เถ้าถ่านภูเขาไฟในไอซ์แลนด์ทำป่วนซ้ำ หลังปะทุอีกครั้ง จนหลายเที่ยวบินในยุโรป-อเมริกาเหนือ ต้องระงับและเปลี่ยนเส้นทางการบิน เพื่อป้องกันการเกิดอุบัติเหตุ...
สำนักข่าวต่างประเทศ รายงานเมื่อวันที่ 9 พ.ค. ว่า เถ้าถ่านภูเขาไฟจากเหตุภูเขาไฟใต้ธารน้ำแข็งในไอซ์แลนด์ระเบิด สร้างความอลหม่าน เพราะเกิดการปะทุอีกครั้ง จนหลายเที่ยวบินในยุโรปและอเมริกาเหนือ ต้องเปลี่ยนเส้นทางการบิน เพื่อป้องกันการเกิดอุบัติเหตุ และอีกกว่า 160 เที่ยวบินต้องถูกระงับ
ขณะที่ประเทศฝรั่งเศสกำลังอยู่ระหว่างประเมินผลกระทบที่เกิดขึ้นว่า ต้องปิดสนามบินหรือไม่ ด้านประเทศสเปน โดนผลกระทบเช่นกัน จึงสั่งปิดสนามบินอย่างน้อย 19 แห่ง อย่างไรก็ตาม ท่าทีของภูเขาไฟใต้ธารน้ำแข็งยังไม่มีทีท่าว่าจะสบงลงในเร็ววันนี้
8.5.10
Florida has most to lose from oil slick
(Reuters) - Florida, with 2,276 miles of beaches and tidal shoreline, is the U.S. state most economically vulnerable to the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.
U.S. | Green Business
At risk is Florida's tourist sector which last year accounted for a hefty $65 billion of state economic activity.
Florida's local and state governments rely heavily on sales and real estate taxes. That income would be depressed by any downturn in vacationers and the value of second homes.
"This could stain Florida's reputation for having beautiful beaches," said senior economist Mark Vitner at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina. "It may scare off some people from committing to conventions and vacations. Florida is clearly the biggest potential loser."
The state's lightly populated northwestern region known as the Panhandle is the area of Florida closest to the giant slick. Coastal Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are also threatened. The three shoreline areas extending west from the Panhandle do $8.5 billion of tourist business each year.
Florida's leisure and hospitality sectors make up nearly six percent of the state's economy.
"If fears or closures drive tourists away from Gulf Shores, Mobile, Gulfport or Biloxi, the restaurants, grocery stores and retailers along the coast will suffer during the season when they traditionally collect the bulk of their annual revenues," University of Alabama professor Bob Robicheaux said.
Experts were reluctant to guess at potential damages at such an early stage, citing too many unknowns like how effective containment would be, or how far currents could pull the growing oil spill.
Although Florida now has only a small energy-related sector, unlike other Gulf states such as Louisiana, it will likely miss out on or have to wait many more years for economic and tax gains expected to flow from proposed offshore drilling projects that now look shaky.
"Offshore oil exploration was going to be a source of significant growth but looks less likely now," Vitner said.
Florida, which is a rare American state with no personal income taxes, is seeing tentative post-recession upticks in sales taxes that account for 75 percent of the state government's general fund revenue.
"We'll watch sales taxes along the coast for signs of impact on tourism, such as restaurants, hotels and amusement venues," said Amy Baker, the Florida legislature's chief economist. "In the long term, there might be effects on property. You may see sales of property decline, as well as property taxes."
Like Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama have substantial commercial fishing sectors already being stung by fishing prohibitions imposed after the oil disaster that began last month. On Wednesday, authorities were on alert for the first major landfall of the slick, estimated to be at least 130 miles by 70 miles in size.
"The two sectors that may be most affected are tourism and fishing," said Michael Chriszt, an assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Fishing and forestry, which government statisticians track as one sector, added up to $2.1 billion in Florida, $715 million in Alabama, $613 million in Louisiana and $600 million in Mississippi during 2007, according to Chriszt.
In Louisiana, state revenue should not feel any immediate drag from the oil disaster, according to Louisiana State University Economics Professor Jim Richardson.
But bigger effects in Louisiana could be on the oil and gas industry, which accounts for about 50,000 jobs in the state, according to Richardson. Calls to shut down offshore drilling or impose more regulations could hurt those jobs, he said.
The region's ports that serve cargo ships have so far not felt any negative effects from the slick, Chriszt said.
Officials at Alabama's Port of Mobile, the ninth busiest U.S. harbor, reported that ships carrying coal, petroleum, forest products, steel and grain are coming and going at the normal rate of 100 to 120 ships per month.
(Additional reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago and Verna Gates in Mobile, Alabama; Editing by Andrew Hay)
Containment dome hovering above U.S. Gulf leak
(Reuters) - A four-story metal chamber hovered just above a gushing, ruptured oil well on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday as BP Plc engineers made an unprecedented effort to contain a potentially catastrophic oil spill.
