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BP Is Expected to Replace Chief With American

polland zada — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:08:00 GMT

BP’s board is expected on Monday to name an American, Robert Dudley, as its chief executive, replacing Tony Hayward, whose repeated stumbles during the company’s three-month oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico alienated federal and state officials as well as residents of the Gulf Coast. The planned appointment of an American to run the London-based company, which was confirmed by a person close to BP’s board, would underscore how vital the United States has become to BP. About one-third of the company’s oil and gas wells, refineries and other business interests are in the United States, and 40 percent of its shareholders are Americans. The move would also be a recognition by the board that even though the oil has stopped spewing into the gulf, dealing with the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon accident — from tens of billions of dollars in claims to possible criminal charges and new regulations on offshore drilling — is likely to dominate the company’s agenda for years. “It is in the best interest of the company to go forward with fresh leadership,” said the person close to the board, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the changes. Mr. Dudley, 54, who grew up in Mississippi and spent summers fishing and swimming on the gulf, has been in charge of BP’s response to the spill for the last month. Before that, he was best known for running the company’s joint venture in Russia, where he butted heads in 2008 with BP’s business partners and the Russian government over control of the operation. These experiences could help him in his new job, which will require consummate political skills to convince everyone, from President Obama to idled fishermen, that BP can be trusted to fully pay for the cleanup and safely drill and operate deepwater wells. Kenneth Feinberg, the independent administrator managing the $20 billion claims fund that BP set up under pressure from the White House, was effusive in his praise for Mr. Dudley. “He is cool, calm, collected,” Mr. Feinberg said. “He is proactive. He reached out to me and expressed the desire for BP to be as responsive and cooperative as possible.” Obama administration officials declined to comment on Sunday about the management changes until they are made public. According to the plan being presented to the board, Mr. Dudley would ascend to the top job on Oct. 1, allowing for a transition period. The change would be publicly announced on Tuesday, when BP releases second-quarter financial results and Mr. Hayward talks to shareholders about the company’s post-spill strategy. It is unclear whether Mr. Dudley, who joined BP in 1998 when it acquired ???? Amoco, can drive the fundamental cultural change that many analysts and even some company insiders say that BP badly needs. However, oil companies rarely go outside their ranks for top leaders, and analysts pointed out that Mr. Dudley is untainted by the major operating problems that BP has suffered in recent years, including an explosion at a Texas refinery, pipeline problems in Alaska, and the Deepwater Horizon accident, which killed 11 people and released millions of gallons of oil into the gulf. “He is basically a guy with a clean slate,” said Fadel Gheit, a veteran oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company. Inside BP, Mr. Dudley faces the challenging task of improving the morale of shaken employees while reforming a stubborn culture of excessive risk-taking that placed speed and profits ahead of safety. Daniel Yergin, the chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said that Mr. Dudley faces an enormous set of challenges. “The company needs to reset its direction and restore confidence both externally and within the organization,” said Mr. Yergin, who has known Mr. Dudley for years. “In Russia, he was working in a very high-pressure environment, and he demonstrated his ability to stay focused. He’s very steady and he knows how to work with a wide range of people to get the job done.” Mr. Dudley, a chemical engineer by training, joined Amoco in 1979. Before running TNK-BP, where he increased oil production by 26 percent and increased reserves by 138 percent, he was responsible for BP’s production and exploration business in Russia, the Caspian region, Angola, Algeria and Egypt. Earlier in his career, he ran BP’s renewable-energy business. He was appointed to BP’s board in 2009. Mr. Dudley had been considered for the top job in 2007, but he lost to Mr. Hayward, a geologist by training, who promised at the time to make safety his top priority. But Mr. Hayward’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster — including his notorious comment that “I’d like my life back” — infuriated Gulf Coast residents and government officials alike. He was forced out of the spotlight last month after members of Congress accused him of stonewalling during testimony. Mr. Hayward is still negotiating his severance package. He is entitled to at least a year’s salary, equivalent to about $1.6 million, as well as a pension built up from 28 years at the company, which would be worth about $11 million when he reaches retirement age. BP declined to comment about any pending management changes. In a statement, the company said: “Hayward is our chief executive. He has the full support of the board.” Chris Ruppel, managing director for capital markets for Execution Noble, an international investment bank, said Mr. Dudley was “very, very good at dealing with political issues,” as he proved in Russia. Even though BP had to cede control of the Russian venture, it still owns 50 percent of the venture and has avoided the fate of investors in other projects who were forced to sell out. Now, BP is seeking to move on from the spill, especially after it recently finally managed to stem the flow of oil with a new cap. After a tropical storm briefly delayed work over the weekend, the company is resuming work to permanently shut the well, which it hopes to complete within the next few weeks. Last week, it negotiated the sale of some of its assets in Texas, Egypt and Canada to the Apache Corporation, raising $7 billion to help pay for the spill. Still, the company remains under considerable pressure. The uncertainty over its ultimate liabilities has shaved 40 percent off its share price in the last three months. Some members of Congress want to ban BP from running new offshore ventures. The Senate, meanwhile, is expected to vote on legislation this week that would hold BP “accountable,” according to Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader. And the company still continues to lurch from one public relations embarrassment to another. Last week, BP acknowledged it posted doctored pictures of its spill operations on its corporate Web site. Although Mr. Dudley has a short track record in the gulf, he has already ???? won over some. For example, after Mr. Dudley met with Governor Bob Riley of Alabama a week ago, “the governor felt that Mr. Dudley was very responsive to Alabama’s concerns,” according to Todd Stacy, a spokesman for Mr. Riley. The expected appointment of Mr. Dudley would be the first time that a foreigner served as the top executive of BP, which was once known as British Petroleum. Its board chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, is Swedish. “It’s historic for them to pick an American,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University. “But it sends a message that merit and competency mean more than nationality.”

