As the new Argentine president elect senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner arrives at the Casa Rosada for the first official engagement following her election, Marcos Brindicci uses depth of field to lightly blur the image of her husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner, drawing the eye to the former First Lady and nicely flattening the background.

The image is suggestive of the way in which attention has passed from the outgoing president to his wife, the first woman to run the country. 

It is simple and nicely executed and worthy of its place in today's Editor's Choice.

Like any sexy asset up for sale, Jaguar is attracting a lot of attention.

At least five bidders are expected to throw their hats in the ring by Friday when second round offers are due for the iconic carmaker put up for sale by U.S. automaker Ford. Land Rover is also included in the assets on the block.

Among bidders accelerating to the finish line are India's Tata Motors, buyout firms One Equity, Ripplewood and TPG and British financier Guy Hands' Terra Firma.

But there's a sixth mystery party thought to be putting a bid into gear.  Purely speculatively, we're wondering if some of those named as interested in buying Chrysler when that automaker was up for sale would also be interested -- such as Canada's Magna.

Whoever buys Jag will have a challenge living up to the car's glamorous past -- driven by movie stars, pop stars and celebrities from George Best to Clark Gable.

(pictures: Jaguar Web site and www.clarkgable.com)

Okay, you may have read that "The Exorcist" has been voted the scariest movie of all time in a Halloween poll published today.

That's probably a good choice. Certainly it's the scariest film ever shot in Washington DC's posh Georgetown neighborhood.

Following that 1973 movie are 1980's The Shining, and John Carpenter's 1978 Halloween. Let's see, then A Nightmare on Elm Street, from 1984, and then... Hey, wait a minute! It's 2007 - doesn't anybody make horror movies anymore? Turns out, of the top 10 list, only one film, The Hostel, was even made in this century. All the rest are from the '70s, '80s and '90s.

So, despite all the advances in special effects, computer generated images, trick photography, animation and all the rest of it, the top honor goes to to a 34-year-old movie using pea soup as barf. Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

Handout Photo

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As the negative reviews came pouring in for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton of New York from the debate Tuesday night, her campaign kicked it into overdrive to argue that it was instead just piling on by her rivals since she had a commanding lead in the polls.
 
Clinton's campaign put together a series of clips of her competitors for the Democratic nomination saying her name over and over and over again from during the debate last night.  The note attached said that the rivals were switching to negative campaigning away from pledges of positive campaigning.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who have been running second and third in the nomination hunt respectively, also quickly put up clips of their performances.

The question is: who performed the best and worst?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk16oxb4Ck4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuTjMsqxj64[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97hvOOdy_I[/youtube]

Recently, this blog published some reader criticism questioning the validity of a Reuters photograph from the California fires. Here are the posting and subsequent reader comments. The issue continues to draw attention and debate, and today we are posting several other shots from the same sequence, below.

It is important to understand that accuracy and impartiality are central to our reporting, and to everything Reuters represents. We distribute approximately 1,500 pictures per day, and these pass through rigorous editorial evaluation and selection to make it onto our wire. We stand behind the authenticity and accuracy of both the original photo, and the additional images supplied.

If you're wondering why ousted Merrill CEO Stan O'Neal was apparently obsessed with comparing his firm's performance to that of Goldman Sachs, look no further than 941 Park Avenue.
    
That's right, O'Neal and Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein live in the same building at Park and 81st. 

The New York Times Dealbook points this out in a blog post about the opposite direction the two men are headed. Goldman's stock hit $245 on Wednesday, it's highest level since the firm went public in 1999. Meanwhile, Merrill's shares have been battered lately, hit by the whopping $8.4 billion write-down it took from bad subprime mortgage bets.
Stan O'Neal was swiftly shuttled out of his CEO spot. Blankfein, by contrast, is shining in his role at Goldman, the bank whose quarterly numbers impressed while the others mostly disappointed.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that O'Neal used to wonder aloud to managers why their numbers didn't stack up to Goldman Sachs. Of course, most of Wall Street compares themselves to Goldman. But in O'Neal's case, that comparison was apparently a little closer to home.

