Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/193668636?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Video: Sisters, wife murdered in ?honor killings?
>>> a verdict has been reached in a murder case that's gotten a lot of attention because it involved so-called honor killings of family members by family members. in this case an afghan family living in canada . it is a culture clash getting a lot of attention to our north. nbc's kevin tibbles has the story.
>> reporter: three teenage sisters murdered because of how they wanted 2 live their lives. dress like westerners, use the internet, meet boys. also killed, their father's first wife. by a strict religious family that felt it had been disgraced.
>> four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their family.
>> reporter: convicted of the crime, the girls' father, mother and brother, immigrants from afghanistan. in 2009 , the women were drowned and their bodies placed in a car that was then pushed onto a canal to look like an accident. they may call it honor killing , but delivering the guilty verdict , the canadian judge called it a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society. 59-year-old mohammed shafia came to canada in 2007 . the court was told how he ruled his home with a rod of iron. and that eldest daughter was even forbidden to attend school because she had a boyfriend. the young woman had texted the boy saying, "be aware of my bro." it is impossible to know how many honor killings take place in north america , experts say, because they are often mistaken for domestic violence or disguised as accidents.
>> they are associated with patriarch cultures, where then see themselves as the owners of women.
>> reporter: the took a jury 15 hours to convict all three of first degree murder, which in canada carries an automatic sentence of life in prison . ken tibbles, nbc news, canada .
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46196619/
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Samsung Central Station (SyncMaster C23A750X)
The Samsung Central Station SyncMaster C23A750X ($449.9 list) is not your typical 23-inch monitor. In addition to the usual HDMI and VGA inputs, it offers docking station capabilities with multiple USB ports, a wired Ethernet port, and an audio output. Better yet, your laptop can connect wirelessly via a tiny USB dongle. You'll pay a premium for all this connectivity, however, and although the Central Station delivers good color and viewing angle performance, it has trouble accurately reproducing dark and light shades in the grayscale.
Design and Features
The Central Station uses a 23-inch TN+ panel with a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution and a non-reflective matte anti-glare coating. The screen is framed by thin (0.75-inch) piano black bezels with clear trim and sits in a razor-thin (0.70-inch) black cabinet. A SyncMaster logo is affixed to the upper left side bezel. You won't find any buttons or inputs on the panel cabinet; instead, everything is contained on the base. The panel is attached to a wide curved support arm with a dual hinge mechanism that provides height and tilt maneuverability, so you can adjust the screen for the most comfortable viewing position. The curved piano black base is 9.2-inches deep and sports the Samsung logo on its front edge.
Connectivity options abound. On the left side are two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI video input, and an audio output jack for headphones or an external speaker system (the Central Station does not have embedded speakers). Over on the right side are two USB 2.0 ports, and the rear of the base holds VGA and Ethernet ports, a PC USB input, and the power jack. For viewing HD video and obtaining the best all-around picture quality, you'll want to connect to the monitor via the HDMI port, but you can also connect using the VGA port or one of the USB ports. What's more, you can use the USB 3.0 ports to charge your USB devices.
The monitor also comes with a small USB dongle for your laptop that allows you to wirelessly connect to the Central Station. With the dongle and drivers installed on your system all you have to do is walk within five feet of the monitor and the base will recognize the laptop and a connection is made. I managed to stay connected from up to ten feet away, but Samsung suggests a range of no more than five feet. You won't get the best video quality via wireless USB and there's a noticeable lag, but it's fine for everyday office tasks. As an added bonus you can connect to the internet wirelessly via the USB dongle as long as you have a wired connection to the base's Ethernet port. Lastly, the base can be used as a four port USB hub to connect to a variety of peripherals.
On top of the base are a series of touch sensitive buttons used to navigate the on-screen display, adjust volume and brightness, and select an input. The Menu button that takes you into the Picture settings menu where you can access the Samsung Magic presets, including Magic Angle, Magic Bright, and Magic Color. Magic Angle cranks up the brightness and contrast to accommodate five different viewing scenarios such as leaning back, standing, side mode, and group view. Activating any of these modes significantly changes the image quality for the worst. Viewing angles are actually pretty good without having to enable this feature, so I'd suggest leaving this feature off. Magic Bright changes the brightness for specific viewing apps including Standard, Game, Cinema, and Dynamic Contrast. The Standard mode offers the best overall image quality for everyday viewing and the Cinema mode works well in dim lighting. The Magic Color feature can be set to Full (enhanced skin tones), Intelligent (more vivid colors), Demo (split screen comparison), or you can turn it off. Other picture settings include brightness, contrast, sharpness, and tint. You can also tweak red, green, and blue color values, set tone and gamma levels, and adjust the HDMI black level to obtain darker blacks while using an HDMI signal. The Hub button that takes you into a separate menu system where you can enable/disable the wireless USB feature and view the connection status for the hub, including the USB, VGA, HDMI, and USB super charging ports. This screen also shows you the wireless ID for the Central Station.
In addition to a three year parts, labor, and backlight warranty, the Central Station comes with a driver/user guide CD, a PC to dock USB cable, and the wireless USB dongle.
Performance
As noted above the Central Station delivers good off-angle viewing without having to enable the Magic Angle feature. There's some slight color shifting when viewed from an extreme side angle, but the effect is minimal. The panel did a god job of displaying uniform colors on the DisplayMate Color Scales test and delivered sharp image detail and vibrant colors while playing the BBC's Planet Earth on Blu-ray. Small text from the Scaled Fonts test was well defined and completely legible. The monitor was unable to display every swatch from the 64-Step Grayscale test, however. The darkest shades of gray appeared black and the lightest shades of grays were whitewashed. As such, the Central Station is not well suited for professional-grade photo editing or any application where grayscale accuracy is vital.
As is usually the case with edge-lit LED backlighting there's minor backlight seepage along the top and side edges of the panel. Chances are you won't notice it during regular use, but it's apparent when the majority of the screen is displaying black.
