99% A Separation

All Critics (89) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (89) | 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.

Farhadi's carefully wrought narrative and the ways it handles the fragile emotions of its characters truly sets it apart, not only from contemporary Iranian cinema but world cinema in general.

What counts is that talented writer/director Asghar Farhadi structures it in a culturally compelling and mysterious way, while balancing all the characters to avoid easily typed "good guys" and "bad guys."

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...

More Critic Reviews

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_separation_2011/

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Arctic snowy owls soar south in rare mass move

SALMON, Idaho?? Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable."

Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts.

A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions.

"What we're seeing now ? it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana.

"This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.

Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.

An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said.

Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal.

Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said.

The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests.

"For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington.

But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites ? including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin ? suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes.

He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on.

This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature.

"There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46180562/ns/us_news-environment/

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A glass of milk a day could benefit your brain

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Pouring at least one glass of milk each day could not only boost your intake of much-needed key nutrients, but it could also positively impact your brain and mental performance, according to a recent study in the International Dairy Journal. Researchers found that adults with higher intakes of milk and milk products scored significantly higher on memory and other brain function tests than those who drank little to no milk...

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/wsw-ago012712.php

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Occupy Oakland protests bring 300 arrests

Occupy Oakland protests turned violent Saturday as?demonstrators broke into a historic building and burned an American flag, and officers fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

Dozens of police maintained a late-night guard around City Hall in Oakland, California, following daylong protests that resulted in 300 arrests. Earlier, Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into the historic building and burned a U.S. flag, and officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

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Saturday's protests ? the most turbulent since Oakland police forcefully dismantled an Occupy encampment in November ? came just days after the group said it planned to use a vacant building as a social center and political hub and threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

An exasperated Mayor Jean Quan, who faced heavy criticism for the police action last fall, called on the Occupy movement to "stop using Oakland as its playground."

"People in the community and people in the Occupy movement have to stop making excuses for this behavior," Quan said.

IN PICTURES: Occupy LA and other Occupy protests

Protesters clashed with police throughout the day, at times throwing rocks, bottles and other objects at officers. Police responded by deploying smoke, tear gas and bean bag rounds, City Administrator Deanna Santanta said.

Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan said about 300 arrests were made.

"These demonstrators stated their intention was to provoke officers and engage in illegal activity and that's exactly what has occurred today," Santana said.

The group assembled outside City Hall late Saturday morning and marched through the streets, disrupting traffic as they threatened to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

The number of demonstrators swelled as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

A majority of the arrests came after police took scores of protesters into custody as they marched through the city's downtown, with some entering a YMCA building, said Sgt. Jeff Thomason, a police spokesman.

Quan said that at one point, many protesters forced their way into City Hall, where they burned flags, broke an electrical box and damaged several art structures, including a recycled art exhibit created by children.

She blamed the destruction on a small "very radical, violent" splinter group within Occupy Oakland.

"This is not a situation where we had 1,000 peaceful people and a few violent people. If you look at what's happening today in terms of destructing property, throwing at and charging the police, it's almost like they are begging for attention and hoping that the police will make an error."

Dozens of officers surrounded City Hall, while others swept the inside of the building looking for protesters who had broken into the building, then ran out of the building with American flags before officers arrived.

The protest group issued an email criticizing police, saying "Occupy Oakland's building occupation, an act of constitutionally protected civil disobedience was disrupted by a brutal police response today."

Michael Davis, 32, who is originally from Ohio and was in the Occupy movement in Cincinnati, said Saturday was a very hectic day that originally started off calm but escalated when police began using "flash bangs, tear gas, smoke grenades and bean bags."

"What could've been handled differently is the way the Oakland police came at us," Davis said. "We were peaceful."

The national Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dormant lately.

Oakland, New York and Los Angeles were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demonstrations ebbed after those cities used force to move out hundreds of demonstrators who had set up tent cities.

