Politico: America Rising Targets Steyer
Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer and other leading environmentalists like Bill McKibben are the targets of an expensive new negative campaign from America Rising Squared, the 501(c)4 arm of Republican opposition research group America Rising.
Launched Friday, the push will include a deployment of trackers with video cameras to follow the activists, a significant effort to research them and their work, a six-figure digital ad campaign focused on social media, and a website -- corenews.org -- that will serve as a hub for the group’s content.
Motherboard: This Grid-Scale Battery Is Based on Train Cars and Good Old Gravity
A California startup called Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) has a clever idea for storing electrical power at the most extreme scales -- those of the power grid itself. It's a battery of sorts, but a battery that doesn't resemble anything we'd normally associate with the term. Rather than chemicals, ARES stores power as gravity.
The key components of ARES' storage scheme include a really big hill and a few railroad cars. Energy to be stored in the system is first used to pull the rail cars via electric locomotives to the top of the hill, where it persists as potential energy. So long as the cars are at the top of the hill, the initial energy expended to get them up there remains trapped within the system. To recover that energy, the cars are simply lowered down the hill, turning built-in motor-generators in the process. This power is collected and then returned to the grid.
Seeking Alpha: What Is In Store for These Utility ETFs This Earnings Season?
The utility sector appears to be in great shape as chances of the Fed hiking rates in the near term have dropped significantly after Fed Chair Janet Yellen's dovish comments, which were further reinforced by Federal Bank of New York President William C. Dudley. Dudley said that due to the uncertain U.S. economic outlook, a cautious and gradual approach to interest rate increases is expected.
This raised the appeal for utility stocks, which offer solid dividend payouts and excellent capital appreciation over the longer term. Further, thanks to the sector's low correlation with the market, huge swings in the stock market don't have any effect on utility stocks. The utility sector is thus considered a defensive play or safe haven in turbulent times.
UPI: Former Nuclear Power Plant Employee Admits to Selling Secrets to China
A former senior employee of a U.S. government office in Tennessee admitted to selling U.S. nuclear secrets to China, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Court records released Friday, from a case kept sealed for more than a year, revealed that former Tennessee Valley Authority manager Ching Ning Guey plead guilty to a charge of development of special nuclear material outside the United States.
InsideClimate News: Warren Buffett Faces Pressure to Invest for the Climate, Not Just for Profit
Thousands of bankers, investors, business journalists and just plain fans will flock to Omaha, Neb., on Saturday in a yearly pilgrimage to glean insight from the world's most famous investor: Warren Buffett.
What they are unlikely to get is any guiding wisdom on climate change, even though the world's most famous climate scientist, James Hansen, will be among the attendees pushing for it.
The occasion is the annual shareholder meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's vast holding company, where the chief executive will hold court for up to five hours in the 18,000-seat CenturyLink Center, his answers parsed for even the slightest nuance that might signal how others should invest.