The monitor's Eco Saving feature lets you reduce power consumption by 50 or 75 percent, but in doing so the screen image becomes way too dim. With Eco Saving disabled the monitor used 32-watts of power during my testing, which is twice the amount used by the 24-inch Lenovo LS2421p ($219.99 direct, 4 stars) (16-watts), but much less than the 24-inch HP LA2405wg ($379 direct, 3.5 stars) (41-watts). You mileage will vary depending on how many USB devices are hooked up and drawing power.
The Samsung Central Station SyncMaster C23A750X may cost more than the average 23-inch monitor, but that's because it functions as a docking station with a slew of connectivity options. Not only do you get solid color, text, and viewing angle performance from this versatile monitor but you can connect wirelessly to keep cable clutter to a minimum. Its grayscale performance and backlight issues notwithstanding, the Central Station is a good fit for mobile users seeking a quality HD display, a wireless docking station, and a USB hub all rolled in to one space-saving package.
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Samsung Central Station (SyncMaster C23A750X) with several other monitors side by side.
More monitor reviews:
??? Samsung SyncMaster S23A550H
??? Samsung Central Station (SyncMaster C23A750X)
??? AOC e1649Fwu
??? Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421
??? Asus VG278H
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/JROnmybAYe8/0,2817,2399196,00.asp
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What If I Ate Only One Type of Food? (LiveScience.com)
A British teenager collapsed and was rushed to the hospital this week after eating primarily chicken nuggets for the past 15 years. Stacey Irvine, 17, has reportedly survived on her nugget-heavy diet, occasionally supplemented by a bag of chips or piece of toast, since she was a toddler. Doctors have urgerd her to change her ways, but Irvine's case got us wondering: what would actually happen if you ate only one type of food for your entire life?
Depends on the poison you pick, but poison it most likely would be. According to Jo Ann Hattner, a nutrition consultant at Stanford University School of Medicine and former national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, choosing to eat only one fruit, vegetable or grain would lead to organ failure. Consuming only meat would eventually force your body to start munching on?your own muscles. And if you stuck solely to almost any one food (besides fruit), you would develop a serious case of scurvy.
"I wouldn't recommend this experiment," said Hattner, who also wrote "Gut Insight" (Hattner Nutrition, 2009), a book about digestive health.
No single vegetable or legume has all nine essential amino acids humans need to build the proteins that make up our muscles, Hattner said. That's why most human cultures, without knowing anything about food chemistry, have developed diets centered on complementary veggies that, together, provide all nine. At first, without all the right amino acids, your hair starts to lighten in color and your fingernails get soft. Much worse, "your lean body mass suffers. That doesn't just mean your muscles, but also your heart and your organs." Eventually, your heart shrinks so much you die; this happens, on occasion, with extreme cases of?anorexia nervosa.
Eating only one type of carbohydrate ? just bread or pasta, for example ? also causes organ failure, due to amino acid deficiency. On top of that, you'd get scurvy, a horrific disease brought on by lack of vitamin C, an essential component of many of the body's chemical reactions. Thanks to?highly unethical experiments?carried out on prison inmates in Britain and the United States in the 1940s, we know that scurvy hits after one to eight months of vitamin C deprivation (depending on the quantity one's body has stored to begin with). At first, you feel lethargic and your bones ache. Later, strange spots pop up all over your body and develop into suppurating wounds. You get jaundice, fever, tooth loss and, eventually, you die. [Why Don't Fad Diets Work?]
Life as a "meat purist" would also be a dead-end.
In addition to lacking vitamin C, most meats contain very few carbs ? the easy-to-access packets of energy your body constantly requires to perform even the smallest tasks. "Without carbohydrates, you're going to start to break down some of your muscle mass to get the energy," Hattner said. Again, "muscle" doesn't just mean your biceps. You'll be eating your own heart, too.
However, there is one food that has it all: the one that keeps babies alive. "The only food that provides all the nutrients that humans need is human milk," Hattner said. "Mother's milk is a complete food. We may add some solid foods to an infant's diet in the first year of life to provide more iron and other nutrients, but there is a little bit of everything in human milk."
Technically, adults could survive on?human milk, too, she said; the sticking point would be finding a woman who is willing to provide it (and enough of it). Lacking that option, the second-best choice would be mammalian milk, especially if it is fermented. "Yogurt, which is fermented milk, has a lot of bacteria that is good for the digestive tract," Hattner said.
These hypothetical scenarios aren't just whimsical speculation. In many parts of the world, people have no choice but to eat mostly one food: often, rice. Scientists are developing genetically modified rice that contains more vitamins and nutrients, especially vitamin A, in order to fight malnutrition.
Figuring out how to pack everything we need into one food is also useful for space travel, Hattner said. "The impetus of a lot of nutritional science is, 'How do we feed?people in space?' Scientists are trying to increase the nutritional concentration of food so you don't have a lot of bulk."
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on?Facebook.
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
SAG Awards menu is months in the making
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a proposed plate of slow-roasted salmon, roasted root vegetables, and lamb is seen during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a proposed plate of slow-roasted salmon, roasted root vegetables, and lamb is seen during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, SAG Awards producer Kathy Connell, left, and SAG Awards supervising producer Mick McCullough participate in the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a plate of chopped chicken salad with apples, radicchio, walnuts and whole grain mustard sits on display during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, from left, SAG Awards Committee Chair JoBeth Williams, SAG Awards Committee member Paul Napier, chef Suzanne Goin, of Lucques Catering, and SAG Awards event designer Keith Greco take part during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a plate with grilled chicken breast with black rice, pea shoots and tangerine vinaigrette displays during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? When your dinner party guests include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kate Winslet and Glenn Close, and the whole affair is televised live, it can take months to plan the menu. That's why the team behind the Screen Actors Guild Awards began putting together the plate for Sunday's ceremony months ago.
