The former chief government scientist has warned that it will be impossible for the UK to meet the long term target for carbon reduction without reusing the stockpile of plutonium that exists. He has predicted that the global supplies of Uranium will start to run out around 2023 leaving the UK having to rely on a domestic supply of nuclear fuels.Sir David King has said that we all had to look at stretching the long term targets and we still needed to generate more electricity while at the same time reducing emissions, and the only way, in his opinion, to do this is by using plutonium. The long term goal of the UK is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the middle of this century.

There are currently over 100 tonnes of plutonium in storage; the waste product of the nuclear energy generation, and still no future has been decided on for it. Whilst renewable energy such as tidal, solar, wind power etc., should still be pursued according to King, he said that experience told him that these forms of energy simply aren’t enough to sustain the demand for electric in the future, which will rise sharply as heating and cars are electrified. This may therefore be good news for nuclear engineering jobs in the UK, should the government go ahead with Sir King’s proposal.

King has also called for the government to take a more forceful role in the directing of the Nations energy provision. He also said that we all need a long term view of the future of energy in the UK, and this should be the job of the government to provide this as there is no way we can leave it up to the market to sort out. King added that while the energy market worked well in the short term, it can only deal with the long term with proper government directives and measures.

Despite being classed as a waste product for many years, the government are now starting to regard the stockpile of plutonium as a resource. King said that due to the stocks of uranium being depleted so quickly, and only a fraction of that mined is suitable for generating power, the plutonium would be needed to fuel the new power stations.

Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock reported that combined, the duo of bailout banks were able to make a profit of £477.5m and were able to pay back £1.1b to the UK Government which is a large improvement on the 2009 losses of around the same amount that the banks were forced to report. The only problem is that while it’s great news that the banks are recovering, £1.1b is not that much given the fact that they owe the Government £50b total.

However, the management company for both banks, UK Asset Resolution, hopes to slowly increase profits and continue to repay taxpayers for the amount that the bank had to borrow to stay alive. Chief Executive for UKAR, Richard Banks, stated that they were able to meet their primary business objectives in 2010 and have moved out of loss margins into profit margins and therefore, as they work with their customers, they will continue to make repayments.

He added however that inflation, increase in unemployment, tax increases, and other economic factors that are likely to change over the next few years will impact their profit margins and what they will be able to offer.

It is no secret that the UK has spent the last few years working to improve their broadband speeds across the country. However, this week Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne announced where efforts are going to be focused when he stated the cities that will receive extra funds to help increase broadband speeds.

These cities have been titled ‘super-connected cities’ and will receive a slice of the £100m that Osborne pledged would go towards increasing broadband speeds in autumn of 2011.  Cities that will get a piece of the funding include Bristol, London, Leeds, Belfast, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bradford, Cardiff, Newcastle, and Birmingham.

According to Osborne, the funds should help the UK reach its ultimate goal of offering super fast broadband to over 1.8m homes and an additional 200,000 businesses throughout the UK by 2015. The emphasis of the effort is on high-growth areas that fail meet the high standard expected from a broadband speed test, as well as areas that have a large amount of residents. Osborne also stated that another £50m will be pledged towards ten additional smaller cities in the near future.

The £100m fund that will be split between the metropolitan and city areas comes out of the £5bn national infrastructure investment plot and was removed by Parliament with the intent of helping to increase the average speed of broadband in urban areas. Back in autumn of 2011, the government stated in a report that it planned to increase speeds up to 100 megabits per second in select urban areas and offer mobile connectivity throughout cities in full.

It also stated that some of the areas that would be chosen to receive the funds such as Belfast Edinburgh, London, and Cardiff were chosen so that SMEs would benefit from the decision and help boost the economy as their growth will lead to more employment zones.

The new funds will be given out in addition to the £530m Broadband Delivery UK fund that was already distributed this year to local authorities within the UK and in Scotland. There was no mention of what could be done to help rural areas that suffer from low broadband speeds.

At this point it is becoming very clear to experts, and those who simply read the news, that Greece is not going to be able to pay its debts, but the question on everyone’s minds is what actually happens to a country if it defaults. After all, it’s not like a bank can literally seize the assets or foreclose on an entire country.

At the moment, Greek leaders are attempting to deal with the default by agreeing on some very painful budget cuts that will include adding new taxes and laying off a great deal of people in order to receive any more bailout money from EU countries. The country is also suffering from a deep recession, which is reducing the amount of taxes it is receiving from citizens, which is in turn causing it to faller even deeper into debt.

If Greece were to default then investors will likely flee the debt that they have in other countries in the UE including Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal which will hurt these countries as they lose their investors.

The more troubling news is it could cause default in other countries as well, and even if the EU is able to help Greece and Portugal survive, they will not be able to handle the default of Spain and Italy and there simply is not enough money to bail out the latter two much larger countries. In other words, if Greece goes down it likely will drag everyone down with it and the financial ripples will be felt throughout the world.

Facebook plans to finally go public with an IPO date set to occur sometime in the second quarter of next year with a registration statement said to be in the works and expected to be filed by the close of December of this year.

The social networking giant plans to raise about $10bn from this move which will be the largest netted by any web based technology company and overall would increase the market valuation of Facebook up to a whopping $100 billion.

The IPO is targeted to go on the stock market sometime between the months of April and June in 2012 and has been long expected and awaited since LinkedIn Corp. broke the ice for social networks with its IPO offering in May. Since LinkedIn’s appearance a host of social media companies and internet companies have flooded the stock market including Renren, Pandora Media, and Zillow.