U.S. | Green Business
Using sensors, video cameras and undersea robots, engineers prepared to lower the 98-ton structure the last 200 feet to fit over the biggest of two leaks almost 1 mile below the surface.
The mission, which requires pinpoint accuracy under high water pressure in the dark, has never been tried at that depth. Company officials warned there was no certainty of success for the only short-term option for containing the leak.
BP engineers hope to attach a pipe to the chamber to start pumping oil to a tanker on the surface next week in an operation they said could capture about 85 percent of the leaking oil.
The spill threatens an economic and ecological disaster targeting tourist beaches, wildlife refuges and fishing grounds in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has forced President Barack Obama to rethink plans to open more waters to drilling.
BP, which faces major financial losses, suffered another blow on Friday when ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook on the British oil giant to negative from stable.
It is under pressure from the Obama administration to limit the damage. BP has said it will pay all legitimate costs, a bill that is likely to run into the billions of dollars.
RELIEF WELL
BP also is drilling a relief well to halt the leak -- which began after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 crew members -- but it could take up to three months to complete.
They gave up on efforts to close valves on a failed blowout preventer with underwater robots, after trying in vain for two weeks, said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.
After several days of calm weather, winds began to pick up on Saturday, preventing any controlled burns of the thickest concentrations of oil, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Crews conducted five burns on Friday.
Forecasts said the winds would shift and come from the south to southwest, which could push the slick toward the Louisiana shore.
Nearly 200 boats deployed protective booms and used dispersants to break up the thick oil on Saturday. Crews have laid almost 800,000 feet of boom, and spread 267,000 gallons (1 million liters) of chemical dispersant.
In Buras, Louisiana, fishermen said they were worried about their livelihood and complained BP was not hiring enough locals, many of whom are of Vietnamese or Cambodian descent, for its cleanup jobs.
"I don't know what's going to happen," said fisherman Toai Tong, sitting outside his trailer in Buras. "It's really hard for us right now. I'm hoping for BP to call us to go to work too."
LIABILITY
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said a $75 million legal cap on the companies' liabilities for economic damages under federal law, which some U.S. lawmakers now want to raise, would not be a limit and renewed promises to meet all "legitimate" claims.
Standard & Poor's, in announcing BP's negative outlook, indicated a ratings downgrade was likely. Moody's said the spill raised the specter of credit pressure for the five primary companies involved in the project.
S&P cut its outlook for Anadarko Petroleum Corp, which has a 25 percent stake in the ill-fated well, to stable from positive, saying it is "potentially liable for significant costs and liabilities relating to the clean-up."
Other companies involved are Transocean, owner of the rig; Cameron International, which supplied the failed blow-out preventer for the well; and Halliburton, which helped cement in place the blown-out well.
An estimated 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) have poured into the Gulf each day since the well ruptured. But Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, said the estimate was much too conservative.
The real flow rate from the undersea well, based on aerial images of the oil slick and estimates of the thickness of the oil itself, is probably closer to 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons/4 million liters) per day, MacDonald told Reuters.
A sheen of oil has engulfed much of the Chandeleur Islands, barrier islands that are part of Louisiana's Breton National Wildlife Refuge, the first confirmation of the oil slick hitting land. Some oiled birds have been found in recent days.
BP contractors and commercial fishermen worked feverishly in waist-deep water to anchor booms around tiny uninhabited barrier islands as thousands of birds watched, according to a Reuters photographer.
The Breton refuge was closed to the public after a silver sheen and emulsified oil reached the shoreline, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said. Altogether, crude from the spill could hit 24 national wildlife refuges.
The Reuters photographer, on a flyover of the coast, saw a band of oil, orange in color and about a mile or two long, running parallel to shore about 17 miles south of barrier islands off Mississippi's mainland.
(Additional reporting by Matt Bigg in Venice, Louisiana; Matt Daily in New York; Tom Bergin in London; Anna Driver, Bruce Nichols and Chris Baltimore in Houston; Tom Brown and Pascal Fletcher in Miami; Karen Brettell in New York; Steve Gorman and Brian Snyder in Mobile, Alabama; and Richard Cowan in Washington; writing by Jeffrey Jones, John Whitesides and Ros Krasny; editing by Eric Beech and Vicki Allen)
U.S. | Green Business
Using sensors, video cameras and undersea robots, engineers prepared to lower the 98-ton structure the last 200 feet to fit over the biggest of two leaks almost 1 mile below the surface.
The mission, which requires pinpoint accuracy under high water pressure in the dark, has never been tried at that depth. Company officials warned there was no certainty of success for the only short-term option for containing the leak.
BP engineers hope to attach a pipe to the chamber to start pumping oil to a tanker on the surface next week in an operation they said could capture about 85 percent of the leaking oil.