Bold Stroke May Be Beyond Europe’s Means

polland zada — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:08:00 GMT

Europe may need a broad cure to its debt crisis, but the increasingly awkward pairing of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund makes such action unlikely. Just three days after a 110 billion euro ($134 billion) bailout of Greece was presented as the latest step to stabilize European markets, the opposite has transpired. Fears have spread through the financial markets that a larger epidemic would infect Spain, Portugal and perhaps other indebted countries outside the euro zone, like Britain and the United States. In response, analysts are calling for a shock and awe option — youth nfl jerseys** some rescue of the largest of the peripheral euro zone economies suffering from stagnation and high levels of debt, not unlike the Troubled Asset Relief Program that was created to restore confidence in the American financial system. They suggest that the European Central Bank buy back billions of euros of unwanted Greek, Portuguese and Spanish debt and that the I.M.F. offer a large bailout for Spain. Such a broad stroke would surely cost more than the $700 billion that the United States pledged to back up its failing banks in late 2008. Therein lies the rub: not only is it an enormous sum, but it requires a degree of flexibility, political courage and teamwork that the European Union and the I.M.F. have not yet begun to show. “It is not really about money,” said Timothy Congdon, an economist and professed euro skeptic who foresees an exodus of savings from banks on Europe’s periphery to Germany as doubts build about these countries’ staying power in the Eurozone. “It is about how much pain the people in periphery can stand in order to keep this thing going. Once the confidence is gone, and Greeks and Spaniards move their deposits to Frankfurt, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the whole thing implodes.” Officials throughout Europe continue to say that the plan for Greece is sufficient and there is no need for a broader aid proposal or a formal debt restructuring in any afflicted countries. Investors, though, continue to push down the euro, which fell to $1.28 on Wednesday, a significant sign of eroding confidence. The traditional way to combat unemployment in a recession is to expand the money supply. Such a step puts downward pressure on interest rates and makes capital more plentiful for businesses and consumers alike, spurring economic growth. Mr. Congdon said recent figures indicate that even after deflationary pressures in Spain and Ireland, and the broader effect of the Greek crisis on credit-starved banks in Europe, there had been no growth in the European Central Bank’s money supply. This is proof enough, he contends, that the central bank remains under the influence of Germany, which firmly opposes this type of debt monetization, one that has been aggressively deployed in the United States and Britain to combat the recession. As for the I.M.F., its ambitious managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been eager to present the fund as a potential savior for Europe. This is in spite of a postwar track record of providing a specific treatment of fiscal austerity and currency devaluation only when asked. So far, the fund has not shown the type of flexible, multination solution investors now say is warranted. And even if the fund were called upon to address Europe’s walking shoes** broader debt crisis, doubts remain as to whether it has sufficient funds to do the job properly. Representative Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees financing to the I.M.F., estimates that a bailout of Spain could cost as much as $600 billion. Citing research from the Congressional Research Service, he says the fund has only $268 billion to lend. With a 17 percent share of the international fund, the United States is the largest shareholder and financial contributor. Given the frustrations after the rescue of its financial institutions, and their subsequent landmark profits, there would seem to be scant appetite in the United States for increasing its support. But there may be a deeper problem. The classic methodology that the fund uses in such situations — harsh austerity leavened with a currency devaluation — may not be fully applied in this instance. Greece alone does not control the euro, nor does Portugal or Spain. According to Desmond Lachman, an economist and a former staff member in the fund’s policy review department, it is this dilemma that makes the fund’s job in Europe nearly impossible — especially in light of the 2 trillion euros of outstanding debt in the troubled peripheral economies. Mr. Lachman argues that currency devaluations are a crucial balancing component to every harsh austerity program because they can kick-start exports and growth, thus diluting the pain of public spending cuts. But with Greece and other Eurozone economies having a fixed currency, this option is unavailable, forcing the fund to compensate with even deeper austerity measures that prolong recessions and spark the type of social anger that came to characterize the fund’s controversial programs in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s. For Greece to meet the fund’s target of a budget deficit of 4 percent to 6 percent of economic output in 2014, the government will need to find savings of 13.5 percent of its total output, according to an analysis by Barclays Capital. Such a turnaround has little precedent in past restructuring efforts in Western Europe and will be all the more difficult given the depth of the recession and the inability of Greece to devalue. Some analysts wonder if the ever-sliding euro could give Greece and Europe the devaluation and the competitive boost it so desperately needs — or whether it will again be too little, too late. Greece is not the only country that must survive brutal spending cuts and maintain a fixed currency regime. The economies of both Latvia, as part of an I.M.F. program, and Lithuania, on its own, have shrunk by more than 10 percent pumps shoes** as a result of deep pullbacks in government spending. Mr. Lachman says that when the I.M.F. came to the rescue of Latvia, which also has a fixed currency, his staff recommended that the Latvian lat be allowed to float to ease the pain of the budget cuts. “I know that the staffers were very unhappy with the program — they believed it would be impossible to achieve an adjustment in Latvia without moving the exchange rate,” Mr. Lachman said. “But the European Commission felt that if Latvia moved its rate, there would be contagion in Europe — so they put the pressure on.” So far, neither Latvia nor Lithuania has been overwhelmed with the type of protests now occurring regularly in Athens. But for Greece, where unions are powerful and already gearing up to oppose the government, not having the luxury to devalue the currency will make it all the harder for the fund’s program to succeed.

White House Takes a Bigger Role in the Oil Spill Cleanup

polland zada — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:46:00 GMT

The response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico intensified abruptly on Thursday, with the federal government intervening more aggressively as the rapidly growing slick drifted ever closer to the fragile coastline of Louisiana. Resources from the United States Navy were marshaled to supplement an operation that already consisted of more than 1,000 people and scores of vessels and aircraft. Calling it “a spill of national significance” which could threaten coastline in several states, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the creation of a second command post in Mobile, Ala., in addition to the one in Louisiana, to manage potential coastal impact in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered an immediate review of the 30 offshore drilling rigs and ed hardy clothing** 47 production platforms operating in the deepwater Gulf, and is sending teams to conduct on-site inspections. The oil slick was only three miles offshore on Thursday afternoon and was expected to hit coastal Louisiana as early as Thursday evening, prompting Gov. Bobby Jindal to declare a state of emergency and to request the participation of the National Guard in cleanup efforts. About 40,000 feet of boom had been placed around Pass-a-Loutre, the area of the Mississippi River Delta where the oil was expected to touch first, a spokesman for Mr. Jindal said. The Navy provided 50 contractors, 7 skimming systems and 66,000 feet of inflatable containment boom. About 210,000 feet of boom had been laid down to protect the shoreline in several places along the Gulf Coast, though experts said that marshlands presented a far more daunting cleaning challenge than sandy beaches. Eight days after the first explosion on the rig, which killed 11 workers, the tenor of the response team’s briefings changed abruptly Wednesday night with a hastily called news conference to announce that the rate of the spill was estimated to be 5,000 barrels a day, or more than 200,000 gallons — five times the previous estimate. By Thursday, it was apparent that the cleanup operation desperately needed help, with no indication that the well would be sealed any time soon and oil drifting closer to shore. The response effort has been driven by BP, the company that was leasing the rig and that is responsible for the cleanup, under the oversight of the Coast Guard. While federal resources, including naval support, were available before Wednesday, officials had given little indication that such reinforcements would be deployed so quickly and at such a scale. “Some of it existed from the start,” Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard, the federal on-scene coordinator, said of the federal resources. “We can ramp it up as we need it.” Referring to what she called “dynamic tension” among the participants in a spill response, Admiral Landry said it was her duty to ensure that BP was trying every approach available. “If BP does not request these resources, then I can and I will,” she said. Asked whether the Coast Guard has maintained confidence in mbt shoes** BP’s efforts, Admiral Landry said, “BP, from Day 1, has attempted to be very responsive and be a very responsible spiller.” BP, in turn, has pointed out on more than one occasion that Transocean owned the oil rig and the blowout preventer, a device that apparently failed to function properly and that is continuing to be the most significant obstacle to stopping the spill. Underscoring how acute the situation has become, BP is now soliciting ideas and techniques from four other major oil companies — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and Anadarko. BP officials have also requested help from the Department of Defense in their efforts to activate the blowout preventer, a stack of hydraulically activated valves at the top of the well that is designed to seal it off in the event of a sudden pressure release. Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said the company had specifically asked the military for better imaging technology and more advanced remotely operated vehicles. As of now, there are six such vehicles monitoring or actively trying to fix the blowout preventer, which sits on the sea floor. “To be frank, the offer of help from all quarters is welcome,” said David Nicholas, a BP spokesman. But Norman Polmar, an expert on military systems, said the robotic submersibles used by the oil industry were better equipped to try to stop the oil leak than any of the Navy’s minisubs. The Navy’s unmanned subs have cameras and can retrieve bits of hardware, he said, but are not designed to plug a hole in a pipe or do repair work. Other efforts to contain the spill included a tactic that Admiral Landry called “absolutely novel”: crews awaited approval on Thursday night to begin deploying chemical dispersants underwater near the source of the leaks. Aircraft have dropped nearly 100,000 gallons of the dispersants on the water’s surface to break down the oil, a more conventional strategy. BP is also designing and building large boxlike structures that could be lowered over the leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connected the well to the rig and has since become detached and is snaking along the sea floor. louboutin shoes** The structures would contain the leaking oil and route it to the surface to be collected. This temporary solution could take several weeks to execute. Mr. Suttles said three such structures were being prepared, one of which is complete and could corral the worst of the leaks. But citing the disclosure of the new leak on Wednesday night, experts said more were certainly possible. “All that movement is going to continue to stress and fatigue the pipe and create more leaks,” said Jeffrey Short, Pacific science director for Oceana and former chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped clean the spill from the Exxon Valdez in 1989. “This is not on a good trajectory,” he added. The next solution is drilling relief wells that would allow crews to plug the gushing cavity with mud, concrete or other heavy liquid. The drilling of one such well is expected to begin in the next 48 hours, Mr. Suttles said, but it could be three months before the leak is plugged by this method. The legal and political dimensions of the oil spill spread as well on Thursday, with lawyers filing suits on behalf of commercial fishermen, shrimpers and injured workers against BP; Transocean; Cameron, the company that manufactured the blowout preventer; and other companies involved in the drilling process, including Halliburton. Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, has asked the heads of major oil companies, including BP, to testify at a hearing about the spill. Opponents of President Obama’s plan to expand offshore drilling have also called for a halt. Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, called Thursday for a moratorium on all new offshore oil exploration while the cause of this rig explosion is under investigation. Mr. Nelson, a longtime opponent of oil drilling off the coasts of Florida, said in a letter to Mr. Obama that the spreading oil spill threatened environmental and economic disaster all along the Gulf Coast. Administration officials stressed that the president’s offshore drilling plan was the beginning of a lengthy review process and did not mean that large new areas would see immediate oil and gas activity. They also said that they louboutin shoes** expected that members of Congress and the public would have new questions about the safety of offshore operations and that the administration would rethink its commitment to offshore drilling in light of the accident. “That is the beginning of a process,” said Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy. “What is occurring now will also be taken into consideration.”

