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Friday, October 25, 2013

Scotland dodges blow as deal saves big refinery, plant

By Simon Falush and Alexander Winning

LONDON (Reuters) - Scotland dodged a heavy blow to its economy on Friday with a deal to rescue its biggest industrial site and safeguard up to 1,400 jobs.

Operator Ineos said it would continue to operate the Grangemouth petrochemical plant and refinery after the Unite union agreed to a three-year pay freeze and a cut in pension benefits and pledged not to strike for three years. Britain and Scotland also pledged to provide financial support.

"Redundancies will be very limited. There's a future for this site, and it's long-term sustainable," Calum MacLean, chairman of Grangemouth UK, said at a news conference.

Ineos had previously said losses would force it to shut the petrochemical plant and could also threaten the future of the 210,000 barrel-per-day refinery, Scotland's only refinery which provides around 70 percent of its fuel.

A Grangemouth closure would have damaged the governing Scottish National Party as it campaigns for independence from Britain ahead of a referendum in September next year. Many Scots have told pollsters that their biggest concern will be the likely impact a separation would have on the economy.

Switzerland-based Ineos said shareholders would invest 300 million pounds ($485 million) in the site to cover losses.

Around half of this will go to fund a new terminal for importing gas from the United States, which is due to be built by 2017.

The rest would cover Grangemouth's ongoing losses, said Tom Crotty, a director at Ineos Group. Ineos has said the complex was losing 10 million pounds per month.

"We've given the chemicals business another 15 to 20 years on the back of new raw materials, new contracts and significant investment," MacLean said.

Crotty said the company was restarting both plants from Friday and they could be fully operational within two weeks.

Ineos is the full owner of the petrochemical plant and a joint owner of the refinery along with PetroChina, which holds 49.9 percent.

Union members, among other concessions, agreed to give up a final-salary pension plan for a defined-contribution plan.

"Obviously today's news is tinged with sadness. Decent men and women are being asked to make sacrifices to hold onto their jobs, but the clear wish of our members is that we work with the company," Pat Rafferty, Unite's Scottish secretary, said in a statement.

SAVING JOBS

The Scottish government has agreed to provide a 9 million pound grant to support Grangemouth, and the British government has given initial approval for a 125 million pound loan guarantee, Ineos said. The loan would contribute to the shareholders' 300 million pound investment.

"A really important petrochemical plant will stay open, savings thousands of jobs, not just at that plant but in the supply chain," British Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC.

A closure of the refinery, which provides power for a major oil pipeline, might also have reduced supplies of the major North Sea crude that underpins the Brent oil benchmark, used as a basis for setting oil prices around the world.

Europe's oil refining industry is under extreme pressure from lower-cost competitors in the United States, the Middle East and Asia, while regional demand has declined.

Such market pressures led to the closure of British refiner Coryton near London in 2012 after its parent company, Swiss-based Petroplus, filed for bankruptcy.

Unite had been in a dispute with Ineos for weeks over the dismissal of a union representative. The company halted operations at the two plants earlier this month and demanded changes in terms and conditions to restart them.

"Grangemouth is the powerhouse of the Scottish economy. It now has a fighting chance of upholding this crucial role into the future," Unite's Rafferty said.

Employment lawyer David Fenton at Keystone law said the closure was an extreme tactic to force the union to back down and could set a worrying precedent.

"This should not be used as a tactic for future disputes - i.e. accept our terms or we will close down. It is after all a tactic that can only be used once if your bluff is called." ($1 = 0.6186 British pounds)

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by Jane Baird)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/scotlands-grangemouth-refinery-set-stay-open-sky-093247303--finance.html
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Nintendo 2DS

The Nintendo 3DS is an excellent handheld gaming system, but the 3D feature isn't integral. The third dimension can look very convincing, but you need to keep your head and the 3DS very still when using it, and many gamers turn off the 3D after playing for a while. The 3DS XL has the same problem, and at $200, it costs the same as a Sony PlayStation Vita now. You probably wouldn't want to give any of these devices to a small kid for fear of damage from abuse, and the 3D screens come with a warning for children ages six and under. Nintendo tackles these issues with the 2DS, a less expensive handheld ($129.99 list) with a flat (rather than clamshell) design, no 3D support, but compatibility with every feature and game available on the 3DS. The 3DS XL or the PS Vita might be more appealing to you, but the 2DS earns our Editors' Choice for being an affordable, accessible, and feature-filled game system you can safely give to your kids.