The spill threatens an economic and ecological disaster targeting tourist beaches, wildlife refuges and fishing grounds in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has forced President Barack Obama to rethink plans to open more waters to drilling.
BP, which faces major financial losses, suffered another blow on Friday when ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook on the British oil giant to negative from stable.
It is under pressure from the Obama administration to limit the damage. BP has said it will pay all legitimate costs, a bill that is likely to run into the billions of dollars.
RELIEF WELL
BP also is drilling a relief well to halt the leak -- which began after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 crew members -- but it could take up to three months to complete.
They gave up on efforts to close valves on a failed blowout preventer with underwater robots, after trying in vain for two weeks, said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.
After several days of calm weather, winds began to pick up on Saturday, preventing any controlled burns of the thickest concentrations of oil, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Crews conducted five burns on Friday.
Forecasts said the winds would shift and come from the south to southwest, which could push the slick toward the Louisiana shore.
Nearly 200 boats deployed protective booms and used dispersants to break up the thick oil on Saturday. Crews have laid almost 800,000 feet of boom, and spread 267,000 gallons (1 million liters) of chemical dispersant.
In Buras, Louisiana, fishermen said they were worried about their livelihood and complained BP was not hiring enough locals, many of whom are of Vietnamese or Cambodian descent, for its cleanup jobs.
"I don't know what's going to happen," said fisherman Toai Tong, sitting outside his trailer in Buras. "It's really hard for us right now. I'm hoping for BP to call us to go to work too."
LIABILITY
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said a $75 million legal cap on the companies' liabilities for economic damages under federal law, which some U.S. lawmakers now want to raise, would not be a limit and renewed promises to meet all "legitimate" claims.
Standard & Poor's, in announcing BP's negative outlook, indicated a ratings downgrade was likely. Moody's said the spill raised the specter of credit pressure for the five primary companies involved in the project.
S&P cut its outlook for Anadarko Petroleum Corp, which has a 25 percent stake in the ill-fated well, to stable from positive, saying it is "potentially liable for significant costs and liabilities relating to the clean-up."
Other companies involved are Transocean, owner of the rig; Cameron International, which supplied the failed blow-out preventer for the well; and Halliburton, which helped cement in place the blown-out well.
An estimated 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) have poured into the Gulf each day since the well ruptured. But Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, said the estimate was much too conservative.
The real flow rate from the undersea well, based on aerial images of the oil slick and estimates of the thickness of the oil itself, is probably closer to 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons/4 million liters) per day, MacDonald told Reuters.
A sheen of oil has engulfed much of the Chandeleur Islands, barrier islands that are part of Louisiana's Breton National Wildlife Refuge, the first confirmation of the oil slick hitting land. Some oiled birds have been found in recent days.
BP contractors and commercial fishermen worked feverishly in waist-deep water to anchor booms around tiny uninhabited barrier islands as thousands of birds watched, according to a Reuters photographer.
The Breton refuge was closed to the public after a silver sheen and emulsified oil reached the shoreline, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said. Altogether, crude from the spill could hit 24 national wildlife refuges.
The Reuters photographer, on a flyover of the coast, saw a band of oil, orange in color and about a mile or two long, running parallel to shore about 17 miles south of barrier islands off Mississippi's mainland.
(Additional reporting by Matt Bigg in Venice, Louisiana; Matt Daily in New York; Tom Bergin in London; Anna Driver, Bruce Nichols and Chris Baltimore in Houston; Tom Brown and Pascal Fletcher in Miami; Karen Brettell in New York; Steve Gorman and Brian Snyder in Mobile, Alabama; and Richard Cowan in Washington; writing by Jeffrey Jones, John Whitesides and Ros Krasny; editing by Eric Beech and Vicki Allen)
7.5.10
Wrangling as Thai protesters refuse to quit
(Reuters) - Anti-government protesters in Thailand refused to leave the streets of Bangkok on Friday, but hinted they may be able to strike a deal in coming days to end a deadly crisis that has stifled the economy.
World | Thailand
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has put forward a plan to end the rallies that have crippled the capital and scared off tourists, but it remained in limbo as rival factions squabbled over details, including a proposed early election in November.
"We are not calling off protests as yet," Jaran Ditapichai told Reuters after meeting fellow leaders. "We have a proposal for Abhisit and we will talk about it in more detail later."
The stand-off has paralyzed the commercial heart of the capital for nearly two months, but its roots stretch back to the prime ministership of Thaksin Shinawatra -- a populist tycoon ousted in a 2006 military coup -- and the deep social divisions it exposed between Thailand's traditional elite and rural masses.
Thai stocks fell 2.1 percent, but other Asian markets were also in negative territory amid worries about the fallout from euro zone debt problems. The baht was little changed.
Thai stocks have now given up the gains scored on Tuesday, when the index jumped 4.4 percent in reaction to Abhisit's reconciliation plan.
