irascibly fredia

Monday, January 14, 2013

Video: Why are people still refusing to get a flu shots?

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50441262/

the talented mr ripley ">weather new orleans orcl the hartford illinois primary 2012 michael bay zsa zsa gabor

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Victims of Costa shipwreck mark anniversary

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) ? Survivors of the Costa Concordia shipwreck and relatives of the 32 people who died marked the first anniversary of the grounding Sunday with the unveiling of memorials to the victims, a tearful Mass in their honor and a minute of silence to recall the exact moment that the cruise ship rammed into a reef off Tuscany.

One of the most moving tributes came first, with the daybreak return to the sea of part of the massive rock that tore a 70-meter (230-foot) gash into the hull of the ocean liner on Jan. 13, 2012, when the captain took it off course in a stunt. The boulder remained embedded in the mangled steel as the 112,000-ton vessel capsized off Giglio island along with its 4,200 passengers and crew.

As fog horns and sirens wailed, a crane on a tug lowered the boulder back onto the reef off Giglio where it belonged, returning it to the seabed affixed with a memorial plaque. Relatives of the dead threw flowers into the sea and embraced as they watched the ceremony from a special ferry that bobbed in the waves under a gray sky.

They wept during the Mass and ran their fingers over the names of the 32 dead that were engraved on a bronze plaque unveiled at the end of Giglio's jetty, near where the Concordia still lays on its side. And later, under a cold rain, they gathered on the jetty holding candles to observe a moment of silence at 9:45 p.m., the exact moment when the Concordia slammed into the reef after Capt. Francesco Schettino took it off its pre-programmed course and brought it closer to Giglio as a favor to friends from the island.

While many tears were shed Sunday, relatives also seemed to have found some comfort in coming to the tiny fishing island of Giglio, where residents opened their homes and hearts to the survivors that frigid night.

"Having the possibility to see everything, we can accept it a bit more, but there is still a long way to overcome this loss, especially for my mother who suffered a lot for her son," said Madeleine Costilla Mendoza, whose brother Tomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza of Peru was a steward on the ship.

Schettino is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and leaving the ship before all passengers were evacuated. He hasn't been charged but is living under court-ordered restrictions pending a decision on whether to indict him. Schettino maintains he saved lives by bringing the ship closer to shore rather than letting it sink in the open sea, and claims the reef he hit wasn't on his nautical charts.

In an interview broadcast Sunday with RAI state television, Schettino again defended his actions and blamed others on the bridge for failing to inform him of the situation in time, and then of botching his orders once he tried to steer clear of the reef.

He said he wanted to "share in the pain of all the victims and the families of the victims."

At Schettino's home in Meta di Sorrento, on the Gulf of Naples, no one answered the doorbell Sunday and the window shutters were closed.

Taking part in the anniversary commemoration was Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard, who became something of a hero to survivors after his recorded conversations with Schettino during the evacuation were made public. In them, De Falco excoriated Schettino for having abandoned the ship before all passengers were off and ordered him to return, shouting the now-infamous order "Go on board (expletive)!"

De Falco said he wanted to go to Giglio to "embrace the victims, and the relatives of the victims." De Falco said he has shied from media attention since the disaster out of respect for the victims.

"I'm not a hero," he told reporters in Giglio on Sunday. "I just did my job."

The 32 people who died included 12 Germans, seven Italians, six French nationals, two Americans ? Barbara and Gerald Heil of White Bear Lake, Minnesota ? two Peruvian crew members, one Hungarian, one Spaniard and an Indian.

Indian waiter Russel Rebello was one of the two victims whose bodies were never recovered. Kevin Rebello, his brother, spent weeks on Giglio in the aftermath of the disaster awaiting word of the fate of his sibling and said he couldn't sleep ahead of Sunday's anniversary.

"I have been constantly thinking it is going to be again the same agony, even tonight, because it is going to be the same exact moment when all this happened," he told The Associated Press on Sunday. "So my heart is beating a bit faster I guess."

Elio Vincenzi, the husband of Maria Grazia Trecarichi of Italy, whose body also was never recovered, wept as he presented a ceramic statue of the Madonna to Giglio's mayor as a gesture of thanks during a ceremony honoring the coast guard, firemen and other rescue crews.

The Concordia remains on its side, grounded off Giglio's port. Officials now say it may take until September to prepare the ship to be rolled upright and towed from the rocks to a port to be dismantled ? an operation on a scale that has never before been attempted. The cost has swelled to ?400 million ($530 million).

While Sunday's commemoration was focused on the relatives of those who died, Giglio's residents were also being remembered for having opened their doors to the survivors who came ashore that night, cold, wet and traumatized after a chaotic evacuation.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano sent a message of thanks to the island, praising its people for their "high sense of civic duty and humanity."