It was still summer when show producer Kathy Connell and executive producer and director Jeff Margolis first sat down with chef Suzanne Goin of Los Angeles eatery Lucques with a tall order: Create a meal that is delicious at room temperature, looks beautiful on TV, is easy to eat and appeals to Hollywood tastes. Oh, and no poppy seeds, soups, spicy dishes, or piles of onions or garlic.
"It can't drip, stick in their teeth or be too heavy," Connell said. "We have to appease all palates."
The chef put together a plate of possibilities: slow-roasted salmon with yellow beets, lamb with couscous and spiced cauliflower and roasted root vegetables with quinoa. There was also a chopped chicken salad and another chicken dish with black beans.
To ensure the dishes are both tasty and TV-ready, Connell and Margolis, along with the SAG Awards Committee and the show's florist and art director, dined together at this summertime lunch on tables set to replicate those that will be in the Shrine Exposition Center during the ceremony. The pewter, crushed-silk tablecloths and white lilies you'll see on TV Sunday were also chosen months ago.
The diners discussed the look of the plate, the size of the portions and the vegetarian possibilities.
"We'd like the portions a little larger," Connell told the chef.
"And a little more sauce on the salmon," Margolis added.
Come Sunday, it's up to Goin to prepare 1,200 of the long-planned meals for the A-list audience.
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Column: Colts and Peyton Manning heading for split (AP)
The idea didn't seem so outlandish at the time. Not for a city about to open a spanking new $720 million stadium, and surely not for a team with Peyton Manning under center.
Hosting a Super Bowl would put Indianapolis on the map, sure. Give residents something to do, too, like talk to those people with the funny accents from New York or ride the new zip lines downtown.
But couldn't Colts fans dream of the day when their team became the first home team to play in the big game?
They could, and they did. It wasn't the biggest stretch, either, because the Colts had already won a Super Bowl behind Manning and were coming off a 13-3 regular season when the game was awarded to Indianapolis in the spring of 2008.
Then Manning got hurt. And the Colts went south in less time than it takes to complete a warmup lap at the Speedway.
Now, on the eve of what was supposed to be a glorious week in Indianapolis, the home team is a dysfunctional mess.
A joint statement issued Friday by Manning and Colts owner Jim Irsay claimed otherwise, though that was to be expected. The dirty laundry aired publicly the previous few days was so distasteful that something had to be said to get the attention off the home team and back on a game that means so much to the city's pride.
The self-styled great protector of the horseshoe himself ? that would be Irsay ? says it was all a misunderstanding. Surely not anything that a good talk between friends ? or, say, a payment of $28 million ? couldn't resolve.
Manning got the talk. Whether he gets the check will ultimately determine just how friendly the owner and his quarterback really are.
The Colts seem ready to move on without the face of their franchise, a player so valuable that they may not have been able to build their new stadium without him. Manning transformed a woeful franchise into a perennial playoff contender, taking the Colts to two Super Bowls and winning one. The prospect of even better times ahead helped Indianapolis residents swallow the increased taxes they were forced to pony up for the new stadium, which opened in 2008.
The NFL gave the city a Super Bowl as a reward, something that seems to have boosted civic pride even if few area residents will actually get inside the Lucas Oil Stadium for the event. As an added bonus, it gave Colts fans a chance to forget about a 2-14 season that was doomed the moment the first rumors about Manning's health began circulating during the summer.
But Irsay couldn't stop firing people. Manning couldn't keep his mouth shut.
And instead of happy chatter about the Super Bowl coming to town, the buzz in Indy in recent days has been a definite downer.
There's a Manning playing in the Super Bowl, but it's the wrong one. And the chances of Peyton Manning ? still recovering from three neck surgeries ? playing another down for the Colts seem to be about as good as the chances Indianapolis ever lands another Super Bowl.
He's owed $28 million by March 8 if the Colts are to keep him, but that's just part of the problem. The Colts are almost sure to use their No. 1 draft pick on Stanford's Andrew Luck, and it doesn't make much sense to be paying millions of dollars to two different quarterbacks ? especially if there's no guarantee Manning will even be healthy enough to play again.
In Irsay's defense, there's no real template on how to handle this. Money aside, he still has to think about the future of the team, and that future likely doesn't include an aging and suddenly fragile Manning.
Irsay already sacked much of the front office and the coaching staff, something that clearly upset Manning. He's in the midst of rebuilding the Colts, and has to be looking at Luck as the new face of the franchise, much like Manning was when the Colts picked him No. 1 in the 1998 draft.
That it came down to the owner and the star player sniping at each other this week was perhaps inevitable. Decision time is coming, and it's becoming increasingly clear what that decision has to be.
Odds are Manning is done playing for the Colts, perhaps even done playing football entirely. Those reading tea leaves surely noted that the joint statement Manning and Irsay issued on Friday contained no reference to Manning playing for the team again, no reassurance that he was healing and would be able to play quarterback again.
For the next week the big question in Indianapolis will be who wins the Super Bowl.
For Colts fans, though, there's an even bigger question to be answered once the game is over.
____
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or at http://twitter.com/timdahlberg
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
CARPE DIEM: Modern Automotive Manufacturing
?Che is dead said...
Here's a video of another high tech auto assembly plant: Fords Camacari assembly plant in Brazil. This plant would have been built in the U.S. except for the objections from the UAW.
?Sprewell said...
Che's video is much better: that's a real factory, not the glorified showcase that VW built. What I'd like to see is a real cost breakdown of why Ford built that factory in Brazil, how much of it was due to labor costs vs regulatory costs, whether due to govt laws or union rules.
?sethstorm said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
?sethstorm said...
So basically it's a car factory for cars not meant for mere mortals to afford. Now if that was used for cars that regular people could afford, that would be a far better demonstration.