"The deal is still not off the table. There're still more complications, more talks to look forward to. This stalemate could actually last for a while," said Kiatkong Decho, a strategist at CIMB Securities.
STAY OR GO?
Abhisit offered to dissolve parliament in the second half of September ahead of an election on November 14 as part of a plan to end a crisis in which 27 people have died and more than 1,000 been wounded in clashes.
But that failed to convince the mostly rural and urban poor "red shirt" protesters who have refused to budge from the commercial district, where posh malls and luxury hotels have been forced to close their doors since April 3.
"I am waiting for the leaders to say if we are celebrating or whether we should fight on," said Satien Wuttichai, a 39-year-old truck driver who joined the protest in early April.
"I am ready for either but this waiting is frustrating. But we have to be patient."
Far from packing up their camp, which sprawls across 3 sq km (1.2 sq miles) of an upmarket commercial district in central Bangkok, the red shirt leaders said they would bus in more supporters from their northeastern stronghold.
Around 5,000 protesters were at the site on Friday afternoon. Numbers usually grow during the day into the cooler evenings, before dropping to a few thousand who spend the night behind the fortified barricades.
A local business group put revenue losses in the area since April 3 at about 174 million baht ($5.4 million) a day.
MIXED SIGNALS
There were mixed signals from the red shirt camp that broadly backs Thaksin, who won popularity among the poor with policies of such as cheap healthcare and village microcredit, but appalled the Bangkok elite and the middle classes who turned against him a few years after he came to power in 2001, accusing him of corruption, autocracy, and disloyalty to the monarchy.
"Most leaders are ready to leave. A couple of leaders are still concerned that leaving the streets now would mean failure for the movement," said protest leader Kwanchai Praipanna.
Complicating the picture, Abhisit faces some opposition from the government's traditional backers after the yellow shirt group, which broadly represents the anti-Thaksin royalist elite and the middle classes, condemned his plan.
The yellow shirts, whose eight-day occupation of Bangkok's airport in 2008 helped undermine a Thaksin-allied government, said Abhisit should resign if he cannot enforce the law and end the occupation of the shopping district.
The red shirts, who had demanded immediate elections when their latest protest rally started in mid-March, say the ruling coalition lacks a popular mandate after coming to power in a controversial parliamentary vote 17 months ago.
Protest leaders are demanding a specific date for dissolution of parliament -- a technicality analysts said was probably an excuse to negotiate a better deal, including a guarantee they would not face terrorism and anti-monarchy charges.
(Additional reporting by Ploy Ten Kate and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Martin Petty)
The Science of Success
We are like dogs. We respond better to success than we do failures. Scads of platitudes have been written about learning from failure, and while it is possible to learn great lessons from life's clunkers, neuroscience now shows us that nothing succeeds like success. Have you ever had that golf game, presentation or some other challenge where everything you do with that challenge is golden? Then, the next day, you go at it again and you mess up one time and--bam! You can't seem to get in the groove. There is a brain-based reason for that, and the more aware of it you are, the more you can create success momentum in your business.
Earl Miller of MIT and Mark Histed of Harvard found that our neurons retain memory and become more finely tuned when we succeed, but they don't when success isn't present. There is a difference between the absence of success and the presence of failure. For instance, when a mistake leads to a negative consequence, we have a tendency to learn from it and veer in another direction. We don't necessarily learn what to do, but we learn what not to do. On the other hand, when there is absence of success but no apparent mistakes (you lose money in the stock market but have nothing tangibly to do with it), nothing appears to change in the brain, and relatively little--if any--learning takes place.
Here's what goes on that makes success so...well, successful. When you're learning something new and you have a success, even a small one, your brain gets a little reward bump of the pleasure neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is used to thicken the neural pathways needed to learn a new skill. Your brain is drawn to activities that give you those little pleasure bumps. You can actually become addicted to success. But the big news is that the more you succeed, the longer your brain retains the proper information to help you succeed again.
The implications of this seem enormous for you and your business. We now know that what you celebrate (typically success) gets repeated, and the more you celebrate it, the more of that behavior you get. We used to think this was part of the psycho-babble voodoo of niceness in business and that it really wasn't necessary. It is and now it's proven. Look for low-hanging fruit in your company--small successes that everyone can participate in--because it's a good way to get the snowball of success and high morale rolling when things are going badly.
Following are five things you can do to take advantage of this science in your organization and get the snowball effect of success breeding success.
1. You're looking to experience success, not to learn from mistakes. It might sound like semantics, but it is a different framing that works to keep you going. When you discuss mistakes, make sure you don't just focus on the what-not-to-do part of it. If you want to head down the path of success, you have to understand what is correct and try the successful behavior until you have a positive outcome.
