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Occupy Wall St. Movement Most Important Thing in the World

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Labor Unions Join Wall St. Protesters

Oct 5 (Reuters) – Labor unions including nurses and transit workers planned to join a an anti-Wall Street march on Wednesday through New York’s financial district, and some college students walked out of classes in solidarity with the growing protest movement.

The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, Communications Workers of America and the Amalgamated Transit Union said they would be joining the protesters voicing discontent and anger over high unemployment, home foreclosures and the 2008 corporate bailouts.

The nation’s largest union of nurses, National Nurses United, also said it would take part in the New York march, set for late afternoon in downtown Manhattan.

Students on college campuses added their voices, with walkouts scheduled on Wednesday at some 75 universities across the nation.

“We stand in solidarity with those protesting Wall Street’s greed,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the 1.6 million-member AFSCME union, in a statement. “The economy that has wrecked so many lives, obliterated jobs, and left millions of Americans homeless and hopeless is the fault of banks that gamble with our future.”

Thin Film Solar Panels Gaining in Popularity

FLANDERS, N.J. — A giggling Kyle Bartz used the new rooftop solar panels as a trampoline atop the sprawling Toys R Us distribution center here on a recent sunny summer morning.

“This is the latest panel on the market,” said Bartz, the national director of energy management for Toys R Us. “It’s extremely durable, extremely flexible.”

The Thin Film Solar Panels he was jumping on are now part of the nation’s largest rooftop solar installation, covering 20 acres — the size of about 15 football fields — atop the distribution center. The 5.38-megawatt project will slash $350,000 a year from the building’s power bills, a 72 percent reduction, the company said.

While the Toys R Us installation wrested the crown for largest U.S. rooftop solar plant away from another New Jersey building earlier this month, the 4.26-MW installation on the Avidan Management building in Edison, still another Garden State entity claims it is going be No. 1 this fall. Developers putting 27,000 photovoltaic panels on the Gloucester Marine Terminal in Gloucester City say it will have a rooftop capacity of 9 MW.

“We think the momentum has been fabulous,” said Michelle Siekerka, assistant commissioner for green energy at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. “We’ve seen a thriving industry and we’ve seen jobs created as a result.”

New Allegations Besiege Murdoch Empire

LONDON (AP) — Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was besieged Monday by accusations that two more of his British newspapers engaged in privacy violations that included accessing former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s bank account information and stealing the medical records of his seriously ill baby son.

If proven true, the charges by rival newspapers seem certain to dramatically increase the pressure on Murdoch’s News Corp. from a scandal that seems to grow wider and deeper by the hour.

The public outrage began a week ago over wrongdoing at the Murdoch-owned best-selling tabloid News of the World. It has since disrupted the media titan’s plans to take over highly profitable satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting and slashed billions off the value of his global conglomerate, News Corp.

The takeover will also be spared scrutiny during a period of once-unimaginable public criticism of Murdoch’s British operation, News International, fuled by a relentless stream of new allegations of wrongdoing at its properties.

The 80-year-old Australian touched down in the U.K. on Sunday to take charge of the widening crisis.

Legal experts said Monday it is possible Murdoch’s U.S. companies even may face legal actions because of the shady practices at the News of the World, his now defunct British tabloid.

They said Murdoch’s News Corp. might be liable to criminal prosecution under the 1977 Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, a broad act designed to prosecute executives who bribe foreign officials in exchange for large contracts.

A group of News Corp. shareholders already have sued the company over the phone-hacking scandal, accusing News Corp. of large-scale governance failures. The lawsuit was filed late Friday in Delaware Chancery Court by shareholders led by Amalgamated Bank, and several municipal and union pension funds joined in.

GE Sees Solar Power Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels Within Five Years

Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for GE.

“If we can get solar at 15 cents a kilowatt-hour or lower, which I’m hopeful that we will do, you’re going to have a lot of people that are going to want to have solar at home,” Little said yesterday in an interview in Bloomberg’s Washington office. The 2009 average U.S. retail rate per kilowatt-hour for electricity ranges from 6.1 cents in Wyoming to 18.1 cents in Connecticut, according to Energy Information Administration data released in April.

GE, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, announced in April that it had boosted the efficiency of thin-film solar panels to a record 12.8 percent. Improving efficiency, or the amount of sunlight converted to electricity, would help reduce the costs without relying on subsidies.

The thin-film panels will be manufactured at a plant that GE intends to open in 2013. The company said in April that the factory will have about 400 employees and make enough panels each year to power about 80,000 homes.

Solar-panel makers from Arizona to Shanghai are expanding factories to add more cost savings that analysts say will sustain the industry’s expansion. Installations may increase by as much as 50 percent in 2011, worth about $140 billion, as cheaper panels and thin film make developers less dependent on government subsidies, Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecast.

Solar Costs Dive

The cost of solar cells, the main component in standard panels, has fallen 21 percent so far this year, and the cost of solar power is now about the same as the rate utilities charge for conventional power in the sunniest parts of California, Italy and Turkey, the London-based research company said.

Most solar panels use silicon-based photovoltaic cells to transform sunlight into electricity. The thin-film versions, made of glass or other material coated with cadmium telluride or copper indium gallium selenide alloys, account for about 15 percent of the $28 billion in worldwide solar-panel sales.