Haiti assist bid injured by delayed U.N. reply

Tom Brown PORT-AU-PRINCE Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:13pm EST Related News Haiti preserve puncture as sleet turns camps to mudThu, Feb eighteen 2010U.N. assist arch chides agencies on Haiti reliefThu, Feb eighteen 2010Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils vital assist packageWed, Feb seventeen 2010Tarps, toilets are priorities for quake-hit Haiti: U.N.Mon, Feb fifteen 2010One month after quake, Haitians stick on to weep deadFri, Feb twelve 2010 < 1 / 7 >

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Clutching involuntary attack rifles, truckloads of U.N. infantry patrolled the streets of Haiti"s cracked collateral on the day after the trembler strike last month, clearly preoccupied to the wretchedness around them.

World&&&&Natural Disasters

Cries for assistance from people digging for survivors in collapsed buildings were drowned out by the bark of heavy-duty engines as the infantry plowed by Port-au-Prince but interlude to stick on rescue efforts, majority less lead them.

A usual steer since they were deployed in 2004, the U.N. infantry huddled in the shade of their canopied vehicles.

There were about 9,000 uniformed U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Haiti when the upheaval struck on Jan twelve and they were the judicious "first responders" to the mess in the bankrupt Caribbean country, whose notoriously diseased executive supervision was impressed by the scale of the tragedy.

Initially, however, nothing of the peacekeepers appeared to be concerned in hands-on charitable service in what puncture healing experts report as the vicious initial 72 hours after a harmful trembler strikes.

Their reply to the abominable pang was singular to you do security and seeking for looters after the bulk 7.0 upheaval intended majority of the collateral and took what Haitian President Rene Preval says could be as majority as 300,000 lives.

There was looting in the capital, but it paled in some-more aged with the astringency of the charitable crisis.

Horribly-injured patients flooded overstretched hospitals, forcing healing staff to confirm that patients to yield and that were already as well far left to try saving.

"Doctors played God," pronounced Tyler Marshall, a maestro former Los Angeles Times match operative with an general assist organisation that helped out in a tent city erected at the tallness of the destruction on the drift of Port-au-Prince"s University Hospital, the country"s largest.

Scores of U.N. crew died in the quake, together with Hedi Annabi, head of the U.N. mission that was set up in 2004. That helps insist what majority have criticized as a glacially delayed kickoff of service operations after one of history"s misfortune healthy disasters.

But in the days and weeks that followed it mostly seemed that lessons from alternative disasters were abandoned in Haiti as fears of rioting or anarchy overshadowed concerns about removing assist out quickly.

The U.N."s tip charitable assist official, John Holmes, is between those who have chided service agencies, together with the United Nations itself, for you do as well small to assistance Haiti.

"We cannot ... wait for for for the subsequent puncture for these lessons to be learned," Holmes wrote in a trusted email initial published on the website of the biography Foreign Policy.

"There is an obligatory need to progress significantly genius on the ground, to urge coordination, vital formulation and sustenance of aid," pronounced Holmes.

Edmond Mulet, behaving head of the U.N. mission, concurred in an talk that it played a singular charitable purpose in the initial couple of days after the trembler since the operations were effectively decapitated.

"At the unequivocally commencement it was unequivocally formidable since all the domicile was utterly broken and all the care of the mission was killed," Mulet told Reuters.

"CRIMINALS AND BANDITS"

Mulet gained prominence for wielding an iron fist during a prior army as head of the U.N. mission when he led mostly Brazilian "blue helmet" infantry in a successful crackdown on Haiti"s heavily armed gangs.

And he has finished no tip about sophistry the competing needs of service operations with law enforcement, in his bid to lane down the some-more than 3,000 inmates who took value of the trembler to shun from the main prison.

"We are here additionally to yield security," he pronounced when asked about the mess of convoys of rifle-wielding U.N. infantry to poke for people trapped in the rubble of the busted capital.

"I still have to patrol, I still have to go after all these criminals and bandits that transient from the inhabitant penitentiary, the squad leaders, the criminals, the killers, the kidnappers. I cannot unequivocally confuse myself from you do that."

The service mission shifted in to higher rigging after U.S. infantry deployed in large numbers and set up a supply sequence to get food and disinfectant in to areas great out for aid.

