, as it is called, is to make public transport more personal, allowing on-demand journeys at the push of a button, all controlled by computers and lasers rather than a human.

The system has been heralded as a solution to transport congestion in years to come. And this is not the only futuristic idea for public transport that has been developed.

The Aero-Train is said to drive more like an aeroplane than a train

One blue-sky idea is the Aero-Train - a plane-like vehicle which travels at up to 350km/h (220mph) just 10cm above the ground.

The vehicle uses a technology known as ground-effect which removes the friction that makes conventional rail transport less efficient and uses aerodynamics to reduce drag.

Its speed relies on aerodynamics similar to those used in a plane or a hovercraft, using the air as a cushion to prevent it from touching the floor.

While currently in prototype, developers at the Tohoku University in Japan have already demonstrated the idea and hope it can be in public use by 2020.

But there are trains in use right now that never touch the ground.

Maglev trains, most famously in use in China between Shanghai Pudong International Airport to an interchange with the Shanghai Metro, operate just centimetres from the track's surface.

The train is held from the ground by a magnetic field - the term maglev is short for magnetic levitation - and powered by motors that, without as much friction, allow it to go at very high speeds.

Maglev trains have been tested to run up to 581km/h (361mph), according to Guinness World Records, quite a pace considering there is no contact between the train and the ground.

Japan is planning to connect Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka by maglev train by 2027 but the first train of this kind was actually used in Birmingham, UK in the 1980s.

Travelling over short distances to Birmingham International Airport at low speeds, it never quite contested the test-run speeds of more modern iterations. It is no longer in use.

What was once widely considered the successor to high-speed rail, maglev networks has struggled with investment in recent years, especially outside of east Asia.

'Steel juggernaut'

So is reinventing the wheel likely to change public transport forever?

Some people think that changing opinions within the industry is - to mix metaphors - akin to turning a tanker around.

Maglev trains lessen friction by being held centimetres above the track

"The steel wheel on steel rail has been in existence for nearly 200 years and it hasn't fundamentally changed in all that time," says Richard Anderson, managing director of the Railway and Transport Strategy Centre at Imperial College London.

"There's a momentum in the industry that steel rail is a juggernaut that can't be stopped. It's here to stay."

And that is where most governments are targeting their funding. While the future of public transport as a whole is one of much debate, high-speed rail seems to be close to widespread global adoption.

Around the world more and more high-speed networks are appearing, costing billions to develop with the promise of improved infrastructure and vast economic benefits.

The UK plans to spend around £32bn on a new high-speed rail network connecting London with Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and then Scotland.

A consultation has been completed, with some critics saying the network risks "being a vast white elephant that is out of date before it is even completed".

But elsewhere, a conference in New York has already looked at plans to spend $600bn (£380bn) and China already operates 16 high-speed rail lines.

So what can high-speed rail offer?

Surprisingly, it seems like speed may not be the most important thing about implementing new networks at all.

"The thing about high-speed rail is not so much speed as capacity," says Mr Anderson.

"The best metros and trams around the world provide mass transport - they move lots of people very efficiently. The advances in technology are going to be important but, after safety, the amount of people that can travel is vital."

And safety is the one thing that causes most concern among commuters.

With the general definition for High-Speed Rail being around 150mph (240km/h), any minor malfunction could lead to catastrophe.

Many high-speed solutions have failed to deliver the speeds promised

In July this year, 39 people died in China when a high-speed train ran into the back of another which had stalled. This was meant to be impossible because of the electronic safety system that was in place.

But in general, driverless public transport is believed to be around 30% more reliable than if it was being driven by a human.

Recent examples include an entirely automated North East MRT Line in Singapore, the last station of which opened earlier this year. It remains completely underground and is entirely driverless for its 20km (12.4 miles) route.

Lesser known is that a significant part of the London Underground network has been automated to some extent, including the Central, Jubilee and Victoria Lines along with the Docklands Light Railway.

"Most modern metros are automatic, which increases reliability," says Mr Anderson.

"This is because you're cutting out a certain level of human involvement which inherently causes problems."

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QUEZON CITY ACCUSES ABS-CBN OF NOT PAYING OVER P1 BILLION WORTH OF TAX!