Speaking of the home, New York Magazine calls the co-op a "plush-but-not-too-plush building at 81st Street that was also home to Tom Brokaw and Claude Arpels."

Dealbreaker says: "Suddenly, Stan's obsession with Goldman's earnings is starting to make sense." Indeed, maybe it is.

(Photo. Top, 941 Park Ave., http://www.thecityreview.com. Bottom, Stan O'Neal, Reuters file)

The cautious Vatican reaction to the dialogue appeal from 138 Muslim scholars has prompted one of the signatories to question whether the top Catholic official for relations with Muslims understands Islam. More specifically, Aref Ali Nayed has asked how Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran can say that a serious theological dialogue with Muslims is not possible because they will not discuss the Koran in depth. This debate (discussed in an earlier post here) is dense and highly specialised. But it may be at this level that this unprecedented dialogue could take off or fail to ignite.

Nayed, a former professor at the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome and main spokesman for the 138 scholars, flatly refutes Tauran's view. He says Muslims have always interpreted the Koran and studied it both historically and linguistically. Their methods were even the forerunners of the "historical-critical" method that Christians use with the Bible, he says. Protestants began applying this "higher criticism" to the Bible in the 18th century and Catholics accepted it only in 1943, making them latecomers to this exercise in Nayed's view. I am no specialist on these details and will need to hear reactions from Christian theologians.

Readers interested in Nayed's argument can read it on the website of Islamica magazine or read Cindy Wooden's story for the Catholic News Service on it. I'll just quote the crisp conclusion:

"Unfortunately, Cardinal Tauran’s statement turns out to be based on ill-founded ‘Islam versus Christianity’ ‘contrast tables’ developed and advocated by some ‘Islam experts’. Rather than unilaterally declaring the impossibility of theological dialogue with Muslims, Cardinal Tauran would have been wiser to ask Muslim scholars themselves as to what kind of dialogue they feel is possible, from their point of view. To unilaterally pre-determine what is possible and not possible for the other, on behalf of the other, is one sure way of achieving closure in matters dialogical."

Until we get the Vatican's official reaction to the Muslim scholars' letter, we won't know exactly how it plans to answer this criticism. But comments made by Pope Benedict before and after his election in 2005 strongly hint he has a well-developed view of the difficulty of holding a theological dialogue with Muslims. Fr. Samir Khalil Samir S.J., an Egyptian-born Catholic expert on both faiths who welcomed the dialogue appeal despite some reservations, published this long and detailed analysis of the Pope's views on Islam in Asianews.it in April 2006.

Joseph Ratzinger is an old-school German professor and they don't give in lightly. He was so opposed to blurring the differences between faiths that he criticised Pope John Paul's spectacular Assisi inter-faith summit in 1986. But Pope Benedict found a way to pray with Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti of Istanbul, in the Blue Mosque last year. Are we hearing echoes of Goethe's Faust (Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust -- Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast) or should we look to another poet to explain this?

While we're on the subject, Benedict and Saudi King Abdullah will meet at the Vatican next Tuesday for the first talks between the head of the Catholic Church and the monarch who is custodian of Islam's holiest site of Mecca and ruler of a kingdom that follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam. Benedict has frequently noted the lack of religious reciprocity in some Muslim countries that bar the construction of Christian churches even though Western countries allow mosques to be built on their territory. In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are not allowed to visit Mecca. Other religions cannot build houses of worship. Christians can't even own a Bible. Abdullah's visit will give Benedict the opportunity to repeat his complaint about the lack of religious freedom to the man whose country is regularly listed -- as here by the U.S. State Department-- as among the world's worst offenders.

Tauran, by the way, is not the only one cautious about the Muslim scholars' dialogue appeal. The British weekly The Spectator gave it a less-than-enthusiastic review.