But there were still majority bottlenecks and setbacks, mostly involving U.N.-linked food distributions hobbled by unsound organization, reserve and throng control.

Unfortunately, U.N. infantry in Haiti have over the years gained a repute for toughness and abuse some-more than for easing pang in the lowest nation in the Americas.

"The usually time I"ve seen one of these U.N. infantry burst out of the behind of a lorry was to kick up on somebody or take a shot at them," pronounced a piece of the U.S. Army"s 82nd Airborne Division, as he worked security during a new assist handout.

"These guys have since all of us in unvaried a bad repute here," he said, asking not to be identified.

Haiti"s wrecked infrastructure and bad ride links finished it formidable to get assist out and keep it flowing, but that frequency finished the incident opposite from that in alternative new disasters around the globe.

"POOREST AND MOST VULNERABLE"

"The lowest and the majority exposed people lend towards to live in the regions that are strike the majority by healthy disasters," pronounced Solomon Kuah, an puncture healing medicine formed in New York who outlayed 4 weeks in Port-au-Prince after the quake.

There are no arguable estimates for the series of survivors who died from injuries due to unsound healing supplies.

But Henriette Chamouillet, the World Health Organization"s deputy in Haiti, pronounced all from staff shortages to bureaucracy and a miss of make-up lists embroiled the smoothness of containers full of medicines from Port-au-Prince"s airfield to doctors on the ground.

Port-au-Prince sits usually 700 miles off the seashore of Miami, that is home to a large Haitian-American community, and it seemed ludicrous that so couple of the U.S. infantry rushed there spoke French or were accompanied by translators.

One retaining picture of pell-mell food distributions came when U.S. helicopters offloaded boxes of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) at a site in the capital. Many Haitians non-stop them up usually to toss them afar in offend since no French or Creole-language instructions were enclosed with the assumingly invalid packets of dust, explaining that they indispensable to be churned with H2O as piece of their preparation.

Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has touted the Haiti service mission as "the largest and majority successful general poke and rescue bid ever fabricated in history."

But some-more than 6 weeks after the upheaval hit, the mission is still mostly in an puncture reply mode. The U.N."s World Food Program is tying the food rations to 55-pound (25 kg) bags of rice and the Haitian supervision estimates that a million upheaval survivors are still vital in the streets in temporary encampments with no using H2O or toilets.

Doctors are roughly finished traffic with dire injuries but reconstruction for a little 40,000 amputees and rebuilding Haiti"s health infrastructure are between long-term challenges.

"This is unequivocally a mess of Biblical proportions," pronounced Lewis Lucke, who was the USAID executive in Iraq prior to entrance to Haiti as U.S. ambassador.

U.N. and alternative officials have pronounced the tellurian reply to Haiti"s upheaval was quicker and some-more in effect than in alternative new disasters, together with the Asian tsunami that killed 226,000 people in thirteen countries in Dec 2004.

But experts contend the United Nations has a lot to sense from smaller, some-more nimble healing groups similar to International Medical Corps, or IMC, and Paris-based Medicins Sans Frontieres, along with charities some-more experienced in distributing aid, such as CARE and Catholic Relief Services.

Kuah, who concurrent service efforts for IMC, a California-based organisation that had rarely learned doctors treating patients in Haiti twenty-three hours after the trembler struck, stressed the "need for speed" when it comes to saving lives.

"When you ask yourself if there were ways you could have prevented some-more mortalities or discontinued additional mortality, with earthquakes, in particular, it"s some-more timing than anything else," pronounced Kuah.

(Additional stating by Catherine Bremer, Jackie Frank, Patricia Zengerle, Mica Rosenberg and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)

World Natural Disasters

Hiring approaching in Triangle

More Triangle employers design to sinecure during the second quarter, according to a quarterly consult by Manpower.

The consult expelled Tuesday shows that eighteen percent of companies in the Raleigh-Cary area plan to supplement workers in the March-to-June period, whilst 2 percent design to cut jobs. In Durham, seventeen percent design to hire, and 7 percent plan to revoke their payrolls.

Nationally, sixteen percent of 18,000 companies surveyed by the proxy staffing organisation design to supplement workers, and 8 percent plan cuts.

The internal numbers are formed on a most not as big pool of companies but are an additional pointer that the misfortune of the retrogression is easing.