Privilege Pulls Qatar Toward Unhealthy Choices

polland zada — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:26:00 GMT

For such a small country, a finger of sand poking into the Persian Gulf from the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, Qatar is a land of big numbers. It has the second highest per capita gross domestic product in the world and the third largest proven reserves of natural gas. But it also ranks high in some less enviable categories, having among the greatest prevalence of obesity, diabetes and genetic disorders in the world, according to international and local health experts. Native Qataris, who number only about 250,000 in a nation of nfl football jerseys** 1.6 million, are suffering serious health problems that relate directly to a privileged lifestyle paid for with the nation’s oil wealth, as well as a determination to hold onto social traditions, like having young people marry their cousins. “We’re talking serious obesity,” said Dr. Justin Grantham, a specialist at Qatar’s orthopedic and sports medicine hospital involved in a healthy-living pilot program. “The long-term health consequences will be significant.” Like other oil-rich nations, Qatar has leaped across decades of development in a short time, leaving behind the physically demanding life of the desert for air-conditioned comfort, servants and fast food. While embracing modern conveniences, however, Qataris have also struggled to protect their cultural identity from the forces of globalization. For many here, that has included continuing the practice of marrying within families, even when it predictably produces genetic disorders, like blindness and various mental disabilities. “It’s really hard to break traditions,” said Dr. Hatem El-Shanti, a pediatrician and clinical geneticist who runs a genetics testing center in Doha, the capital. “It’s a tradition carried from one generation to the next.” Qataris live in a nation no larger than the state of Connecticut where they are a minority among the more than a million foreign workers lured here for jobs. But their problems are not unique. Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia all share similar struggles with obesity, diabetes and genetic disorders, each suffering the side effects of an oil-financed lifestyle and a desire to hold on to traditions. Yet, even in this neighborhood, Qatar stands out. According to the International Association for the Study of Obesity, Qatar ranks sixth globally for prevalence of obesity and has the highest rate of obesity among boys in the Middle East and North African region. A recent article in the Qatari newspaper Al Watan said that local health experts predicted that within five years, 73 percent of Qatari women and 69 percent of the men would qualify as obese. Obesity is considered the most important factor in the nfl jerseys** development of diabetes and is a prime contributor to many other ailments, like hypertension. The International Diabetes Federation ranks Qatar fifth globally in terms of the proportion of people aged 20 to 79 with diabetes. The March of Dimes Foundation, a United States charity that focuses on trying to wipe out birth defects, listed Qatar as 16th globally for the incidence of birth defects per 1,000 live births. The chief cause of the problem in Qatar is consanguineous marriages, experts here said. Saudi Arabia ranked second globally. For all of these challenges, and for all of its wealth, Qatar has primarily focused on the treatment of diseases rather than on prevention. Everyone here points to lifestyle and tradition to explain the nation’s health crises. While it was once taboo to talk about the problems involved with marrying relatives, they are now talked about openly. There have been some discussions about premarital genetic screening, or genetic testing done at birth. But the tradition is so strong, no one has raised the prospect of curbing it. “You can’t tackle the issue,” said Moza al-Malki, a family therapist and writer. “There are some big families, clans, they don’t marry outside the family. They won’t allow it.” The issue of obesity seems to run into the same wall of tradition, health experts here said. “If you don’t eat, it’s considered a shame, and if you leave someone’s home without eating it’s a shame,” said Abdulla al-Naimi, 25, who refers to himself as “chubby” but is noticeably overweight. “Half of my family youth nfl jerseys** has diabetes,” Mr. Naimi said. “My mother has diabetes. Three cousins younger than me have diabetes. For me, I eat too much and I don’t exercise.” He is also married to his first cousin. And Mr. Naimi happens to be the project director for the Healthy Lifestyle, a fledgling effort to try to shift from treatment to prevention. It is connected to the Qatar Foundation, founded by the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Mr. Naimi sees no irony in all this because in Qatari terms, his weight and his choice of a relative as a spouse are the norm, he said. He acknowledges that changing attitudes will be a slow process, at best. “We are trying to change people’s habits, just to get them to walk,” he said, admitting that he himself never finds the time to exercise. Walking is not popular in Qatar’s heat. Average high temperatures in June and July are a very humid 106 degrees, and Doha, like many cities in the region, is not built for pedestrians. To make matters worse, people here said that all of their social occasions were defined by eating. Traditional meals usually include rice, clarified butter and lamb. Because people often share large community platters, there is almost no way to keep track of portion size, people here said. “We can’t get together and not eat,” said a 22-year-old Qatari woman who is a member of the Thani royal family. She asked that her name not be used to avoid embarrassing her immediate relatives. She said her family was typical. Of seven children, five had weight problems. One brother hit 265 pounds by the time he was 19. A younger brother, who is 10, weighs 125 pounds and is gaining weight so fast that he no longer fits in pants she gave him two months ago. She said the typical Qatari student skipped breakfast, then ate a snack and lunch at school. When students return home they are given another lunch, generally a heavy meal of rice and lamb. Later, they snack on cake and tea. And then at night they eat dinner, often fast food that is delivered. “I eat lunch, then I go visit a friend; I am so full, nfl authentic jerseys** but they put a table in front of you and keep bringing food,” she said. “I cannot eat, but it’s an insult.” Another more challenging problem, is attitude, said Nelda Nader, a dietician here. “For the majority,” she said, “it is really quite normal to be obese.”