That, and I wonder if it adheres any bit to the rule of the workers being able to afford it - or if they have to settle for the typical I4 golfcart of Europe.
Here's a video of another high tech auto assembly plant: Fords Camacari assembly plant in Brazil.
So that's what passes for a golfcart down there.
I wonder if they have their own Ford Security to commit thuggery on behalf of the company should workers attempt to become more than just slaves.
That kind of supplier integration is a threat as well, for it makes it easier for Ford to treat workers worse by dividing them up.
?Che is dead said...
"I wonder if they have their own Ford Security to commit thuggery on behalf of the company ... That kind of supplier integration is a threat as well, for it makes it easier for Ford to treat workers worse by dividing them up." -- sethstorm
Not to worry, no UAW workers were harmed in the making of this film. Neither were any of the thousands of Brazilians who now have good jobs thanks to the UAWs greed and stupidity.
?sethstorm said...
Che is dead said...
My point is that they have somewhere where the Battle of the Overpass doesn't go in the worker's favor, but that the people & photographs get disappeared. Thus all you might see are happy people with trains all running on time, much like a Potemkin Village.
?Larry G said...
to be fair, two things that have been the initial focus of unions in the US - health care and retirement pensions are not major union issues in many other countries that have universal health care and their own version of social security - and both are entirely portable from one job to the next.
but I had a similar reaction when looking at the video.. I think even "assembly" work is not THAT "clean" but all those car parts that are part of the assembly process are done in steel mills and stamping plants... which are far different looking that the process shown in the videos.
?sethstorm said...
but I had a similar reaction when looking at the video.. I think even "assembly" work is not THAT "clean" but all those car parts that are part of the assembly process are done in steel mills and stamping plants... which are far different looking that the process shown in the videos.
It's for their Phaeton, one of the few models of VW's lineup that isn't a golfcart. Safe to say it costs a ton.
Source: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/01/modern-automotive-manufacturing.html
Drew Carey's New Girlfriend (VIDEO)
Drew Carey recently split from his fiance of four years, Nicole Jaracz, but he has reportedly already moved on to bombshell babe Kelley Whilden.
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Friday, January 27, 2012
How Is This Supercharged MacBook Air Editing Crazy HD Video? (Updated) [Video]
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Video: In State of the Union, Obama sides with 99 percent
Foreclosures pushing house prices lower
Foreclosure-related properties, which made up roughly one in five home sales in the third quarter of last year, sold for an average 34 percent less than homes that were not ?distressed sales,? new data show.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46138201#46138201
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
How the cruise ship industry sails under the radar (Reuters)
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) ? The very public dispute between Captain Francesco Schettino and the owners of his stricken vessel is a symptom of lax regulation and supervision that can only add to pressure for the cruise line industry to be subjected to closer scrutiny.
The mudslinging over who decided the Costa Concordia should sail within 150 meters of the shoreline of an Italian island in a maneuver known as a "salute" to show the ship off has exposed wider concerns over how such vast ships should be controlled and how safe they really are.
"During the past two decades, cruise lines have maintained the best safety record in the travel industry," the European Cruise Council reassured holidaymakers on January 14 in response to the capsizing of the Costa Concordia in which at least 16 people died.
Research by Reuters has revealed, however, that patchy safety data and poor accident reporting standards make it difficult to verify how safe the industry really is and impossible for members of the public to easily compare the relative safety standards of different operators.
The lack of a comprehensive, publicly available database of shipping accidents is just one symptom of a loosely regulated industry where international rules under the auspices of the United Nations are wide open to interpretation by national governments, operators and ship captains.
The reassurances given to cruise ship passengers in a second statement from the European Cruise Council on January 16 that "all our member lines are subject to the highest safety standards around the world according to international maritime requirements" may raise some eyebrows.
The blame game between the captain and ship operator Costa Cruises - a unit of U.S. giant Carnival - over whose fault it was that he sailed so close to shore as to run aground and passenger criticism of emergency procedures have prompted questions over industry safety standards, particularly as there would have been many more casualties had the ship gone down on the high seas.
Adding to the growing debate, Franco Gabrielli - head of Italy's Civil Protection authority which is coordinating the rescue operations - said over the weekend that a number of unregistered passengers may have been on board. Costa denied there were any stowaways on board.
Highlighting how open to interpretation international shipping rules are, Chapter 5 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea agreed in 1974 requires that member states ensure that "from the point of view of safety of life at sea, all ships shall be sufficiently and efficiently manned." There are no agreed minimum staffing levels.
The U.N.-affiliated International Maritime Organisation (IMO) did adopt additional guidelines for "minimum safe manning" in November 2011 but the principles are, in its own words, broad ones and put the onus on governments under whose flag the ships are sailing.
FULL OF HOLES
Rules on reporting accidents are also short on enforceable specifics.
The 1974 convention, for instance, only required governments to supply the IMO with "pertinent findings" from investigations in the wake of accidents and undertook that any reports or recommendations based on such filings would not disclose the identity or nationality of the ships concerned or apportion blame for any incident.
Guidelines on investigating and reporting casualties have been amended over the years but there's still plenty of wiggle room. Under resolutions adopted in 1999, operators were told only that reports into incidents should be "distributed to relevant parties involved and should preferably be made public" while pooled information on casualties was to be made available in an electronic format to governments but not to the general public.
Even under revised harmonized reporting procedures published in a Maritime Safety Committee circular dated December 18, 2008, governments are asked only to supply the IMO with "pertinent information" concerning the findings of investigations. The circular is characterized by words such as "requested," "urged" and "invited."
The result is that even the IMO's own database of Marine Casualties and Incidents is incomplete.
Costa Concordia owner Carnival, for instance, outlines in its 2010 sustainability report details of an accident in which another member of the Costa Cruises fleet - the Costa Europa - collided with a pier while docking in the port of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, causing a hole in the ship, killing three members of the crew and injuring four passengers.
