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The ripples from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have reached Norway.

Norwegian opponents to opening the fragile ecosystems around the Lofoten Islands -- with their critical spawning grounds for cod -- to oil drilling are arguing that Norway needs to delay any decision until the country fully considers the lessons from the uncontrolled oil release off the coast of Louisiana.

 

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The oil industry estimates that there are 1.3 billion barrels of oil in the reserves around the islands. Production from those reserves will help offset declining production from Norway's mature North Sea fields.

 

Getting an executive to move from Paris to Marysville, Ohio, with its population of 18,212, would probably take a miracle.

Or, in the case of Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG), it takes a ton of money and perks. The company pulled out the stops to lure Claude Lopez to the Buckeye State to become its president of global sales, according to the Footnoted blog.

First, the company is spending $100,000 on a "mobility allowance" just to move Lopez and his family from Paris to Ohio. What, are they buying a plane just for the move?

Then, he will have a $6,000 a month housing allowance 

Dear men: If you want to truly dress like a millionaire hedge funder who doesn't care what people think about him, wear a bracelet.

That's apparently the new code for "I'm so rich that I'm nonchalant." The Financial Times reports that these accessories are an update of backpacker souvenirs and friendship bracelets, and now show you have experience "beyond the suit."

Male bracelets are gaining in popularity in England and especially in Italy, where one tailor says he is wearing them to change the mood in classic men's dressing. 

The May auto sales numbers that recently hit Wall Street were cheered by many in Detroit. Between recall woes at Toyota (TM) and a rebound in consumer spending, Domestic Automakers Ford (F), GM and Chrysler posted nice year-over-year gains.

Unfortunately, those figures may not mean much. After all, we're comparing numbers with the month that consumers learned GM and Chrysler were entering bankruptcy protection -- so it would be hard not so show improvements.

A closer look at the numbers show that all is not well, particularly at Chrysler. In fact, here are three reasons the company could fold completely if things don't change in a hurry:

 

Goldman Sachs (GS) is doing its best to irritate the group investigating the financial crisis, and lawmakers are very unhappy about it.

The investigators, working for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, asked Goldman for several documents as part of their inquiry. Goldman responded with a document dump of more than 1 billion pages -- far more than what was requested.

The FCIC only has 50 staffers, and they have to prepare and deliver their report by the end of the year. There's no way they can sort through all of Goldman's paperwork and finish on time. 

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

I'm just sitting here reading about all of the exciting new products coming out of Medtronic (MDT), all the terrific news out of the oncology conference, all the shortages of parts for wireless Internet because of the demand, all of the unbelievable things that the Apple (AAPL) iPhone does (and that ARM Holdings (ARMH) helps them do), and I say to myself: So what?

 

Who cares?

 

Have you seen the euro? Gold? Spain?

 

It's not enough.

That was a message emphatically delivered Monday by several members of Congress and numerous minority producers and diversity-minded media-business watchdog groups to Comcast and NBC Universal, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing conducted in downtown Los Angeles.

The four-hour hearing, the first and probably only one to be held in Los Angeles over the proposed Comcast purchase of NBCU, was convened at the California Science Center, at the behest of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who represents the area.

Its purpose: to explore the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity in the broadcast and cable media -- and more specifically, how one of the biggest mergers in media history will improve or worsen that situation.

 

It's time to bring back vertical integration in the movie business, said outspoken entertainment, sports and Internet mogul Mark Cuban at the Producers Guild of America's Produced By conference on Saturday. He said movie studios ought to buy theater chains and explore releasing certain movies to video-on-demand even before those films hit the big screen.

During a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Los Angeles Times reporter Dawn Chmielewski, Cuban said his ownership of both Magnolia Pictures and the Landmark Theaters chain allowed him more flexibility on the release patterns of films like Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble," Neil Jordan's new "Ondine" and Alex Gibney's Oscar-nominated documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room."

 

Written by Douglas Estadt

 

Eric Whitman, MD, of http://drericwhitman.wordpress.com/, is a board certified surgical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with melanoma, joins us today for an exclusive interview regarding the DTCH presentation at The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

• Survival rate tripled for cancer patients treated with PHP (Percutaneous Hepatic Perfusion) - 398 days vs. 124 with best alternative care

 

Based on how rapidly The CW network sold out its primetime upfront ad inventory during a five-hour run last week, the young-female-skewing broadcast network may have found the Holy Grail for monetizing streamed TV shows.

While The CW may only take in 15% to 20% as much in primetime television ad dollars this year when compared with the Big Four, the speed at which media agencies gobbled up its "convergence packages" Thursday night clearly shows that a nerve was struck.

• Related: Media Buyers Blink: ABC, CBS, CW Do Big Business

The result is a potential blueprint for the entire television industry.

 

In gauging the dimensions of a crisis, you have to make certain assumptions. 

One thing I've assumed about the current euro debt crisis is that no politician there would do something unusually stupid. Venial. Short-sighted. Duplicitous. Sure. But not something so really stupid that it would raise damage from the crisis by an order of magnitude.

Well, I'm seeing exactly that level of “really stupid” starting to gather momentum. And the source is Chancellor Angela Merkel's government in Germany.

 

Companies like Skype and Cisco (CSCO) have been working on video calling for years. But now, with a little attention from Apple (AAPL), this technology is going to become hot.

Apple calls it FaceTime, and unveiled the feature Monday as part of its new iPhone announcement. The new iPhone 4 will have a front-facing camera, which is perfect for videoconferencing. Hold the phone in front of your face, instead of at your ear, for a video call.

Video calling isn't a big deal in the corporate world, but it's practically unheard of for mainstream mobile users. Even Apple won't change that immediately -- FaceTime will only run on Wi-fi at first -- but the company is working with carriers to get on 3G networks. 

Not all is well at Bank of America (BAC), the nation's largest bank.

Richard Bove, a well-known banking analyst, has lowered his price target for the stock, staying it faces "serious challenges" from multiple sources, according to The New York Times.

And it was a pretty steep drop. Bove's target price is now $22.80, down from his earlier target of $27.50. The stock is trading at about $15. 

When Walmart (WMT) identifies a new location for one of the chain's supercenters, that often generates some degree of local opposition. Some of that, it turns out, is coming from outside agitators.

 

The Wall Street Journal reports that competing chains such as Safeway (SWY), Supervalu (SVU)  and others retain a consulting firm to lead the charge against a new Wal-Mart store. That means that some of those "concerned citizens" writing letters to the editor may actually be sticking up for corporate interests and not the community’s welfare.

 

By Jonathan Blum, TheStreet

 

There's a new small-business mobile beast loose in the land: the Sprint (S) Evo.

 

Finally, after, I kid you not, almost a year of speculation, pre-announcements, announcements and other marketing drivel, Sprint's premier 4G superphone, the HTC Evo, is on sale. And while far from perfect -- much more on clunk factor, grim battery life and cost -- the Google (GOOG) Android-powered Evo offers a legitimate, small-business option between the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the full line of Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry devices.

 

Without question, the Evo’s bright screen, blazing multi-tasking performance and support for critical business tools compete at the highest levels in the mobile-business-device market.