On 40th Anniversary, Earth Day Is Big Business

polland zada — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:12:00 GMT

So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins “to challenge corporate and government leaders.” Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry. For this year’s celebration, Bahama Umbrella is advertising a specially designed umbrella, with a drain so that water “can be stored, reused and recycled.” Gray Line, a New York City sightseeing company, will keep running its buses on fossil fuels, but it is promoting an “Earth Week” package of day trips to green spots like the botanical gardens and flower shopping at Chelsea Market. F. A. O. Schwarz is taking advantage of Earth Day to showcase Peat the Penguin, an emerald-tinted plush toy that, as part of the Greenzys line, is made of soy fibers and teaches green lessons to children. The penguin, Greenzys promotional material notes, “is an ardent supporter of recycling, reusing and reducing waste.” To many pioneers of the environmental movement, eco-consumerism, nfl authentic jerseys** creeping for decades, is intensely frustrating and detracts from Earth Day’s original purpose. “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green,” said Denis Hayes, who was national coordinator of the first Earth Day and is returning to organize this year’s activities in Washington. “It is tragic.” Yet the eagerness of corporations to sign up for Earth Day also reflects the environmental movement’s increased tolerance toward corporate America: Many “big greens,” as leading environmental advocacy organizations are known, now accept that they must take money from corporations or at the least become partners with them if they are to make real inroads in changing social behavior. This year, in an updated version of a teach-in, Greenpeace will team up with technology giants like Cisco and Google to hold a Web seminar focused on how the use of new technologies like videoconferencing and “cloud” computing can reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. Daniel Kessler, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said it was necessary to “promote a counterweight to the fossil fuel industry.” In 1970, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York addressed a crowd of tens of thousands in Union Square on Earth Day, in an atmosphere The New York Times likened to a “secular revival meeting.” This year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will be in Times Square to announce measures to reduce New York’s impact on the environment. Using the same stage, Keep America Beautiful, an antilittering nonprofit organization, will introduce “dream machines,” recycling kiosks it is introducing with PepsiCo. The machines are meant to increase the recycling rates for beverage containers, which is estimated at about 36 percent nationwide. Of course, a fair portion of the more than 200 billion beverage containers produced in the United States each year are filled with PepsiCo products like Mountain Dew and Aquafina; such bottle trash contributes to serious pollution on beaches, oceans and inland waterways. Still, Matthew M. McKenna, president and chief executive of louboutin shoes** Keep America Beautiful, and a former PepsiCo senior vice president, said he jumped at the opportunity to have his former employer introduce its new kiosk at the event. “We are not being asked to encourage the purchase of Pepsi or the consumption of their products,” he said. “We are asked to deal in the field with what happens when they get thrown out.” While the momentum for the first Earth Day came from the grass roots, many corporations say that it is often the business community that now leads the way in environmental innovation — and they want to get their customers interested. In an era when the population is more divided on the importance of environmental issues than it was four decades ago, the April event offers a rare window, they say, when customers are game to learn about the environmentally friendly changes the companies have made. Frank Sherman, United States green officer for TD Bank, said the company hurried to get its prototype of a highly energy-efficient bank branch building in Queens ready for Earth Day because that’s when “people are paying attention.” The original Earth Day events were attended by 20 million Americans — to this day among the largest participation in a political action in the nation’s history. This year, while the day will be widely marked with events, including a climate rally on the Mall in Washington, the movement does not have the same support it had four decades ago. In part, said Robert Stone, a independent documentary filmmaker whose history of the American environmental movement is being broadcast on public television this week, the movement has been a victim of its own success in clearing up ???** tangible problems with air and water. But that is just part of the problem, he noted. “Every Earth Day is a reflection of where we are as a culture,” he said. “If it has become commoditized, about green consumerism instead of systemic change, then it is a reflection of our society.”

Continental and United Resume Talks to Merge

polland zada — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:30:00 GMT

When the music stopped on Thursday in the airline industry’s game of musical chairs, Continental Airlines and United Airlines were back in talks again, and US Airways was still tying to grab a seat. The latest merger talks come just a week after United and US Airways nfl jersey resumed their own off-again, on-again attempts at combining operations. But most industry analysts had viewed those discussions as a not-so-subtle attempt by United to lure Continental back to the negotiating table. People briefed on the matter cautioned on Thursday that the discussions between Continental and United were in the early stages and could quickly fall apart. And talks between United and US Airways are still going on. “The stars have aligned for consolidation,” said Vicki Bryan, an analyst at Gimme Credit. “United is forcing Continental to make a move and is using poor little US Airways as bait.” The negotiations come close to two years after Continental broke off an engagement to merge with United. A combination would create the nation’s biggest airline, in terms of revenue. Merging United’s operations in the West, including its hubs in Denver and San Francisco, and Continental’s hubs in Houston and Newark would create a formidable competitor to Delta Air Lines, which jumped to the top position because of its acquisition of Northwest Airlines in 2008. If the Continental-United talks result in a deal, American Airlines would end up as the third major carrier with both domestic and international operations. But it would leave US Airways way behind, with analysts questioning its chances of survival. Combining Continental and United would also create a global behemoth. Continental would bring its strong presence in Latin America and Europe, while United has strong positions in Asia, including China and Japan. Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for United in Chicago, and Julie King, a spokeswoman for Continental in Houston, both declined to comment. United is the nation’s third-biggest carrier by market value, and Continental is the fourth. Todd Lehmacher, a spokesman for US Airways, also declined to comment. Shares of UAL, United’s parent company, gained 5.3 percent on Thursday, closing at a two-year high of $23.54. The stock has risen 24 percent, valuing the company at $3.94 billion, since reports of the talks were disclosed last week by The New York Times. Shares of Continental, meanwhile, gained 2.2 percent, closing at ed hardy $23.77, also their highest level in two years, valuing it at $3.3 billion. Shares of US Airways were barely changed at $7.41. Delta is now worth $11.3 billion, indicating that investors are willing to grant a generous premium for bigger airlines. Major airlines have been losing money for most of the decade because of vigorous competition from low-cost carriers and higher costs for fuel. Airline executives see consolidation as a way to raise revenue by offering more flights to passengers and as a way to cut overhead costs. Analysts have said that a merger between Continental and United makes the most sense. It offers more complementary routes than a tie-up with US Airways, and would therefore raise fewer antitrust concerns in Washington. With the global economy showing signs of improving, analysts have suggested that the time is right for airlines to consolidate to take advantage of the expected pickup in business and leisure travel. The talks also reflect the airlines’ growing concern that they are trailing more formidable rivals being formed in Europe, including Air France-KLM and British Airways, which recently acquired Iberia of Spain. Because of limits on foreigners owning more than 25 percent of United States airlines, domestic carriers have been increasingly coalescing around three global partnerships that allow them to share both passengers and revenue as well as to offer routes that literally circle the globe. Some of the airlines benefit from antitrust immunity to set fares and coordinate schedules with foreign carriers. United belongs to the Star Alliance, which also includes Lufthansa of Germany. Delta, along with Air France, is part of SkyTeam. Continental, in an unusual move last fall, switched from SkyTeam to Star. And American Airlines and British Airways are members of the Oneworld alliance, which also includes Japan Airlines. Continental and United were about to merge in 2008 but their talks foundered in the final stretch when Continental’s board balked at United’s poor financial health amid soaring fuel prices. The stunning reversal came just days before the two carriers were about to announce a deal. Continental’s chairman at the time, Lawrence W. Kellner, had already been chosen to run the merged company. The collapse of these talks prompted United to open discussions with mbt shoes US Airways, but those talks were also rapidly shelved. An attempt in 2000 by United to buy US Airways failed because of antitrust concerns from the Justice Department. But today, United has more clout in its talks with the other airlines. While the company is still unprofitable, its balance sheet has vastly improved over the last year because of efforts to cut capacity and raise revenue through fees. That means United may be in a position to dictate terms to Continental and to have its own executives run a merged company, according to a research note by Ms. Bryan, of Gimme Credit. United has less debt than Continental and has more than $3 billion in cash, Ms. Bryan said. A combination of the two companies, she said, could yield more than $2 billion in extra revenue, in addition to any cost savings. At an investor conference last month, Jeffery A. Smisek, the chairman of Continental, suggested that the decision to walk from United two years ago was the right one “at the time.” But he also said that he would be open to “defensively bulk up.” Those comments were interpreted as a signal that he would be willing to make a pre-emptive move for United. A Continental-United tie-up would be bad news for US Airways, which operates mainly as a domestic airline facing low-cost competition from Southwest Airlines on 80 percent of its routes, Basili Alukos, an analyst at Morningstar, said. “The biggest question would be the future viability of US Airways,” Mr. Alukos said. “Southwest is cheaper and is a better operator.”