In Oakland, the police department received heavy criticism for using force to break up earlier protests. Quan was among the critics, but on Saturday, she seemed to have changed her tune.

"Our officers have been very measured," Quan said. "Were there some mistakes made? There may be. I would say the Oakland police and our allies, so far a small percentage of mistakes. But quite frankly, a majority of protesters who were charging the police were clearly not being peaceful.?

IN PICTURES: Occupy LA and other Occupy protests

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/d2cxQrdpvnY/Occupy-Oakland-protests-bring-300-arrests

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[OOC] Bright Lights, Long Nights

Forum rules
This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.

Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!

This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Bright Lights, Long Nights?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

Topic Tags:

Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.
Bright Lights, Long Nights

~::Character Slots::~

Lead Singer (Female): Taken By Horseygirl
Singer (Male):
Lead Guitarist (Male): Taken By Me
Guitarist (Female): Taken By The Painkiller
Bassist (Male):
Keyboardist (Female):
Drummer (Male or Female): (Optional)
Violinist (Male or Female): (Optional)

Join! I don't bite! :]

Last edited by DarknessToDeath23 on Sat Jan 28, 2012 2:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

DarknessToDeath23

Member for 2 years

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Can I reserve the lead singer?

Horseygirl

Member for 3 years

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Um, what kind of band is it exactly? I'm showing interesting in playing the guitarist (could it be maybe a co-lead guitarist?) depending on what kind of music they play :v

The Painkiller

Member for 1 years

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It's more of a metal and rock type, but I can change it if needed.

DarknessToDeath23

Member for 2 years

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If it's metal, I'm all for it. I'll submit a character and you let me know if you think she'd fit.

The Painkiller

Member for 1 years

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Oh my, can I take up the violinist? I know it's optional, but I really like violins!!! ^^

PrincessBoy

Member for 2 years

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Post a reply

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Making sense of sensory connections

Friday, January 27, 2012

A key feature of human and animal brains is that they are adaptive; they are able to change their structure and function based on input from the environment and on the potential associations, or consequences, of that input. For example, if a person puts his hand in a fire and gets burned, he learns to avoid flames; the simple sight of a flame has acquired a predictive value, which in this case, is repulsive. To learn more about such neural adaptability, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have explored the brains of insects and identified a mechanism by which the connections in their brain change to form new and specific memories of smells.

"Although these results were obtained from experiments with insects, the components of the mechanism exist also in vertebrate, including mammalian, brains which means that what we describe may be of wide applicability," says Stijn Cassenaer, a Broad Senior Research Fellow in brain circuitry at Caltech and lead author of a paper?published in the journal Nature on January 25?that outlined the findings. The study focused on insects because their nervous systems are smaller, and thus likely to reveal their secrets sooner than those of their vertebrate counterparts.

To home in on sensory memories, the researchers concentrated on olfaction, or the sense of smell. When a person encounters a favorite food or the perfume of a loved one, she will typically experience a recall, usually positive, based on the memories evoked by those smells. Such a recall?to a smell, sound, taste, or any other sensory stimulus?is evidence of "associative" learning, says Gilles Laurent, a former professor of biology at Caltech and senior author of the study, as learning often means assigning a value, such as beneficial or not, to inputs that were until then neutral. The original, neutral stimulus acquires significance as a result of being paired, or associated, with a reinforcing reward or punishment?in this case, the pleasant emotion recalled by a smell.

"When we learn that a particular sensory stimulus predicts a reward, there is general agreement that this knowledge is stored by changing the connections between particular neurons," explains Cassenaer. The problem, however, is that the biological signals that represent value (positive or negative) are broadcast nonspecifically throughout the brain. How then, are they assigned specifically to particular connections, so that a certain sensory input, until then neutral, acquires its new, predictive value? "In this study, we carried out experiments to investigate how the brain identifies exactly which connections, out of an enormously large number of possibilities, should be changed to store the memory of a specific association."

