iVillage Chief Correspondent Kelly Wallace and iVillage Election Editor/Correspondent Joanne Bamberger and author of PunditMom.com focus on how President Obama has some work to do to win over women voters who supported him in 2008. Hint Mr. President -- chocolates always help!
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Chancellor Angela Merkel cemented her political ascendancy in Europe Monday when 25 out of 27 EU states agreed to a German-inspired pact for stricter budget discipline, even as they struggled to rekindle growth from the ashes of austerity.
Only Britain and the Czech Republic refused to sign a fiscal compact in March that will impose quasi-automatic sanctions on countries that breach European Union budget deficit limits and will enshrine balanced budget rules in national law.
The accord was eagerly greeted by the European Central Bank which has long pressed euro zone governments to put their houses in order.
"It is the first step toward a fiscal union. It certainly will strengthen confidence in the euro area," ECB President Mario Draghi said.
Officially, the half-day summit focused on a strategy to revive growth and create jobs at a time when governments across Europe are having to cut public spending and raise taxes to tackle mountains of debt.
But differences over the limits of austerity, and Greece's unfinished debt restructuring negotiations, hampered efforts to convey a more optimistic message that Europe is getting on top of its debt crisis.
Merkel told a news conference the agreements on the fiscal pact and a permanent rescue fund for the euro zone were a "small but fine step on the path to restoring confidence."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he expected a deal on reducing Greece's debt to private bondholders within days and he believed independent European institutions - a clear reference to the ECB - would help meet a funding gap.
Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said he hoped to reach a deal both with private creditors over restructuring 200 billion euros of debt and on conditions tied to a second bailout by its international lenders by the end of the week.
"Significant progress has been made in talks about private sector involvement ... We are seeking to conclude negotiations with the troika by the end of the week," Papademos told reporters after he and his finance minister met the heads of EU institutions.
Until there is a deal, EU leaders cannot move forward with a second, 130-billion-euro rescue program for Athens, which they originally pledged at a summit last October. Without it, Athens faces default in March when huge bond repayments fall due.
The EU leaders also agreed that a 500-billion-euro European Stability Mechanism will enter into force in July, a year earlier than planned, to back heavily indebted states.
Europe is already under pressure from the United States, China, the International Monetary Fund and some of its own members to increase the size of the financial firewall, but Merkel has refused to consider the issue before March.
EURO "MESS"
Many economists doubt the wisdom of so severely restricting deficit spending, and EU diplomats say the fiscal compact was mostly a political gesture to calm German voters angry at repeated euro zone bailouts and to restore market confidence.
"To write into law a Germanic view of how one should run an economy and that essentially makes Keynesianism illegal is not something we would do," a British official said.
There was no repetition of last month's confrontation between British Prime Minister David Cameron and Sarkozy when Cameron vetoed efforts to amend the EU treaty to tighten euro zone budget discipline.
But the British and French leaders sniped at each other at separate news conferences while professing mutual respect.
Cameron told reporters: "Our national interest is that these countries get on and sort out the mess that is the euro."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that although Cameron had shown no sign of relenting in his opposition to treaty change, the new pact could be easily slotted into EU law at a later date and she expected it would be within five years.
Financial markets fretted over the lack of tangible progress in the Greek debt talks and gloom about Europe's economic outlook. The risk premium on southern European government bonds rose while the euro and stocks fell.
Highlighting those fears, Spain's economy contracted in the last quarter of 2011 for the first time in two years and looks set to slip into a long recession.
France halved its 2012 growth forecast to a mere 0.5 percent in a potentially ominous sign for Sarkozy's troubled bid for re-election in May. But the president said Paris could achieve its deficit reduction target without further savings.
Italy, rushing through sweeping economic reforms under new Prime Minister Mario Monti, was rewarded with a significant fall in its borrowing costs at an auction of 10- and 5-year bonds, despite two-notch downgrades of its credit rating by Standard & Poor's and Fitch this month.
But Portugal's slide toward becoming the next Greece - needing a second bailout to avoid chaotic bankruptcy - gathered pace as banks raised the cost of insuring government bonds against default and insisted the money be paid up front instead of over several years.
The yield spread on 10-year Portuguese bonds over safe haven German Bunds topped 15 percentage points for the first time in the euro era.
The ESM was meant to replace the European Financial Stability Facility, a temporary fund that has been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal. But pressure is mounting to combine the resources of the two funds to create a super-firewall of 750 billion euros ($1 trillion).
The IMF says if Europe puts up more of its own money, that will convince others to give more resources to the IMF, boosting its crisis-fighting abilities and improving market sentiment.
Germany has so far resisted such a step.
Merkel has said she will not discuss the issue of the ESM/EFSF's ceiling until the next EU summit in March. Meanwhile, financial markets will continue to worry that there may not be sufficient rescue funds available to help the likes of Italy and Spain if they run into renewed debt funding problems.
The EU will consider how to deploy 82 billion euros of unspent funds from the EU's 2007-2013 budget in an attempt to boost growth and employment. Some will be recycled toward job creation, especially among the young.
But with no new public money available for a stimulus, the leaders focused mainly on promoting structural reforms such as loosening labor market regulation, cutting red tape for business and promoting innovation.
($1 = 0.7615 euros)
(Additional reporting by Julien Toyer, Harry Papachristou, John O'Donnell, Matt Falloon and Robin Emmott in Brussels, Marius Zaharia, William James and Jeremy Gaunt in London, Axel Bugge in Lisbon; Writing by Paul Taylor, editing by Mike Peacock)
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All Critics (88) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (88) | Rotten (1) | DVD (2)
Asghar Farhadi's emotionally epic movie is not just a masterpiece dramatically, it is a movie dramatically of its moment.
It's small. It's real. And it's deeply moving.
This is a trenchant emotional thriller that you watch in dread, awe, and amazing aggravation.
Some films wear their artistry so lightly they appear simply to be happening, the inner workings of the story guided by an unseen hand.
The film involves its audience in an unusually direct way, because although we can see the logic of everyone's position, our emotions often disagree.
This is primarily a human story about a marriage unraveling, the husband torn between love for his daughter and devotion to his father, the daughter torn between one parent and the other.
Emotionally resonant beyond the filmmaker's own country and culture, it is a compassionate yet searingly precise film that refuses to name villains, nor to let any of its protagonists off the hook
Sometimes, in an attempt to do the best we can for the people we love, we end up wreaking irreparable damage.