Germany Asserts Interests as Greek Crisis Unfolds

polland zada — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:48:00 GMT

France and Germany traditionally have been the “motor” of the European Union, but relations between the two countries are badly strained over the Greek debt crisis, which is just the latest example of a new German willingness to resist the demands of Europe and assert its self-interest under Chancellor Angela Merkel. “There has been a tectonic shift in the way Germany acts in Europe,” said Ulrike Gu?rot, a senior research fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. Germans, she says, are “talking of behaving ‘normally’ now, like the others, and that means nationally.” The European Union is facing a serious crisis over financing and its currency, the euro. But France and Germany also have important disagreements on policy toward Russia, China and Iran, making a coherent European foreign policy increasingly nfl authentic jerseys difficult to discern on an array of critical issues. The French and the Germans, with different domestic constituencies and different attitudes toward economic policy, have a different view of how Europe and the euro zone, the 16 nations that have adopted the euro as their currency, should be managed. Germany, long the financier of the European Union, has made it clear that it will no longer pay for the mistakes and frauds of others. France has put a much stronger emphasis on European unity and pride, trying to avoid involving multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund in the future of the euro, a prominent symbol of Europe’s challenge to the supremacy of the United States. “Germany is no longer, as a matter of course or of principle, the motor, heart and savior of Europe,” said Constanze Stelzenm?ller, a senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “This isn’t the Europe we signed up for. It’s much larger, much poorer, and we have to take care of our own.” Germany always acted in its interests, Ms. Gu?rot said, but those were perceived as sublimated within the European Union and NATO, the two postwar multilateral institutions that both protected the new democratic Germany and kept its ambitions in check. Now Germany is turning more obviously to Russia for energy and commercial interests, she said, making its European and American partners uneasy. “We sublimated hegemony,” said Ms. Gu?rot, a German who is working on a paper called “Germany Unbound.” “But we’re dropping the sublimation now.” She laughed, then said: “Of course, this doesn’t sound nice to others.” Before a European Union summit meeting in Brussels last month on the Greek crisis, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was reportedly in a rage, unable to push Mrs. Merkel toward a more explicit promise of help for Greece. Mr. Sarkozy yelled at the European Union president, Herman Van Rompuy, whom he summoned to Paris, European Union officials said. He threatened to boycott the summit meeting, while muttering that the Germans “haven’t changed,” according to French officials. Mrs. Merkel, for her part, remained calm as Mr. Sarkozy cooled down, but she stood by her position — that German taxpayers should not suffer for Greek mismanagement and laxity or set a precedent for future rescues of other weaker Mediterranean countries like Portugal, Spain and even Italy. Her stand, which included a role for the International Monetary Fund, created resentment in the rest of the euro zone, accustomed to German sacrifice for larger European political and economic goals. With a neo-liberal coalition partner, the Free Democrats, and with mbt shoes important elections coming next month in North Rhine-Westphalia, which could cost her ruling coalition control of the upper house in Berlin, Mrs. Merkel stood up for German interests and was hailed afterward at home. She also cited constitutional restraints against Germany bailing out other countries, concerns that France took as something of a pretext. Criticism of German economic policy “expresses a French malaise toward the growing gap between the two economies, and more generally toward this new Germany without which nothing is possible anymore in Europe, and which seems less and less likely to compromise if not in its national interests,” Jacques-Pierre Gougeon, a Germany specialist at the French Institute for International and Strategic Relations, wrote in the newspaper Le Monde. At the heart of the dispute is the euro. The French see it as the currency of a new, united Europe; the Germans see it as the direct descendant of the mark, and the European Central Bank as retaining the DNA of the Bundesbank, whose main task was to keep inflation down. The French favor a kind of European economic government, with easier rules on deficits; the Germans have no intention of giving up economic sovereignty to anyone, let alone to the French. In the Greek crisis, for example, Germany has insisted that any aid to Greece come as a last resort, and in the loan package arranged on Sunday it insisted that Greece pay a significant penalty in interest rates. This was well within Mrs. Merkel’s guidelines and does not represent a subsidy to Greece, said Thomas Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The German taxpayer is much more likely to make money from this deal than to lose it, and the agreement is within the framework of what she agreed upon in successive Brussels summits,” he added. Germany also reacted angrily and defensively to a modest French ??sf suggestion by Finance Minister Christine Lagarde that the German export model had to change in the interests of other, less competitive euro zone countries, and that Germans should spend more buying the goods of their less fortunate neighbors. Germans, who have already undergone a wrenching structural reform and paid a huge bill to integrate the former eastern Germany, say they feel that “they’re paying a significant personal price,” Mr. Klau said. “Poverty has increased considerably in Germany and is now a social reality. And it makes Germany more inward-looking than the old West Germany, and a more defensive country.” Part of the change is generational, with Mrs. Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, representing those born after World War II, with only anecdotal knowledge of Nazi Germany. The members of Parliament are even younger, many of them teenagers or younger when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. So the German leadership paradigm from Konrad Adenauer through Helmut Kohl — roughly 1949 to 1989, when Germany was a crucial junior partner both for NATO and European integration — is gone. “When Germany steps out of the film, it changes,” Ms. Gu?rot said. Despite symbolic efforts to bring Mr. Sarkozy and Mrs. Merkel together — unveiling joint projects at the Arc de Triomphe last February or a recent stunt of having Ms. Lagarde sit in on a German cabinet meeting — “With the French we have more that divides us than unites us,” Ms. Gu?rot said. Germans feel they have paid both their reparations and their dues, “and many times over,” said Ms. Stelzenm?ller, especially in an uncertain time of globalization and financial crisis. “People want to be normal, in the sense that other people don’t come to us first and say, ‘You have to pay.’ And it doesn’t have much to do with political orientation. All of us are huddling with our backs against the storm.”