However, some companies that filed for IPOs chose to hold their offering due to the shaky nature of the global markets including Groupon the successful coupon site and Zynga the Facebook gaming start-up. LivingSocial is also planning to file for an IPO although its success may not be guaranteed as Groupon after delaying their offering did not list successfully and now plans to scale down.

Facebook is said to have about 800 million global users out of which a 500 million log in on a daily basis. In fact, it has even been able to disrupt the business plans of yahoo and Google making it a very strong online presence.

A large study conducted of mobile users in Denmark discovered that there was not actually any link between cellphone use and an increased risk of developing brain tumours with lengthy use. Although the data is reassuring to those who use mobile phones on a regular basis, investigators noted that the study was more focused on cellphone subscriptions and not the actual use of the phones so it is not a conclusive study yet in terms of the frequency of mobile use.

According to the investigators, the risk of brain tumours in those who heavily use their mobile phones over the course of 10 to 15 years can still not be ruled out. The findings were published in BMJ as an update to a report that was published in 2007 just a few months after a panel from the World Health Organization that determined that cellphones could potentially be cancer causing.

Last year a similar study was published titled Interphone that also determined that there that there was not a clear link although those with the highest usage levels did have a higher risk for a certain type of brain tumour.

The new results from the Danish study are important due to the fact that they match data that was collected since 1982 from a national cancer registry which allows selection bias to be eliminated for the first time allowing the results to be much more accurate. Still, as usage levels of the cell phones was not taken into account it is still not considered a conclusive study.

In a new authorised biography about to hit the shelves at bookstores and written before his untimely death, Steve Jobs swore that he would destroy the Android operating system and would spend his life and all of Apple’s money to do so if that is what it took.

According to Jobs, Android’s operating system was developed basically by grand theft and that he would do whatever it took to get back his intellectual property. At the moment Apple is involved in several lawsuits against smartphones that utilise the Android software.

Before Google launched the Android they were actually friendly with Apple as both companies often offered each others products. In fact, the chairman of Google, and at that point the chief executive of Google, both sat on the Apple board. However, when Android first came out in 2007 just ten months after the iPhone was released the relationship started to sour and has become more bitter every year with Apple rejecting Google from its app store.

Since this point Android has taken over a large part of the smartphone market and is now installed on about 48% of all mobile phone shipments compared to 19% of the shipments that Apple is installed on. However, Apple has fought its growth every step of the way repeatedly suing many of the hardware manufacturers that have chosen to use the Android OS on their smartphones and tablets including Samsung and Motorola. In fact, right now the Galaxy Tab is on hold in Germany and Australia due to pending lawsuits.

Google claims that its street view mapping service can go just about anywhere, and it now seems that the company has made good on its promise, as the company just recently took some time to get out on bike and boat to map the Amazon rainforest. Available on the Google map service are now great panoramic shots of the communities and images that make up the Amazon rainforest allowing those who cannot afford to get out a chance to experience the views for themselves from home.

The Sustainable Amazon Foundation partnered with the popular search engine company as part of an initiative to increase the public’s awareness of just how diverse the endangered rainforest is. In addition to Google photographers riding around with their cameras in tow, some of the local indigenous community people were also hired to take out Google’s tricycles with onboard camera equipment around their villages so that many unique views could be presented on the Amazon.

Street View team head Karin Tuxen-Bettman said that once the images are completely uploaded then anyone will have a chance to see the beauty and culture of the Amazon rainforest from any location in the world. Previous efforts by Google to help open up the beauty of the world include an interactive tour of Antarctica and a full charter of the area.  The Amazon project is still in the works with some images available now and more yet to come, although Google does not have a timetable for completion.

A lawsuit has been filed in the United States that claims that Apple along with five major publishers including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin have consorted in the illegal price fixing of their ebooks.The new lawsuit claims that the publishers consulted with Apple to increase their ebook prices so that Amazon would have to quit selling its ebooks at a discount rate to customers.The complaint itself revolves around the Apple model in which publishers instead of the retailer set their eBook prices.

While the claim may be new to the US, it is not new to the publishers or Apple as similar complaints have already been filed in the UK and in Europe with the Office of Fair Trading currently taking to a look to determine if publisher-retailer agreements are breaching the competition law.The lawsuit in America started with two main defendants, but could be expanded to include anyone that purchased a book at the price of £9.99 or $9.99 from Apple from any of the included publishers and could quickly escalate to be worth many millions of dollars for those affected.

While the stock market has continued to fall a little by a little, pint by point since 2007, but there are other ways to trade that are remaining strong. One area that is continuing to prosper is the area of difference trading which is continuing to rise in popularity among private investors who are able to see the many advantages of trading against the margin and the amount of profit that there is to be had. The nice thing about contracts for difference trading is the fact that they are completely legal and more and more countries are getting involved, allowing more people to take advantage of the market.

Another reason that difference trading is getting popular is the fact that it can all be done online, which allows you to see the profits in both rising and falling markets, which creates a large amount of transparency and flexibility among the contracts for difference market.

Thus, the product is extremely exciting to most investors and over the course of 2011 the UK Financial Spread Betting and Contracts for Difference Report expects to see another 9,000 traders join the market. This is a small number next to their prediction that over the next decade most people involved in the trade industry expect it to become a medium choice for most global traders.

The other reason that contracts for difference trading is becoming so popular is due to the fact that it is a simple trading tool that is easy to use for beginners to trade and those who want a low risk investment opportunity. It is also becoming a great fit for those who want to take their finances into their own hands because after the financial crisis many people feel better taking care of their finances on their own instead of trusting someone else to do it.