I hope "A Separation" is the beginning of a new cinematic dawn for Iranian filmmakers.
[The film] puts us in the uncomfortable role of the adjudicator.
Culturally specific but universally relatable, this slowly escalating Iranian drama boasts incredibly impressive motivational clarity.
For all the stifled truths of its characters, Farhadi's film feels like a gust of brisk air.
...like being caught in a barbed-wire fence of ethical dilemmas.
Feels like a peek through a neighbor's window.
The progressively tedious atmosphere ultimately prevents the film's final scenes from making any real emotional impact...
Estabelece definitivamente Asghar Farhadi como um dos diretores mais consistentes e fascinantes do Cinema contempor?neo.
More Critic ReviewsSource: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_separation_2011/
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Back in 2010, late-night host Jimmy Fallon set a world record for ?Most Video Game Consoles Played in One Minute,? as measured by the RecordSetter Book of World Records. That?s nine different consoles in 60 seconds ? ranging from the Super Nintendo, to the Dreamcast, to the fabled Atari 2600.
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But we all know the saying, and an intrepid Ohio gamer named Ryan Sullivan has done just that: Broken Fallon?s record with a whopping?13 different consoles played?in under a minute.
Let?s get serious for a moment: You?re probably thinking the same thing we did upon reading the news. What, exactly, does one have to do to achieve a world record for most consoles played? Did Fallon or Sullivan hook all of their appendages up to strings and simultaneously work a bunch of gaming controllers at once or something?
After reading up on the actual rules that define the title of ?Most Video Game Consoles Played,? and watching the official videos of both Fallon?s and Sullivan?s world-shattering feats, we can?t help but feel a little let down by the quote-unquote accomplishments.
To break the record, says RecordSetter, a gamer ?must make forward progress in each game? during the attempt. It?s forbidden to play any console more than one time, gamers must use consoles, and gamers must provide video evidence of the feat. That?s it.
In other words, a person just has to play all of five seconds of a game on a particular console before jumping onto the next. We suppose that it?s a challenge to play all the consoles before your character dies, if a fighting game is used during the attempt (as is the case in Sullivan?s record-breaking romp). But even then, it?s unclear as to whether losing a round or getting killed in a game as a result of letting it sit there while one plays other consoles is even going to result in a disqualification.
Even if that?s true, well, one doesn?t?have?to use a game where one faces even the slightest potential of death to break the ?world record.? It?s probably harder for a gamer to amass more than 13 different consoles in the same room than it is to physically break the record.
This ?record? would sound a lot more interesting if the criteria forced a gamer to play all the different consoles at once ? or, for that matter, if it was reshaped to simply be a record of ?most games played simultaneously.? Watching gamers control a ton of accounts in a massively multiplayer online game (otherwise called ?multiboxing?) seems as if it would involve a little more skill than what either Fallon or Sullivan have been credited for.
[PCMag]
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SADADA, Libya (Reuters) ? A militia commander whose troops were driven out of the Libyan tribal stronghold of Bani Walid this week said on Friday that his forces were massing to recapture the town but were holding back at the government's request.
"It is our right to reenter Bani Walid and nobody can prevent us," Imbarak al-Futmani said in an interview with Reuters at his desert camp near Sadada, 30 miles east of Bani Walid.
Futmani's troops were pushed out by angry townsmen who he accuses of being the remnants of loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi, the former dictator who was overthrown then captured and killed in October.
Eight hundred of his men were now massed along the eastern flank of the town awaiting his orders to enter by force, said the elderly warrior, who was dressed in an ornate black and gold waistcoast, a skullcap and a white blanket over his shoulder.
Bani Walid, 90 miles south of Tripoli, was one of the last towns to surrender to the anti-Gaddafi rebellion last year.
Hundreds of fighters loyal to the interim government have surrounded the isolated town after hearing word that a pro-Gaddafi uprising had broken out.
Futmani said he faced a couple of hundred "criminals" nostalgic for Gaddafi's time in power, rather than large battalions of organized loyalists.
"We have all the revolutionary fighters with us and we can take Bani Walid in a matter of hours."
"If they don't hand themselves in, they will face what they cannot imagine," he added, his eyes hidden by thick-rimmed, amber Ray-Ban sunglasses.
GADDAFI SUPPORT ALLEGATIONS
On Monday, armed residents surrounded Futmani's brigade, who named themselves the "28th of May," after the date last year when Gaddafi loyalists executed a number of pro-democracy protesters in Bani Walid.
After a battle in which Futmani lost six fighters, his men fled the barracks in the dark of the night.
"Once the Gaddafis broke through the gate and entered the barracks, all they cared about was stealing our tanks. We just walked right out," said one of Futmani's men.
Echoing complaints by residents that the 28th of May Brigade had been harassing people and abusing prisoners, the town elders said they were dismissing the government-backed local council on which Futmani sits and appointing their own local government.
They said they were not Gaddafi supporters but just tired of the militia pushing its weight around their town.
Futmani says the elders profited from Gaddafi and were trying to reclaim their town from its rightful rulers, the western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) government.
WAITING ON THE PRIME MINISTER
With hundreds of fighters waiting at the gates of Bani Walid, drinking tea and oiling their weapons in the cold desert, why have they have not pushed forward?
Sitting in his base, a former Gaddafi holiday mansion on the top of a rocky hill, Futmani said the prime minister had asked him to hold off to allow civilians to leave the town and, hopefully, for the assailants to surrender.
"The prime minister called me and asked me not to move and I accepted," he said.
"(Prime minister Abdel Rahim) El Keib promised that the government would use force to maintain security, if necessary."
Troops from the nascent National Army, composed of revolutionary fighters who have signed up to the government force, had joined the militias around Bani Walid.
The NTC has been unable to fully establish control over armed revolutionary groups in Libya and has only incorporated a few brigades into a national security force. All of the militias claim loyalty to the government but most are still unwilling to disarm. Instead, they adopt a wait-and-see approach to who comes to power, and if they like them.
Futmani's men cruise around the base in dirty pick-up trucks with machineguns mounted on the back.
He is skeptical of any peaceful solution and saw more violence ahead.
"These pro-Gaddafis, they see us a rats, like Gaddafi did," he said. "They are murderers and criminals, they will never integrate into the new Libya because they know they will face justice now."
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The Apollo 1 Command Module after the fire that claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Credit: NASA.