To get a closer look at these connections, Cassenaer and Laurent?who is now director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany?measured neural activity in an area of the locust brain where olfactory memories are thought to be stored. They found that what allows the brain to identify which synapses should be modified, and thus where the nonspecific reward signal should act, is a very transient synchronization between pairs of connected neurons.

"When pairs of connected neurons fire in quick succession, the strength of their connection can be altered. This phenomenon, called spike-timing dependent plasticity, has been known for many years. What is new, however, is recognizing that it also makes these connections sensitive to an internal signal released in response to a reward," says Cassenaer. "If no reward is encountered, the cells' sensitivity fades. However, if the sensory stimulus is followed by a reward within a certain time window, then these connections are the only ones altered by the internal reward signal. All other connections remain unaffected."

Laurent says that the molecular underpinnings of this phenomenon, as well as the process by which the stored memories are later read out, are an area of much-needed exploration.

"We are currently developing the necessary tools to examine this with sufficient specificity, which will allow us to evaluate animals' behavior as they learn," says Cassenaer.

###

California Institute of Technology: http://www.caltech.edu

Thanks to California Institute of Technology for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117119/Making_sense_of_sensory_connections

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Bisping continues to question Sonnen?s manhood over low testosterone

CHICAGO -- Maybe it's a good thing Michael Bisping and Chael Sonnen didn't have months to promote their fight tomorrow night on the UFC on Fox 2 at the United Center. One can only imagine the depths the trash talk would've sunk to.

Sonnen's testosterone replacement therapy is the popular subject this week for the Brit, who suggests that the American is less than a complete male. Early in the week on HDNet, Bisping alleged that Sonnen has a physical abnormality.

"[...] He's been submitted more times than I care to mention. Not to mention, the last time he lost a fight by submission, there were some issues involving performance enhancing drugs," Bisping said. "I don't know what the deal is. Apparently, he has one testicle. One testicle! This is why he uses performance enhancing drugs. He's gonna need more than one little ball to fight me next weekend!"

Sonnen served a one-year suspension for not properly disclosing that he was undergoing testosterone replacement therapy before his UFC 117 fight in California. Bisping is not a fan of fighter using TRT.

"If Sonnen needs TRT, then he's is the wrong sport. If you need TRT, then perhaps you should be carrying a purse and a handbag, and wearing a dress," Bisping told The Telegraph's Gareth A. Davies. "This is a fight sport, and Alpha males shouldn't need testosterone from anywhere else."

Strangely enough, that quote emerged from a conversation where Bisping discussed using a sports psychologist. That topic could certainly open the door for some counter-fire from Sonnen. Stay tuned, there's still 30-plus hours until the fight.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/bisping-continues-sonnen-manhood-over-low-testoterone-194252587.html

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Perry hits Obama-level approval rating in Texas (AP)

AUSTIN, Texas ? Texas Gov. Rick Perry's White House bid tarnished his image enough that he's about as popular in his solidly Republican home state as President Barack Obama, a poll published Thursday shows.

Perry's approval rating after his failed presidential bid has fallen to 40 percent, a 10-point drop from a year ago and slightly less than Obama's 43 percent statewide approval rating, according to the poll. More than half of the people who responded to a statewide survey don't want Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, to run for another term in 2014.

Perry's campaign for president ? during which he made a series of public gaffs and debate flubs that turned him into a national punch line ? embarrassed some Texans. Forty-five percent of those polled said the campaign actually hurt the state's image.

"He should have never been in the race," said Traci Humphrey, a 33-year-old Republican from Dallas, who wasn't a poll respondent. "I think it made us look like idiots, how he conducted himself. His overall image is not good for Texas."

It wasn't long ago that Perry led even presidential public opinion polls. He became an almost overnight front-runner when he strode into the race for the GOP nomination in August.

But that was before a series of verbal mistakes that included forgetting the voting age; forgetting the name of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and then mixing up how many judges are on the court; or mistakenly saying U.S. ally Turkey was run by Islamic extremists.