In the prior Manpower survey, thirteen percent of Raleigh-Cary companies programmed to sinecure during the initial quarter. About twelve percent of Durham companies approaching to hire.

Still, no one anticipates clever practice expansion until after this year or in to 2011, as companies sojourn changeable about the mercantile recovery.

The discreet proceed to employing found in the Manpower consult mirrors the mood of dual new surveys of corporate monetary management team by UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University.

The N.C. Employment Security Commission is scheduled to recover Jan jobs interpretation this morning.

Staff bard Alan M. Wolf

Using a superficial knowledge of neon can lift the dullest room out of the winter ennui

When majority people think of neon, visions of Eighties Day-Glo wardrobe and smiley faces open to mind. But how about neon in interiors? Somehow that doesn"t receptive to advice as if it would work in the homes.

And yet, here we are at the commencement of a new decade with a superficial knowledge of neon looming in the shops.

Neon is not for timorous violets - rather it"s for people who wish to have a confidant statement.

Spoon club stool, 280, Heal"s, heals.co.uk Briar lampshade, 89, Clarissa Hulse at Abode Living, abodeliving.co.uk

Scrabble players unite! Beyonc� is over the dark Jack Malvern

Jack Malvern & ,}

Like an annoying uncle at a marriage you do the musty duck to Lady Gaga, the owners of Scrabble are perplexing to interest to a younger assembly by becoming different the manners to concede players to make make make use of of the names of cocktail stars.

Shakira and Beyonc would be authorised (both 64 points if you embody the 50-point reward for utilizing all 7 letters), as would less profitable single-name celebrities such as Jordan (14), Kilroy (13) and Hitler (9). Indeed, all correct nouns would be satisfactory game, that will prompt hours of fun as family groups rivet in family cheering matches over either it is slight to make make make use of of Bombay, Burma or supplement the appendix inople to the finish of constant.

It is probable that this proclamation is no some-more than a device to prompt angry comment, but it creates Mattel, that owns the rights to the diversion outward North America, see idiotic.

The unsentimental flaws are obvious. Who is to confirm either Limahl, of the 1980s cocktail organisation Kajagoogoo, is amply critical to consequence inclusion? Is Dec, of Ant and Dec, acceptable on his own?

BACKGROUNDRules of Scrabble shift for the initial timeImagine: Scrabble; Oliver Postgate: A Life in Small FilmsAre Scrabble"s men of letters usually cheating?War of difference over Scrabble compendium

But Mattels attempt is dunderheaded in a some-more critical respect: the association is relaxing the standards at a time when Scrabble has already turn as well liberal. Casual players who have ventured in to online versions of the diversion have detected that the guardians have stretched the central difference list to embody conditions that are at most appropriate problematic and at misfortune illegal.

Dubious difference embody Pernod, a code of aniseed liqueur, smoyle, a movement of grin that has not been used for multiform centuries, and et, that is presumably the past moving of eat. You competence have thought that compilers of Scrabble word lists would be fire-and-brimstone pedants, but when The Times alerted them to these anomalies last year they replied that rival players do not caring about language. The tip players, they said, are statisticians who instruct as most permutations as possible, even if this equates to utilizing Maori slang.

It seems that Mattel has no instruct to safety the firmness of the diversion invented by Alfred Butts in 1948. It is additionally insufficient, in an online world, to direct that players can usually make make make use of of difference that they can define, since it is as well easy to see them up.

What is indispensable is a version of the central Scrabble list that has unsteadiness difference excised. This does not have to be a approved process. A small physique of prudent pedants could furnish an book in a make a difference of weeks. Is there any one in a nation with messy copyright coercion who would be rebuilt to host such a service?

Jack Malvern is a Times reporter

Tories conflict individualist Lib Dems after discuss ratings

The Tories currently launched a inhuman handbill opposite individualist Liberal Democrat policies after Nick Clegg emerged as the transparent personality in a purchase of present polls following last nights ancestral leaders" debate.

Jubilant Lib Dems hailed their leaders performance, observant it could renovate the General Election battle, giving them the movement to renovate Labours second place in the perspective polls.

But the Conservatives done transparent they dictated to aim the celebration in the run up to the second discuss subsequent week, when Mr Clegg will again go head-to-head with David Cameron and Gordon Brown.

A clever Lib Dem opening on polling day would enlarge the chances of a hung parliament, shortening the prospects of the Conservatives being means to form a infancy government.

