While New York is often referred to as the global energy finance center, it is not otherwise known as an energy industry focal point. That appears to be changing, however, as energy issues have recently shot towards the top of local and state political agendas and high-profile energy events – like New York Energy Week – are increasingly being held in the New York Metropolitan area.

Breaking Energy recently spoke with the New York Energy Week founders at energy policy research and data company Energy Solutions Forum about the initiative’s origin and goals. Energy Solutions Forum was created by a group of former banking analysts who found the need for a policy data service given the increasing Wall Street focus on regulations and policy that drive stock price movements.

Read more on Breaking Energy.

Simi Polonsky and Chaya Chanin of Frock Swap

On any afternoon in Crown Heights on Kingston Avenue, there are sliver sightings of forearms, the sounds of heels clacking, the humming of stroller wheels, and tribes of young mothers wearing long, tressed wigs. The Brooklyn enclave is home to the Hasidic Jewish sect, Chabad-Lubavitch. Women follow the Torah’s strict laws of modesty or “tznius”–their elbows and collarbones must be covered, they have to wear skirts (not pants) that go past the knee, as well as stockings. Once they are married, women must cover their hair by wearing a wig (a “sheitel”) or a scarf.

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A whole bunch of mini Moynihans are said to have left the building.

Read more on Dealbreaker.

Different schools of thought exist when it comes to cover letters for job applications. Back when I applied for legal jobs, I took a “do no harm” approach, using the cover letter merely to transmit my résumé, transcript, and writing sample. But jobs were more plentiful back then.

In a tougher legal job market, employers expect more from cover letters. For cover letter advice from an in-house perspective, see David Mowry’s post. For cover letter advice from a small-firm perspective, see Jay Shepherd’s post.

And for an example of how not to write a cover letter, keep reading….

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

It’s here! It’s here! The Met Ball red carpet is finally underway.

So the fashion is great–though not exactly punk. According to Anna Wintour, though, her florals are punk, in a way: Andrew Bolton, the currator of the exhibit told her that pink was the real color of punk. Hence the color scheme. So there.

Click through to see what everyone from Anna to Rooney Mara to Beyonce to Kim and Kanye and many many more wore.

Read more on Fashionista.

The two Littoral Combat Ship variants, LCS-1 Freedom and LCS-2 Independence.

CAPITOL HILL: The Navy is 90 percent sure its current estimated cost to operate and maintain the controversial Littoral Combat Ship is off target, according to a draft Government Accountability Office report obtained by BreakingDefense.

According to the anonymous authors – whose diagnosis, we should emphasize, is not yet the official and fully vetted conclusion of the GAO, which won’t publish the final report until September – the Navy may go into a critical decision in 2015 about whether to contract for up to 28 more Littoral Combat Ships without enough understanding of the long-term costs, the evolving concepts to sustain the vessels, or even whether they have enough bandwidth to exchange maintenance data with support facilities ashore. As a result of this uncertainty, the GAO draft says the Navy’s own analysts have “only about 10 percent confidence” in the current estimate that it will cost $50.4 billion to “operate and support” a total of 55 LCSs over their 25-year service lives. While such long-term “life cycle costs” are notoriously hard to estimate accurately decades out, a normal program would have at least 50 percent confidence in its figures at this stage.

Read more on Breaking Defense.

The ongoing debate over how and whether hydraulic fracturing poses a threat to the environment covers a whole host of issues – land use, earthquakes, drinking water contamination, methane emissions, and even the sustainability of fossil fuel use. While some issues remain mired in a lack of hard data or fundamental philosophical differences, companies all over the US are generating innovative solutions to those that can be addressed, such as methods to reduce water use and methane emissions during production.

Some of these technologies have already proven effective, while others are at the very early stages of commercial use. The following list provides a taste of some of the fracking clean-up technologies that companies have developed, or are in the process of developing, to address water use and methane emissions. We will be exploring them in more depth, looking at benefits as well as drawbacks, over the coming weeks.

Read more on Breaking Energy.

Diamond talked the situation through with Jennifer, his wife of 26 years. “What is the best thing right now I can do for the firm?” he asked. His answer: “Step aside and shut up.” His daughter, Nell, a recent graduate of Princeton, wasn’t quite so discreet. The morning after Diamond announced his resignation, she tweeted: “George Osborne and Ed Miliband you can go ahead and #HMD” — referring to a slang term that can’t be reprinted in these pages. (Google it.) She immediately called her father.

Read more on Dealbreaker.

A new rankings approach based no on inputs, but on outcomes.

Read more on Abovethelaw.

Photo: Getty

When Gwyneth Paltrow hit the red carpet earlier this week wearing a sheer paneled Antonio Berardi dress all we could focus on was her incredibly perky side ass, on display for all to see.

But that dress could have potentially revealed a lot more than Paltrow’s toned-by-Tracy-Anderson rear. Turns out People‘s “Most Beautiful Woman” doesn’t do regular bikini line maintenance, making for a potentially prickly situation, and making us really really like her.

Read more on Fashionista.