Design
Shaped like a thin wedge of cheese, the 2DS sports a slightly rounded top that's wider than the curved bottom. The face and back panel are mostly black, with a red or blue band around the edge (the red version looks particularly gouda-like). The wider top edge holds the game card slot, the power port, and shoulder buttons. The thin bottom edge houses the headphone jack and a Sleep switch that puts the 2DS in a power-saving standby mode, just like closing the clamshell Nintendo handhelds does. On the triangular right edge, there's a place for the included stylus, an SD card slot, and a lanyard hole. On the left are the volume slider and another lanyard hole.

The face of the 2DS contains the displays and all of the controls of the 3DS XL, placed similarly to where they would be with the clamshell handheld unfolded. The 3.5-inch upper and 3-inch lower screens (both of which are actually parts of the same LCD panel, covered by a plastic bezel) sit in the center of the handheld. The display is flanked by a circular analog pad and digital direction pad on the left, and four face buttons (A, B, X, and Y), Start, and Select buttons, and the Power button with power and charging indicators on the right. A front-facing camera sits above the top screen, matched by a pair of cameras around back that let the 2DS capture 3D video despite not being able to display it. (The 3D video feature is more useful for augmented reality features in certain games, which are fully functional on the 2DS.) A large Home button lives below the bottom screen.

Since it doesn't fold like the 3DS or 3DS XL, the 2DS dwarfs the other two handhelds in their closed positions. The unfolded 3DS XL is larger, and the 2DS is less pocketable. For a device with 3.5-inch and 3-inch screens, it feels downright clunky, when compared with the 3DS and its identical screen sizes, and even the 3DS XL with its big 4.9-inch top screen, and the PS Vita with 5-inch OLED touch screen. It's a tradeoff that comes with the nice price; the 3DS XL and Vita each cost $70 more, and the original 3DS costs $40 more and offers a much sleeker, smaller body. The lack of a hinge makes the 2DS seem sturdier than the 3DS, though, at least in the sense that the most vulnerable spot on the clamshell design is now gone. The handheld feels more plasticky and less solid than the 3DS and 3DS XL.

The controls are fortunately untouched from the 3DS and 3DS XL, and the face buttons and analog pad are as large as they are on the 3DS XL. The shoulder buttons are slightly larger, and are concave to feel much more comfortable under the fingers while you play. Depending on your tastes, the controls might sit too high on the front of the 2DS and too close to the shoulder buttons to feel comfortable. This is mostly an issue for adult users with larger hands. Kids should find the 2DS much easier hold and play with.

Features
You can do anything on the 2DS you could do on the 3DS, except see images in 3D. 3DS games will render in 2D, and with the exception of a few minor puzzles in some games that rely on the 3D effect, like Super Mario 3D Land, this won't affect game play. You can still play original DS games either in card form or downloaded to an SD card. A respectable number of downloaded games fit on the included 4GB card, but you can expand to up to a 32GB card to get a massive library of 3DS, DS, and Virtual Console titles onto the system. The StreetPass and all Mii Plaza features and optional games that go with them work here. You can still use the 3D camera (the camera app defaults to 2D, but you can switch to 3D mode to take photos and videos to view on a 3DS), and the front-facing camera, the Web browser, and even Netflix and Hulu Plus are all the same. Basically, the 2DS is a 3DS that doesn't display 3D.