The significance of the debates was underlined by observation total that showed a rise assembly 9.9 million tuned in for the 90 notation confront on ITV1 violence even Coronation Street that rught away preceded it.

Mr Cameron supposed his Lib Dem antithesis had had a great discuss but insisted the Tories could still delight on polling day.

Its a outrageous challenge, he pronounced in a phone-in on BBC Radio Manchester.

We are in the center of a hard-fought and difficult choosing campaign. Its a discuss I hold we can win. Its a discuss I hold we ought to win since the nation is great out for change.

His shade childrens cabinet member Michael Gove warned they right away dictated to theme the Lib Dems process programme to heated scrutiny.

He highlighted Lib Dem plans to stick on the euro, throw the Trident chief halt and suggest an freedom to bootleg immigrants, which, he said, lay well outward the domestic mainstream.

The larger grade of inspection these policies have, the some-more that people will realize that whilst Nick Clegg is a unequivocally tasteful sold in majority ways, the policies of his celebration are outward the mainstream and a small bit eccentricnot indispensably what you would instruct at a time of predicament and difficulty, he told Sky News.

Nick Clegg can fool around the purpose of the sparky and feisty outsider, the new child on the blockand he plays that with a grade of assurancebut if you are creation a preference about who the budding apportion is, it is some-more critical to weigh in the shift process decisions.

In contrast, Labour was penetrating to emphasize areas of agreement with the Lib Dems, with Home Secretary Alan Johnson indicating to their antithesis to pull by spending cuts this year.

Cameron and Osborne roughly alone in Western governing body hold you cut at the tallness of a recession. We determine with the Lib Dems on that, he told the BBC.

We determine additionally on the need for unequivocally estimable reforms to the constitution electoral remodel in particular.

Mr Clegg, on the discuss route in Warrington, was concerned to slightly wet down expectations following the debate, observant it had been an critical impulse but stressing there was still a prolonged approach to go.

It is only the beginning, but there is utterly a approach to go until people have their contend in the list box. The leaders discuss was an critical step, but it was the commencement of the discuss proper, he said.

Lib Dem unfamiliar affairs orator Edward Davey pronounced Mr Cleggs clever display in the discuss could give the celebration a lift that could see it pass Labour in the polls.

I"m not indispensably observant the going to happen, but the probable this will utterly shift this choosing campaign, he told the BBC.

If we see polls with the Liberal Democrats catching up on Labour, and even overtaking them, that is going to give us the momentum.

Mr Clegg surfaced 4 present polls in the hours after the broadcast, claiming 51% of viewers" votes in a consult for The Sun, 43% in an additional for ITV News and 37% in a content summary check for Sky News.

The Sun had Mr Cameron on 29% and Mr Brown on 19%, ITV1s check scored them on 26% and 20% respectively and the Sky News consult put the Tory personality marginally at the back of the Prime Minister by 31% to 32%.

In The Times, the Lib Dem personality was rated the personality by a gigantic 61%, opposite 22% for Mr Cameron and 17% for Mr Brown.

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis after played down the Liberal Democrats" success in present perspective polls, insisting that the preference was in between a Labour or Conservative government.

He told BBC Radio 4s World At One: We"re fighting for each opinion and seat, of march we are, and we"ll go on to do so and the subsequent dual debates will be a consequential piece as that.

So far as the Lib Dems are concerned, of course, opposite majority of the nation they are the third celebration and the issue confronting Lib Dem electorate is either they instruct to see a Labour supervision after May 6 or a Conservative government.

He pronounced the policies of Labour and Liberal Democrats were unequivocally close together.

The Lib Dems begin as the third party. Lib Dem electorate by choosing by casting votes Lib Dem of march simply have it some-more expected that the Conservatives will get in as opposite the Labour Party...

These are issues that electorate will need to weigh as they watch the debate.

Colombia choosing competition starts Santos adored

Andrew Cawthorne and Patrick Markey BOGOTA Sat February 27, 2010 1:09pm EST Factboxes Factbox: Facts about Colombia"s President Alvaro UribeFri, February twenty-six 2010Factbox: After Uribe, who"s in line for Colombia"s presidency?Fri, February twenty-six 2010Factbox: Colombian claimant SantosSat, February twenty-seven 2010 Related News After eight years, Uribe a warrior until the endSat, February twenty-seven 2010 Related Video Uribe barred from Colombia poll Sat, February twenty-seven 2010 < 1 / 2 >

Brown wrong on taxation claims contend Tories

Gordon Brown was yesterday indicted of creation fake claims about the series of businesses since Government assistance with their taxation bills.

