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Italian prosecutors have placed seven further employees of Costa Crociere SpA, operator of the shipwrecked Concordia cruise ship, under formal investigation in connection with the ship's ill-fated journey, the company and investigators said. Three company officials who were placed under investigation weren't aboard the giant ship when it ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, according to a statement by Costa Crociere, which is a unit of the U.S.-based Carnival Corp. The seven were added to a group of people—including the ship's captain—whom prosecutors are already investigating as part of their probe into why the ship struck a rock off the island of Giglio, sacoche louis vuitton causing it to founder with more than 4,000 people aboard. That collision and sinking caused the death of at least 25 people. Prosecutors are also investigating whether there were any unnecessary delays in the ship's evacuation. The move by prosecutors in the Tuscan town of Grosseto allows the seven people, who haven't been charged, to retain legal counsel before a special court hearing is held in early March to review the contents of the ship's black-box recorder for the first time. "We believe that placing other Costa personnel under investigation is simply due to the necessity for the authorities to provide such individuals with the guarantees afforded to everybody under Italian law," a statement from Costa Crociere said. A spokesman for Costa Crociere declined to disclose the names of the employees under investigation. The move came as Italian authorities found eight more bodies, including that of a young girl, inside the overturned Concordia on Wednesday, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 25 people. Seven more people remain missing but are presumed dead. The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, has been under house arrest for several weeks on preliminary charges of multiple manslaughter and abandonment of ship as the Grosseto prosecutors continue their investigation. Mr. Schettino has told prosecutors the ship struck a rock after he deviated from the its traditional route, steering the vessel close to Gilgio's shore. He has also testified to a judge that he didn't abandon the ship, but instead tumbled off the Concordia, into a life boat, while passengers were still aboard. Costa Crociere's CEO, Pier Luigi Foschi, has testified before the Italian Senate that Mr. Schettino phoned the company moments after the ship struck the rock and an hour before the evacuation alarm was sounded. That delay led to a disorderly evacuation with passengers jumping from the ship's decks into the cold sea. In its statement, Costa Crociere said it maintained "complete trust and solidarity" in the seven employees under investigation, adding that the firm was "absolutely confident in their professional competence and ethical correctness."
Two Canadian climate change scientists from the University of Victoria say the public reaction to their recently published commentary has missed their key message: that all forms of fossil fuels, including the oilsands and coal, must be regulated for the world to avoid dangerous global warming. "Much of the way this has been reported is (through) a type of view that oilsands are good and coal is bad," said climate scientist Neil Swart, who co-authored the study with fellow climatologist Andrew Weaver. "From my perspective, that was not the point. . . . sacoche louis vuitton The point here is, we need a rapid transition to renewable (energy), and avoid committing to long-term fossil fuel use if we are to get within the limits (of reducing global warming to less than 2 C)." The commentary, published in the British scientific journal, Nature Climate Change, estimated the impact of consuming the fuel from oilsands deposits — without factoring in greenhouse gas emissions associated with extraction and production — would be far less harmful to the planet's atmosphere than consuming all of the world's coal resources. "The conclusions of a credible climate scientist with access to good data are very different than some of the rhetoric we've heard from Hollywood celebrities of late," said Travis Davies, a spokesman from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "However, it clearly doesn't absolve industry from what it needs to do: (To) continue to improve environmental performance broadly, and demonstrate that improvement to Canadians and our customers . . . in terms of GHG emissions, as well as water, land and tailings facilities." Swart and Weaver also note that growth in Alberta's oilsands sector and recent debates over a major pipeline expansion project in the United States represent a symptom of the planet's unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels. The commentary said policymakers in North America and Europe must avoid major infrastructure of this nature since it is pushing the planet dangerously close to more than 2 C of average global temperatures above pre-industrial levels, which is considered to be a threshold of dramatic changes in the Earth's ecosystems. Swart also said their estimates revealed that the relative impact of the oilsands on the climate, per unit of production, would push the average Canadian to 75 per cent of what would be considered their maximum allowable carbon dioxide footprint for an entire lifetime. In other words, this would mean that after factoring in oilsands emissions, the average Canadian would not have much room left to consume fossil fuels