U.S. Sued Over Nuclear Waste Fees

polland zada — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 22:01:00 GMT

Sixteen utilities and a trade association sued the Energy Department on Monday to halt the government’s collection of nuclear waste disposal fees, arguing that the country no longer had a disposal plan after ruling out Yucca Mountain, Nev., as a repository. The utilities, which filed the lawsuit in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, jointly pay about $750 million a year — amounting to a tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour — into the fund. It now stands at about $24 billion nfl jerseys and earns about $1 billion annually in interest. The money was supposed to pay for the development of the Yucca Mountain repository, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but the Energy Department said last month that it was formally seeking to withdraw its application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate the site. President Obama had promised while campaigning for office that he would kill the project, in large part at the urging of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, now the majority leader. But it was also far from clear that the site was technically suitable for waste disposal. A federal advisory commission on a new waste strategy met for the first time last week, but it is focusing on broad issues like choosing a disposal technology, not finding a new site. Ellen C. Ginsberg, general counsel for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said there was therefore no longer a basis for collecting the fee. The federal energy secretary makes annual estimates called “fee adequacy reports,” based on the cost to build, operate and close up the repository, but there is now no repository to base a cost estimate on, she said. “Where there is no program being implemented, we don’t want to have to pay for something while there’s no way to determine whether the number is correct or not,” she said. But an Energy Department spokeswoman, Stephanie Mueller, Miami Dolphins Jersey countered that the fees were legally mandated and would eventually go to waste disposal. The advisory commission will recommend how the fees should be handled, she added. The utilities have been paying into the fund since April 1983. On Friday, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, a Washington-based group that represents members of state public service commissions, said in a court filing that the payments should be stopped. It noted that the money was paid by the utilities, but that ultimately the bill was passed to ratepayers. Two suits have been filed contesting the Obama administration’s decision to stop work on Yucca. Under contracts with the utilities, the Energy Department was to begin taking delivery of the fuel in 1998. It has been sued by many of them and has been forced to pay damages, mostly for the utilities’ costs to build additional storage at the reactor sites. But the waste impasse has gone on so long that in some places, the reactors have been retired and demolished, leaving nothing but small concrete-and-steel silos holding the waste. Ms. Ginsberg said she hoped that the department would Miami Dolphins Jersey move that waste to a central location, a step the industry said would reduce costs. But the department argues that the 1982 law under which it collects the waste fees does not permit it to use the money for “interim storage.”

How Much Exercise Will Prevent Weight Gain?

polland zada — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:45:00 GMT

Losing weight is difficult, and keeping it off may be even harder. So Harvard researchers set out to determine exactly how much physical activity women need in midlife to avoid gaining weight as they age. The researchers found that an hour of moderate activity a day — including such recreational activities as brisk walking, leisurely bicycling, ballroom dancing and playing with children — prevented women of normal weight from gaining more than five pounds over any three-year period. Half that amount of vigorous activity, like running, jogging or fast biking, will do the trick as well, they said. Women who got the same amount of exercise but were heavier to start with were not able to avoid gaining weight, however. Neither were women of normal weight who got less than seven hours a week of moderate activity, according to the nfl throwback jerseys study, published in the March 24 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. The average weight gain over the course of the 15-year study, which followed 34,079 healthy women with an average age of 54 at the beginning, was just over five pounds. The researchers did not take diet into account. “It’s so hard to lose weight and maintain the loss, so whatever weight you are, you should try to stay that weight — that is a success,” said the paper’s lead author, Dr. I-Min Lee, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. But any amount of exercise is beneficial, she emphasized. “People shouldn’t just throw up their hands and say, ‘Sixty minutes? I can’t do that,’ and give up. Health is more than weight.”

Blasts Revive Russians’ Fear of Female Bombers

polland zada — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:54:00 GMT

The two powerful explosions that tore through Moscow’s subway Monday revived a peculiar fear in the Russian capital, one that goes beyond the usual terrorism worries of a metropolis: the female bomber. On Monday, the Russian authorities said the bombings had been carried out by two women, and that they were searching for two suspected female accomplices, the Russian news media reported. Few details of the bombers were released. Earlier this decade, Moscow’s fear of female suicide bombers was so strong it became a lurid obsession. Women, sometimes casually adorned in jeans and blending in to the swirl of Moscow, committed at least 16 bombings, including two on cheap nfl jerseys board planes. The attacks came early — as when a widow killed herself and the Russian commander who had killed her husband in one of the first such attacks in the Chechen war — and sometimes in the most unlikely places, like mingling in line at a music festival, which only multiplied the horror. They joined in some of the most celebrated terrorist attacks in recent Russian history, at a theater in Moscow and a school in Beslan, Russia. The women, who came to be called the Black Widows, were not the first women to die this way. That dubious honor goes to a 16 year old Palestinian girl, who drove a truck into an Israeli army convoy in 1985. The Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was killed in 1991 by a member of the Birds of Paradise, a female group associated with the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka. Suicide bombing was a tactic that came late to Chechnya and was nearly unknown during the first war from 1994 to 1996. But once it arrived, in 2000, in an attack that killed 27 Russian special forces soldiers, it quickly became associated with women. The tactic expanded in subsequent years. Females adorned in billowy black robes and strapped with explosives made up 19 of the 41 captors in the October, 2002 hostage taking in the Moscow theater, which ended when Russian special services released a sleep-inducing gas into the building. When soldiers entered the auditorium they reportedly Miami Dolphins Jersey walked among into slumped forms and as a first precaution shot dead the Black Widows where they lay, lest they wake up and explode. In 2004, female suicide bombers detonated bombs on internal flights; one bomber identified by the Russian authorities was divorced in her early 40s, the other two sisters in their 20s who had also divorced. While there is no single reason women decide to give up their lives, experts say they have usually suffered a traumatic event that makes them burn with revenge or question whether they want to live. This can be the death of a child, husband or other family member at the hands of Russian forces or a rape. Russian authorities have said the women are sometimes drugged. In 2003, Russian police captured 22-year-old Chechen woman, Zarema M. Muzhakhoyeva, after she left a handbag bomb in a Moscow caf?. She was not a religious fanatic, her lawyer, Natalya V. Yevlapova, said in a telephone interview, but she had become emotionally distressed after her husband was murdered in what appeared to be a business dispute. “These girls are just pushed into a corner,” Pittsburgh Steelers Jersey Ms. Yevlapova said. In recent weeks, the Russian military conducted a series of raids that killed a prominent and charismatic recruiter for the rebels, a man who went by the name Said Buryatsky, along with dozens of other fighters. That had prompted a warning from a prominent rebel leader, who may or may not have made good his threat on Monday.

In Iowa, Obama Calls Health Bill ‘Pro-Business’