NASA?s Apollo program began with one of the worst disasters the organization has ever faced. A routine prelaunch test turned fatal when a fire ripped through the spacecraft?s crew cabin killing all three astronauts. Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, a tragic and preventable accident. There were warning signs, similar accidents that had claimed lives both in the United States and abroad. The Apollo 1 crew could have been saved from a gruesome death.
Plugs Out
L-R: Roger Chaffee, Ed White, and Gud Grissom training for their Apollo 1 flight. Credit: NASA.
The commander for Apollo 1 was Gus Grissom, one of the original Mercury astronauts whose first spaceflight was marred by his capsule?s sinking after splashdown. He flew again in Gemini in a spacecraft he named ?Molly Brown.? Senior pilot on the Apollo 1 crew was Ed White, a Gemini veteran who made America?s first spacewalk in 1965. Rounding out the crew was pilot Roger Chaffee, a talented rookie more than capable of holding his own with his experienced crew mates. He was a notoriously good guy who took pains to thank everyone for their contributions to Apollo right down to the janitors.
By the end of January 1967, the crew was going through their final prelaunch tests; barring some major setback, they would make the first manned Apollo flight on February 21. One routine test NASA had done since Mercury was the ?plugs out? test, a final check of the spacecraft?s systems.
The spacecraft - Command Module 12 - arrives at the Kennedy Spaceflight Centre clearly destined for Apollo 1. Credit: NASA.
The spacecraft was fully assembled and stacked on top of its unfuelled Saturn IB launch vehicle on pad 34. The umbilical power cords that usually supplied power were removed ? the plugs were out ? and the spacecraft switched over to battery power. The cabin was pressurized with 16.7 pounds per square inch (psi) of 100 percent oxygen, a pressure slightly greater than one atmosphere. With everything just as it would be on February 21, the crew went through a full simulation of countdown and launch.
A full launch-day staff of engineers in mission control also went through the simulation. The White Room, the room through which the astronauts entered the spacecraft, remained pressed next to the vehicle. A crew of engineers monitored the spacecraft and were just feet away from the astronauts.
Cosmonaut Bondarenko. Credit: spacefacts.de
Grissom, White, and Chaffee suited up and entered the Apollo 1 command module at 1pm and hooked into the spacecraft?s oxygen and communications systems. For the next five and a half hours, the test proceeded with only minor interruptions. Grissom?s complaint of a smell like sour buttermilk in the oxygen circulating through his suit was resolved after a short hold, and a high oxygen flow through the astronauts suits tripped an alarm. But these were minor problems and didn?t raise any red flags in mission control.
The real problem was communication. Static made it impossible for the crew and mission control to hear one another. An increasingly frustrated Grissom began to question how they were expected to get to the Moon if they couldn?t talk between a few buildings.
The Apollo 1 official crew portrait. L-R: Ed White, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee. Credit: NASA.
Just after 6:31 that evening, the routine test took a turn. Engineers in mission control saw an increase in oxygen flow and pressure inside the cabin. The telemetry was accompanied by a garbled transmission that sounded like ?fire.? The official record reflects the communications problem. The transmission was unclear, but the panic was obvious as an astronaut yelled something like ?they?re fighting a bad fire ? let?s get out. Open ?er up? or ?we?ve got a bad fire ? let?s get out. We?re burning up.? The static made it impossible to hear the exact words or even distinguish who was speaking.
But flames visible through the command module?s small porthole window left no doubt about what the crew had said. Engineers in the White Room tried to get the hatch open but couldn?t. It was an inward opening design, and neither engineers outside the spacecraft nor the astronauts inside were strong enough to force it open. The men in mission control watched helplessly as the scene played out on the live video feed.
The Apollo 1 crew in a less formal setting. L-R: Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee. Credit: NASA.
Just three seconds after the crew?s garbled report of a fire, the pressure inside the cabin became so great that the hull ruptured. Men wrestling with the hatch were thrown across the room as flames and smoke spilled into the White Room. Many continued to fight their way towards the spacecraft but were forced to retreat as the smoke grew too thick to see through. In mission control, the telemetry and voice communication from Apollo 1 went completely silent.
An hour and a half later, firemen and emergency personnel succeeded in removing the bodies; Ed White was turned around on his couch reaching for the hatch. Over the next two months, the spacecraft was disassembled piece by piece in an attempt to isolate the cause of the fire. The full investigation lasted a year.
The Apollo 1 crew floats around during water egress training. Credit: NASA.
The Apollo 1 accident review board determined that a wire over the piping from the urine collection system had arced. The fire started below the crew?s feet, so from their supine positions on their couches they wouldn?t have seen it in time to react. Everything in the cabin had been soaking in pure oxygen for hours, and flammable material near the wire caught fire immediately. From there, it took ten seconds for spacecraft to fill with flames.
The crew?s official cause of death was asphyxiation from smoke inhalation. Once their oxygen hoses were severed they began breathing in toxic gases. All three astronauts died in less than a minute. Many who had tried to save them were treated for smoke inhalation.
The Chamber of Silence
Astronaut Frank Borman's official Gemini era portrait. Borman was the astronaut's representative on the Apollo 1 accident review board. Credit: NASA.
The fire that claimed the lives of Grissom, White, and Chaffee is eerily similar to one that killed cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko in 1961. Bondarenko was known to his colleagues as a congenial and giving man with great athletic prowess who worked tirelessly to prove he deserved the honour of flying in space.
Part of the cosmonauts? training was done in an isolation chamber designed to mimic the mental stresses spaceflight. The room, which the men called the Chamber of Silence, was spartan to say the least. It was furnished with a steel bed, a wooden table, a seat identical to what they would have in the Vostok capsule, minimal toilet facilities, an open-coil hot plate for warming meals, and a limited amount of water for washing and cooking. The chamber was pressurized to mimic the capsule?s environment in space. In this case, the oxygen concentration was 68 percent.
Ed White III touches his father's name on the Apollo 1 panel of the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Centre visitor complex. Credit: NASA.
During the test, cosmonauts would exercise mental agility with memory games using a wall chart with coloured squares. They would keep busy by reading or colouring ? subjects were supplied with some leisure material. The silence was frequently interrupted by classical music to see how the subjects reacted to a pleasurable shock. Aside from these distractions, sensory deprivation inside the chamber was absolute. The room was mounted on thick rubber shock absorbers that muffled any vibrations from movement outside, and the 16-inch thick walls absorbed any sound. The cosmonauts communicated with doctors by lights. A light told the subject to apply medical sensors to his body, and a light outside the chamber signaled to doctors that they could begin their tests. A different light would signal the end of the isolation test.