The 2DS is clearly Nintendo's attempt to make a more accessible handheld for kids. It succeeds in putting parents at ease with its lower price and hinge-free design (and 2D screen, if the effects of 3D are a concern). The 3DS and 3DS XL are still far superior handhelds for adult gamers who want to play Nintendo handheld games, but at just $130 the 2DS gives little hands a sturdy, inexpensive game system with loads of games. It easily earns our Editors' Choice for its price, features, and appeal.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/ls2UlyvwsLQ/0,2817,2426168,00.asp
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'Homeland' Showrunner Alex Gansa on the Big Reveal in 'Game On'

[Warning: Spoilers ahead for last Sunday's episode of Homeland, "Game On"]

After watching the last scene of Sunday's Homeland, the fourth outing in its third season, many viewers may want to revisit the last few episodes. "I'm hoping that's the general consensus," executive producer and showrunner Alex Gansa tells The Hollywood Reporter. "This should answer some questions for people."

Carrie (Claire Danes) finally made her way out of her forced institutionalization -- and though circumstances seemed to be pushing her toward turning her back on the CIA, the last scene of the episode reveals that she and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) have actually been working together all along. Carrie and her mentor choreographed her second turn being thrown under the bus by her employers in an attempt to bring down the terrorist network involved in the bombing.

Q&A: Damian Lewis Talks Brody's 'Homeland' Return, Rock Bottom and TV Fatherhood

Gansa, who chatted with THR about the big twist, explains that the unseen wheels were set in motion as soon as the second season faded to black, where Homeland is shifting its attention now, and how Brody (Damian Lewis) will fit in down the road.

How long have Saul and Carrie been in cahoots?

We started the year by talking about what had happened at the end of season two. Carrie and Saul are together, standing there with all of the bodies around them. Clearly, they are culpable for what happened -- Saul and Carrie together. As intelligence officers, the first thing that they would try to do is to turn this tragedy into something positive. That's what they went to work on the day after the bombing. How were they going to catch the guys responsible for this? A plan was hatched quite quickly in the aftermath of the attack on the CIA.

Does this mean the CIA fallout will play a lesser role now?

We view season three in three movements -- each being four episodes -- with this being the end of the first movement. It was a long con that they played in order to draw out this Iranian intelligence officer, Majid Javadi [Shaun Toub].

The cast and producers were very candid about a lot of early season-three plot points during in the summer. Was that intended to play up the red herring?

We were also playing a bit of a con here from the story room. That said, one of the thing we've learned from our CIA consultants is that the most successful intelligence operations are 95 percent true -- and the 95 percent that's true, in this case, is that Saul and Carrie were culpable and that, largely, the CIA as an organization would look for a scapegoat to lay the blame on. Saul and Carrie were playing on that natural, institutional inclination to find a scapegoat. They used that, but when you go back to the first three episodes, you can see the toll that it's taking on both of them. The con also has its consequences.

PHOTOS: 'Homeland': Portraits of the Emmy-Winning Cast and Creators

Like that moment between Carrie and Saul in the hospital at the end of the second episode.

It comes down to the line toward the end of this episode when she says, "You really should have gotten me out of the hospital." That was one step too far. That was the part of her role-playing that hit too close. Although they are in this ruse together, it's painful for Carrie to admit that she's to blame for what happened and to think that because she was on her meds, she missed stopping the attack. All of that is true and playing through her head.

What does the next movement focus on?

They are now in the process of luring him out into the open and landing this guy. That's the substance of the second movement.

How will Brody figure in to all of this?

I will say that Brody becomes a principal player in the architecture of the last sweep of episodes. His predicament down in Caracas and his separation from Carrie and Saul is really paramount as we move into the next two movements of the season.

Did you have any reservations about having an episode ("Tower of David") that was almost exclusively from Brody's point of view?