Then there was his infamous "oops" debate moment, when Perry said that as president he'd eliminate three federal agencies but could remember only two of them.

"I think it's pretty clear that people even in Texas don't think that the presidential campaign went very well," said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics project at the University of Texas. "There aren't a lot of people who are willing to say, `Wow, he did us proud.'"

The poll was conducted Jan. 21-24 for The Dallas Morning News, the Austin American Statesman, the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. The random telephone survey of 806 Texans, including 669 registered voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Forty percent respondents said they disapprove of the job Perry is doing.

Though his approval rating may be on par with Obama's, Perry would still seem more likely to win voters in his very red native state. Henson pointed out that Perry has continued to win re-election even though his approval ratings often fluctuated between the mid to high 30s and low 40s.

He said that Perry was in the mid to high 30s in the second half of 2009 and early 2010, when he easily won the Republican gubernatorial nomination over U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and then cruised to re-election over Democrat Bill White.

Before the presidential campaign, Perry had never lost an election since 1984, when he won a Texas House seat as a Democrat. He switched parties and won his first statewide post as agricultural commissioner before being elected lieutenant governor, ascending to the governorship when George W. Bush left for the White House in December 2000 and winning election to three full, four-year terms.

Though the poll released Thursday found 53 percent of respondents don't want Perry to run for a fourth full term in two years, Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said the governor doesn't let polling numbers dictate how he will govern.

Sullivan also said the governor hasn't ruled out running for president again in 2016, particularly if Obama wins a second term.

Asked if his poor presidential showing was embarrassing, Sullivan said, "the presidential campaign let even more Americans know about Texas' pro-job climate, great quality of life and culture of fiscal responsibility."

According to the poll, Perry's approval rating among Texas Republicans dipped from 73 percent to 60 percent, and among independents he fell from nearly half to 27 percent.

Erin Bonner, a soft-spoken Dallas businesswoman, said Perry "didn't come across well" during his presidential bid.

"I probably think of him as more redneck," Bonner said.

__

Associated Press writer Linda Stewart Ball contributed to this report from Dallas.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_el_gu/us_perry_poll

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Bill Gates Donates $750 Million to Global Fund

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The donation to the struggling Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was made as a promissory note intended to tide it over regular cash shortages.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=563e0c47a0090b9deb7da512b0b4d7e6

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Does the military make the man or does the man make the military?

Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Divya Menon
dmenon@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

"Be all you can be," the Army tells potential recruits. The military promises personal reinvention. But does it deliver? A new study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that personality does change a little after military service German conscripts come out of the military less agreeable than their peers who chose civilian service.

It's hard to do long-term studies on how personalities change. Besides taking many years, a challenge to overcome is that many experiences that could change personality are self-selected, and thus many social, psychological and economic differences exist between people who had the experience versus those that did not. "It makes a researcher's job tough," jokes Joshua J. Jackson, now at Washington University in St. Louis, "but there are some methods to safeguard against such bias". He cowrote the new study with Felix Thoemmes, Kathrin Jonkmann, Oliver Ldtke, and Ulrich Trautwein of the University of Tbingen in Germany.

Jackson used data on German men who were in high school at the time the study started. At that time, about 10 years ago, all German men had to either serve in the military for nine months or perform some other kind of civilian service.

First, he looked at the men's personalities before their national service to see if personality predicted the decision to enter the military. Men who chose to serve in the military were less open to experiencethey are less likely to be interested in novel and aesthetic experiences like going to an art museum, for example. They were less neurotic, or inclined to worry. And they were less agreeable"less warm and cooperative, interpersonally," Jackson says.