The environment was designed to challenge the cosmonauts? mental stability and adaptability. But the hardest part was that no subject knew beforehand how long his test would last. It could run anywhere from a few hours to weeks.
The Apollo 1 crew walks across the gantry before entering the spacecraft on January 27. Credit: NASA.
Bondarenko was the 17th cosmonaut to go into the Chamber of Silence and on March 23, his ten day test came to an end. A light signaled that technicians outside had started depressurizing the chamber to match the atmosphere outside. It was a routine part of the test, but this time it was interrupted by a fire alarm.
While he waited to leave the chamber, Bondarenko removed his biomedical sensors and wiped the adhesive off with rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad. In his haste to leave, and exhibiting the lack of concentration expected after ten days of mental testing, he didn?t look where he threw the pad. It landed on the hot plate?s coil. Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich theorized that he had been standing next to it at the time. Many subjects left the small heater on all the time to warm up the chilly room.
A dummy rides in a Vostok capsule seat. Credit: Associated Press.
A fire sparked and spread in an instant; everything, including Bondarenko, was saturated with a high concentration of oxygen. Technicians wrenched the door open and exposed the chamber to air, killing the fire instantly, but the damage was done. Doctors pulled a huddled and severely burnt Bondarenko from the room. ?It?s my fault,? he whispered when doctors reached him, ?I?m so sorry? no one else is to blame.? The severity of the fire was immediately obvious. Bondarenko?s wool clothes had melted onto his body and the skin underneath had burned away. His hair had caught fire. His eyes were swollen and melted shut.
In Moscow, surgeon and traumatologist Vladimir Julievich Golyakhovsky got a frantic call at his office; the severely burned patient was on his way. Ten minutes later, a team of men in military uniforms arrived carrying the blanket-wrapped cosmonaut. They were accompanied, Golyakhovsky later recalled, by an overwhelming smell of burnt flesh.
The damage to the Apollo 1 crew cabin, after the bodies were removed and before the disassembly began. Credit: NASA.
Bondarenko pleaded for something ?to kill the pain.? Golyakhovsky obliged and gave the patient a shot of morphine in the soles of his feet. It was the one unscathed part of his body thanks to his heavy boots, and the only place the doctor could find a vein. There was nothing he could do to save the man?s life. Bondarenko died the next morning. The official cause was shock and severe burns.
Lessons at Home
Parallels between the Apollo 1 crew?s and Bondarenko?s deaths are obvious, but how each space agency dealt with the deaths was very different. Grissom, White, and Chaffee were each given very public funerals in accordance with their respective military traditions. Bondarenko?s death was kept secret, his identity covered by a pseudonym. Not until 1986 did the world hear the true story of his death. This has bred speculation that had the Soviet system been more open, NASA would have know about the dangers of training in a pressurized pure oxygen environment and could have saved the Apollo 1 crew. Former cosmonaut Alexei Leonov even suggested that the CIA knew about Bondarenko since the US had pierced the Iron Curtain before the accident.
But this is unlikely. And besides, NASA wouldn?t need to look to the Soviet Union to know the dangers of testing in a pressurized oxygen environment. There were enough incidents in the US to make the danger very clear. Four oxygen fires in the five years before the Apollo 1 accident were proof enough.
The Apollo 1 spacecraft nearing the end of the disassembly. Sometime towards the end of March, 1967. Credit: NASA.
On September 9, 1962, a fire broke out in a simulated spacecraft cabin at Brooks Air Force Base. The cabin was pressurized to 5psi with pure oxygen. Both subjects were protected by pressure suits. Neither sustained burns, but both were treated for smoke inhalation.
Two months later on November 16, four men had been inside the US Navy?s Air Crew Equipment Laboratory for 17 days in an environment pressurized to 5psi of 100 percent oxygen when an exposed wire arced and started a fire. It spread rapidly over the men?s clothing and hands for 40 seconds before they were rescued. All were treated for severe burns, and this was the only instance in which the source of the fire was identified.
Two Navy divers were killed on February 16, 1965 in a test of the Navy?s Experimental Diving Unit, which was pressurized to 55.6psi to mimic conditions at a depth of 92 feet. It was a multi-gas environment: 28 percent oxygen, 36 percent nitrogen, and 36 percent helium. Somehow, the carbon dioxide scrubbers that were designed to remove the toxic gas from the air caught fire. Pressure inside the chamber rose making it impossible for technicians outside to open the door and remove the men.
Gus Grissom's funeral procession. Credit: NASA.
A 1966 oxygen environment fire came frighteningly close to anticipating the Apollo 1 accident. A fire broke out during an unmanned qualification test of the Apollo Environmental Control System on April 28. The cabin was pressurized to 5psi of 100 percent oxygen, just like the spacecraft would be in flight. The fire was blamed on a commercial grade strip heater inside the cabin and the incident was consequently dismissed. The commercial material would not be onboard any manned flights. The board that investigated the accident made no mention of the hazardous environment.
A Lack of Imagination
The Apollo 1 mission patch. Credit: NASA.
These accidents weren?t secret. NASA knew the dangers of a pressurized oxygen environment, which has prompted conspiracy theorists to suggest that the space agency intentionally put the Apollo 1 crew in danger. But this was hardly the case. In truth, no one at NASA gave much thought to a fire in the spacecraft.
In the early 1960s when Apollo was in its preliminary stages, a dual gas system (likely oxygen and nitrogen) was proposed for the crew cabin. This would have been safer in the event of fire, but more difficult overall. A mixed gas environment requires more piping and wiring, which in turn adds weight. Pure oxygen was simpler, lighter, and was already familiar to NASA. The dual-gas idea was scratched.
NASA did address the possibility of a fire in the spacecraft, but only developed procedures for an event in space when the nearest fire station was 180 miles away. Apollo, like Mercury and Gemini, had no specific fire fighting system on board. The 5psi of oxygen in space was considered too thin to feed a significant fire. Anything that could spark in that environment could be taken care of with a few well aimed blasts from the astronauts? water pistol.
Grissom's, White's, and Chaffee's death are the cover story of Life Magazine's February 10 issue. Credit: Life.
There was no procedure for a fire on the ground. With so many engineers on hand for every test, it was assumed that the astronauts would safe so long as fire extinguishers were nearby. But more importantly in the case of Apollo 1 is the plugs out test?s status: it wasn?t classified as dangerous.