"It was something that was too big for us," said Giglio resident Silvana Anichini. "We are just not used to things like this, and then it turned out to be one of the biggest shipwrecks in the world."

Many survivors have stayed in touch with their Giglio hosts, connected in ways they never expected. Claudia Urru, who stayed home in Sardinia on the anniversary, says she speaks monthly with the Giglio family that took in her family and two other families that night. The hosts gave the survivors warm clothes and food.

For Christmas, her Giglio family sent a package of local sweets, and they have discussed having a reunion in Sardinia.

"This is the only thing good that has come of it," Urru said by phone last week.

___

Winfield reported from Rome.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/victims-costa-shipwreck-mark-anniversary-075213150.html

vangogh yield crossbow airhead atherosclerosis steven tyler tropic thunder

Israel declares Area E1 closed military zone

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Saturday night, ordered security forces to evict the Palestinian ?settlement? established in the area between Maaeleh Adummim and Jerusalem, known as Area E1 and close it off as a military zone. Several Palestinians moved into the area Friday and renamed it Bab el-Shams. Netanyahu also instructed the state prosecution to apply to the Supreme Court for annulment of a temporary injunction holding up the Palestinian evacuation. The Palestinians claim Israel?s presence in E1 divides the West Bank in two parts. Israel says it leaves a wide enough corridor to link them.

Source: http://www.debka.com/newsupdate/3440/

NFL fantasy football Chris Kluwe Jennifer Granholm Tulane player injured fox sports frank ocean obama speech

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Shell may have moved rig to avoid taxes: U.S. lawmaker

ANCHORAGE, Alaska/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shell may have moved an oil rig that ran aground off Alaska last week partly to avoid millions of dollars in taxes, U.S. Rep. Ed Markey said, raising even more questions about the oil company's decision on the timing of the move.

The letter from the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee adds to the already-intense political scrutiny of Royal Dutch Shell's ambitious and troubled Arctic drilling foray last year.

Shell's 30-year-old Kulluk drillship ran aground on New Year's Eve in what were described as "near hurricane" conditions while it was being towed south for the winter.

In a letter to Shell's top U.S. executive, Marvin Odum, Markey said the decision to move the rig "may have been driven, in part, by a desire to avoid...tax liability on the rig."

In late December, a Shell spokesman told a local newspaper, the Dutch Harbor Fisherman, that it was "fair to say the current tax structure related to vessels of this type influenced the timing of our departure." But Shell said in response to Markey on Thursday that its decision was guided by safety, not taxes.

Markey, an outspoken critic of the oil and gas industry, said his office received information about Shell and taxes from Alaska's revenue department.

Shell could have been exposed to a state tax if the rig had remained in the state until January 1, as Alaska law says an annual tax of 2 percent can be assessed on drilling equipment on that date, Markey said in the letter sent on Wednesday.

The company spent $292 million on upgrades on the rig since purchasing it in 2005, so the liability could have been about $6 million, he wrote. In total, Shell has spent $4.5 billion since 2005 to develop the Arctic's vast oil reserves.

Jim Greeley, Anchorage-based petroleum property assessor for the Alaska Department of Revenue, explained that the tax applies to property used for exploration, production or transportation of oil or natural gas. He could not say whether the Kulluk would have been taxed or whether Shell's actions avoided a tax.

The issue was complicated by the fact that Shell's drilling was in federal waters.

"There's no tax precedent for that," at least in recent times, Greeley said, adding that department officials were researching the tax practices from two decades ago when there was a flurry of drilling offshore Alaska.

The decision would have to be made by the time the state publishes its tax rolls on March 1.

CONOCO LOOKS ON

Shell's Arctic work has been closely watched by many in the industry and especially by ConocoPhillips ahead of its planned Alaska offshore drilling program slated for 2014.

According to the U.S. government, the Beaufort and Chukchi seas hold an estimated 23 billion barrels of recoverable oil - equivalent to a tenth of Saudi Arabia's reserves.

A Shell spokeswoman said the plan for the Kulluk this winter was always to move it in December.

"While we are aware of the tax environment wherever we operate, the driver for operational decisions is governed by safety." She said an approved tow plan for the rig included weather considerations.

Winter transit in northern waters is not unusual for rigs. Just this month, a rig owned by contractor Seadrill was due to arrive in Norway to start work for Statoil, while another was headed to Canada for Exxon Mobil Corp.

The Kulluk accident is only Shell's latest problem in Alaska. Its 2012 Arctic drilling season was plagued by delays due to lingering ice and problems getting a mandatory oil spill containment vessel certified by the Coast Guard.

Also, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said late on Thursday it issued notices of violation for air pollution in 2012 for the Noble Corp-owned Discoverer, Shell's other Arctic rig, and for the Kulluk.

The EPA also terminated a temporary, more lenient permit granted to Shell in September for the Discoverer and said Shell's application for a less strict air permit was still under review.