U.S. crude oil prices gushed to a record over $94.50 a barrel Wednesday after a government report showed a surprisingly big decline in stockpile levels last week. And more declines in inventories could be on the way.

Energy analysts are saying the industry is selling off huge amounts of oil in storage because of the shape of the forward price curve -- oil prices get cheaper for delivery out into the future -- and the market may now be in a vicious circle.... or perhaps a hampster wheel.

"We're in a hampster wheel right now," said Stephen Schork, editor of the Schork Report. "Given the economics of what it takes to store oil, it makes no sense to hold onto inventory right now. Storage owners are taking the economically prudent step and dumping inventories because of the backwardated market structure."

He explained that having a storage tank full of crude that loses value over time makes it a wise choice for energy players to sell onto the physical market now, rather than later.

"If you were managing storage for an oil company you could be sued for malpractice for adding to storage last week. This can only end when there is not enough prompt demand to sop up supply on the spot market. Only then can we switch back into a contango structure which would be conducive to building up storage levels," he said.

NOTE: This post was edited to change the accompanying photo.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQaciEMMmKg[/youtube]Not everyone believes trading the right to pollute greenhouse gases will stop global warming, as vociferously demonstrated at a New York carbon conference.  Shouting "Renounce this treachery!" two self-dubbed "greenwash guerrillas" invaded a Point Carbon conference in New York's Javits Center on Tuesday. The activists from a group called Rising Tide,  passed security posing as convention delegates. Then they rushed the stage just before U.S. Congressman Jay Inslee, a Washington Democrat, was set to speak.  The extreme greens, organic farmer Jessica Starr, and graphic artist David Lee, came down from their home Maine to bestow the 700 carbon traders, environmentalists, and bankers attending the meet with a deed to the sky, and a key to the sky.

Many environmental groups support carbon trading, believing it can unleash the power of capitalism to support innovation that will reduce emissions blamed for warming the earth. They cite similar U.S. markets that cut acid rain pollution. Carbon markets work by setting an emissions level that industry must meet. Heavy greenhouse gas emitters, like coal-fired power plants, can buy credits from companies and countries that invest in carbon cutting projects to meet their limits.  Billions of dollars worth of credits have traded in such markets, mainly in the European Union.

But some greens believe carbon trading in effect privatizes the atmosphere under false pretenses.  At best it puts money in the pockets of traders and brokers for projects that probably would have eventually happened anyway, and at worst could support energy sources and technologies that could increase emissions or other environmental and social problems, they say.

Point Carbon workers escorted the activists from the stage without bothering to alert convention security. "It's not fun to have people to take over your stage," said Veronique Bugnion, Point Carbon's North America director. But she took pride in the fact that interest in carbon markets in the United States, the only developed country besides Australia that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, is rising. "It means the subject is important enough to notice one way or the other."

Not everyone got the message. One delegate from a New York-based company that identifies carbon reduction opportunities in India said she had no idea the conference had been invaded. "I thought it was a congratulatory thing, kind of a 'thanks' for figuring out how to fight global warming," she said.

It sounds like Rising Tide will be polishing its techniques. Brian Sloan, who does outreach for the group, vowed that Tuesday's invasion was the just the kickoff of a campaign against "false solutions" and that greenwash guerillas could soon invade a venue near you.

How would you rate the infiltration?

Google is moving in on the hot social network's territory, after being rebuffed by Facebook.

Google will offer software developers a system to create applications across the Internet, hoping to thwart Facebook's goal to create the "operating system" for social networking.

The OpenSocial system eliminates the need for startups to customize their programs for each site, and follows a similar move by MySpace.

One quick thought: Anyone making money on this yet?

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• NBC, GE joint venture invests in mobile text message advertising company 4INFO. (Business Wire)
• IAC/InterActiveCorp profit falls, but HSN revenue rises. So does its share price. (Reuters)
• IPG buys brand marketing firm Translation Consulting + Brand Imaging. (Reuters)
• Google could be a tough sell to U.S. wireless carriers. (Reuters)