2. Get your head positively in the game. When you make a mistake, don't allow negativity to rule you. As "new-agey" as it sounds, stay positive. Your attitude should be that you get another chance to make it right. Focus on the next turn. Put in neuroscience terms, when you become mired in negativity, the stressor hormone cortisol bathes your brain and blocks access to the part of the brain that breeds success. You become more and more frustrated and will continue to make mistakes. Take a break! When you can come at the challenge with a new and positive perspective, you are primed to try it again.
3. Nothing replaces practice. When you achieve success, mimic the very same behavior again relatively quickly after the last success. You'll build thicker neural pathways for the successful behaviors. In essence, practice and practice and practice the art of success. That's why you see golfers hit ball after ball on a driving range. Focus on the attempts you get right; ignore the wrong ones.
4. Celebrate. If you're trying to teach someone a new skill, celebrate their successes and ignore their mistakes unless the failure is going to be harmful.
5. Positive feedback is like cash in the bank. The old adage is true: "People have a tendency to become what we encourage them to be, not what we nag them to be." As a leader, catch people doing things right and make sure they know you've witnessed it. Give them on-the-spot feedback on it so that they get a big dopamine hit. Don't wait for company meetings or the next time you see them walking down the hall. One of your most important activities as a success chief will be to immediately dole out feedback when someone does something right. Get good and consistent at it.
There are few things as exciting as breeding success, especially when you know you can do it deliberately. If you want to be the titan of your industry and have a high hit rate at success, keep hitting. Notice when you and others get it right and do it again and again. We really are like dogs. Sit. Roll over. Good entrepreneur. Celebrate.
Earl Miller of MIT and Mark Histed of Harvard found that our neurons retain memory and become more finely tuned when we succeed, but they don't when success isn't present. There is a difference between the absence of success and the presence of failure. For instance, when a mistake leads to a negative consequence, we have a tendency to learn from it and veer in another direction. We don't necessarily learn what to do, but we learn what not to do. On the other hand, when there is absence of success but no apparent mistakes (you lose money in the stock market but have nothing tangibly to do with it), nothing appears to change in the brain, and relatively little--if any--learning takes place.
Here's what goes on that makes success so...well, successful. When you're learning something new and you have a success, even a small one, your brain gets a little reward bump of the pleasure neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is used to thicken the neural pathways needed to learn a new skill. Your brain is drawn to activities that give you those little pleasure bumps. You can actually become addicted to success. But the big news is that the more you succeed, the longer your brain retains the proper information to help you succeed again.
The implications of this seem enormous for you and your business. We now know that what you celebrate (typically success) gets repeated, and the more you celebrate it, the more of that behavior you get. We used to think this was part of the psycho-babble voodoo of niceness in business and that it really wasn't necessary. It is and now it's proven. Look for low-hanging fruit in your company--small successes that everyone can participate in--because it's a good way to get the snowball of success and high morale rolling when things are going badly.
Following are five things you can do to take advantage of this science in your organization and get the snowball effect of success breeding success.
1. You're looking to experience success, not to learn from mistakes. It might sound like semantics, but it is a different framing that works to keep you going. When you discuss mistakes, make sure you don't just focus on the what-not-to-do part of it. If you want to head down the path of success, you have to understand what is correct and try the successful behavior until you have a positive outcome.
2. Get your head positively in the game. When you make a mistake, don't allow negativity to rule you. As "new-agey" as it sounds, stay positive. Your attitude should be that you get another chance to make it right. Focus on the next turn. Put in neuroscience terms, when you become mired in negativity, the stressor hormone cortisol bathes your brain and blocks access to the part of the brain that breeds success. You become more and more frustrated and will continue to make mistakes. Take a break! When you can come at the challenge with a new and positive perspective, you are primed to try it again.
3. Nothing replaces practice. When you achieve success, mimic the very same behavior again relatively quickly after the last success. You'll build thicker neural pathways for the successful behaviors. In essence, practice and practice and practice the art of success. That's why you see golfers hit ball after ball on a driving range. Focus on the attempts you get right; ignore the wrong ones.
4. Celebrate. If you're trying to teach someone a new skill, celebrate their successes and ignore their mistakes unless the failure is going to be harmful.
5. Positive feedback is like cash in the bank. The old adage is true: "People have a tendency to become what we encourage them to be, not what we nag them to be." As a leader, catch people doing things right and make sure they know you've witnessed it. Give them on-the-spot feedback on it so that they get a big dopamine hit. Don't wait for company meetings or the next time you see them walking down the hall. One of your most important activities as a success chief will be to immediately dole out feedback when someone does something right. Get good and consistent at it.
There are few things as exciting as breeding success, especially when you know you can do it deliberately. If you want to be the titan of your industry and have a high hit rate at success, keep hitting. Notice when you and others get it right and do it again and again. We really are like dogs. Sit. Roll over. Good entrepreneur. Celebrate.
