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Here’s the latest action:

Web data offers new info on presidential election — It remains to be seen whether Barack Obama’s tremendous lead over John McCain in Facebook friends will lead to a similar victory on election day. Meanwhile, another study looks at which social networking sites are big in which swing states.

Google CEO stumping for Obama — Eric Schmidt says he’s speaking for himself, not Google, and that he has previously been an informal adviser to the campaign.

Wall Street workers getting big bonuses — Discretionary bonuses at six banks, including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, will total $70 billion, one-tenth the size of the $700 billion bailout package.

The Sarah Palin video game backlash begins — Apparently, the number of Palin-themed Flash games has proliferated, and GamePolitics has had enough.

National Association of Broadcasters challenges FCC white space report — The report backs efforts by tech companies like Google and Motorola to open up white spaces (unused slivers of spectrum) for unlicensed use.

Satellite radio operator WorldSpace files for bankruptcy with $2 billion in debt — The company broadcasts to more than 170,000 paid subscribers in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Financial empires built on debt are crumbling — The trend is hitting Russia especially hard.

Federal takedown of HerbalKing didn’t reduce spam — The Federal Trade Commission predicted that after it shut down the HerbalKing spam network, spam levels would drop. But companies that track junk mail say that hasn’t happened.

Adbrite, Sequoia-backed online ad company, cuts 40 percent of staff — The company’s VPs of marketing and finance were among those laid off.

PressFlip founder resigns – The blog search engine was founded by Ted Dziuba, who also wrote the startup-mocking blog Uncov. Now, Dziuba says he’s quitting because he’s going to be a father next year, and because he’s “tired of the fight.”

Four of five Al-Qaeda web forums taken offline — A distribution network for Al-Qaeda supporters says “technical reasons” are to blame.

Heavy’s heavy layoffs — The video network announced 14 percent cuts last week, but Silicon Alley Insider calculates the company’s staff is actually down 45 percent since June.

Peer-to-peer lending systems undergo scrutiny — The largest network, called Prosper, stopped taking money for individual loans last week.

Financial crisis leads to boom in lawsuits — More than one-third of company lawyers expect to see more litigation next year.

Hong Kong magnate Richard Li mulls buyout of PCCW — Investors say a takeover of Li’s telecom company would face serious hurdles, including shareholders demanding a premium price.

Here’s the latest action:

Google and Yahoo delay ad deal — The delay gives the Justice Department more time for its antitrust investigation. This news, as well as calls by Sen. Herb Kohl (chair of the Senate Antitrust Committee) for more scrutiny, probably doesn’t bode well for the deal, though it may buy the tech companies more time to negotiate.

Wells Fargo plans merger with Wachovia — Friday’s announcement came only four days after Citigroup agreed to buy Wachovia’s banking operations for about $1 per share. Citigroup, however, isn’t ready to give up yet. The announcement was followed by a weekend of legal wrangling, with no clear winner yet. (Wachovia chief executive Robert Steele is pictured, left.)

Facebook cashout scheduled for Nov. 1? — We’ve already reported that Facebook will allow employees to sell a small portion of their stock this fall. Now a source tells Valleywag’s Owen Thomas that Facebook employees can start selling their shares on Nov. 1 and that the company will purchase the shares, then sell them to an outside buyer.

Economy sheds 159,000 jobs in September — This was the steepest decline in nonfarm employment in five years.

Sony announces new ebook reader — Trying to stay competitive with Amazon’s Kindle, Sony will add a touch panel and reading light in the new version of its device.

BankRate purchases financial blog Bankaholic for up to $15M — The price is particularly impressive when you realize that Bankaholic is a one-man site.

Flurry launches free mobile analytics service — The San Francisco startup also named Simon Khalaf, formerly chief executive of Vernier Networks, as its new CEO and president.

Yesterday evening’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin was at times short on substance, but a few nuggets did give hints of what America’s political landscape might look like after November. One of the best exchanges of the debate came when the two were asked by the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, about climate change.

Palin, responding, suggested that global warming is partially manmade, and partially natural. Biden countered that climate change is entirely manmade. But both candidates seemed in line with creating carbon caps, which will give a serious push to clean technology like solar, wind, geothermal power and electric cars by raising the cost of coal and other traditional energy sources.

