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Vanguard 1, the 4th artificial Earth satellite (2nd US satellite) was launced into orbit March 17, 1958 and is still circling the Earth. It can be tracked via this website: http://www.satflare.com/track.asp?q=00005#TOP The first three satellites (Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 (USSR) and Explorer 1 (US) no longer remain in orbit.

The law, which took effect Saturday, allows Pennsylvania to seize some retirement accounts three years after they're presumed abandoned - regardless of the account owner's age. Previously, the state waited until individuals reached age 701/2 before seizing retirement accounts and liquidating the portfolios. Now, older folks and famously contact-averse millennials could be affected. Valley Forge-based Vanguard, with more than $3 trillion in assets, isn't happy about the state's budget-inspired change and plans to join forces with others in the financial industry to repeal the law next year. ... For those who opt to communicate electronically, the "lost contact" trigger is...

The skills and expertise of fund managers are supposed to give them the ability to select better stocks and bonds than an index like the Dow or S&P 500. The problem is that hasn't been happening lately. A staggering 86% of active large-cap fund managers failed to beat their benchmarks in the last year, according to an S&P Dow Jones Indices scorecard released on Thursday. And no, that wasn't a one-off blip either. Nearly 89% of those fund managers underperformed their benchmarks over the past five years and 82% did the same over the last decade, S&P said.

John “Jack” Bogle is an icon in the investing industry. The founder of Vanguard and the “father” of index mutual fund investing has had a lot of good ideas over the years. Unfortunately, the ideas in his recent editorial in the Financial Times are not among those good ideas. According to Mr. Bogle, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are something that investors should “beware” of. As Bogle writes, “Mark me as a member of a small group of cohorts who are dubious about the utility of ETFs for long-term investors.” Bogle goes on to express some rather bad views about ETFs as...

This featured fund is broader than some of those covered previously in our current series about the world’s largest exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The market’s fourth-largest ETF is simply one to invest in when you think times are good and things are looking up across the board in the United States: Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI). VTI is less discriminatory than the other U.S. funds we have examined, since it tracks an index that includes nearly every stock in the U.S. market that is open to investment. The fund’s holdings run the gamut from large to small and value- to...

Who is David Danon, and what drove him to take on his old bosses at Vanguard Group Inc., alleging that its nearly $3 trillion in assets were built on an illegal tax strategy? The son of a refugee from Bulgaria, Danon got in scraps as a schoolboy in Tenafly, N.J., where his short stature and harelip made him a target for bullying. "The teachers didn't do anything," Danon said. "I got into lots of fights that I should never have had to." The struggle with Vanguard, where he worked for nearly five years as a tax lawyer, is Danon's toughest...

President Obama has accused Mitt Romney of raking in profits from investing in companies that ship American jobs overseas, but according to his most recent financial disclosure, he and First Lady Michelle Obama have hundreds of thousands of dollars in a mutual fund that has large holdings in corporations that outsource jobs. “(Romney) invested in companies that have been called ‘pioneers’ of outsourcing,” Obama said at a Saturday campaign event in Glen Allen, Va. “I don’t want a pioneer in outsourcing. I want some insourcing.” But Obama’s own portfolio shows a willingness to invest in American corporations that have shifted...

Papa Johns, Huggies, Vanguard Drop Ads on Blog Attacking Trig Palin Three large companies have dropped their advertisements on the liberal, pro-abortion Wonkette blog after it ran a post earlier today bashing pro-life former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/20/papa-johns-huggies-vanguard-drop-ads-on-blog-attacking-trig-palin/

The go go days of the 1990s was the heyday for growth oriented stock picking fund families like Fidelity. Their star manager system - led by legendary Peter Lynch - and huge funds (Lynch's Fidelity Magellan was once the largest in the country) made them the most prominent fund family in America. But the past decade has not been so kind as "close your eyes, throw a dart, long only is the way to go, and stocks just go up almost every year in a magical way" investing of 1983 to 1999 came to abrupt end in 2000. [Feb 5,...

Vanguard Cautions Investors On RallyOct. 6, 2009, 4:25 p.m. EDTSam Mamudi, Market WatchDon't be taken in by this year's robust gains, fund firm warns. NEW YORK (MartketWatch) -- Many mutual funds are poised to celebrate stellar returns this year, but one fund firm is going out of its way to warn investors not to get too giddy. Vanguard Group issued a cautionary note on Tuesday, emphasizing that strong third-quarter gains don't mean it's time to go overboard on certain areas of the market. Investors Brace for Earnings SeasonMichael Cuggino of the Permanent Portfolio Funds says the coming parade of quarterly...