BP hopes giant steel dome will stem U.S. Gulf leak
(Reuters) - BP Plc engineers were expected to lower a massive metal containment chamber onto a ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday in an effort to stem the widening slick.
U.S. | Green Business
If all goes to plan, the four storey-tall structure will redirect the flow of crude from nearly 1 mile below the water and pump it up to the surface. But BP officials warned it will be no easy task.
Oil sloshed ashore on a chain of islands off the Louisiana coast on Thursday as the oil slick expanded and oiled birds had been found.
At least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) have gushed into the Gulf each day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded two weeks ago off the Louisiana Coast, killing 11 workers.
BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles had said the dome could be operating by Monday.
The company is drilling a relief well that could take two or three months to complete, making the 98-ton containment dome the centerpiece of the short-term fight against the slick.
On Thursday, the federal government heaped more criticism on BP, and said it would make sure it lived up to its responsibility to limit the damage from what could be the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
After meeting with BP executives in Houston, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the company and its partners made "some very major mistakes" and added: "Its life is very much on the line here."
The spill threatens an environmental catastrophe on the coasts of four states and has forced President Barack Obama to rethink plans to open up more waters to offshore drilling.
The heavier oil remains further off the coast for now, close to the leak site. But the Mississippi Delta, Breton Sound, and Chandeleur Sound are in danger of shoreline contacts over the next few days, officials said.
"It has already hit some of the fishing areas further out," said Leonard Ball, a resident of Biloxi, Mississippi. "There's already a lot of devastation as far as the fishermen go," he said.
In Buras, Louisiana, Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen unable to make their usual living in the Gulf told BP officials that some were excluded from cleanup jobs offered, in part because they are deck-hands rather than boat owners.
By late Saturday or Sunday morning, winds in the Gulf region are forecast to pick up to 15 to 20 knots, possibly making containment efforts more difficult.
More insurers outlined the cost of the disaster.
Munich Re warned on Friday that high payouts for natural catastrophe claims and the U.S. oil spill had placed its 2010 earnings goal in jeopardy.
Munich's nearest competitor Swiss Re said on Thursday that the cost of the spill to the entire insurance industry would be $1.5-$3.5 billion.
CALM WEATHER WINDOW
Crews on Thursday took advantage of calm weather to fight the slick. About 270 boats deployed protective booms and used dispersants to break up the thick oil.
Scientists monitored the impact on marine and coastal wildlife of the slick, estimated to be at least 130 miles by 70 miles in size.
Coast Guard and port officials said there had been no impact on ship traffic, and preparations were in place to clean vessels quickly en route to port to keep traffic moving.
BP shares were down 1 percent in London by 0828 GMT, adding to $32 billion worth of recent losses in market value.
The Interior Department on Thursday canceled a series of public meetings planned this month on a proposal to sell oil and gas leases off the Virginia coastline, a move that was cheered by environmentalists.
(Editing by David Cowell; Additional reporting by Matt Daily in New York; Tom Bergin in London; Anna Driver and Chris Baltimore in Houston; Tom Brown and Pascal Fletcher in Miami; Michael Peltier in Pensacola; Steve Gorman and Brian Snyder in Mobile; Scott Malone in Boston; and Richard Cowan in Washington; writing by Jeffrey Jones, John Whitesides and Ros Krasny)
2.5.10
United, Continental boards OK merger: sources
Continental planes are pictured at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey June 18, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer
(Reuters) - UAL Corp (UAUA.O), parent of United Airlines, will buy Continental Airlines Inc (CAL.N) for $3.2 billion, forming the world's largest carrier in a merger that further shrinks the embattled U.S. airline industry and could drive up air fares, sources said on Sunday.
Deals
The boards of directors of both companies unanimously approved the deal, which was expected to be announced by the carriers on Monday morning, sources familiar with the discussions said. UAL and Continental declined to comment and neither airline has confirmed the votes.
If given regulatory approval, the carrier would be called United Airlines and would be based in Chicago, with over $29 billion in annual revenue, a source said. The deal would generate up to $1.2 billion in revenue and cost benefits for the combined company.
"The combined firm would have more staying power than each of them individually," Robert Mann, airline consultant at RW Mann & Co, said. "Part of it is the consolidation provides pricing power and the opportunity for pricing power for the entire industry."
"The margins on the combined business would be better," Mann said. "The share of revenue that's consumed by revenue will be lower. Margins will be better."
The airline industry is recovering from an economic downturn that drained travel demand and forced carriers to downsize.
Experts have said consolidation would lend much-needed stability to the industry, which has been dogged by low-fare competition, terror concerns, volatile fuel prices and overcapacity.
ALL-STOCK DEAL
UAL and Continental have agreed to an exchange ratio of 1.05 UAL shares for each Continental share in all-stock deal, the sources said. That value would be determined by the market, and could change by the time the deal closed.
Based on United's stock price of $21.83 on Friday afternoon, and Continental's 139.6 million outstanding shares as of April 21, United would pay $3.2 billion for Continental.