The Tories pronounced the Prime Minister had regularly insisted that 300,000 firms have benefited from a intrigue that allows them to check payments to HM Revenue and Customs, when the genuine figure was essentially 160,000.

Shadow Treasury arch cabinet member Philip Hammond has created to Mr Brown job on him to set the jot down straight. The involvement comes after the Prime Minister certified last week he poorly claimed counterclaim spending had risen in genuine conditions each year when he gave justification to the Iraq Inquiry.

During the same Prime Ministers questions, Mr Brown told Tory former apportion John Redwood that "300,000 small businesses have been since direct, money upsurge assistance by the Government amounting to �5bn over new years".

But the Conservatives forked to a Commons created answer from Business Minister Pat McFadden that pronounced that "160,000 businesses have been means to widespread �5bn in commercial operation taxes by permitting businesses some-more time to compensate their taxation bill". The celebration claims Mr Brown is "double counting" since most of those firms have sealed mixed agreements, bringing the sum series of deferrals to 292,000.

Patients who have colonoscopy achieved by gastroenterologists less expected to rise colorectal cancer investigate finds

The altogether occurrence of colorectal cancer is marked down for at slightest 10 years following a disastrous colonoscopy, compared with the ubiquitous population. However, colorectal cancers do start in people following a disastrous colonoscopy, pronounced Linda Rabeneck, MD, MPH, of the University of Toronto and lead writer of this study. For this reason, carrying endless grave precision matters, generally when procedures are some-more severe to perform. We found that in in between those physicians who perform colonoscopy in the sanatorium setting, gastroenterologists are some-more proficient at colonoscopy than alternative physicians, together with ubiquitous surgeons. This might simulate the substantial grave precision in endoscopy that forms piece of gastroenterology core precision mandate in the U.S. and Canada.

AGA considers colonoscopy to be the bullion customary for detecting and stealing adenomas, and colonoscopic polypectomy is compared with a marked down occurrence of CRC. Colonoscopy is permitted as an choice for CRC screening by the U.S. Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, that provides the undiluted sign to patients elderly 50 and comparison that they need to be screened for colorectal cancer, pronounced Gail A. Hecht, MD, MS, AGAF, boss of the AGA Institute. Colorectal cancer is the third heading means of cancer death, but it is one of the infancy preventable cancers when held earlier. We cannot stress strongly sufficient that screening saves lives. Patients should speak to their doctors to plead all of their colorectal cancer screening options.

Study Results

Doctors identified a conspirator of 110,402 Ontario residents, 50 to 80 years old, who had a disastrous finish colonoscopy in in between Jan. 1, 1992, and Dec. 31, 1997. Cohort members had no before story of CRC, inflammatory bowel disease or a new colonic resection. Each particular was followed by Dec. 31, 2006, and those with a new diagnosis of CRC were identified.

During the 15-year follow-up period, 1,596 (14.5 percent) grown CRC. There was no organisation in in between the normal series of colonoscopies achieved and a diagnosis of CRC. Among those who had their colonoscopies at a hospital, that was the infancy (86 percent), those who had their procedures achieved by a non-gastroenterologist, e.g., ubiquitous surgeon, internist or family physician, were at significantly increasing risk for building successive CRC. For those who underwent their colonoscopies in a in isolation office/clinic, endoscopist featured item was not significantly compared with situation CRC. These investigate commentary indicate that endoscopist featured item is an critical decding factor of the efficacy of colonoscopy in common clinical practice.

A Sexy Partner Can Make You Seem More Attractive LiveScience

If you instruct to be alluring, you competence wish to span up with a prohibited partner. A tasteful poignant alternative will means alternative intensity friends to find you some-more desirable, new examine suggests.

The formula hold some-more for women than men, who lend towards to find tasteful ladies fascinating no make a disproportion who they are insinuate with.

While the commentary competence be generally beneficial to singles, the researchers are meddlesome in guidance about the mysterious�rules of attraction�that request via the animal kingdom.