polland zada — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:20:00 GMT

President Obama on Thursday began an aggressive White House public relations blitz to sell his newly signed health care overhaul to a skeptical and sometimes confused public, calling the measure “pro-jobs” and “pro-business” and taunting Republicans who are vowing to repeal it. “My attitude is, go for it!” Mr. Obama declared, challenging his critics at a campaign-style rally here. “If these congressmen in Washington want to come here to Iowa and tell small business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits nfl jerseys and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest.” Several thousand people turned out to hear the president speak at the University of Iowa Field House here, in the city where he first laid out detailed plans for “affordable, universal health care in America” as a presidential candidate in May 2007. But while the gymnasium was filled with cheering supporters, the president also faced heckling, over one feature of his initial proposal that did not make it into the law: a “public option,” or government-backed insurance plan. “What about the public option?” a man called out, interrupting the president in an exchange that seemed momentarily to throw Mr. Obama off stride by forcing him to depart from the remarks he was reading off a TelePrompTer. “That’s not in it!” Mr. Obama called back. “Why not?” the man replied. “Because we couldn’t get it through Congress, that’s why,” Mr. Obama said. The heckler started up again, and the president admonished him: “There’s no need to shout, young man, no need to shout. Thirty two people — 32 million people are going to have health insurance because of this legislation.” The choice of Iowa City as the first stop on Mr. Obama’s health care victory lap was fraught with symbolism for the president; it was Iowa, of course, that thrust him into the spotlight when, improbably, he came out on top in the Democratic caucuses here. When he delivered his health care speech here in May 2007, he was facing criticism for lacking substance; his proposal made policy analysts sit up and take notice. “Because of you,” Mr. Obama told the crowd on Thursday, “this is the place where change began.” Now Mr. Obama must convince doubting Americans that the changes he wrought will make their lives better, not worse. And he must also give political cover to Democrats who may have risked their jobs to vote in favor of the bill. Mr. Obama is expected to campaign aggressively for some of those Democrats. Others who did not support the measure, and especially those who changed their votes from an initial yes to a final no, may find it tough to get campaign help from Mr. Obama in the midterm elections this fall. With polls showing the public still uncertain about the law, Mr. Obama will make a series of stops around the country in the coming weeks to tout its more popular provisions, including one allowing young people to stay on their parents’ mbt outlet health insurance plans until they turn 26, another barring insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing medical conditions, and one granting tax credits to help small businesses cover their workers. Here in Iowa City, with Republicans criticizing the measure as a burden on big business, Mr. Obama used his talk to zero in on the aid for smaller employers. “This year, millions of small-business owners will be eligible for tax credits that will help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees,” Mr. Obama said, citing the experience of the Prairie Lights Bookstore in downtown Iowa City , which has been offering coverage to employees but is struggling with rising premiums. The local reference drew a roar from the crowd. “Starting today,” Mr. Obama went on, “small business owners can sit down at the end of the week, look at their expenses, and they can begin calculating how much money they’re going to save. And maybe they can even use that savings to not only provide insurance but also create jobs. This health care tax credit is pro-jobs, it’s pro-business, and it starts this year.” Back in Washington, Republicans were spotlighting another provision that affects business: : the elimination of a subsidy provided to businesses for the purchase of prescription drugs for retirees and their families. The office of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, circulated an article from The Des Moines Register quoting officials of Deere & Company, Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer, saying the bill would cost the company $150 million. Outside the Iowa Field House, a smattering of protesters were Bo Jackson Jersey on hand to await the president. But so were supporters, with signs reading “Thank You.” Beyond the public option, the plan Mr. Obama signed into law differs in several significant aspects from the one he unveiled here three years ago. Back then, Mr. Obama expected to cover 45 million uninsured Americans; the new law will cover 32 million. Mr. Obama did not envision a mandate requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance; that is one of the more contentious aspects of the new law. And the president’s plan to pay for the bill entirely by rolling back his predecessor’s tax cuts proved unfeasible; the new law includes an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans. Mr. Obama, notably, did not touch on those differences in his speech here. But he did take Republicans to task for what he called “fear-mongering and overheated rhetoric” about the measure. Mocking his critics for referring to passage of the measure as “Armageddon” the president departed from his prepared text. “So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, some cracks opening up in the earth,” the president said. “Turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chirping, folks were strolling down the mall, people still had their doctors.”

Toyota Says Fixes Work When Done Properly

polland zada — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:53:00 GMT

Toyota said on Monday that some cases of sudden unintended acceleration still occurring in vehicles that had been repaired might have been the result of fixes being done incorrectly. The carmaker said it was confident that the repairs were effective when done properly. Federal safety regulators are looking into the reports of unintended NBA basketball jersey acceleration in repaired vehicles — it received more than 60 as of last week — and warned Toyota that it could order a new remedy if the current one did not solve the problem. The regulators, along with officials from Toyota, have been trying to contact all of the drivers who filed the reports. “Only a few of them have we been able to confirm and verify,” a Toyota spokesman, Mike Michels said. “Many of them are not verifiable.” But Mr. Michels added, that “in some cases, it had to do with the repair not being done completely.” The repair process varies for different models among the more than eight million vehicles that Toyota has recalled worldwide because of problems with their accelerator pedals. For vehicles recalled because the pedal could stick or become hard to operate, technicians must insert a small steel shim into the pedal assembly. For vehicles with pedals that could become trapped under the floor mat, some of the pedal is shaved off and technicians may remove some floor padding. Dealerships are also adding brake override systems, which are meant to deactivate the accelerator when the brake pedal is pressed. Toyota has highlighted its technicians in several television ads aimed at assuring customers that it is fixing the problems. “Our dealers are repairing up to 50,000 vehicles a day with confidence,” the voiceover in one ad says. Mr. Michels made the comments at a news conference that Toyota held in an effort to rebut a Southern Illinois University professor who told a House panel last month that he was able to replicate an electronic cause for sudden acceleration in Toyotas. Engineers from a consulting firm hired by Toyota said the professor’s conclusions were attained by manipulating the vehicle’s circuitry and that the situation would not occur in the real world. The engineers also showed that they could produce Penny Hardaway similar results on non-Toyota vehicles, including those from Ford, Honda and BMW. The professor’s demonstration “is not evidence of a design flaw or a safety risk, whether in Toyota vehicles or in any other manufacturer’s vehicles,” Shukri J. Souri, a principal with the consulting firm, Exponent, said. Te professor, David W. Gilbert, acknowledged in his testimony that he was trying to deliberately manipulate the vehicle into speeding up without generating an error code or entering a fail-safe mode, and said his ability to do that should be cause for concern. Safety Research & Strategies, a Massachusetts consulting firm that hired Professor Gilbert and is compiling data for plaintiffs in lawsuits against Toyota, posted a response to Toyota’s arguments Monday. “In general, Exponent’s report mischaracterizes Dr. Gilbert’s findings, but it does validate his primary findings — Toyota’s fail-safe system does not always detect critical errors or go into fail-safe mode as the company has claimed,” the response said. The demonstration did not directly address questions about whether sudden unintended acceleration might be caused by a defect in a vehicle’s electronic throttle control system, though officials said they have not found evidence of such a flaw. Also on Monday, the head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Toyota to turn over a 2006 memo in which six company employees in Japan raised questions about the safety of the vehicles. The memo was reported Vince Carter in The Los Angeles Times on Monday. “If senior Toyota officials ignored important safety concerns raised by their own employees, it calls into question Toyota’s corporate priorities and its commitment to safety,” Representative Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York, wrote to Yoshimi Inaba, the president of Toyota Motor North America.