for their other energy needs if he or she wanted to do their fair share of reductions when compared with citizens from other countries, Swart explained. "If we go down this path, the amount of warming will be massive," Swart said. Governments from around the world have agreed that scientific evidence shows that humans are causing global warming through land-use changes and the burning of fossil fuels, but that it is possible to avoid dangerous impacts of climate change by dramatically cutting levels of greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere. Davies said his association disputes a new estimate released by the top department in the federal government, the Privy Council Office, that warned an emerging form of on-site oilsands extraction, using the injection of steam into the ground, is producing three times the emissions as the conventional form of mining bitumen and separating synthetic crude from the clay in the ground with heated water.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is warning people not to eat certain packages of Country Morning Beef Burgers and No Name Club Pack Beef Steakettes because of fears the products may be contaminated with E. coli. The manufacturer New Food Classics of Ontario is conducting a voluntary recall of the products from stores across Western Canada, sacoche louis vuitton Manitoba, Ontario and the Northwest Territories. So far there is one reported case of illness associated with the beef burgers and steakettes. For store information visit the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website. He cautioned Hussien not to question him on his desire. He changed his mind a week later, saying he wanted to blow himself up inside the Capitol on Feb. 17 as an act of martyrdom, prosecutors say. He went on something of a test run that same day, using a cell phone to successfully detonate a test bomb at a West Virginia quarry. But instead of being satisfied with the explosion, the FBI says, he said he wanted a bigger bomb. Court papers show the last two weeks were consumed with the planned attack on the Capitol as a seemingly emboldened El Khalifi selected a location where he'd be dropped off. He asked that even more explosives be strapped to his body. He wanted to make sure the bomb in his vest could be remotely detonated in case he faced security problems, authorities say. Final planning occurred in an Alexandria hotel room on Valentine's Day, when authorities say the undercover officer handed El Khalifi an automatic machine gun and showed him a jacket the suspect thought contained a bomb. El Khalifi studied himself in the mirror with the weapon. He practiced shooting it. He discussed how he'd be identified in a video al-Qaeda would release after the attack, according to court papers. On Friday, a sunny and unseasonably warm winter day, El Khalifi got into a van in northern Virginia with Yusuf and Hussien. The gun and vest he had asked for were inside, authorities say. The van pulled into a parking garage near the Capitol. El Khalifi got out alone. Before he could leave the garage, he was arrested.
Rupert Murdoch has taken seven months to recover from the “most humble day” of his life at the peak of a phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. to announce a new tabloid in a trademark defiant move by the 80-year-old. News Corp.’s chief executive officer, whose U.K. operations have been inundated with lawsuits from hacking victims, police investigations and government inquiries into ethical and legal misdeeds, yesterday said he will start a Sunday edition of the Sun tabloid to replace the News of the World.sacoche louis vuitton He said an influential newspaper is the key to prevailing. “Having a winning paper is the best answer to our critics,” Murdoch told Sun employees, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. Staff had requested an audience with him after a second round of arrests a week ago into bribery sparked outrage among journalists at Britain’s best-selling daily newspaper. Murdoch’s announcement may soothe anger in the newsroom after the company’s Management and Standards Committee, formed by News Corp. to assist police in their investigations of phone- hacking and bribery, handed over information to police. It may also spark more clashes with U.K. politicians, with Murdoch announcing the decision before legislators publish a report into why News Corp. executives didn’t stop illegal activities. “This is very much like him,” said Edward Wasserman, a professor of Journalism Ethics at Washington & Lee University, said in an interview. “He decided he wants to fill up the hole in the market that he left. ‘It also shows a certain amount of defiance, he’s not going to allow questions to be raised about the wisdom of News Corp.’s management.” Stubborn Streak Murdoch has a track record of stubbornness. In 2007, when he was bidding for Dow Jones & Co. and the family-owned Wall Street Journal, he offered $60 a share, a 65 percent premium to the company’s stock price, cornering the Bancrofts into selling. The family, who had fought the takeover for three months with some members expressing concern about Murdoch’s influence on coverage, had controlled the paper for more than a century. The News of the World was the best-selling Sunday paper in Britain when it was closed and its readers have dispersed to competing tabloids or stopped buying Sunday papers altogether. Advertisers would be glad to see the popular tabloid replaced, said Marc Mendoza, the head of the media-buying arm of advertising agency Havas SA.