The men were given personality tests again two years later, after they had finished their military or civilian service. Most people's personalities change at this age; it's normal to become more agreeable and more conscientious, and for neuroticism to decrease. Jackson saw those changes in all the men. But men who chose to go into the military, while they were more agreeable two years later than they'd been before, were less agreeable than their peers who didn't do military service. Four years later, after many of the men had gone on to university or into the work force, they were still less agreeable if they'd spent nine months in the military.

How agreeable you are has a lot to do with how well you relate to other people"establishing and maintaining positive relationships with friends and romantic partners," Jackson says. "as such, having low levels of agreeableness may be considered a bad thing." On the other hand, some evidence suggests that people who are less agreeable tend to have more career success.

"I cannot say if it's good or bad, but it shows that these individualswho, by and large, did not face any combathad experiences in basic training that likely shaped the way they approach the world," Jackson says. "The changes in personality were small, but over time, they could have important ramifications for the men's lives," he says.

###

For more information about this study, please contact: Joshua J. Jackson at j.jackson@wustl.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Military training and personality trait development: Does the military make the man or does the man make the military" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Divya Menon
dmenon@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

"Be all you can be," the Army tells potential recruits. The military promises personal reinvention. But does it deliver? A new study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that personality does change a little after military service German conscripts come out of the military less agreeable than their peers who chose civilian service.

It's hard to do long-term studies on how personalities change. Besides taking many years, a challenge to overcome is that many experiences that could change personality are self-selected, and thus many social, psychological and economic differences exist between people who had the experience versus those that did not. "It makes a researcher's job tough," jokes Joshua J. Jackson, now at Washington University in St. Louis, "but there are some methods to safeguard against such bias". He cowrote the new study with Felix Thoemmes, Kathrin Jonkmann, Oliver Ldtke, and Ulrich Trautwein of the University of Tbingen in Germany.

Jackson used data on German men who were in high school at the time the study started. At that time, about 10 years ago, all German men had to either serve in the military for nine months or perform some other kind of civilian service.

First, he looked at the men's personalities before their national service to see if personality predicted the decision to enter the military. Men who chose to serve in the military were less open to experiencethey are less likely to be interested in novel and aesthetic experiences like going to an art museum, for example. They were less neurotic, or inclined to worry. And they were less agreeable"less warm and cooperative, interpersonally," Jackson says.

The men were given personality tests again two years later, after they had finished their military or civilian service. Most people's personalities change at this age; it's normal to become more agreeable and more conscientious, and for neuroticism to decrease. Jackson saw those changes in all the men. But men who chose to go into the military, while they were more agreeable two years later than they'd been before, were less agreeable than their peers who didn't do military service. Four years later, after many of the men had gone on to university or into the work force, they were still less agreeable if they'd spent nine months in the military.

How agreeable you are has a lot to do with how well you relate to other people"establishing and maintaining positive relationships with friends and romantic partners," Jackson says. "as such, having low levels of agreeableness may be considered a bad thing." On the other hand, some evidence suggests that people who are less agreeable tend to have more career success.

"I cannot say if it's good or bad, but it shows that these individualswho, by and large, did not face any combathad experiences in basic training that likely shaped the way they approach the world," Jackson says. "The changes in personality were small, but over time, they could have important ramifications for the men's lives," he says.

###

For more information about this study, please contact: Joshua J. Jackson at j.jackson@wustl.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Military training and personality trait development: Does the military make the man or does the man make the military" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.

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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/afps-dtm012512.php

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More kids seek tans as they age, may raise skin cancer risk (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? As children go from elementary to junior high school, the desire to tan grows stronger while the habit of using sunscreen goes out the window, according to a survey -- potentially raising the risk of getting deadly skin cancer later on.

The survey, carried out over three years, found that sunscreen use fell by half, said a study published in the journal Pediatrics, a worrying trend since there is evidence that sun damage at a young age is tied to a higher risk of developing melanoma.

The number of melanoma cases in the United States has been rising for the past three decades, and around 70,230 new cases will be diagnosed this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

"I think especially at this age, and in general, there are a lot of forces that promote tanning," said Stephen Dusza, a researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and lead author of the study.