This accident does not appear on the IMO database. Nor, in fact, does another incident outlined in the same Carnival report when on July 12, 2010 a diver inspecting its Holland America Line cruise ship Noordam drowned.
The most recent Costa Concordia incident off the coast of Italy is recorded on the IMO database. So too is a near miss - a so-called close-quarter situation - involving the Costa Atlantica, which in 2008 came too close to the Panamanian registered car carrier Grand Neptune in the Dover Strait between Britain and France. The cruise ship was crossing a traffic separation zone which is shipping's answer to a one-way street and designed to reduce the chances of collisions in busy shipping lanes.
UNREPORTED
The IMO database lists 38 incidents involving passenger ships since 2005 in which more than 60 people died. The incidents, which include ferries, range in severity from momentary groundings with little damage and no injuries to the loss of the ship and several lives. What data there are, show Carnival as owner of 12 of the 38 ships to get into trouble while Royal Caribbean International was operator of three, as was Fred Olsen. The others have not been identified or belonged to smaller, local cruise or ferry companies.
A recent report by industry analysts Cruise Market Watch showed Carnival had a 49.2 percent share of the global cruise market followed by Royal Caribbean with 23.8 percent.
For the period since 2000, the IMO database has recorded just under 300 incidents involving passenger-carrying vessels ranging from near misses to sinkings although prior to 2005 the details available in relation to any given accident are often patchy.
Data compiled by sociologist Professor Ross Klein of Memorial University Newfoundland, who in 2007 testified before a U.S. congressional hearing into cruise safety but whose findings have often been disputed by the industry, indicates the rate of reportable accidents could be much higher, however.
Klein's data, which he posts on his website www.cruisejunkie.com, suggest that for cruise ships alone there have been 368 disabling events such as fires, 174 persons overboard, 75 groundings and 27 sunken ships, giving a total of 644 incidents since 2000. That's more than twice what the IMO data shows for cruise ships, ferries and other passenger vessels combined.
"No one keeps track of it and it's not really reported anywhere," Klein told Reuters. "I scour the world media every morning and look for what's been reported anywhere. I receive about 3,500 hits on my website every day, a lot of them are passengers and crew members and they send me information."
A presentation to The International Union of Marine Insurance's 2011 conference in Paris by Paul Hill, of marine consultancy Braemar (Incorporating The Salvage Association), indicated that the passenger shipping industry may be more accident prone than it cares to admit.
A table in Hill's presentation shows that passenger ships, including ferries, account for 9.9 percent of casualties at sea and just 6.3 percent of the global shipping fleet, meaning statistically they have the highest casualty rates of any type of shipping. Passenger shipping also accounts for 40 percent of the total cost of casualties at sea, the presentation shows.
Hill declined to speak to Reuters about his report's findings.
POWERLESS
The lack of global rules means there is little to stand in the way of the considerable autonomy that ships' captains have accumulated over the centuries and that there is nothing on a global level to prevent practices such as so-called showboating where ships sail close to shore to give tourists a better view.
Some inhabitants of the island of Giglio where the Costa Concordia now lies on its side, say they had been told beforehand that Captain Schettino would perform a salute which took the ship within 150 meters of the shore. Schettino is accused by prosecutors of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship before all the passengers were evacuated.
"There are no national or international rules that forbid ships steering close to shore," a spokesman for Italy's Coast Guard department which deals with maritime security told Reuters. "It's not that we knew about and allowed these salutes as you might suppose, it's that you can't really stop a ship from approaching within a minimum distance of the shore for tourism purposes."
The practice may have become common along the Italian coast. Enrico Scerni, former president of the Genoa-based RINA ship classification organization, has said that it is difficult to believe Carnival's Costa Cruises division was unaware that captains often went close to Giglio to salute the island and give passengers a closer view. Schettino said Costa had told him to perform the maneuver but the company said it was unaware of risky approaches so close to the shore.
Many in the shipping industry have rejected the idea that "showboating" has become widespread, saying that captains should only depart from an agreed course when necessary.
"Sailing close to shore - for whatever reason other than for the safety of life, and especially not for entertaining passengers, crew or people ashore - is certainly not commonplace," said John Dalby, a former oil tanker captain who now runs Marine Risk Management. "The vast majority of masters, officers and owners are far too responsible to indulge in such potentially dangerous practice ... Neither do I know of any owners - including Carnival - who would advocate, propose, suggest or order such reckless, irresponsible actions."
Tracking data from shipping publication Lloyd's List has indicated not only that the Costa Concordia had already sailed within 230 meters of Giglio in August but also that it was the only large cruise vessel to sail so close to the island in the last six months, with others giving it a relatively wide birth as they sailed through the strait separating it from the mainland.
"The question is who authorized the order to go that close," said Mike Smith, a retired master mariner with 45 ship commands and over 34 years experience including as captain of a cruise liner. "There is always a temptation to get closer in to keep the passengers happy which is what the company wants the ship to do provided it remains safe."
He noted, however, that typically captains would err comfortably on the side of caution while others pointed out that for all the disagreements over how widespread or tacitly approved showboating had become, the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by captains brings with it a high degree of responsibility.
"Command of any ship means that the captain is ultimately responsible for all aspects of the ship's operations," said one senior shipping official who asked not to be named. "This is a necessary approach developed over hundreds of years of maritime trade and operations. The master operates autonomously within guidelines provided by the company, the flag and international regulation."
NO BLACK BOX
The official said the need for a ship's commander to make on the spot decisions meant it was important not to compare procedures with those of the airline industry. But for others the Costa Concordia affair has highlighted glaring differences.
"What needs to be done is the designated person ashore needs to be monitoring these ships all the time, and if they go off course they should get on the radio and ask 'why are you off course?'," said one senior marine underwriter at the Lloyd's of London insurance market.
"With aircraft, if you go 2,000 feet too high or too low, you have air traffic control on the radio immediately saying 'you're off course, get on course'. Maybe what they'll come up with is the equivalent of air traffic control for passenger ships."