Does Sears Canada Inc. have a Target on its back? The retailer announced a revamped pricing strategy on Thursday, lowering day-to-day prices by an average of 20 to 30 per cent on a wide range of popular items, taking a page from rival Wal-Mart Canada Corp.'s book. The move comes as Sears Canada faces increasing pressure to boost years of sales declines, part of a strategy from new chief executive Calvin McDonald to compete in a fierce retail market that is girding for the arrival of mass merchant Target next year. The company said Thursday it will cut prices on more than 5,000 items across all departments. ``The department store model is changing and what worked before is less relevant today,'' sacoche louis vuitton said McDonald, adding the strategy is aimed at forging a more trusting relationship with customers. ``Trust starts with value in pricing. . . . I think Canadian customers expect good value every day and that's what we are ensuring we are doing, and that is what other retailers choose to do as well.'' The program applies to about 15 per cent of the items in the store, McDonald said, primarily to a range of goods that are bought most frequently by consumers. Wal-Mart grew to become the world's biggest retailer while following an ``everyday low price'' strategy (EDLP), selling a wide range of frequently purchased goods at a low margin rather than pricing goods at a traditional retail markup and slashing prices for special sale events. In recent years it enhanced its strategy by offering deeper but limited-time sales known as price ``rollbacks.'' Ten years ago under prior ownership, Zellers put 95 per cent of its store merchandise on EDLP in response to Wal-Mart, which entered Canada aggressively in the mid-90s. Sears Canada has introduced everyday value items over the years, but never before on this scale. The company said in addition to the broad value-based pricing strategy, Sears will introduce a weekly price-cutting program, ``WOW'' items. In-store merchandising will align more directly to what is promoted in the flyers. ``It's not an EDLP pure-pricing proposition, in the sense that we are still going to offer great deals,'' McDonald said. McDonald, a former Loblaw Cos. executive who joined Sears Canada in the middle of last year, has outlined a three-year plan to turn around the flagging retailer that includes eliminating excess inventory, refurbishing older stores and reworking its pricing strategy. The company has laid off about 470 employees since December, and like most retailers, is feeling the heat from Target's impending arrival. Analyst Keith Howlett of Desjardins Securities has esimtated Target will add an incremental $1.25 billion in annual sales per square foot above that of the current Zellers chain, which generates about $3.9 billion in sales per year. Sears Canada, 96 per cent owned by U.S. retailer Sears Holdings Corp., has seen its revenue, net earnings and same-store sales sink every year since 2006. It is set to announce its fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2011 results next week. McDonald said reworking prices is the first of many changes he has planned. The new pricing program will be marketed in radio ads and the company's weekly flyer. Will it work for Sears Canada? Richard Talbot, president of retail consulting firm Talbot Consultants International Inc., is dubious about whether a new pricing format will draw in more consumers. ``I think it is probably too little, too late,'' he said. ``Really they should have adopted a policy like that years ago back when Wal-Mart came in and they did nothing effective to compete with Wal-Mart. Certainly (Sears Canada's) cachet has eroded since Wal-Mart came in, and it is tough to get customers back once you have lost them.''
Love is in the air in Iowa — or at least the diplomatic equivalent of it. When Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived in this small town late Wednesday, carefully chosen welcoming gifts were on hand, nostalgic remembrances were on everyone’s lips and hearts all around were ready for the wooing. Officially speaking,sacoche louis vuitton Xi, who is expected to become China’s president next year, picked Iowa as the centerpiece of his U.S. tour because he visited here as a lowly provincial official in 1985 to learn about American agriculture. But, more broadly, the town of Muscatine provides a convenient backdrop for Chinese officials hoping to emphasize the idea of an enduring U.S.-Chinese friendship at a time when the two nations are fierce economic competitors, policy opponents and military rivals. The Chinese want to remind Americans — and their audience back home — that the two nations are also intimately intertwined as trading partners and stakeholders in global affairs. “The relationship is like some magnetic field where there’s powerful attraction and repulsion. It’s what makes these exchanges so hard,” said Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. “The Chinese are extremely sensitive to any sign of disrespect even as they do things that are clearly not worthy of respect. Meanwhile, you have Americans who are used to being the wealthy, dominant one, evangelizing their ways and thinking.” To say that U.S.-Chinese relations have changed since Xi was last here would be a gross understatement. Many in Muscatine — population 23,000, 87 percent white, 0.8 percent Asian — who hosted him back then remember the exotic nature of his visit nearly three decades ago. China was just opening up, and Xi was a vaguely congenial though serious leader of a small agricultural delegation, residents here recall. “It was difficult to really get beyond that superficial level. They didn’t speak English; we didn’t speak Chinese, and there was only one interpreter,” said Sarah Lande, who helped plan Xi’s two-night stay.
