Nortel Pensioners at risk?

"May lose 40%; Plan 'might have to be liquidated and wound up"

A sad day. The sad developments in this story support the idea of greater oversight and perhaps more stringent regulation of private sector pension plans. As I recall how this once great pension plan organization has now fallen into such a state.

DB plans operate on the premise of a promise to pay - and as such are contingent on the continued health and prosperity of the sponsor company. For some time many of these large industrial companies have been at risk. The real burden of company failures is borne by those pensioners already retired and closest to retirement. It should be law that such retiree's pension obligations are "locked down" by insurance contracts at age 55 and older to guarantee their pension payouts. It should also be clarified that COLA adjustments for retirees must be separated and funded when granted and can not be amortized over all pension plan members, as is often the case. This would remove a huge burden that often plagues CAW negotiations and is a defacto expectation that there are "no second class" pensioners, when in fact they are.

The other solution is just to move to DC and forget about DB altogether.

Asteroid to have close brush with Earth

Not since 1973. Asteroid a "few meter" across will whiz by only 63,000km from earth - or closer. It has been deemed a "harmless risk" to anyone. Put into perspective our Moon is 384,000km away. This space rock discovered on Feb 27 is officially called DD45-2009 and is being tracked by the jet Propulsion Lab, Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory and others. Its size matches the Tunguska asteroid which blew up in the atmosphere over Siberia RUS in June 17, 1908 at 0014h GMT flattening thousands of sq kilometers (see photo). Astronomers used to make these announcements all the time - along with danger ratings - until the noticed people started to panic.



The devastation toppled trees in a 50km radius but there was no crater. The most likely explanation is that the 10m asteroid exploded on entry in the Earth's atmosphere. The heart built up in front of the rock is immense and would likely be equivalent to a 20mt blast - about the same as Nagasaki JAP at the end of WWII. The U.S Dept of Defense has also revealed that there are a couple of these blasts in the upper atmosphere every year.

Here is list of all "asteroid-like" objects that have been recorded.