Based on current shares outstanding, a combined company would have 314.5 million shares, and UAL shareholders would own roughly 53 percent of the new company.
Under the terms for the all-stock merger, UAL Chief Executive Glenn Tilton would become non-executive chairman of the combined carrier while Continental CEO Jeff Smisek would become chief executive.
The carriers are planning a 16-member board with six directors from each airline, plus Tilton and Smisek, and two seats from labor unions. The airlines hope for US regulatory approval of proposed merger by year's end.
The new company on paper now would have a combined work force of nearly 90,000 employees and a combined fleet of 693 planes.
United Airlines took in more than $16 billion in operating revenue for 2009. The carrier has hubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Washington, D.C. The carrier boasts a strong presence on Asia-Pacific routes, Europe and Latin America.
The carrier has 46,000 employees and a mainline fleet of 360 planes made by Airbus and Boeing Co (BA.N).
Continental, which saw $12.6 billion in annual revenue for 2009, has about 41,000 employees and hubs in Newark, New Jersey, Houston and Cleveland. Continental has a mainline fleet of 333 jets.
The unions representing pilots at UAL and Continental did not have immediate comment.
Although Capt. John Prater, the president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents UAL and Continental pilots, told the Reuters in February that a merger of those two carriers made more sense than other possible combinations because they have less route overlap.
UAL and Continental are both members of the global Star Alliance of airlines. UAL shares trade on Nasdaq. Continental shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
LONG TIME COMING
The leaders of both airlines had engaged in merger talks before, the most recent being in 2008, when Continental walked away at the last minute out of concern for UAL's then-fragile financial position.
Continental and UAL later agreed to link up in a strategic global alliance. The most recent round of talks were completed in about three weeks, a source familiar with discussions said.
Some industry experts believe that one airline merger could spur others and that several different combinations of major airlines are possible. The last major airline merger was in 2008 between Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) and Northwest Airlines to form what is currently the world's largest airline.
UAL and US Airways Group (LCC.N) also were in merger talks this year, but US Airways pulled out last month. US Airways CEO Doug Parker, a vocal proponent of airline consolidation, has said that any mergers are good for the industry because they pull capacity out of the bloated system.
"I think it's going to force other carriers to raise the question (of consolidation)," said Hunter Keay, airline analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. He said a merger between US Airways and American Airlines parent AMR Corp (AMR.N) makes sense from a "network perspective."
"It certainly raises the question," Keay said. "I don't see it happening in the short-term."
Investigators hunt New York car bomb culprits
(Reuters) - Investigators were combing through evidence on Monday in the hunt for suspects in a failed car bombing in New York's busy Times Square and officials expressed optimism that the culprits will be found.
U.S.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was no evidence of a link to al Qaeda or any other militant organization in the failed bomb attack on Saturday evening that prompted the evacuation of the teeming entertainment and shopping district.
"It's unfortunate that this happened. I'm confident that we will find out who did it," Bloomberg told reporters outside a Times Square restaurant.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said a white man in his 40s was spotted in security video footage and was seen removing a dark shirt about half a block from where the vehicle was left with its engine running and hazard lights flashing.
Bloomberg had dinner with policeman Wayne Rhatigan, who was tipped off by an alert street vendor about a suspicious Nissan sport utility vehicle on West 45th Street near Broadway.
The Taliban in Pakistan said it planted the bomb to avenge the killing in April of al Qaeda's two top leaders in Iraq. But Kelly said there was "no evidence" to support that claim.
Investigators were poring over surveillance camera footage and a device made of propane, gasoline and fireworks after officers found the bomb in the vehicle as Times Square in Midtown Manhattan was packed with tourists and theater-goers.
"WHATEVER IS NECESSARY"
President Barack Obama received regular updates on the incident as he visited Louisiana to assess the response to the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We're going to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people, to determine who's behind this potentially deadly act and to see that justice is done," said Obama, who was accompanied on the trip by his counterterrorism chief John Brennan.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the scare a "potential terrorist attack" but she and other officials held off saying whether there was a link to Islamist groups or to a domestic cause in the United States.
Security at U.S. East Coast airports was boosted in the wake of the incident to counter possible vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices at airports and crowded public spaces, a Department of Homeland Security official said.
Michael Cheah, senior portfolio manager at SunAmerica Asset Management, said the car bomb was an "isolated incident" that was not likely to spark any Treasury market reaction.
New York and its 8 million people have been on high alert since the September 11 attacks in 2001 when airliners hijacked by al Qaeda militants toppled the World Trade Center's twin towers, killing more than 2,600 people.
(Writing by JoAnne Allen; editing by Chris Wilson and Will Dunham)
U.S.
Four killed in Darfur protest over cash scam
(Reuters) - At least four people died on Sunday in clashes between Sudanese security forces and protesters angry over a failed investment scheme in Darfur, an aid source and witnesses said.