It was really a function of how much story was to be told there. Just anecdotally, some people felt we were with him too much and others felt we were with him too little. It felt right to us to establish his predicament and to parallel his plight with Carrie's. These are two people in some very desperate circumstances. The show has paralleled their stories before and some of the most successful episodes that we have done have drawn comparisons between their predicaments.

Stylistically, the episode was very different from the rest of the series.

I sort of leave it to the audience to tell us if we were successful or not, but it's fun for us to mix up the show a little bit and not tell the same story over and over again -- to take a risk here and there. We also teased the audience by not having Brody in the first two episodes, so we gave them a healthy dose of him in number three.

Q&A: 'Homeland' EP Alex Gansa Talks Season 3, Benghazi and Demedicating Carrie -- Again

The Brody family storyline has really been dominated by Dana (Morgan Saylor) this season. When did you decide you'd focus so much on her?

Because Brody was not onscreen and not part of the story in those first couple of episodes, we really wanted to tell the aftermath of the bombing in a more personal way. The relationship between Dana and her father is very strong. It's stronger than his relationship with Jessica [Morena Baccarin] and certainly stronger than his relationship with Chris [Jackson Pace]. Going back to the first season … the first time that Brody came back from captivity, he gives his wife a hug -- but it's kind of a tentative one. The first time we see him open up, it's in response to his daughter. That led to the end of season one, when she talks him off the ledge when he's about to explode that vest inside the bunker with the vice president. Her role grew through season two, and she just felt like the logical person. For the weight of what her dad did, it just landed on her in a more profound way.

How much does the story stick with Dana moving forward?

You'll see in the next four episodes, and certainly the last four, that she doesn't play as big of a role. She's not physically onscreen a lot, but her presence is there in a profound way for Brody and for Carrie.

How was all the secret-keeping for you personally?

We've taken a degree of pleasure in it. I was an amateur magician when I was a kid, and for me, the best tricks were the ones where the magician convinces the audience that he's made a mistake – only to prove at the end that he's been ahead of them all along. We've been leaning into that idea a little bit, and hopefully it will have paid off in episode four.

E-mail: Michael.OConnell@THR.com
Twitter: @MikeyLikesTV

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/news/~3/MFWwXqOzP7E/homeland-showrunner-alex-gansa-big-649562
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Saudi Women Go For A Spin In Latest Challenge To Driving Ban

A woman drives a car in Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are barred from driving, but activists have launched a renewed protest and are urging women to drive on Saturday.

Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters/Landov

Activists in Saudi Arabia tried once, they tried again and now they're making a third challenge to the kingdom's long-standing ban on female drivers.

Some women have recently made short drives, posting videos on social media sites, and many more are planning to get behind the wheel on Saturday.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that effectively prohibits women from driving, a ban supported by conservative clerics. While there is no law formally banning female drivers, the government does not give them licenses.

Government authorities seem to be more lenient these days, however.

Sara Hussein, 32, says it's time to claim the right to drive.

"Think back in history — Rosa Parks was the only person who sat down on the bus, wasn't she? And then it started to happen gradually," Hussein says. "It does have to start with the few brave people who are willing to risk whatever there is to risk."

Hussein's mother, Aziza al-Yousef, who is in her 50s and teaches computer science at King Saud University, is a key organizer of the drive-in. Activists set Saturday as a date for a national road rally, but also encouraged women to just get behind the wheel any time.

"We are saying, 'Just go ahead and drive now,' " says al-Yousef. "I know women started driving. The messages are in the hundreds. We are counting the videotapes."

YouTube

Activists have been challenging Saudi Arabia's ban on female drivers by taking to the road and posting videos. Here is one of what organizers say are 100 videos posted so far.

The mother and daughter say the videos are coming from across the kingdom and even show one man teaching his wife and sister to drive.

Relying On Male Drivers

Saudi Arabia was made for driving, with wide open spaces and cheap gas. The sprawling capital, Riyadh, is as big as Los Angeles, with no dependable public transportation.