This is important, because politicians to date have been somewhat shy about wholeheartedly supporting a carbon cap. And since it’s fairly easy (although not necessarily accurate) to argue that a cap could hurt the economy, it’s even more notable that the consensus is clear, given the current economic crisis. Here’s a small excerpt from the transcript (the whole thing is here), edited to show the statements together:

PALIN: … Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real … And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? … even in dealing with climate change, it’s all the more reason that we have an “all of the above” approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.

IFILL: Senator, what is true and what is false about the causes?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.

IFILL: Let me clear something up, Sen. McCain has said he supports caps on carbon emissions. Sen. Obama has said he supports clean coal technology, which I don’t believe you’ve always supported.
BIDEN: I have always supported it. That’s a fact …

IFILL: We do need to keep within our two minutes. But I just wanted to ask you, do you support capping carbon emissions?
PALIN: I do. I do.

Some sparring occurred with a number of comments by Palin, not shown above, suggesting that more domestic drilling is needed. Biden, for his part, could have easily used the opportunity to push cleantech sources. However, it seems that the political hot issue is now clean coal, which was mentioned more than once. Biden was careful to show his support:

PALIN:I was surprised to hear you mention that because you had said that there isn’t anything — such a thing as clean coal. And I think you said it in a rope line, too, at one of your rallies.
BIDEN: …My record, just take a look at the record. My record for 25 years has supported clean coal technology. A comment made in a rope line was taken out of context. I was talking about exporting that technology to China so when they burn their dirty coal, it won’t be as dirty, it will be clean.

Biden is considered an intelligent, well-educated man, so it’s indeed likely that he has said, at least in private, that clean coal isn’t “real” — because, for the most part, it’s not. But at the moment, political support for it seems to be mandatory; clean coal now fills the role that corn ethanol did several years ago, before it was repeatedly debunked as a cure-all.

Here’s the latest action:

Microsoft cut prices for its Xbox 360 videogame consoles in Japan by as much as 30 percent — The software giant is trying to increase momentum in its most challenging market as the holiday season approaches.

VP candidate Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia bio was cleaned up — The fact that a single user made 30 positive edits to Palin’s bio shortly before the announcement that she’s John McCain’s running mate led to a flurry of online speculation that the McCain campaign made the edits. The anonymous Wikipedia user acknowledged that they volunteer for the campaign, but denied any conflict of interest.

MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson has a rich hacker history — That history includes FBI confiscation of his computer equipment. TechCrunch revealed earlier that Anderson, who has more MySpace friends than anyone else in the world, is really 37, not 32 as his profile says.

Tesla to supply battery packs to Daimler — Tesla will provide the batteries for Daimler’s 150 electric Smart cars deployed in Berlin, according to AutoblogGreen. The site reported the rumor a few weeks ago and now says there’s confirmation in the German edition of the Financial Times.

Movie social network Flixster acquires iPhone app Movies.app — The application was purchased for an undisclosed price, then re-released last week. Movies.app is probably the first iPhone app to get acquired.

Only 25 percent of Internet traffic now routed through the United States — In the earliest days of the web, all traffic went through the U.S., and that number was still 70 percent a decade ago. The shift has implications for intelligence agencies and foreign policy.

GameStop Chief Operating Officer Daniel DeMatteo will succeed longtime CEO Richard Fontaine — Fontaine will stay on as videogame retailer’s chairman.

Linux developer Hans Reiser gets 15 years to life for killing his wife – A deal with prosecutors led to Reiser’s reduced sentence after he brought police to his wife’s body.

New software offers iPhone-like navigation on Windows Mobile devices – The application is called Kinoma Play and costs $30.

Game publisher Square Enix bids for Tecmo — If Tecmo’s board approves the deal, it would give Square Enix a stronger foothold in the United States.

Tech pioneer Judy Estrin warns of an innovation gap if the U.S. fails to invest – Estrin, formerly the chief technology officer at Cisco Systems, has written a book on “Closing the Innovation Gap.”