Frank Borman, a Gemini veteran who would go to the Moon on Apollo 8, served as the astronaut?s representative to the Apollo 1 accident investigation board. He made this point about the plugs out test?s status abundantly clear. ?I don?t believe that any of us recognized that the test conditions for this test were hazardous,? he said on record. Without fuel in the launch vehicle and all the pyrotechnic bolts unarmed, no one imagined a fire could start let alone thrive. Borman himself hadn?t thought twice when he went through the plugs out test before his Gemini 7 mission. He was confident in NASA and its engineers and stated on record that he would have gone through the Apollo 1 test had he been on the crew.
The Apollo 1 crew expressed their concerns over the Apollo spacecraft in a joke crew portrait. They said a little prayer, and gave the picture to the manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office Joe Shea in 1966. Credit: NASA.
Borman alluded to the Apollo 1 crew?s shared confidence. There had been problems with Apollo?w development, and every astronaut had the right to refuse to enter a spacecraft. ?Although there are sometimes romantic silk-scarf attitudes attributed to this type of business, in the final analysis we are professionals and will accept risk but not undue risks,? explained Borman. The Apollo 1 crew felt the dangers were minimal.
With that statement, Borman identified what he considered the crux of the problem and the real reason, however indirect, behind the death of the crew. ?We did not think,? he said, ?and this is a failing on my part and on everyone associated with us; we did not recognize the fact that we had the three essentials, an ignition source, extensive fuel and, of course, we knew we had oxygen.?
A plaque commemorating the Apollo 1 crew on what's left of launch pad 34. Credit: Christopher K. Davis (via Wikipedia).
Gus Grissom serendipitously wrote his memoirs during the Gemini program. He addresses the inherent risk of spaceflight in the book?s final passage. ?There will be risks, as there are in any experimental program, and sooner or later, inevitably, we?re going to run head-on into the law of averages and lose somebody. I hope this never happens? but if it does, I hope the American people won?t feel it?s too high a price to pay for our space program. None of us was ordered into manned spaceflight. We flew with the knowledge that if something really went wrong up there, there wasn?t the slightest hope of rescue. We could do it because we had complete confidence in the scientists and engineers who designed and built our spacecraft and operated our Mission Control Centre? Now for the moon.?
Though tragic, their deaths were not in vain. The substantial redesigns made to the Apollo command module after the fire yielded a safer and more capable spacecraft that played no small role in NASA reaching the moon before the end of the decade. It is a fitting tribute to the crew that the plaque on the pad where they perished reads ?ad astra per aspera? ? a rough road to the stars.
Suggested Reading:
- Official Apollo 1 site:?http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/
- Colin Burgess and Rex Hall. The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team. 2009.
- Gus Grissom. Gemini. 1968.
- Apollo 204 Accident. Report of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Science, United States. 1968. Available online:?http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/Failure_Reports/as-204/senate_956/index.htm
- Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board to the Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 1968. Available online:?http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/content.html
- Hearings Before the Subcommittee on NASA Oversight of the Committee on Science and Astronautics. 1967.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=0eace55ab634dec7f49ebc5b7e406a36
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WASHINGTON ? The federal government's plan to expand computer security protections into critical parts of private industry is raising concerns that the move will threaten Americans' civil liberties.
In a report for release Friday, The Constitution Project warns that as the Obama administration partners more with the energy, financial, communications and health care industries to monitor and protect networks, sensitive personal information of people who work for or communicate with those companies could be improperly or inadvertently disclosed.
While the government may have good intentions, it "runs the risk of establishing a program akin to wiretapping all network users' communications," the nonpartisan legal think tank says. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report in advance.
Cybersecurity has become a rapidly expanding priority for the government as federal agencies, private companies and everyday people come under persistent and increasingly sophisticated computer attacks. The threat is diverse, ranging from computer hackers going after banking and financial accounts to terrorists or other nations breaching government networks to steal sensitive data or sabotage critical systems such as the electrical grid, nuclear plants or Wall Street.
Privacy has been a hotly debated issue, particularly as the Pentagon broadens its pilot program to help defense contractors protect their networks and systems. Several companies, including critical jet fighter and drone programs, have been attacked, although the Pentagon has said that no classified information was lost.
And there are plans for the Homeland Security Department to use the defense program as a model to prevent hackers and hostile nations from breaching critical infrastructure. Officials have suggested that Congress needs to craft legislation that would protect companies from certain privacy and other laws in order to share information with the government for cybersecurity purposes.
DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said the legislative proposals reflect the administration's commitment to privacy protections and contain standards to minimize contact with personal information while dealing with cybersecurity threats. "DHS builds strong privacy protections into the core of all cybersecurity programs and initiatives," Chandler said, adding that the agency realizes that providing assistance to private companies is a sensitive task that requires "trust and strict confidentiality."
The Constitution Project report recommends that officials limit the amount and nature of personal information shared between the public and private sectors. And it calls for strict oversight of the cyber programs by Congress and independent audits, to ensure that privacy rights have not been violated.
"The government should not be permitted to conduct an end-run around Fourth Amendment safeguards by relying upon private companies to monitor networks," it said.
In addition, the report raised concerns about the ongoing development of the Einstein 3 program, a government network monitoring system that would both detect and take action against cyberattacks on federal systems. DHS officials have said that extensive privacy protections are in place.
But the report expressed concerns that as DHS and the secretive National Security Agency share information about potential computer-based threats, the NSA could review communications from U.S. individuals without setting up privacy safeguards.
"With more and more people needing to share sensitive personal and financial data over the Internet, it is absolutely vital that, while we are looking to protect our networks against cyberattack, we also preserve our constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy," said Constitution Project committee member Asa Hutchinson, a former DHS undersecretary who also served as a GOP congressman from Arkansas.
Lawmakers who have been wrestling with these issues over the past several years have several bills in the works, and most include some privacy provisions.
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By msnbc.com news services
Felipe Dana / AP
Rescue workers search for victims Wednesday after a building collapses in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Updated at 3:40 p.m. EST Thursday:
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Rescuers pulled?at least six bodies from the rubble of three buildings that suddenly collapsed,?the Rio de Janeiro?morgue said Thursday.
At least?16 people remained missing?as?smoke from small fires drifted above the wreckage, The Associated Press reported.
Authorities?speculated that illegal construction work damaged the structure of a 20-story building and caused it to crumble,?bringing down two other office buildings alongside at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Rescue crews, aided by specially trained dogs, dug through tons of brick and twisted metal.