Animals mostly select friends by imitating the choices of others. For instance, womanlike guppies typically cite brightly colored males, but will switch to bearing drab ones if they see alternative females mating with them. Copying others could infer beneficial, generally for fresh people that impersonate some-more experienced ones. Still, small is well known about what underlies this function in any species.

Human see, human do?

To see if humans duplicate others as well, scientists had thirty masculine and thirty womanlike volunteers who all described themselves as true rate how tasteful they found photos of 36 men and 36 women. The volunteers were afterwards shown 144 cinema of men and women interconnected together and asked how fascinating they would find long-term relations with members of the conflicting sex in the pictures.

Both masculine and womanlike volunteers rated people in the cinema as some-more fascinating when they were interconnected subsequent to tasteful companions, the scientists found. By utilizing cameras to lane eye movements during the experiments, the researchers additionally saw that when volunteers outlayed some-more time seeking at a intensity mates�unattractive partner, they were less meddlesome in that mate.

"Even though people were usually asked to weigh the intensity partner in each�photograph, they all outlayed a poignant volume of time seeking at the friends partner," pronounced researcher Jessica Yorzinski, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis. "Women outlayed some-more time seeking at the partners that they found attractive, whilst men shifted their gawk behind and onward more."

In addition, whilst masculine volunteers were meddlesome in tasteful women in any case of their partners, womanlike volunteers were some-more doubtful of�attractive men�if they were interconnected with unappealing companions. This disproportion competence may be be secure in how women are mostly choosier about friends afterwards men.

"The men competence have usually had a higher turn of seductiveness in all intensity mates, and were less cultured than females would be," Yorzinski said.

Playing the field

One may be upsetting effect competence be that if you are attractive, would-be adulterers competence find your associate some-more fascinating as well. Still, "we essentially told subjects that the couples they were observation were no longer together," Yorzinski said. "We didnt wish to emanate a examine about foe with someone already in a relationship, that would engage all kinds of issues."

As such, these commentary could essentially assistance singles.

"If the singular chairman was formerly seen with an tasteful partner, this could still progress their chances," Yorzinski noted. "If you were a lady and a prior beloved was tasteful and a little alternative man saw you with him, may be that would enlarge your chances if you pennyless up and were accessible again. Or may be if women you do online dating Web sites are graphic with tasteful boyfriends, that would assistance them get some-more responses with their ads."

The researchers remarkable they usually focused on the earthy lure of the partner, and that destiny examine could examine either alternative aspects, such as personality, competence additionally change desires. Scientists could additionally try the underpinnings of this function in the brain to see how these decisions are made.

"Furthermore, we would similar to to lane the gawk of people in a some-more naturalistic setting, not usually in front of a computer screen, as they select their mates, may be to see where people see when perplexing to collect up a date at a club or when�speed dating," Yorzinski added.

Yorzinski and her co-worker Michael Platt minute their commentary online Feb. 9 in the journal�PLoS ONE.

The LiveScience Sex Quiz 4 Myths of Online Dating Photos Revealed Top 10 Aphrodisiacs

Robin Wright Richard Schiff set for Bway debuts

March 23, 2010, 3:47 PM EST

NEW YORK (AP) -- Robin Wright and Richard Schiff will have their Broadway entrance subsequent deteriorate in a reconstruction of Lanford Wilson"s Pulitzer Prize-winning "Talley"s Folly."

Producers Phil Monat, T. Richard Fitzgerald and Randall L. Wreghitt voiced Tuesday that the prolongation will open in open 2011 at a drama to be announced. Marshall Mason, who creatively destined the fool around a little thirty years ago, will direct. Mason additionally destined such Wilson plays as "Fifth of July" and "Angels Fall."

Wright is most appropriate well known for her purposes in such drive-in theatre as "Forrest Gump," "The Princess Bride" and "Hurlyburly." Schiff played communications executive Toby Zeigler in "The West Wing" on NBC.

,,,

Norfolk to compensate $4 mln to solve chlorine brief box

WASHINGTON Mon Mar 8, 2010 4:14pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Railroad company Norfolk Southern Corp. agreed to pay $4 million to settle charges it violated the Clean Water Act when chlorine gas and diesel fuel spilled during a derailment that killed nine people, the U.S. government said on Monday.

A Norfolk Southern train derailed on January 6, 2005, in South Carolina, leading to the puncture of a chlorine tank car and the spill of diesel fuel from the locomotive engine fuel tanks, the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency said.