A thief snatched two archaeological pieces worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts last October during opening hours, steps from security guards. The theft is only the second heist in the MMFA’s 152-year history and the incident is testing the facility’s policy of not encasing many of its items as well as the decades-long bond of trust it has with visitors – now numbering 500,000 a year. A Persian sandstone bas-relief and a marble head dating from the Roman Empire were taken from the Mediterranean archeological exhibit room on the first floor of the Hornstein Pavilion on or about Oct. 26. sacoche louis vuitton The theft wasn’t made public until now so as not to compromise the investigation, the MMFA said. Montreal police said Tuesday the investigation is continuing. One suspect – believed to be in his 30s and 5-feet, 7-inches tall – can be seen wandering the museum halls in surveillance video. The Persian piece – donated to the MMFA by Cleveland Morgan in 1950 – is worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Mark Dalrymple, representing AXA Art, a global insurance company insuring the items for the Montreal museum. The second piece – on loan since 2003 from the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec – is worth “tens of thousands,” Dalrymple said. “We’re interested in seeing if anybody could possibly recognize this man and point the finger at him and help the police,” he said about the security video. The insurance company is offering a “substantial” reward for the return of the stolen objects and a $10,000 reward for anyone who can identify the suspect. Danielle Champagne, a spokesperson for the MMFA, said security has been tightened in some areas of the museum since the theft. But the museum does not plan any major changes to its policy of keeping many of its objects in open-air displays – anchored or attached, but not in cases – “so people get a better sense of the texture of the objects. “We are blessed to live in a country where people are generally honest and we’ve had very few problems,” she added. The only other theft at the museum was in 1972, when 18 paintings were stolen, including a Rembrandt. Only one of the paintings was recovered. Cecily Hilsdale, a professor of art history at McGill University, said the Persian object’s theft is “huge” news in the art world. The piece was part of the Apadana, a grand audience hall in Persepolis, the ancient city centre of the Persian empire. The object is well-known, she added. Anyone purchasing it would lprobably want to know where it came from. Anyone with information about the theft is urged to call police at 1-800-659-4264 or the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts at 1-855-471-1800.
Stephen Harper’s senior bureaucrats have been racking up some hefty airfares at a time of government restraint and controversy over travel. Travel expenses recently posted for the final quarter of 2011 show executives at the Privy Council Office, the prime minister’s own department, paid costly fares last year on some of the most competitive routes to Europe and elsewhere. Return airfare to Great Britain cost taxpayers $6,855 for Rennie Marcoux, assistant secretary to cabinet, to attend a week-long “cyber” conference in London last October. The clerk of the Privy Council, sacoche louis vuitton Wayne Wouters, paid almost as much for a round-trip flight to London – $6,625 – for a public-service summit in November. William Pentney, deputy secretary to cabinet, spent $3,566 on airfare to attend another international summit in London last June. Paris, another popular European destination with plenty of airline competition, was also a favoured spot for Privy Council bureaucrats, who paid sky-high prices to get there. Yvan Roy, legal counsel to Mr. Wouters, billed taxpayers $4,607 for a round-trip flight to Paris last October. The posted expense report does not explain the purpose of the trip or provide related costs, but a spokesman said it was for a conference hosted by the French government. Another senior public servant in Mr. Harper’s department – Joseph Wild, assistant secretary to cabinet – spent $4,367 on airfare to an OECD conference in Paris. The Irish capital of Dublin was also the destination for another hefty fare – $5,117, paid by Kristina Namiesniowski, assistant secretary to the cabinet. She was there to learn about “e-government.” The jetsetters at Privy Council Office racked up other pricey airfares for several multi-stop trips overseas, making it difficult to compare prices directly. Ward Elcock billed a whopping $15,278 to fly to four cities in Australia and New Zealand last October for two weeks of “meetings.” Elcock was travelling as the prime minister’s special adviser on human smuggling. Mr. Harper’s national security adviser, Stephen Rigby, was a frequent flyer last year – a five-day visit to Singapore in June set taxpayers back $10,719 in airfare alone. And Mr. Rigby’s week-long visit to Munich and London cost the treasury $6,733 in airline tickets. All these travellers were public servants flying commercial, rather than the political staff who work inside the Prime Minister’s Office, which is part of the Privy Council Office. Mr. Harper and his political staff typically fly on government-owned aircraft, rather than commercial airlines, largely for security and logistical reasons. The Harper government was embroiled in several travel-related controversies in 2011. CTV News reported in September that the chief of defence staff, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, spent almost $1.5-million since 2008 flying on government-owned Challenger aircraft, once to a Caribbean holiday.