The U.S. Department of the Interior said this week it would review Shell's Arctic oil drilling program to assess the challenges it faced and to guide future Arctic permitting.

Markey's committee does not have the power to stop drilling. His investigation would focus on why the rig was being towed along the coast down to Washington state in such severe weather and on Shell's safety policies, an aide to Markey said.

Any permitting changes or delays resulting from the Interior Department review could threaten Shell's 2013 drilling plans, as the company has a limited drilling window during the summer.

The Kulluk, before heading south, had previously been at a private facility in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor operated by Kirkland, Washington-based Offshore Systems Inc, which serves fishing and other vessels in Alaska. Harbormaster Jim Days said it was there for at least a month after completing its Beaufort Sea drilling.

The environmental impact of the Kulluk accident is so far limited. The incident response team has located all four survival ships and one rescue ship that were dislodged from the drillship when it ran aground. The survival ships all had 68-gallon-capacity fuel tanks and two had been breached.

None of the 155,000 gallons of fuel and other oil products aboard the Kulluk itself had leaked.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Callus in London and Braden Reddall in San Francisco; Editing by John Wallace, Jim Marshall, Tim Dobbyn, Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz and Matt Driskill)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shell-may-moved-rig-avoid-taxes-u-lawmaker-062957909--finance.html

laron landry mary j blige burger king islands joe flacco 2013 nissan altima masters par 3 contest google augmented reality glasses

Pap Smear Detects Ovarian, Uterine Cancer | WJTV

MEDICAL WATCH --

A pap smear can be used to detect ovarian and uterine cancers, in addition to cervical cancer, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins used a cervical fluid, which is collected during a Pap smear, to do a genome sequencing called the PapGene.

More studies are needed.

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest form of cancer in women, partly because it's difficult to detect.

Source: http://www2.wjtv.com/news/2013/jan/11/pap-smear-detects-ovarian-uterine-cancer-ar-5349620/

petrino clayton kershaw tyler perry face transplant maundy thursday fab melo google glasses

Ghana Business News ? IFC expands financing for small Ghanaian ...

You Are Here: Home ? General News ? IFC expands financing for small Ghanaian businesses

Page last updated at Friday, January 11, 2013 15:15 PM //

Small businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa are often limited in their growth as they cannot keep up with demand and access finance for the necessary supplies, machinery and other inputs. In Ghana, the lack of national identity card system, a credit information bureau, and a collateral registry makes lending to smaller businesses clients a riskier activity for commercial banks.

A number of IFC [International Finance Corporation] interventions in Ghana, in partnership with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, have helped to improve the country?s financial infrastructure to increase access to finance to small business as a key driver of job creation.

After the enactment of the Borrowers and Lenders Act in 2008, the Bank of Ghana, with the support of IFC, established a collateral registry which has recently been upgraded into a web-based electronic registry, which started operating in June 2012. Previously, the lack of a secured lending regime represented a key constraint for access to credit, as bank lending was mainly used real estate as collateral ? an asset many small businesses in the country do not have.

Following IFC?s intervention, the volume of financing for small businesses has increased significantly: more than 36,000 loans have been registered by financial institutions in the collateral registry since its creation in March 2010. As of June 2012, these loans account for almost $3 billion in financing secured with movable property. More than 5,000 SMEs and around 22,000 micro businesses and individual entrepreneurs have received loans.

Constance Swaniker founded Accents & Art Ghana, a design firm that produces furniture and other home accessories. Following increasing demand for her products, she was able to access her first loan by pledging her machinery as collateral. This allowed her to expand her business and hire more than 30 people from the local community.

At the same time, IFC?s Africa Credit Bureau program is helping to increase availability of credit to businesses by supporting the development of credit reporting systems which help financial institutions to provide loans to more businesses. As a result, most banks and financial institutions in Ghana consistently submitted quality data to the private credit bureaus licensed in Ghana and are increasingly using the resulting credit reports made available by the bureau for risk management. In August 2012 alone, one of the bureaus received 20,000 inquiries from lenders.

Previous projects to increase access to finance for small business in Ghana include the IFC Africa Leasing Facility which was also supported by SECO. Since the start of the program in 2005, the number of new leases registered increased more than fivefold to 1,745 in 2010, while the value of these new leases increased significantly from over $15 million to $128 million. The number of institutions engaging in leasing increased from five registered independent leasing companies to over 50 in 2011.

When Ghana?s Odart Stevedoring switched from renting expensive machines that load containers onto ships, to leasing the equipment, the impact was immediate. ?Business boomed up, we engaged more people, trained more people,? says Kojo Arthur, Odart?s director.

SECO is one of IFC?s most important donor partners in Sub-Saharan Africa and globally. In IFC?s last two financial years alone, SECO has provided over $15 million in support to IFC?s Advisory Services programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on access to finance and investment climate.

Source: IFC