I have a 401k in a Vanguard stock fund that I would really like to get out of. I rode it up over 12,000, rode it down all year and now I'd like to cut my losses before it takes another dump. What other Vanguard funds are safer, or even a money market? I can't just cash it in or the government would slaughter me at tax time. What's a safe haven to ride the coming depression out?

Bruce Lindsay knew a good bargain when he saw one: For decades, the millionaire ate three square meals a day in the cafeteria of tiny Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, surrounded by students who called him the "campus grandpa." When he passed away last month at 79, the college learned just what a generous tip he had left. He bequeathed his fortune -- amassed by buying up cut-rate oil leases and flipping beachfront homes -- to the Christian university, which like many private colleges across the country has been bedeviled by the slumping economy.

But in Philadelphia, where he has lived since 1945, and where he built one of the region's largest, most successful businesses (Vanguard has 12,000 employees and oversees nearly $1.2 trillion in assets), and where he helped foster the National Constitution Center, serving as its chairman for nearly eight years, Bogle is less known than, say, Bill Giles of the Phillies or Brian Roberts of Comcast. No doubt many Philadelphians would be surprised to learn that in 1999 Fortune magazine named Bogle one of the investment industry's four giants of the 20th century, and that in 2004 Time magazine included him...

Project Vanguard represented the American commitment to place a satellite in orbit as part of its contribution to the International Geophysical Year. The project was managed by the Naval Research Laboratory and funded by the National Science Foundation. Vanguard 1, known as TV-3 before launch, was to have been placed in orbit on December 6, 1957. The satellite was recovered after the launch rocket malfunctioned almost immediately after ignition and crashed on the launchpad. It carries two radio transmitters to allow earth stations to track its flight; this would allow scientists to obtain data on the Earth's shape and variations...

PayPal, the ubiquitous online payments service, has been in the news lately as much for its former employees as for its fast-growing business. From YouTube to LinkedIn, from award-winning picture “Thank You for Smoking” to path-breaking rocket company SpaceX, PayPal alumni are everywhere. As Forbes magazine recently put it, “maybe there was something in the beer.” It was just a matter of time until one of them got into politics. Enter Rod Martin. Martin is bigger than life, physically and every other way. Whether speaking to groups of 10 or 10,000, all across the nation he draws the crowd in,...

Democratic strategists who had feared Sen. John McCain as the potentially unbeatable Republican candidate for President in 2008 were surprised and delighted by his dour appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday. One Democratic leader referred to McCain’s performance, in suggesting President Bush’s additional 21,000 troops may be inadequate, as “comatose.” A Republican adviser to McCain said it was one of the worst performances ever on “Meet the Press.” The senator’s defender said he could not be expected to be cheerful about a plan to send additional U.S. troops in harm’s way. A footnote: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney...

Jerome Corsi, co-author of the 2004 campaign book "Unfit for Command" attacking Sen. John Kerry's war record, joined up Tuesday with the organization intended to similarly undermine Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 campaign. TheVanguard.org is intended to be a right-wing version of the leftist MoveOn.Org. It was founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including Gil Amelio, former CEO of Apple and National Semiconductor. Coming on board Feb. 16 as TheVanguard's full-time editorial and creative director will be Richard Poe, who has served as editor-in-chief of FrontPage Magazine. He has been described as the conservative movement's leading expert on MoveOn.Org's...

Brown in favour of updating Trident By George Jones, Political Editor (Filed: 22/06/2006) Gordon Brown promised last night to approve the updating of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent in an attempt to show that a Labour government led by him would not swing back to the Left or be "soft" on defence. In a move that will anger Left-wing MPs, the Chancellor told business leaders and financiers that as Prime Minister he would be "strong" in fighting terrorism, supporting the Armed Forces and "retaining our independent nuclear deterrent". Treasury sources said Mr Brown, who in the past has been criticised for...

"We shot our wad. We filibustered 10 guys, and at the end of the day the worst got on anyway," says a former Judiciary Committee counsel. "If we had not used the filibuster and pissed off the Republicans over the past four years, if it was seriously being entertained for the first time [against Alito], we might have succeeded.".......There are any number of ways to fault the performance of Senate Democrats in their campaign to keep Samuel Alito Jr. -- seemingly as rock-ribbed a conservative as you'll find -- off the high court. During Alito's weeklong confirmation hearings, Senate Judiciary...

Judge Samuel Alito’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week confirmed his integrity and character. Patiently and clearly answering senators’ questions of all kinds, hour after hour, he also proved his judicial temperament. Now, as their hopes of defeating this nomination diminish, Judge Alito’s opponents are left trying to hype fake issues. One of these attacks focuses on Judge Alito’s initial failure to recuse himself in the so-called Vanguard case. It is time to set the record straight. Preserving both justice and judicial independence requires that judges avoid conflicts of interest. To that end, federal law requires that a...