Women must rely on men to drive them around. They may be male relatives or drivers who are part of the country's imported labor. But this is expensive and an intrusion into their lives, many women say.

As the country changes bit by bit, the prohibition on female drivers can contradict other efforts by the government. For example, the government is urging private companies to hire more women. It is hard to see how that can happen unless women can drive to work, Hussein says.

"No one has been given orders from higher up" to arrest female drivers, she adds.

Al-Yousef says this campaign, the third challenge to the driving ban, has learned from past mistakes.

In 1990, 47 women made the first attempt to challenge the ban. They all lost their jobs, were prohibited from traveling for years, and were shunned for their defiance.

The next challenge came in 2011, when activists Maha al-Qatani was the first Saudi woman to get a traffic ticket. The campaign fizzled after some women were jailed for driving. But soon after, King Abdullah said women could vote in local elections, and 30 women were appointed to the 150-member Shura Council, an advisory body to the king.

Going For A Spin

Al-Yousef — who has an international driver's license — says she and other drivers don't want to break laws aside from the one banning driving.

She now takes a short drive every day and invites me to join her for a cruise around the capital. We get in the front, her male driver climbs in the back, and we take to the road.

"I need people to see that it is normal; we have to let people accept it," al-Yousef says. "It doesn't mean anything if you drive only one day."

The afternoon traffic is so heavy that nobody notices two women in the front seat of a car.

Then we approach a police station.

"Let's see what their reaction is," she says. "You watch it; it's going to be on your right."

She says the head of the national police stated publicly that his officers would not arrest women for driving. But they will ticket those without a license, which is impossible for a woman to get here.

Al-Yousef drives like a pro. She learned while attending a university in the U.S. The only time she shows excitement is when another activist calls her.

"I am driving!" she announces with a distinct rise in her voice.

We end our drive at her front door, where her husband is waiting to meet her.

"Hello, I'm a coward. How do you do," her husband, Moisen al-Haydar, says with a laugh.

Al-Haydar says he's given up driving. He's proud of his wife for braving Riyadh's hectic traffic. He supports her driving campaign, but he's worried, too.

Threats Against Activists

There have been online threats and insults against activists. Al-Yousef filed a case this week against the attackers in court. Also this week, conservative clerics urged King Abdullah to stop Saturday's drive-in, but the king did not meet with the complaining clerics.

Al-Yousef sweeps away her husband's concerns and sits down to check the latest driving videos.

"We've had four today and we are now up to 100 videos," she says as she turns up the volume on the latest driving demonstration.

Al-Yousef translates the Arabic in the video: "She says this is a very positive movement; Saudi ladies should have the choice to drive her own car. And she named the tape, 'Yes, we can.' "

The final decision is up to the king, who has said he believes women have the right to drive, but hasn't said when.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/10/24/240491843/saudi-women-go-for-a-spin-in-latest-challenge-to-driving-ban?ft=1&f=1001
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Australia PM: Climate change not causing wildfires

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The government staunchly rejected arguments that climate change is causing the wildfires ravaging parts of eastern Australia following a record hot start to the spring season.

"That is complete hogwash," Prime Minister Tony Abbott told News Corp. Australian newspapers in an interview published on Friday.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt backed his prime minister, saying no individual event can be linked to climate change.

But a climate science organization abolished by Abbott's government released a report on Friday declaring a clear link between climate change and the wildfires. The severity and scale of the fires was unprecedented for this time of year, it said. Last month had been the hottest September on record in New South Wales state. The 12 months preceding it had been the hottest year on record across Australia.

The government abolished the state-funded Climate Commission after being elected last month. But the organization survives through public donations as the Climate Council to continue its independent work of communicating reliable information about global warming.

To deny the influence of climate change on extreme fire weather placed people and property an unnecessarily high risk, the report warned. The findings are interim, and the final report will be released next month.

Will Steffen, a Climate Council member and director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, said he was frustrated that the established science on global warming was not yet accepted in Australia.