Under IMO rules data recorders, known as black boxes, have been mandatory aboard passenger ships since 2004 but there is a get-out clause exempting ships built before July 2002 where it can be demonstrated that fitting one alongside existing equipment would be unreasonable or impracticable.
By contrast the flight data recorders have been widespread since the 1960s.
In the case of the Costa Concordia, Schettino has been quoted in the Italian press as saying the black box had been broken for two weeks and he had asked for it to be repaired, in vain.
The slow-moving nature of consensus-based global regulation means there is unlikely to be a revolution in the industry overnight but things are already starting to move on a local level.
CODE WORDS
The U.S. Congress, which over the years has resisted efforts to more closely regulate the cruise line industry, last week launched an investigation of industry safety practices with a hearing due next month, while Italian environmentalists and some politicians are demanding that big cruise ships be banned from passing too close to islands or shorelines, or entering environmentally delicate areas such as the Venice lagoon.
Vessel design changes may also follow the accident which has revealed how the problem of getting thousands of people off a cruise ship and into lifeboats quickly has still not been resolved 100 years after the Titanic disaster.
In some areas of ship safety, there have been suggestions that things have gone backwards in recent years as the cruise ship industry seeks to strike a balance between pressure to constantly refresh fleets with ever smarter vessels and making money. Most of the Costa Concordia's 1,023-strong crew were there to run the bars, swimming pools, theatres and casino rather than qualified seamen.
While entertainment and hospitality staff would have had training in emergency procedures, there have been questions over the quality of that training given that these days most of them will have been agency staff who came from around 40 different countries.
"On our ship it was really, really strict," one former waitress with Cunard prior to its takeover by Carnival in the 1990s told Reuters. "We had boat drill every single day, we practiced tying on people's lifejackets every single day. We had all these code words so passengers wouldn't panic - "niagara" was a flood, "starlight" meant somebody had died."
Some on the Costa Concordia have said they did not get a full safety briefing within 24 hours of boarding while a Reuters reporter who cruised on a sister ship of the Concordia last summer went nearly 36 hours without a briefing after boarding.
Carnival has defended its compliance with rules on safety drills but here, once again, there are grey areas. The Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping Convention provides global guidelines on safety training for crew which were most recently amended in 2010 but the IMO has little authority to enforce those standards.
There has also been much debate around Schettino's decision to leave the ship before it had been evacuated but here too there are no rules governing a captain's behavior.
"There is no basis in international law for the notion that the captain goes down with the ship, or that he is the last to leave the ship," said Vice Admiral Sir Alan Massey, chief executive of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency and a former senior Royal Navy officer. "There is more myth than reality to that notion."
Massey said that in certain circumstances, such as when communications systems go down on a stricken ship, it may be better for the captain to leave and to direct operations from another vessel.
The IMO has left the door open to reform, with Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu saying his organization should seriously consider the lessons to be learnt.
"The frightening thing is how quickly the ship went on its side. If that had been out to sea there would have been a massive loss of life," the marine insurance underwriter said. "It's very similar to the Titanic disaster. The Titanic hit an iceberg and opened up like a can of sardines ... They will look at the disaster and there may be some changes, presumably vessel design changes."
(Additional reporting by Myles Neligan, Estelle Shirbon and Jonathan Saul in London; Ben Berkowitz in Boston; and Antonella Cinelli in Rome; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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MMA Marketplace: Bid for a fighter to fight cancer
Perhaps you want a nice UFC Hall-of-Famer Randy Couture? Or you would like to spend your cash on the original Ultimate Fighter winner Forrest Griffin? Martin Kampmann, Clay Guida and Kyle Kingsbury will also be on the auction block. Women included are UFC Octagon Girl Chandella Powell and former Octagon Girl Natasha Wicks.
Auction winners will attend dinner at Fogo de Chao. If you're in Las Vegas for next weekend's fights, check out the event. It's $15 at the Mandalay Bay. Even if you can't win a fighter, it's sure to be a great time.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/mma-marketplace-bid-fighter-fight-cancer-145901026.html
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Iran revives Gulf threats after EU sanctions
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? Senior Iranian lawmakers have stepped up threats that Islamic Republic warships could block the Persian Gulf's oil tanker traffic after the latest blow by Western leaders seeking to rein in Tehran's nuclear program: A punishing oil embargo by the European Union that sharply raises the economic stakes for Iran's defiance.
The EU decision taken Monday in Brussels ? following the U.S. lead to target Iran's critical oil exports ? opened a new front against Iran's leadership. Pressure is bearing down on the clerical regime from many directions, including intense U.S. lobbying to urge Asian powers to shun Iranian crude, a nose-diving national currency and a recent slaying in what Iran calls a clandestine campaign against its nuclear establishment.
In response, Iranian officials have turned to one of their most powerful cards: The narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf and the route for a fifth of the world's oil. Iran has rattled world markets with repeated warnings it could block the hook-shaped waterway, which could spark a conflict in the Gulf.
Military experts have questioned whether Iran has the naval capabilities to attempt a blockade. But the U.S. and allies have already said they would take swift action against any Iranian moves to choke off the 30-mile (50-kilometer) wide strait ? where the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, along with British and French warships, entered the Gulf on Sunday without incident.
The British Ministry of Defense said the three nations sought to "underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law."
Earlier this month, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that Iranian forces could block shipping through the strait "for a period of time," but added "we can defeat that" and restore the flow of oil and other commerce. He did not offer details on a U.S. military response, but the Pentagon is believed to have contingency plans for such a scenario.
A member of Iran's influential national security committee in parliament, Mohammad Ismail Kowsari, said Monday that the strait "would definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way." He went on warn the U.S. against any "military adventurism."
Another senior lawmaker, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said Iran has the right to shutter Hormuz in retaliation for oil sanctions and that the closure was increasingly probable, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency.