"We have hopes of finding people alive," said Moises Torres, a spokesman with the Fire Department.
According to the institution responsible for approving construction in Rio, unauthorized construction projects were under way in the building. The head of the accident prevention unit of Rio's Regional Council of Engineering, Luiz Cosenza, told the Globo television network that illegal projects could have led to the collapse.
"Two projects were happening in the building," said Cosenza. "They were illegal works; they were not registered with the council."
He didn't provide details but said the work was not being supervised by any registered professional.
Hoping for news
A janitor finishing up the day's work was among?six injured extracted by rescue crews from the heap of bricks, metal and glass. An?accountant closing the books for the month and a computer technician installing software were among the missing. Their friends or relatives took shelter from the scorching sun in a nearby building, hoping for news.
Francisco Adir was trying to get information about a friend, Flavio Porrozi, 23, who had been attending a computer course in the largest of the three buildings.
"We think he's alive. At 3 a.m. he managed to call his girlfriend and say, 'Hello, love,' before his phone went dead," Adir said. "The rescuers haven't given us any information, but the family is hanging all their hopes on that phone call."
Five of the six bodies pulled out have been identified in the city morgue, and Porrozi is not among them.
As the hours ticked by, relatives of the missing tried to keep despair at bay.
"We last heard from him at 8 p.m. when he called his wife to say he wouldn't be much longer," said Luis Cesar Vasconcelos, whose brother, computer technician Luis Leandro Vasconcelos, remained trapped in the debris. "Since then, there's been no sign of him, but the family is hopeful to the end."
The state's governor, Sergio Cabral, issued a statement saying the government was doing all it could to support the families of the victims.
"We're still living a moment of shock," he said. "There is still hope of finding survivors, and in a last instance, of rescuing bodies."
Rescue crews are searching for victims in Rio de Janeiro's downtown district after a building collapsed leaving at least three people dead and dozens missing. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.
Updated at 1:40 p.m. EST Thursday:
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Three bodies were pulled from the rubble of three collapsed buildings on Thursday, an official with the Rio de Janeiro Fire Department said. Another 21 people were still missing after the buildings went down in the city's historic center, The Associated Press reported.
Mayor Eduardo Paes said a structural problem may have caused a building of about 20 stories to collapse at about 8:30 p.m., and that apparently caused the collapse of two smaller buildings nearby. Officials were still investigating the causes, however.
In addition to the dead and missing, at least six other people were treated for injuries caused by the accident, which left rubble and thick dust strewn over a wide area near Rio's famed Teatro Municipal and the Fine Arts Museum.
One of those pulled out alive was Marcelo Moreira, a janitor in an eight-story building that fell.
"He stayed behind to finish a little bit of work," said Rosalvo Alves, the building's main doorman, who had spent the night in a local hospital with his friend. "We shut down at 8. I left, and he was supposed to come too. Now this; he's hurt, our jobs are gone, everything is gone."
Alves worked in the building for 38 years, and said he had never noticed any problems.
Original post:
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Two downtown buildings collapsed?Wednesday, leaving?at least two dead inside the wreckage.
Rescue crews pulled four people alive from the debris, officials said.
One building was?20 stories tall; the other, 10, Reuters reported.
A loud explosion preceded the collapse, witnesses said.
There was a strong smell of gas in the area, officials said. However, a gas leak likely didn't cause the blast, Rio's mayor said.?
Rubble was strewn across a wide area, covering cars and motorcycles, The Associated Press reported. Television showed at least two people on the?roof of a neighboring building where?they apparently awaited help from firefighters.
"It was like an earthquake. First some pieces of the buildings started to fall down. People started to run. And then it all fell down at once," a witness who identified himself as Gilbert told Reuters.
As many as 11 people could be trapped in the wreckage, cable broadcaster Gloominess said. City authorities are assessing the risk of collapse of a damaged adjoining building, local news services reported, without giving the source of the information.
"I ran down the stairs desperate to escape. Just when I left the building it collapsed. I escaped by the skin of my teeth - it's the work of God," Nelson Tomes, 38, an air conditioning technician, told iG news service.
Tomes, who was on the 10th floor of one of the buildings, said he rushed to the stairwell after he heard a "huge noise."
TV images showed cars covered with concrete and steel rods. Light, the electricity distribution company serving the city, cut power to the area to avert the possibility of fires after the gas smell was detected, the TV broadcasters said.
Rio de Janeiro is struggling to address concerns over poor infrastructure as it prepares to co-host the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games two years later.
The incident comes months after an explosion apparently caused by a gas leak ripped through a restaurant in downtown Rio, killing three people and igniting concerns over the state of the city's infrastructure.
Vanderlei Almeida / AFP - Getty Images
Firefighters look for victims amid the rubble of a building that collapsed Wednesday in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. military personnel and veterans are plagued by substance abuse, depression and suicide, three new studies indicate.
In one study, researchers surveyed nearly 600 veterans returning from war zone deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan, and found that they were at increased risk for mental health problems and alcohol and drug abuse.
Nearly 14 percent of the veterans screened positive for probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 39 percent for probable alcohol abuse, and 3 percent for probable drug use. Men reported more alcohol and drug use than women, but there were no gender differences in PTSD or other mental health conditions.
Veterans returning from Iraq reported more depression or functioning problems and more alcohol and drug use than those returning from Afghanistan. Army and Marine veterans reported worse mental and physical health than Air Force or Navy veterans.
The studies were published online Jan. 25 in the American Journal of Public Health and are scheduled to appear in the March supplement print issue of the journal.
In the second study, researchers found that major depression and substance use disorders have increased among active duty combat-exposed veterans. The finding comes from an analysis of data from 678,382 active personnel serving between 2001 and 2006.
Those who were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan were more likely to be diagnosed with major depression or substance abuse than non-deployed personnel. Army and Marine Corps personnel were more likely to be diagnosed with the conditions than Navy and Air Force personnel.
"Our study provided valuable insight for the mental health readiness of the U.S. armed services and implications for potential, continued support of ongoing operations and their post-deployment health care needs," the researchers wrote in a journal news release.
"Given the continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, and the increasing trend in major mental health conditions reported in the U.S. military, it would be important for the Department of Defense to assess whether the current system has adequate resources and manpower to handle the increasing number of active duty personnel who need mental health services," they concluded.
The third study found that suicide rates for all U.S. military services increased between 2005 and 2007, particularly for members of the regular Army and National Guard.