In addition to the nine people dead from the exposure to the chlorine, hundreds of others sought care because of respiratory distress and more than 5,000 others were evacuated from homes and businesses.

"Companies have a responsibility to workers, emergency responders and the community to make sure a serious accident doesn"t become a senseless tragedy," Stan Meiburg, the acting regional administrator for the EPA, said in a statement.

Norfolk Southern said in a statement that it did not "admit any liability nor any of the facts alleged in the complaint, and it resolves all claims brought" by the Justice Department.

As part of the consent decree, the company also agreed to provide training to transportation and environmental personnel and restock fish in a pond affected by the spill, among other things, according to the federal agencies.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Hedge account matchmakers cannot shun inspection

Matthew Goldstein and Svea Herbst-Bayliss - Analysis NEW YORK/BOSTON Thu Mar 18, 2010 1:05pm EDT Related News Hedge fund matchmakers cannot escape scrutinyThu, Mar 18 2010 Stocks & &

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - The specter of scandal never seems to fully lift from the business that plays matchmaker to hedge fund managers eager to connect with industry experts.

Deals

Now those firms are not only confronting the fallout from the Galleon Group insider-trading case, but a new problem: slumping revenue as the financial crisis has pruned the pool of potential clients.

The so-called expert networking industry was first thrown for a loop in 2007 when U.S. securities regulators began looking into allegations that some hired-gun consultants had improperly divulged confidential corporate information to traders looking to score a quick profit.

The investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo eventually ground to a halt and did not result in any enforcement action.

But lingering regulatory concerns about the potential for abuse in the rent-an-expert business never went away, according to legal sources.

Those sources said securities regulators are once again taking a look at the expert networking business, in part because the Galleon case revealed the lengths that traders can go to crack corporate secrets.

This latest inquiry by the SEC also may not result in any enforcement action and it is not clear if regulators are focused on any particular firm, the sources said.

Still, the chronic suspicion is enough to make some hedge funds steer clear of the industry, even though managers know that may put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Although it is the experts themselves that have been eyed for improper leaks, the networking firms could still potentially be held liable by regulators for their actions.

Robert Romero, who runs Connective Capital, a $65 million tech-focused Palo Alto-based hedge fund, said the trouble with experts who get paid to advise traders is they may tempted "to cross the line to provide inappropriate information."

DRAMATIC HALT

The industry is also feeling the fallout from the financial crisis.

Hundreds of hedge fund firms have been gone out of business in the last two years, meaning there are fewer potential clients for the estimated three-dozen expert networking firms. And even among those managers who survived the crisis, there is a desire to cut costs.

The result is a dramatic halt to the once rapid growth of the expert network industry - a business largely dominated by one big player, Gerson Lehrman Group.

Last year was the first time the roughly 10-year-old industry posted an overall decline in revenue.

Consulting firm Integrity Research Associates estimates that revenue for the matchmaking industry declined about 16 percent to $360 million in 2009. And it may take until 2013 before the industry tops the $430 million in revenues it tallied in 2008.

"Customers are getting very focused on trying to get price reductions," said Integrity Research Chairman Michael Mayhew. "The likely outcome will be fewer and bigger players."

Retrenchment and consolidation has already begun.

Last year, JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) spun off Primary Insight, the expert network business it acquired by rescuing parts of Bear Stearns in 2008. Also, McGraw Hill (MHP.N) sold its Vista Research division to Guidepoint Global, absorbing a $10 million loss on the sale, said industry sources.

COMPLIANCE AS MARKETING TOOL

Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters (TRI.TO), which entered the expert networking business with high-expectations, is scaling back its operation, sources said. The company, which owns the Reuters news service, did not comment.

Mayhew predicts the firms that will prosper are ones that have spent heavily on compliance to guard against abuses.

Certainly Gerson Lehrman, which had been a focal point of the 2007 investigation, is trying to use the compliance measures it has put in place as a marketing tool.

"We expect competition in our industry but we believe only expert network firms that invest in compliance procedures and systems the way we have, will thrive," said Laurence Herman, Gerson Lehrman"s general counsel.

Firm officials said it spent $10 million over the past five years to develop technology it uses to keep track of meetings it arranges between its consultants and customers.