"In case of threat, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of Iran's rights," Falahatpisheh said. "So far, Iran has not used this privilege."
The lawmakers' comments do not directly reflect the views of Iran's ruling clerics, but they echo similar statements made earlier this month by military commanders with close ties to the theocracy.
At the same time, however, Iran has tried to ease tensions by offering to reopen nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers after a one-year gap, and backing off warnings about U.S. naval operations in the Gulf ? where the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet has a base in Bahrain.
On Monday in Brussels, the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Iran to offer "some concrete issues to talk about."
"It is very important that it is not just about words; a meeting is not an excuse, a meeting is an opportunity and I hope that they will seize it," she said as the EU adopted its toughest measures on Iran with an immediate embargo on new oil contracts and a freeze of the country's Central Bank assets. About 90 percent of the EU's nearly $19 billion in Iranian imports in 2010 were oil and related products, according to the International Energy Agency.
On Monday, the U.S. added new sanctions on Bank Tejerat, Iran's third-largest bank. President Barack Obama has also approved new sanctions on Iran's powerful central bank that take effect later this year.
It follows U.S. sanctions enacted last month that target the Central Bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad. The U.S. has delayed implementing the sanctions for at least six months, worried about sending the price of oil higher at a time when the global economy is struggling. On Monday, benchmark crude pushed above $99 a barrel after the EU sanctions and the renewed threats to close the Strait of Hormuz.
"This is not a question of security in the region," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. "It is a question of security in the world."
In Washington, a joint statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the EU move "will sharpen the choice for Iran's leaders and increase their cost of defiance" over the country's nuclear program.
But there are no signals from Iran that the tougher sanctions will force concessions on the core dispute: Iran's ability to enrich uranium.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted by state TV as calling the EU sanctions "psychological warfare" to try to halt Iran's nuclear program.
Iran's leaders have consistently portrayed the country's nuclear fuel labs as a symbol of national pride and part of efforts to become the Muslim world's center for homegrown technology, including long-range missiles and rockets capable of reaching orbit. Iran says it seeks reactors only for energy and research, but the U.S. and others worry that the uranium enrichment will eventually lead to warhead-grade material.
Earlier this month, Iran said it was beginning enrichment at a new facility buried in a mountainside south of Tehran.
"Iran's right for uranium enrichment is nonnegotiable," said conservative Iranian lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh. "There is no reason for Iran to compromise over its rights. But Iran is open to discussions over concerns about its nuclear program."
Russia ? which strongly opposed the EU sanctions ? said in a statement: "Under pressure of this sort, Iran will not make any concessions or any corrections to its policies."
On the U.S. side, Obama may also be wary about political fallout from any negotiations in an election year.
No date has been set to resume talks. A more pressing task for OPEC's No. 2 producer is assessing the sting from the EU slap.
The 27-nation bloc imposed an immediate halt to all new contracts for Iranian crude and petroleum products while existing ones are allowed to run until July. It also placed a freeze on the assets of Iran's Central Bank.
About 80 percent of Iran's oil revenue comes from exports, and any measures that affect its ability to export oil could hit hard at its economy, which is already staggering from widespread unemployment and a sinking currency that has sharply driven up the relative costs for imported goods.
Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, called the struggling Iranian economy a potential "weak spot" for the ruling system as the country moves toward parliamentary elections in early March.
Reflecting the uncertainties, the Iranian rial fell Monday to a new low of nearly 21,000 to the dollar, a 14 percent drop since Friday, currency dealers said. A year ago, the rial was trading at 10,500 to the dollar.
Samuel Ciszuk, a consultant at KBC Energy Economics in Britain, said the sanctions will likely cause crude prices to rise in Europe and soften in Asia in the short term as more Iranian oil heads east. The sanctions will make it even harder for Iran to find customers for its oil and shipping companies willing to carry it.
"Iranian crude is being made the last choice. ... You may be able to get it at a discount (outside the West), but how stable is the supply?" he said.
In order to sell supplies once destined for Europe, Iran may need to offer discounts to its main buyers in Asia such as Japan, South Korea and China. Ciszuk said there hasn't been much sign Tehran is willing to do this so far, and it may prefer for now to divert the excess into storage.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, have been pressing Tehran's main Asian oil markets to turn away from Iran.
China ? which counts on Iran as its third-biggest oil supplier ? has rejected sanctions and called for negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
South Korea, which relies on Iran for up to 10 percent of its oil supplies, was noncommittal on the U.S. sanctions. Japan, which imports about 9 percent of its oil from Iran, gave mixed signals but most recently expressed concern about how the sanctions would affect Japanese banks.
But all three nations sent high-profile delegations ? including one led by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao ? to oil-rich Gulf Arab states this month for talks that left Iran fearful of efforts to undercut its crude exports.
Within Iran, meanwhile, security officials are on higher alert over what they claim is a covert campaign led by Israel's Mossad and backed by the U.S. and Britain. On Jan. 11, a magnetic bomb placed on a car killed scientist who worked at Iran's main uranium enrichment facility. It was at least the fourth targeted killing of a nuclear-related researcher in two years.
The U.S. denied any role in the January attack, but Israel's military chief hinted that Iran could face incidents that happen "unnaturally."
After the sanctions vote, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a joint statement urging Iran to suspend its sensitive nuclear activities.
"Our message is clear," the statement said. "We have no quarrel with the Iranian people. But the Iranian leadership has failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program. We will not accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon."
___
Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Don Melvin in Brussels, Robert Burns in Washington and Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this report.
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Daily Crunch: Apples & Eggs
Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Tim Cook: Apple TV IS Still A Hobby, But I Couldn?t Live Without It App-maker Moonbot Gets An Oscar Nomination Full Circle: Boxee Brings OTA HDTV And Basic Cable To The Boxee BoxSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/AWwvCYxzkB4/
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Euro zone ministers reject private bondholders' Greece offer (Reuters)
BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) ? Euro zone finance ministers Monday rejected as insufficient an offer made by private bondholders to help restructure Greece's debts, sending negotiators back to the drawing board and raising the threat of Greek default.