The analysis of data from 2,064,183 active duty personnel in 2005 and 1,981,810 active duty personnel in 2007 also showed that mental health diagnoses, mental health visits, prescriptions for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants and sleep medicines, reduction in rank, enlisted rank and separation or divorce were all associated with suicides.
Deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan were associated with an elevated risk of suicide among all services in 2007, and for the Army in 2005.
The increased risk of suicide associated with deployments in 2007 compared with 2005 may be due to the extended duration of war and increasing lengths of deployment for Army and Air Force personnel, the researchers suggested.
"Additional research needs to address the increasing rates of suicide in active duty personnel. This should include careful evaluation of suicide prevention programs and the possible increase in risk associated with SSRIs and other mental health drugs, as well as the possible impact of shorter deployments, age, mental health diagnoses and relationship problems," the researchers concluded.
More information
The American Psychiatric Association has more about military mental health.
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On Monday?s Howard Stern Sirius XM show, spitfire Chelsea Handler took the opportunity to lash out at the Mariah Carey?s ever-fluctuating weight battle. And despite his health troubles, Nick Cannon is standing up for his woman! Nick is taking his beef with Chelsea to the ultimate playground ? the Twitterverse.
On Howard?s show, Chelsea spoke of Mariah?s new Jenny Craig ad and her battle with the bulge, saying, ?She?s worse than Elizabeth Taylor.? The late night hostess continued,?She?s just so ridiculous with her body. You see her one day and she?s like 50 pounds heavier or lighter. I mean, what is she doing? I don?t even understand what hemisphere people like that operate in. There?s nothing real about her and her Hello Kitty whatever.?
Nick then took to Twitter for a string of defensive (but positive) tweets:
-"I hear @ChelseaHandler is out there talking shit about my wife again! She's lucky I'm trying to live right now! Jesus my cup runneth over."
-"I think @ChelseaHandler is still bitter that she got blasted on my radio show! It's okay I still love you!"
-"When miserable people see happiness they must attack it."
-"You know me, I'm always up for a good joke or wise crack but when people talk about my family the "Hood" in me wants to come out!"
-"I've learned cooler heads prevail. Life is too short to focus on negativity!"
Please note that Nick calls Chelsea bitter, negative, says she?s lucky he is sick, says she makes "the hood" in him want to come out and that he has a cooler head than she does ? but then essentially says he is too positive to be phased by her comments. Hey Nicky, sure sounds like you are focusing on negativity. Simply, tweeting these kind of responses kind of take away your holier-than-thou leg to stand up. Nick, just because you hurl insults too and then say Life?s too short after being negative ? doesn?t mean you aren?t being negative, it just means you are being passive aggressive.
As for Chelsea's mean-spirited digs: let's be honest, those Mariah Carey/Jenny Craig ads are ridiculous (ridiculously amazing). It?s hard not to mock them. I can't watch them without with out laughing and thinking ? who do these people think they are fooling!? There aren?t enough smoke, mirrors and cut-away camera angles in the world to fool me into believing that Mariah Carey now has a hot bod. That just ain?t happening. But really, no one really likes to hear Chelsea Handler, a skinny woman built like a coat rack, whose main diet is probably vodka, pixie sticks and baby's blood, slam a woman who is curvier by nature. It?s just bitchy. But that's kind of Chelsea Handler?s thing. It's made her famous and Nick Cannon faux im-better-than-this tweets aren?t gonna stop that mouth of hers.
But good job Nick for standing up for your woman, I love a man who defends his lady?s honor (and weight). Clearly Mariah has trained you well.
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WASHINGTON ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid about $3 million in federal income taxes in 2010, having earned more than seven times that from his investments and making him among the wealthiest of American taxpayers.
At the same time, Romney gave nearly $3 million to charity ? about half of that amount to the Mormon Church ? which helped lower his effective tax rate to a modest 14 percent, according to records his campaign released early Tuesday.
For 2011, he'll pay about $3.2 million with an effective tax rate of about 15.4 percent, the campaign said. Those returns haven't yet been filed yet with the Internal Revenue Service.
The former Massachusetts governor had been under pressure in recent weeks to release his tax returns, his GOP opponents casting him as a wealthy businessman who slashed jobs in the private sector. Rival Newt Gingrich made public his returns on Saturday, showing he paid almost $1 million in income taxes ? a tax rate of about 31 percent.
Romney's campaign confirmed the details of his tax information after several news organizations saw a preview of the documents. He had said planned to release his returns in full Tuesday morning, and campaign officials would be prepared to discuss them in detail with reporters.
"You'll see my income, how much taxes I've paid, how much I've paid to charity," Romney said during Monday night's debate in Tampa. "I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes."
Romney's 2010 returns show the candidate is among the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The returns showed about $4.5 million in itemized deductions, including $1.5 million to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Before the tax records were released, Romney's old investments in two controversial government-backed housing lenders stirred up new questions at the same time his campaign targeted Gingrich for his work for Freddie Mac.
Gingrich earned $1.6 million in consulting fees from Freddie Mac even though Romney has as much as $500,000 invested in the U.S.-backed lender and its sister entity, Fannie Mae.
The dimensions and the sources of Romney's wealth, which he has estimated to be as much as $250 million, have become pivotal issues in the roiling GOP primary campaign. For months, Romney dismissed calls to release his personal income tax records. But after mounting criticism from his rivals and others, coupled with his stinging weekend loss to Gingrich in the South Carolina primary, Romney agreed to release his 2010 return and 2011 estimate.
Romney already has acknowledged that his current tax rate is about 15 percent, a level far lower than standard rates for high-income earners and similar to the capital gains rate. "I'm proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes," Romney said.
The current lowest rate for long-term capital gains is 15 percent, but a higher rate of 20 percent had been in effect since 1981 until President George W. Bush signed into law a massive tax cut program in 2001.
Romney's vast investments contain other funds than the ones he profited from as a Bain Capital executive. But it was unclear whether he had any direct role in handling the investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that appear on his 2012 presidential disclosure.
One investment, listed as a "Federated Government Obligation Fund" and worth between $250,000 and $500,000, was a mutual fund that included both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac assets among a larger pool that included other government securities.
The holding was not listed in Romney's blind trust, which led some Democratic Party activists to suggest that the investment was under his direct control.
"He is relentlessly attacking Newt Gingrich over his ties to Freddie Mac despite the fact that he personally invested up to a half a million dollars in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," said Ty Matsdorf, a senior adviser with American Bridge 21st Century, a PAC associated with Democratic Party and liberal causes.