Sometimes, Workplaces Aren’t Meant for Children

polland zada — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:29:00 GMT

Children love airplanes! It probably seemed like a perfectly good idea to an air traffic controller at Kennedy International Airport to bring his children to work last month — heck, this country has a whole day set aside for that sort of thing. But one idea led to another — “Dad, can I help the nice planes take off?” — and a young boy was heard clearing three jets for departure on Feb. 16. The child spoke to five pilots in all, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. wholesale ed hardy The next day, officials said, the same employee let his daughter speak to two pilots over the air traffic radios. The recordings were released on Tuesday, and now a probably well-meaning father is in trouble. There are still several weeks before Take Your Child to Work Day, on April 22, but it is never too soon for New Yorkers to heed this cautionary tale and plan ahead so as to not find themselves under federal investigation or writing a giant check for a big “oops” that day. There are plenty of places in New York, after all, where children acting their age can become a six-figure situation in no time. As for the unidentified controller at Kennedy, he and his supervisor have been suspended and are the subject of an F.A.A. investigation. On the recording, a young boy tells a pilot he’s “cleared for takeoff,” and the pilot tells him he has done an “awesome job.” Another man, presumably the child’s father, says, “That’s what you get, guys, when the kids are out of school.” Not surprisingly, the F.A.A. this week banned bringing children or anyone else into air traffic operational areas. “This lapse in judgment not only violated F.A.A.’s own policies, but common sense standards for professional conduct. These kinds of distractions are totally unacceptable,” said Randy Babbitt, the administrator of the agency. “We have an incredible team of professionals who safely control our nation’s skies every single day. This kind of behavior does not reflect the true caliber of our work force.” Consider other city occupations that could, in the unpredictable and innocent world of children, become the subject of a discussion that begins with the words, “In hindsight...” Children love dolls! But best to keep them away from the colorful ed hardy women belts dolls on display at the exhibition “Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art: Treasures from the Packard Collection” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sackler Wing Galleries. Among the 180 pieces are three Kakiemon ware figures of valuable porcelain. To make matters worse, one of them is a cute little dog. “You don’t really play with it,” said Naomi Takafuchi, a senior press officer at the museum. “If it’s broken, it’s very dangerous.” Not to mention expensive, although just how much was unclear Wednesday. “We don’t discuss the value,” Ms. Takafuchi said. “Kakiemon type is a very famous type of porcelain made in Japan,” she added. Children love chocolate! But perhaps not a great idea: giving young ones unfettered access to large quantities of expensive chocolate. There are at least 14 boutique Godiva chocolate shops in the city, according to Godiva’s Web site. Turning your back on a child in any one of them seems unwise. It is unclear how many of the shops carry the Milk Chocolate Pearls with Caffe Latte, but each cute little box of 18 pearls — in a shiny box, no less — costs $71.10. And now, freshly amped on caffeine, the children will be ready to seek out the chocolate holy grail, the “signature assortment of classic Belgian chocolates,” the Gold Ballotin. Price: $150. Children love fire trucks! Some even love fire, and who would not enjoy a turn at the business end of a fire hose? Sorry — not in this town. “The Fire Department’s a big family,” and children are no strangers to firehouses, but that’s as far as it goes, said Frank Dwyer, a spokesman. “We’re not bringing them along on calls. They’re not going out on emergency situations. ???? We have a no-ride-along policy.” Further questioning revealed that the policy goes for big kids — i.e., reporters — as well.

Hey, Waiter! Just How Much Extra Do You Really Expect?

polland zada — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:11:00 GMT

Funny you should ask, because I just gave you a $10 bill, and my latte and raspberry scone came to $5.75. As much as I think you’re pleasing to look at, and you do magical things with frothy milk, I just don’t see your services commanding a 70-plus percent premium over the market rate for my breakfast. And you, my dear bartender, who cracked open a $4 beer bottle, and handed me back my change entirely in a stack of one-dollar notes. Very subtle. As though the sheer bulk of that paper would deter me from putting it back in my wallet, and, ed hardy on sale defeated, I’d simply leave it there for you like a burnt offering on your sticky altar. At least you two left me a choice, unlike the menu last night, whose fine print stated how “parties of six or more will be charged a 20 percent gratuity.” Because there’s simply no way that six adults can gauge the service of a meal (one of hundreds in their lives) with any degree of accuracy. Better to just slap us with a perfunctory tax and screw up our orders anyway. Once that tip is locked in, who cares if the fish is cold? Yes, I know you’re all underpaid. But guess what? So am I. When I get $500 for an article that I think is worth $1,000, you won’t see me e-mail the editor, saying, “Just so you know, service isn’t included.” Do I ask you to come into my workplace and supplement my meager income? No, I don’t. Sure, you’re in the service industry. But doesn’t that mean that ed hardy t-shirts my gratuity should be a reward for better service, or at least an incentive? It sure wasn’t to the taxi driver the other night, who sped through two red lights, hopped a cement divider (nearly toppling his S.U.V.) and then strongly “suggested” that I elect the 25 percent tip option on the credit card payment system. Maybe if I had paid up, his next passenger would have had a smoother ride. Oh, sure, I’m cheap. But not as cheap as your boss, apparently, who figures he can pay you the minimum wage of $4.65 for servers, and the customer will just pick up the rest of your living expenses. Imagine if everyone did that. As you file out of the airplane, there’s the pilot, standing with his palm outstretched like a doorman who just let you into the hotel: “Hope you enjoyed your flight. Ahem, bit of a rough landing there, ahem. ed hardy woman shoes Not too easy to pull off, you know. Oh, why thank you, sir. You shouldn’t have.” I could elect not to tip, but that is as much an option as refusing to pay your income tax because you’re a member of the Tea Party. So here’s the deal: I’ll keep forking over my change, you keep smiling, and we’ll both lobby for an increase in the minimum wage.

Charges Filed in Federal Inquiry Into Katrina Police Shooting

polland zada — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:41:00 GMT

A retired police lieutenant was charged Wednesday with obstruction of justice, the first charge in a wide-ranging federal inquiry into whether police misconduct led to civilian deaths in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina. The charge stems from the shooting deaths of two civilians, one of them nike basketball shoes mentally retarded, by police officers on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans on Sept. 4, 2005, as floodwaters filled the city. The police officers had claimed they were responding to gunfire. Four other civilians were shot and seriously wounded. A bill of information, which was unsealed on Wednesday, describes Lt. Michael Lohman, who was working at a temporary headquarters nearby, arriving at the bridge and seeing dead and wounded civilians, none of whom had weapons. Concluding that the shooting was “legally unjustified,” he spoke to officers at the scene who were already planning to lie about the shootings, according to prosecutors. Lieutenant Lohman and another investigator did little to examine the scene, and later encouraged two police sergeants involved to go back to the bridge and dispose of shell casings that were left behind, according to the bill of information. Lieutenant Lohman was expected to plead guilty to the charge against him in federal court on Wednesday afternoon. The bill of information describes how Lieutenant Lohman and others who were involved in the investigation repeatedly helped officers who were involved to modify their stories to make them sound more believable. They made up details, like a claim that one of the people who was shot had reached for a “shiny object” in his waistband. One of the investigators was accused of planting a gun at the scene. At one point, the bill of information says, Lieutenant Lohman was frustrated that the cover-up story in the report, which was drafted by a police sergeant, “was not logical,” so he “personally drafted up a 17-page false report” Tim Duncan and provided it to the sergeant to submit as the official report. Lieutenant Lohman is also described as lying in an interview he gave to the F.B.I. in May of last year. At least two other officers have received target letters in the federal investigation, one of whom was assigned to the investigation and another who was involved in the shooting. The charge against Lieutenant Lohman shows the scope of the federal probe, which goes beyond the actual shooting to the activities of the police who were assigned to look into the deaths. In 2006, the seven officers who were directly involved in the shooting were charged with murder and attempted murder, but the charges were dismissed in late 2008 by a judge who cited improprieties in the handling of the case. The United States attorney’s office picked up the case soon after. The federal investigation took place throughout 2009, during which dozens of police officers testified before grand juries, federal agents seized files from the police homicide division and Danziger Bridge was shut down for hours as agents looked for evidence. Several other cases are under investigation by federal authorities, including the shooting death of Henry Glover, 31, whose remains were eventually discovered in a burned car parked behind a police station in the Algiers section of Allen Iverson New Orleans. This case was brought to the attention of authorities by an article that appeared in The Nation magazine in December 2008 and at ProPublica.org. A spokeswoman for the New Orleans Police Department declined to comment, citing the federal investigation.