World
Automatic gunfire erupted after about 1,000 people marched on the center of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, U.N. officials and aid workers said.
Local residents said protesters were angry after losing money in a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid model where money is paid from one investor to the other and presented as profit.
Two members of the crowd told Reuters that security forces opened fire on protesters. One humanitarian aid source said some protesters were also armed and there were exchanges of fire.
"Between four and 10 people have been killed ... and 30 to 40 people injured ... There was intense fighting. We cannot say who killed who," said an aid official, asking not to be named.
Aid workers and U.N. officials took refuge in their compounds during the confrontation.
"There is a lot of confusion ... We don't know if it is police shooting, or civilians, or the Arab militias in town. They lost a lot of money and are very unhappy," said one aid worker, speaking to Reuters by phone.
PONZI SCHEME
The fighting had ended by early afternoon but streets were largely deserted and shops shut, residents of the area said.
"They used guns against the protest ... They shot some people," said Dirar Abdullah Dirar, a member of the League of the Victims of the El Mawasir Market, which helped organize the protest to demand the return of investors' money.
Mawasir is a local term for pipes, slang for a swindle.
Another witness in the crowd told Reuters he saw four bodies in the street. "Everything is quiet now but the problem is not solved. We have still not heard how we are going to get our money back," he said.
North Darfur's police chief Abdul Rahman al-Tayeb issued a statement late on Sunday saying three protesters died in the demonstration, without going into how they lost their lives.
Al-Tayeb said officers had to use batons and teargas after meeting resistance from the crowd which he said was backed by "armed movements." A total of 104 people were arrested, he said.
El Fasher, and Darfur's other major cities, have become thriving commercial centers during the remote western region's seven-year conflict, boosted by foreign cash brought in by aid workers and peacekeepers and accelerating urbanization.
Local residents told Reuters two men set up a business in El Fasher around 10 months ago, taking in cash and other goods and promising returns of more than 50 percent after a month.
Investors received certificates for their goods and did receive payments in the early days of the scheme, one investor said. But the business closed down before last month's national elections, leaving thousands unpaid, he said.
Police arrested a number of men accused of setting up the investment operation, the secretary general of North Darfur's government, Ali Mohammed Ibrahim, told Reuters last week.
Mostly non-Arab rebels in Darfur took up arms against Sudan's government in 2003, accusing it of neglect. Khartoum armed mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising.
(Editing by Charles Dick)
World
Automatic gunfire erupted after about 1,000 people marched on the center of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, U.N. officials and aid workers said.
Local residents said protesters were angry after losing money in a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid model where money is paid from one investor to the other and presented as profit.
Two members of the crowd told Reuters that security forces opened fire on protesters. One humanitarian aid source said some protesters were also armed and there were exchanges of fire.
"Between four and 10 people have been killed ... and 30 to 40 people injured ... There was intense fighting. We cannot say who killed who," said an aid official, asking not to be named.
Aid workers and U.N. officials took refuge in their compounds during the confrontation.
"There is a lot of confusion ... We don't know if it is police shooting, or civilians, or the Arab militias in town. They lost a lot of money and are very unhappy," said one aid worker, speaking to Reuters by phone.
PONZI SCHEME
The fighting had ended by early afternoon but streets were largely deserted and shops shut, residents of the area said.
"They used guns against the protest ... They shot some people," said Dirar Abdullah Dirar, a member of the League of the Victims of the El Mawasir Market, which helped organize the protest to demand the return of investors' money.
Mawasir is a local term for pipes, slang for a swindle.
Another witness in the crowd told Reuters he saw four bodies in the street. "Everything is quiet now but the problem is not solved. We have still not heard how we are going to get our money back," he said.
North Darfur's police chief Abdul Rahman al-Tayeb issued a statement late on Sunday saying three protesters died in the demonstration, without going into how they lost their lives.
Al-Tayeb said officers had to use batons and teargas after meeting resistance from the crowd which he said was backed by "armed movements." A total of 104 people were arrested, he said.
El Fasher, and Darfur's other major cities, have become thriving commercial centers during the remote western region's seven-year conflict, boosted by foreign cash brought in by aid workers and peacekeepers and accelerating urbanization.
Local residents told Reuters two men set up a business in El Fasher around 10 months ago, taking in cash and other goods and promising returns of more than 50 percent after a month.
Investors received certificates for their goods and did receive payments in the early days of the scheme, one investor said. But the business closed down before last month's national elections, leaving thousands unpaid, he said.
Police arrested a number of men accused of setting up the investment operation, the secretary general of North Darfur's government, Ali Mohammed Ibrahim, told Reuters last week.
Mostly non-Arab rebels in Darfur took up arms against Sudan's government in 2003, accusing it of neglect. Khartoum armed mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising.
(Editing by Charles Dick)
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