From @BreakingNews Twitter Feed:
Market sources: The Costa Concordia could cost maritime insurers Lloyds of London up to $1bn, the largest insurance loss from a single wreck
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Amateur Video Captures Terror Felt By Those Evacuating the Sinking Ship
AMATEUR VIDEO: Shocked Costa Concordia Passengers Escape Sinking
Crusie Ship Captain Abandoned Ship, Left Passengers On Board to Perish
Investigators now believe the ship was dangerously close to the shore and hit a rock that the captain claims was unmarked.
The captain of the ship, Francesco Schettino, is now in custody, facing possible charges with manslaughter and abandoning his ship.
Schettino was detained by authorities and questioned along with the ship’s first bridge officer, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. ANSA said the captain could face criminal charges.
The agency reported that Schettino could be charged with abandoning ship since he reportedly left the stricken vessel about 12:30 a.m., while many passengers didn’t get safely off the ship until 6 a.m.
There are also reports in the Italian press that Schettino took the Costa Concordia close to the harbor of Giglio island many times in the past so his passengers could take photographs.
The captain’s lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, said Schettino was taken to the Grosseto jail, but argued that the captain was a hero.
“I would like to say that hundreds of people owe their life to the captain of the Costa Concordia’s skill in an emergency,” the lawyer said. “You have to be very good to bring a ship like this which is 117,000 tons and 300 meters long, which is sinking after a collision, close to land to allow for easy rescue so as to save so many people. I think the maneuver was brilliant from a nautical point of view.”
Harrowing tales of chaos ensued for several hours as the crew and passengers tried to scramble to safety.
Comments »Social Responsibility: Business vs Humanity
South Carolina’s States Rights Debate Stirs Up Old Bias in a Key Battle Ground State
“(Reuters) – The state that fired the first shot in the Civil War is once again battling the government in a racially charged conflict that is drawing heated rhetoric from Republican presidential candidates.
South Carolina is in a standoff with Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration over a new state law that would require residents to produce a photo ID before they could vote. Federal officials say it could disproportionately keep black voters away from the polls.
For South Carolina’s Republican leaders – and Republican presidential candidates seeking support in the state’s primary on January 21 – the Justice Department’s move is the latest in a series of intrusions into state business by Washington.
Republican candidates are waving the banner of states’ rights as they tout their small-government credentials.
“Each of our states are under assault right now by this administration,” Texas Governor Rick Perry said Saturday at a candidates’ forum in Charleston. “We may be under assault – South Carolina, they’re actually at war with you.”
Such declarations might make for smart politics in a state that has a suspicion of Washington woven into its DNA, but they risk stirring up the race-baiting that has been an ugly feature of South Carolina politics in the past….”
Comments »Iran Sends Rare Letter to U.S. Over Killed Scientist
Iran said on Saturday it had evidence Washington was behind the latest killing of one of its nuclear scientists, state television reported, at a time when tensions over the country’s nuclear program have escalated to their highest level ever.
In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan’s car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton denied responsibility and Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge.
“We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported. The Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in a country where Washington has no diplomatic ties.
The spokesman for Iran’s Joint Armed Forces Staff, Massoud Jazayeri, said: “Our enemies, especially America , Britain and the Zionist regime (Israel), have to be held responsible for their actions.”
Iran in the past has accused Israel of causing a series of spectacular and sometimes bloody mishaps to its nuclear programme. Israeli officials do not comment on any involvement in those events, although some have publicly expressed satisfaction at the setbacks.
Feeling the heat from unprecedented new sanctions, Iran’s clerical establishment has brandished its sword by threatening to block the main Mid-East oil shipping route, starting to enrich uranium at an underground bunker and sentencing an Iranian-American citizen to death on spying charges.
State TV said a “letter of condemnation” had also been sent to Britain, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists began after the head of Britain’s MI6 spy service announced intelligence operations against states seeking nuclear weapons.
The West says Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at building a bomb. Tehran says it has the right to peaceful nuclear power.
Tehran has urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing.
After years of international sanctions that had little impact on Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama signed new measures on New Year’s Eve that, if fully implemented, would make it impossible for most countries to pay for Iranian oil.
Washington is requiring that countries gradually reduce their purchases of Iranian oil in order to receive temporary waivers from the sanctions.
The European Union is expected to unveil similar measures next week, and announce a gradual oil embargo among its member states, who collectively buy about a fifth of Iran’s exports.
The combined measures mean Iran may fail to sell all of the 2.6 million barrels a day of exports it relies on to feed its 74 million people. Even if it finds buyers, it will have to offer steep discounts, cutting into its desperately-needed revenue.
On Tuesday shipping sources told Reuters Iran was storing an increasing supply of oil at sea – as much as 8 million barrels – and was likely to store more as it struggles to sell it.
Iran denies it is having trouble: “There has been no disruption in Iran’s crude exports through the Persian Gulf … We have not stored oil in the Gulf because of sanctions as some foreign media reported,” oil official Pirouz Mousavi told the semi-official Mehr news agency on Friday.
The sanctions are causing real hardship on the streets, where prices for basic imported goods are soaring, the rial currency has plummeted and Iranians have been flocking to sell rials to buy dollars to protect their savings.
The pain comes less than two months before a parliamentary election, Iran’s first since a presidential vote in 2009 that was followed by eight months of street demonstrations.
Iran’s authorities successfully put down that revolt by force, but since then the “Arab Spring” has shown the vulnerability of authoritarian governments in the region to protests fueled by anger over economic difficulty.
CLASH THREAT
Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz leading to the Gulf if sanctions are imposed on its oil exports, and has threatened to take unspecified action if Washington sails an aircraft carrier through the strait, an international waterway.