THE Quezon City government on Monday said it was moving ahead to collect over P1 billion in unpaid business taxes owed by the ABS-CBN network.
“We are just trying to get back the correct taxes ABS-CBN must pay the city government,” City Treasurer Edgar Villanueva said. He referred to the Supreme Court’s October 2008 ruling favoring City Hall.ABS-CBN has religiously paid its franchise tax, equivalent to 0.57 percent of 1 percent of its annual gross receipts, but not the local business tax of 0.57 percent of 2 percent of the annual gross receipts that the Quezon City government has imposed.The amount has ballooned to over P1 billion since 2006.Earlier, the Quezon City government moved to collect about P823 million in similar back taxes from GMA Network. 

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Powerball Jackpot-Winning Ticket Worth $200,000 Sold

One Powerball ticket that correctly matched all five white balls, 11-18-36-41-46, but not the red Powerball 38, worth $200,000 was sold at The Best Check & Cash, 409 W. Moreland Road, Willow Grove, Montgomery County on August 10.

The retailer will receive a $500 bonus for selling the winning ticket.

Lottery officials cannot confirm the identity of the Aug. 10 winner until the prize is claimed and the ticket is validated. Pennsylvania Lottery Powerball winners have one year from the drawing date to claim prizes.

Powerball officials said one person in Minnesota bought a ticket that’s worth $228.9 million from Wednesday night’s drawing. The numbers: 11-18-36-41-46, with a Powerball of 38.

The Lottery encourages the holder of the winning ticket to sign the back of the ticket, call the Lottery at 717-702-8146 and file a claim at Lottery headquarters in Middletown, Dauphin County, or at any of Lottery’s seven area offices.
Claims may be filed at headquarters Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at area offices.

The jackpot will now reset to its default prize of $20 million.

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US stops vessel with $180 million worth of cocaine

MIAMI — The U.S. Coast Guard says its crews helped stop a submarine-like craft filled with $180 million of cocaine in the western Caribbean.

The Coast Guard said Monday that a cutter found the semi-submersible craft July 13 off the coast of Honduras near the Nicaraguan border. Officials say it was found with the help of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection airplane.

The watercraft sank, but it was found Tuesday after several searches by the Coast Guard, FBI dive teams and the Honduran Navy. An FBI dive team recovered nearly 7.5 tons of cocaine, which were turned over to U.S. law enforcement.

Similar crafts regularly smuggle drugs along Central America's Pacific Coast, though U.S. and Honduran authorities said this was the first time such a vessel was intercepted in Caribbean waters.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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How Much Is a User Worth?

Several upstart Internet companies have shown promise in being able to translate user engagement into revenue.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011By Mike Orcutt

Internet companies are notoriously difficult to value, as investors learned in the dot-com crash 11 years ago. But since the "Web 2.0" companies fueling this year's Internet IPOs rely upon having a reliable group of engaged users, they do offer at least one telling metric: the amount of money each user is worth. That's why venture capitalists evaluating such businesses in their early stages often examine how much revenue a company is generating per user.

Bijan Sabet, a venture capitalist at Spark Capital, which has invested in several Internet companies, including Twitter, FourSquare, and Tumblr, says his firm often considers $2 of annual revenue per user to be an important target threshold for startups. By that measure, several of today's new Web companies show genuine promise, as the chart below indicates.

Footnotes: 1.) The figure for Google users refers to the number of unique monthly search users, which doesn't reflect all the people that see its ads and use its services. 2.) The figure for Groupon users refers to reported "cumulative customers" in 2010. 3.) The figure for active Zynga users refers to "monthly unique users" from October through December 2010. 4.) The figure for active Twitter users refers to a recent report from Business Insider that found that only 21 million Twitter users follow 32 or more accounts. Twitter considers an "active" user to be someone who is following 30 accounts, with a third of those accounts following back. 5.) Revenue figures for Facebook and Twitter are based on estimates from eMarketer, a research firm. 6.) Revenue figures for Zynga and Groupon come from their IPO filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It's worth noting that Groupon is an outlier largely because its users buy things from the company rather than serving solely as targets for ads. And of course, revenue per user isn't an absolute measure of a company's prospects: after all, Google is the world's most profitable and valuable Internet company not only because it has a lot of revenue per user, but also because it has a vast number of users. Sheer scale is also a reason for the soaring valuation of Facebook, which now boasts 750 million users. However, by the time public investors get a chance to buy a piece of the company, they'll have to decide whether its metrics really justify the price, or whether they foreshadow another bursting bubble.

Footnotes: 1.) Public company values are based on closing prices on July 8. 2.) The values for Zynga and Groupon are what each company hopes to attain after its upcoming IPO, according to the Wall Street Journal. 3.) The values for Facebook and Twitter are based on the last round of funding each company has raised, according to the Journal, and recent trades on a private exchange, SharesPost.

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