Former GOP Rep. J.C. Watts, a Gingrich supporter, said Monday that Romney was on a slippery slope calling his opponent a lobbyist and raising doubts about Gingrich's work for Freddie Mac. But he did not directly address Romney's investments with the lender or with Fannie Mae.
"Some might see it as splitting hairs. But Newt Gingrich was not walking the halls of House and Senate," Watts said on a conference call arranged by the campaign. "He was never doing the hand-to-hand combat doing the lobbying, consulting, whatever you want to call it."
A Romney campaign official who insisted on anonymity to discuss that investment in greater detail said that Romney's trustee had bought the government investment fund in 2007, before the housing crisis broke.
The Romney official said that the government fund was purchased through a charity trust that does not appear in Romney's presidential disclosure but will show up on his income tax return for 2010. That trust, called a Charitable Remainder Unitrust, is a standard tax strategy among the wealthy that provides investors with a fixed payout each year. What remains in the account at a later date, or when the investor dies, is turned over to charity, the official said.
Romney does not directly control the investment account, Romney campaign senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said earlier on Monday. "His investments are controlled by a trustee," Fehrnstrom said.
Separately, Romney's IRA retirement account lists both a Fannie Mae and a Freddie Mac security, each worth between $100,000 and $250,000. But because those are in Romney's IRA, they also appear to be under control of the trustee.
Tax experts said Romney's income tax returns may contain other charity structures and tax strategies designed to both boost his income and charity donations, while minimizing his involvement because of his presidential ambitions.
___
Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt and Brian Bakst in Tampa contributed to this report.
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BANGKOK ? World stocks hovered between gains and losses as talks on a debt agreement for Greece dragged on.
Only a handful of markets were open for business in Asia. Trading is closed in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines for Chinese New Year.
As markets opened in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.4 percent at 5,748.90 while Germany's DAX was flat at 6,405.74. Wall Street was set to lose ground with Dow futures down 0.1 percent at 12,645.
Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average closed little changed at 8,765.90 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.3 percent to 4,225.10. New Zealand's benchmark added 0.6 percent to 3,295.02 and India's Sensex was up 0.1 percent to 16,760.56. Thailand's SET index rose 0.7 percent to 1,065.55.
On Friday, stocks in Europe mostly held their gains for the week, waiting for the outcome of Greece's negotiations with its creditors on a deal to cut the face value of up to euro200 billion ($258 billion) in debt by 50 percent.
Over the weekend, the representative of Greece's private creditors said the talks are continuing even after his unexpected departure from the country.
A deal in Athens would allow the country to receive a second bailout package from other European governments and the International Monetary Fund, and cut Greece's debt from an estimated 160 percent of its annual economic output to 120 percent by 2020.
That is still painfully high, but without the help, Greece will not be able to pay euro14.5 billion in debt due March 20. A Greek default would send borrowing costs higher across Europe and could trigger chaos in the global financial system.
On Wall Street on Friday the Dow rose 96.50 points to close at 12,720.48. The S&P 500 index inched up 0.88 to 1,315.38 and the Nasdaq gained 1.63 points to 2,786.70.
In energy trading, benchmark crude was down 59 cents at $97.74 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The euro rose 0.4 percent to $1.2935. The dollar was up 0.1 percent to 77.04 yen.
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PARIS (Reuters) ? Business morale in France's manufacturing sector dropped unexpectedly in January as uncertainty over the state of the euro zone and world economy as well as upcoming elections weighed on sentiment, adding to hints that France started the year in a recession.
The slump in industrial confidence, now in its seventh month, adds to the sense of economic gloom in France just three months before a two-round presidential election in April and May.
Manufacturing sector morale fell in January to 91 from 94 in December, well below a long-term average of 100 and hitting the lowest level since February 2010, according to a monthly survey from the INSEE national statistics office.
In a Reuters poll, 21 economist had forecast, on average, that the indicator would rise to 95, with estimates ranging from 92 to 96.
"The implementation of an austerity plan in January, poor international climate, and the unclear presidential campaign with no clear view about the favorite's platforms have not reassured the French business sector," ING economist Manuel Maleki said in a research note.
Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, who is favored to win the election against incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, declared war on the world of finance on Sunday in a speech to supporters which drew a flurry of attacks from Sarkozy aides.
The latest dip in confidence points to a longer trend of decline in France's industrial sector, a potent theme in the upcoming election which has both candidates vying to save French jobs and stop a glut of industrial shutdowns.
Sarkozy and Hollande have both promised to set up public investment funds to support struggling mid-sized firms, while the centre-right incumbent has pledged to limit job losses with an overhaul of labor rules before the election.
"We entered into recession in recent months and there won't be a rebound in the beginning of the year," Maleki said.
Overall private-sector business morale eased to 91 points in January from 92 in December, well below the long term average of 100 and the lowest reading since December 2009, according to INSEE.
The statistics office forecast last month that France would suffer a short, shallow recession in the final quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012 which it said would destroy 60,000 jobs in the first half of the year.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas)
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Whale-watching vessels reported seeing 20 to 40 of the marine mammals, also known as orcas, swimming up the coast from Dana Point to Long Beach.
It's not uncommon for killer whales to roam Southern California waters in search of sea lions and other prey, according to the experts who track and identify them. Seeing them in such numbers, however, is unusual.
PHOTOS: Orcas off Southern California
Hence the excitement that erupted Thursday morning when radios squawked with reports of an unbelievable number of orcas off Dana Point.
The timing couldn't have been better for the Dana Pride, a vessel on a chartered whale-watching trip for elementary school children when it came across a pod of 20 killer whales about 10:30 a.m.
"They got the time of their lives seeing all those orcas," said Donna Kalez, general manager of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching.
Observers for the Aquarium of the Pacific, who were aboard the Harbor Breeze Cruises boat Christopher photographing and identifying the whales, counted more than 30 orcas off the coast of Long Beach on two afternoon whale-watching trips.
"We were just completely surrounded. There were so many it was hard to get a good count," said Kera Mathes, education specialist and whale research biologist for the aquarium. "It was incredible. I've never seen so many orcas before."
The orcas stopping through Thursday may be from an "offshore" population based in British Columbia. They travel in massive numbers and prefer to feed on sharks, experts said. The offshore orcas were last seen close to the Southern California shore in 2005.
"We don't really know where they go or where they come from," Mathes said. "We just see them every couple of years."
PHOTOS: Orcas off Southern California
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