At a meeting in Brussels, ministers said they could not accept bondholders' demands for a coupon of four percent on new, longer-dated bonds that are expected be issued in exchange for their existing Greek holdings.
Banks and other private institutions represented by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) say a 4.0 percent coupon is the least they can accept if they are going to write down the nominal value of the debt they hold by 50 percent.
Greece says it is not prepared to pay a coupon of more than 3.5 percent, and euro zone finance ministers effectively backed the Greek government's position at Monday's meeting, a position that the International Monetary Fund also supports.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the Eurogroup countries, said Greece needed to pursue a deal with private bondholders where the interest rate on the replacement bonds was "clearly" below 4.0 percent, stating:
"Ministers asked their Greek colleagues to pursue negotiations to bring the interest rates on the new bonds to below 4 percent for the total period, which implies the interest comes down to well below 3.5 percent before 2020."
The aim of the restructuring is to reduce Greece's debts by around 100 billion euros ($129 billion), cutting them from 160 percent of GDP to 120 percent by 2020, a level EU and IMF officials think will be more manageable for the growth-less Greek economy.
But with Greece off-track in its efforts to get its budget deficit in shape, the 2020 goal looks a long shot at best.
The disagreement increases the risk that it will prove impossible to strike a voluntary restructuring deal between Greece's creditors and the Greek government - an outcome that would have severe repercussions for financial markets.
Negotiations over what's called 'private sector involvement' (PSI) have been going on for nearly seven months without a concrete breakthrough. Failure to reach a deal by March, when Athens must repay 14.5 billion euros of maturing debt, could result in a disorderly default.
Despite the disagreement, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner in charge of economic and monetary affairs, said he expected a deal on PSI to be struck "within days."
PERMANENT BAILOUT FUND
As well as assessing Greece's debt restructuring, euro zone ministers discussed efforts to enforce stricter budget rules for EU states via a "fiscal compact," and steps to finalize the structure of a permanent euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which is due to operate from July.
The ESM will have an effective lending capacity of 500 billion euros and replace the European Financial Stability Facility, a temporary fund that has so far been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal and which will be used to provide part of a second, 130 billion euro package for Greece.
Germany has insisted that once the ESM is up and running, the combined potential outlay of the EFSF and ESM should not exceed 500 billion euros.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and IMF chief Christine Lagarde have said the ceiling should be raised, possibly up to 1 trillion euros, so it has more than enough capacity to handle any problems in major economies such as Spain or Italy.
The Financial Times reported Monday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was ready to see the ceiling of the combined firewall raised to 750 billion euros in exchange for agreement on tighter euro zone budget rules, but the report was immediately denied by her chief spokesman.
"It is not true. There is no such decision," Steffen Seibert told Reuters.
Monti told reporters after Monday's meeting that no conclusions had been reached on the ESM, which all 17 euro zone countries must back in a new treaty. Officials said the details would have to be finalized by an EU summit on January 30.
It was a similar situation for the "fiscal compact," which also involves a new treaty and which EU leaders are expected to agree at the summit next week.
"We have had an extremely constructive meeting on the fiscal compact and this text is a good basis for the discussions for the heads of government at the end of the month," said Juncker, sidestepping concerns about the text raised by the European Central Bank.
DEBT SUSTAINABILITY
Despite the continued deep differences, Greece and its private creditors do appear to be slowly converging on a deal in which private bondholders would take a real loss of 65 to 70 percent on their Greek bonds - giving a nominal reduction of 50 percent - officials close to the negotiations say.
Sources close to the talks told Reuters Monday that the impasse centered on questions of whether the deal would return Greece's debt mountain, currently over 350 billion euros, to levels that European governments believe are sustainable.
"There will likely be an updated debt sustainability analysis that will be discussed at the Eurogroup," a banking source in Athens said, requesting anonymity. "Talks will continue this week. The aim is to have an agreement by late next Monday."
Speaking in Berlin, Lagarde called on European leaders to complement the "fiscal compact" they agreed last month with some form of financial risk-sharing, mentioning euro zone bonds or bills, or a debt redemption fund as possible options.
Merkel told a news conference it was not the time to debate an increase in the euro zone's bailout funds.
"I don't think it is right to do one new thing then do another, let's get the ESM working," Merkel said, reiterating that Germany was prepared to accelerate the flow of capital into the ESM ahead of its planned introduction in mid-2012.
Euro zone leaders agreed in October that the second bailout would total 130 billion euros, if private bondholders forgave half of what Greece owes them in nominal terms.
But Greek economic prospects have deteriorated since then, which means either euro zone governments or investors will have to contribute more than thought.
(Additional reporting by Stephen Brown and Alexandra Hudson in Berlin, Leigh Thomas in Paris, Lefteris Papadimas and Ingrid Melander in Athens; Writing by Noah Barkin and Luke Baker, editing by Mike Peacock/Jeremy Gaunt/Rex Merrifield)
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Video shows cars sliding, crashing in Utah storm
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? Video from Utah during a major snowstorm shows more than a dozen cars sliding, crashing and skidding sideways down a street in just a few hours.
Rhee Braby shot the video from his Bountiful home, about 10 miles north of Salt Lake City.
He says neighbors were even perched at the top of the road Saturday, warning drivers not to attempt the hill, but many continued on and lost control. One car even crashed into a snowplow.
Between crashes, the 34-year-old says he helped push cars back onto the road only to see another come sliding down behind it.
The Utah Highway Patrol says 376 crashes of some sort were reported from Saturday through Sunday afternoon in five northern Utah counties, leading to at least 34 injuries but no fatalities.
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