Last year, Gerson Lehrman, which controls a little more than 60 percent of the market, earned more than $240 million in revenue, a person familiar the company said. By comparison, Coleman Research Group, a competitor, said it took in $22.2 million in revenue in 2009.

Many matchmaking firms charge clients a yearly retainer which can start around $60,000. Premium networking services can cost clients more than $1 million a year, sources said.

"It is a very expensive service, but something we use because it provides critical information," said Thomas Kamp, president of hedge fund Cornerstone Capital Management.

Going forward, managers said matchmaking firms will have to demonstrate that their experts are not simply making the hedge fund circuit, saying the same thing to one fund after another.

"The marginal value of anyone speaking goes down, if everyone is talking to the same guy," said one hedge fund manager.

(Reporting by Matthew Goldstein and Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Deals

Go shops mostly destroy to expose new bids

Jessica Hall PHILADELPHIA Wed Mar 24, 2010 6:12pm EDT Stocks & &

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Telecommunications company RCN Corp (RCNI.O) and CKE Restaurants (CKR.N) may be soliciting new suitors, but they will have a tough time finding higher bids if history is any indication.

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Both RCN and CKE have agreed to takeovers, but their deals give them additional time, called a "go shop" period, to find a higher offer. Such shopping outings, however, rarely prove fruitful.

Since 2004, there have been 108 deals with clauses giving the target company a go shop period, often 30 to 60 days, according to FactSet MergerMetrics.

Among those deals, only 8.3 percent found a higher offer within the go shop window, while 13.9 percent found one eventually, FactSet MergerMetrics said.

"There may be some companies that haven"t run full auctions and have to make sure they are satisfying their "Revlon" duties," said Jeffrey Kaplan, global head of mergers and acquisitions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The 1985 case of Revlon (REV.N) v. MacAndrews Forbes Holdings established that when a board concludes that the company"s sale is inevitable, the directors must be neutral arbiters to ensure that shareholders get the best possible offer.

"A company and a board will say: "Let"s sign up a deal and have a go shop just to be certain,"" Kaplan said. "It"s not likely you"re going to get topped. It"s just good governance for a public company."

Typically, however, deals have "no shop" clauses that prevent a target from actively soliciting new bids while allowing it to consider an unsolicited offer.

Use of go shop provisions has been flat. In the first three months of this year, they have been used five times, compared with 19 times in 2009 and 18 times in 2008, according to FactSet MergerMetrics.

"Go shop provisions will continue to be used more frequently," said Allen Michel, a professor at Boston University"s School of Management.

"The technique is increasingly being used in a wide variety of acquisitions because it is a seemingly low-cost way of providing the best possible price to target shareholders and provides a means by which directors can satisfy their Revlon duties," Michel said.

FRUITLESS SHOPPING

Go shops generally do not lead to new offers, as SkillSoft Plc (SKIL.O) found. Earlier this month, the e-learning software maker ended its go shop period with no offers other than the original $1.1 billion bid from a group of private equity firms.

Less typical is the success seen by Amicas Inc (AMCS.O), which got a higher bid from Merge Healthcare Inc (MRGE.O) than its original deal with Thomas Bravo LLC. The new offer did not come within the 45-day go shop period, but Amicas still accepted it and walked away from its original deal.

"A downside for target company shareholders is the sometimes high break-up fee associated with the go shop provision that is levied on the target with the acceptance of another offer," Michel said.

Sometimes a new bidder doesn"t win, even if it tops an existing offer.

"It"s hard to top a bid," Bank of America"s Kaplan said. "You have to deal with publicity, pay a break-up fee, and it"s hard to differentiate among bidders if there are financial buyers with no synergies."

In 2007, Restoration Hardware, which had accepted a takeover offer from Catterton Partners, got a competing -- and higher-- bid from Sears Holdings Corp (SHLD.O) during the go shop window. But the company turned Sears down after the board determined the proposal "was subject to significant uncertainties."

Even when topped, some suitors don"t go away quietly.

In December, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc (GMCR.O) made a competing bid for Diedrich Coffee Inc (DDRX.O) during a go shop window, scuttling the target"s original agreement with Peet"s Coffee Tea Inc (PEET.O).

However, Peet"s holds out hope. It has extended its tender offer just in case the Green Mountain Coffee deal collapses under regulatory review.

(Reporting by Jessica Hall; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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