Fed up with expensive cellphone bills, Brian Wilson cut off his wireless service with Rogers Communications Inc. more than a year ago. Today, he’s thinking of going back. Every time he walks into a building, he worries about losing the signal on his Samsung smartphone. As he travels between his home in Vancouver and the University of British Columbia, sacoche louis vuitton where he works, his phone sometimes kicks into “roaming” mode – meaning he’d have to pay extra fees to make a call or use data services – even though he’s still within the coverage area of his new cell provider, Mobilicity. He’s not thrilled with the customer service, either: Mr. Wilson says the company gave him the runaround when he tried to have some roaming charges reversed. So while he doesn’t want to give the industry giants any more of his money, he’s having second thoughts about his decision to go with one of the Canadian wireless industry’s newest players. “If I could get better pricing and support a competitive startup, it seemed like a chance worth taking,” says Mr. Wilson, 46, who designs online courses at UBC. “I’m willing to put up with a bit [of hassle]. ... But at some point, you’re thinking, ‘Well, it is really not worth it.’ “ Mr. Wilson is one of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who signed up with the upstart competitors in a Canadian wireless industry overwhelmingly dominated by the troika of BCE Inc. , Telus Corp. and Rogers. But more than four years after the federal government unveiled an ambitious plan to boost competition in the $17-billion sector, new companies such as Mobilicity, Wind Mobile and Public Mobile are still struggling to gain a foothold against the goliaths. The Harper government’s attempt to engineer more competition for the benefit of Canada’s 27 million wireless users has been successful in a couple of ways: Prices have fallen for the average customer, and service plans are now more flexible. The question is, for how much longer? The upstarts’ networks are still poor – both in quality and scope – and there is constant talk of consolidation among players that may be too financially weak to go it alone. Many believe the endgame will see the Big Three eventually consolidate their grip on the market by buying up their smaller rivals, returning the wireless industry to its former state as a cozy oligopoly. “There is a fundamental difference between competition and sustainable competition,” says Alek Krstajic, chief executive officer of Public Mobile. “I think what this country needs is sustainable competition.” The upstarts say that for all their success in driving prices lower, they will die off without further help – or without foreign funding, which is currently restricted by Ottawa’s foreign ownership rules in the telecom sector. Some of them are already pointing fingers at the government that encouraged them to launch in the first place, arguing that Industry Canada has failed to enforce the sector’s rules of fair play, such as forcing BCE, Telus and Rogers to share their wireless towers. The incumbents, meanwhile, argue that Canadians simply prefer the major players’ higher-quality service as well as the higher-end devices they offer such as the iPhone, which the upstarts lack. If the government wants to score political points by lowering prices for consumers, and the big wireless companies say, they will further fragment the relatively small Canadian market and make it more difficult for carriers to afford the latest, greatest wireless technology. All of this has put the Harper government in a difficult spot. Ottawa is set to auction off valuable wireless licences, probably later this year or next. It must soon decide what the rules for that auction will be – whether to tilt them in favour of new wireless companies by setting aside licences that only they can purchase, as the government did in 2008 to stimulate more competition. Its decision on that question and on foreign ownership will shape the industry’s future, and will help determine whether the new entrants can survive for the long haul, or are doomed to disappear.
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