Military experts say Tehran can do little to fight the massive U.S.-led fleet that guards the strait, but the threats raise the chance of a miscalculation that could lead to a military clash and a global oil crisis.
The Pentagon said on Friday that small Iranian boats had approached close to U.S. vessels in the strait last week, although it said it did not believe there was “hostile intent.”
The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute. Iran says it would retaliate if attacked.
The tension has caused spikes in global oil prices in recent weeks, although prices eased at the close of last week’s trading on the prospect of reduced demand in economically stricken European countries. Brent crude fell 82 cents to settle at $110.44 a barrel on Friday.
The chances for an imminent easing of tension look even more remote as the nuclear deadlock continues because of Iran’s refusal to halt the sensitive nuclear work.
Last week Iran began enriching uranium underground – the most controversial part of its nuclear programme – at a bunker deep below a mountain near the Shi’ite holy city of Qom.
Nuclear talks with major powers collapsed a year ago. Iran says it wants the talks to resume, but the West says there is no point unless it is willing to discuss a halt to uranium enrichment, which can be used to make material for a bomb.
(Additional reporting by Mitra Amiri; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)
Comments »SHOCK PHOTO: Capsized Cruise Ship off #Italy Coast
@julianmigJulián Miglierini
The BBC at the scene of the Costa Concordia incident near Giglio Islandpic.twitter.com/cUxypSuq
25 British passengers and 12 British crew all rescued safely from cruise ship Costa Concordia, British Consulate says – Sky News
- Submitted 2 hours ago by editor
Tragic Event Unfolding: Cruise Liner Capsizes With 4200 Passengers After Setting Sail on Friday the 13th
Documentary: What I have been afraid to blog about: The ESF and its History
At the very least, there is massive amounts of interesting data points that correlate to the markets.
Cheers on your holiday weekend !
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RUMOR: S&P to Cut Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Debt by Two Notches
Hedge Funds Hunker Down for Greek Debt Standoff
LONDON (Reuters) – Hedge funds are positioning to profit from a plan to slash Greece’s towering debt pile as Athens enters final talks that could sway the country’s membership of the euro.
York Capital, the $14 billion fund part-owned by Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse , New York-listed Och Ziff , and $10 billion-strong Marathon Asset Management are among those who collectively may have built up sufficiently large positions to scupper the bailout deal, several sources close to the debt restructuring told Reuters.
The deal asks creditors to voluntarily write down 50 percent of the notional value of their bond holdings. But hedge funds may opt out, hoping that Athens will let them get away with it to save itself political embarassment.
“I think we’ll hold out. People are so slow in Europe and by the time they’ve got everything in place logistically this might be the one window where investors might be paid back in full,” said one hedge fund manager who owns Greek bonds.
The stakes for Greece are high. Without the deal, the international lenders will not bail Athens out a second time, which means it will likely default around March 20, when a 14.5 billion euro bond falls due.
But hoping that Greece will pay out after all looks increasingly like a dangerous strategy. According to three senior euro zone sources on Thursday, the country is likely to force all creditors into the deal.
Read the rest here.
Comments »More Fuel for the Oil Fear Trade
Trustee: MF Global May Not Be Able to Pay Missing Monies
Ursus Arctos Horribli Officially Renamed Struthio Camelus
What once was a: 
has now become a: 
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMYSWiPm7E0 450 300]
Myanmar brokers cease-fire with rebels
Comments »(CNN) — The Myanmar government signed a cease-fire deal with a rebel group Thursday, the same day Aung San Suu Kyi’s party said it will join the upcoming elections.
Information Minister Soe Win said the government has signed a peace deal with the Karen National Liberation Army.
The Karen National Liberation Army, which has long sought autonomy for the Karen ethnic minority, is now permitted to travel throughout the country without weapons, a separate government official said.
The move is an apparent bid to resolve a conflict that has brewed for more than six decades.
The group operates in the border area of the country.
State of the Union: The Private Sector Money Culture
U.S. plans Taliban peace talks
Comments »WASHINGTON – The US plans a major push next week to jump-start peace talks with the Taliban, senior Obama administration officials said, amid the first concrete signs of progress toward a negotiated end to the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The press comes amid the potentially embarrassing emergence of a video Wednesday that appears to show US troops urinating on Afghan insurgents’ corpses. Its authenticity hasn’t been confirmed.
The US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul to seek his approval to resume US negotiations with Taliban representatives over confidence-building measures aimed at laying the ground for direct Afghan-Taliban talks.
More Ethical Problems for the FDA
Iran to construct “Islamic Internet”, block Western influence
Comments »New cyber regulations announced by Iran last week, including requiring Internet cafes to install surveillance cameras, could be just a precursor to the Islamic Republic’s “halal” network, many observers are saying.
That network, an “Islamically permissible” intranet that the nation’s telecommunications ministry publicized in early 2011, would disconnect Iran from the rest of the world and run a parallel internal service that would automatically censor material and block popular global sites and search engines, such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.
“I don’t think it’s a question of if, but a question of when,” said Austin Heap, executive director of the Censorship Research Center, who also works on developing technologies for increasing Internet freedom.
At the time of the announcement, Iranian authorities said the new infrastructure would be revealed soon, but did not give a specific time frame.
“They are taking the lessons of the 2009 uprisings and figuring out how to prevent that,” Heap said. “A halal network would be only what the regime would want you to see.”
Iran’s network could mirror what Burma, another nation with draconian cyber crackdowns, has done to isolate its people from the Web, limiting users to a national intranet at a high price that deters most potential users.