"We'd like to see a discussion in this country that gets beyond these futile debates about the science that have been settled for decades in the scientific literature and get on with the real debate about what is really the best way of dealing with the problem," Steffen told reporters. "That's where the political debate really needs to be."

Abbott argues that Australia has experienced wildfires for more than 200 years of European settlement and had suffered worse fires in the past.

This week, he accused Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, of "talking through her hat" when she referred to the Australian wildfires as the world "paying the price of carbon" in the atmosphere.

"They are desperate to find anything that they think might pass as ammunition for their cause," Abbott said, referring to people who link the fires to global warming and who criticize his government's climate change policies.

Abbott's conservative government plans to repeal laws that force Australia's worst greenhouse gas polluters to pay a tax for every ton of carbon dioxide that they emit. The tax was introduced last year to reduce Australia's abundant greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia is one of the world's worst greenhouse gas emitters on a per capita basis because of its heavy reliance on cheap coal for power generation. As the world's driest continent after Antarctica, scientists warn that Australia is also particularly vulnerable to climate extremes that come with climate change.

A U.N.-created climate change panel issued a major report in Stockholm last month that said it was "extremely likely," or 95 percent likely, that global warming was man-made. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British meteorological office also released research in September that used computer simulations to conclude that climate change influenced some recent weather occurrences in Europe and the United States.

The wildfires that have burned around Sydney razed more than 200 homes and resulted in two deaths. One resident died of a heart attack while throwing buckets of water on his home last week, and a pilot died Thursday when his plane crashed while attempting to drop water on flames.

Adam Bandt, a lawmaker for the Australian Greens party that champions the carbon tax, was widely accused of politicizing the disaster when be tweeted at the height of the fire emergency last week: "Tony Abbott's plan means more bushfires for Australia & more pics like this of Sydney."

His comment came as television networks were airing images of destroyed homes.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/australia-pm-climate-change-not-causing-wildfires-061504799.html
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Australia PM: Climate change not causing wildfires

"That is complete hogwash," Prime Minister Tony Abbott told News Corp. Australian newspapers in an interview published on Friday.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt backed his prime minister, saying no individual event can be linked to climate change.

Abbott argues that Australia has experienced wildfires for more than 200 years of European settlement and had suffered worse fires in the past.

His comment came as television networks were airing images of destroyed homes.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/australia-pm-climate-change-not-causing-wildfires-061504799.html
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HealthCare.gov fixes will meet deadlines, contractors say

The glitch-ridden website built for people to purchase compulsory health insurance under the Affordable Care Act will be fixed in time for applicants to enroll in plans before the law’s deadline to sign up, contractors who built the site assured lawmakers on Thursday.

“The experience will be improved as we go forward, and people will be able to enroll by the Dec. 15 time frame,” Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president for CGI Federal, the company that helped build the government website, told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We’re seeing improvements day over day.” (People who want their coverage to become effective Jan. 1 must enroll by Dec. 15.)

The launch of HealthCare.gov has been fraught with accessibility problems since it launched Oct. 1. Users have complained that they are unable to create accounts or complete the application process to buy insurance from companies participating in the new government-run marketplace.

On Thursday, the Republican-majority committee questioned four private contractors who coordinated with the Department of Health and Human Services to build the site about why the site has so many early problems.

The contractors testified that their contributions to the site had tested well before the launch and that they had not recommended that the site launch be delayed.

Despite assurance that the website would be fixed in time, the White House on Wednesday night announced that applicants would be able to sign up for insurance until March 1, 2014 — the original deadline was Jan. 1 — without facing a penalty. Republicans and even some Democrats, meanwhile, have called for the law's individual mandate to purchase insurance to be delayed for at least a year because of the problems.

The federal government plans to announce official enrollment numbers by mid-November, officials said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/healthcare-gov-website-problems-will-be-fixed-145058596.html
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