Though Dusza said he expected that children would want to tan more as they grew older, due partly to advertising and tanning among many celebrities, the results surprised him.

"I was struck by the magnitude of the reduction in the use of sunscreen -- a 50 percent drop," he said.

Dusza's group surveyed 360 fifth graders in Massachusetts about their time in the sun, how often they used sun protection and their attitudes about tanning. Three years later, the children answered the same questions.

Only one in four of the eighth graders said they used sunscreen when they were outside for more than six hours, which was half as many who said they used sunscreen in fifth grade.

Four out of 10 of the children also went outside just to get a tan when they were in eighth grade, compared to two out of 10 when they were in fifth grade.

But despite the children spending more time outside trying to get a tan as they grew older, the number who got sunburned remained the same at about 50 percent.

Dusza said he wasn't certain why sunburns didn't increase, but thought that maybe children defined a sunburn differently as they got older, or perhaps their outdoor activities changed.

The study underlined the fact that many young people aren't protecting their skin, said Sophie Balk, an attending pediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore and a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both in New York City.

"Kids think looking tan is consistent with looking healthy, but it's the opposite. A tan is the body's response to UV exposure" and shows there's been damage to the skin, Balk told Reuters Health.

"We need more media messages, more role models, more public health campaigns. As a society we could be doing more to promote skin cancer prevention and skin protection," she added. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/xrguxt

(Reporting from New York by Kerry Grens at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/hl_nm/us_tans

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Wall Street rests after rally; bellwether earnings ahead (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks finished almost flat on Monday as investors took a break from a recent rally, awaiting earnings from bellwethers such as Apple later in the week.

The S&P 500 is up nearly 5 percent so far this year as an improving U.S. economy has bolstered investor optimism. The Dow and the S&P 500 both had their best weekly performances in a month last week.

"Investors are reserved after a mixed bag of results. Many companies have announced sluggish results, portraying a cautious environment going forward," said Robert Lutts, chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts.

"The expectations are very moderate in the market, so a little bit of good news could lead to a significant pop in a stock."

According to Thomson Reuters data, 15 percent of S&P 500 companies have reported earnings, and just 59 percent posted results above Wall Street's expectations. That percentage trails the average of about 70 percent, though the rate is expected to improve as the earnings season gathers steam.

Among the 117 S&P 500 companies expected to report earnings this week is tech company Apple Inc (AAPL.O), due after the closing bell on Tuesday.

The euro-zone crisis remained in the background for the market but has had less of an effect on stocks lately. Germany and France pushed for a deal between Greece and its private creditors, and the two said they still were dedicated to a new bailout that Athens needs by March to stave off default.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) slipped 11.66 points, or 0.09 percent, to end at 12,708.82. But the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) inched up 0.62 point, or 0.05 percent, to close at 1,316.00. And the Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) dipped 2.53 points, or 0.09 percent, to end at 2,784.17.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS UP LATE

After the bell, Texas Instruments Inc (TXN.O) shares rose 2.5 percent to $34.00 after reporting higher-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue.

In addition to Apple, a number of Dow components are due to report earnings on Tuesday, notably Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), Travelers Companies Inc (TRV.N), McDonald's Corp (MCD.N), DuPont (DD.N) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N).

Wall Street's agenda includes the Federal Reserve's first policymaking meeting of the year, which will begin on Tuesday and conclude on Wednesday with a statement. The Fed is likely to say that it will not start raising interest rates again until the first half of 2014, more than five years after cutting them to near zero, a Reuters poll of leading Wall Street economists showed.

The U.S. central bank will begin a new practice of announcing policymakers' interest-rate projections when this week's meeting ends on Wednesday.

During Monday's regular session, Halliburton Co (HAL.N) shares fell 2.1 percent to $35.44 after the world's second-largest oilfield services group warned that the deep slump in U.S. natural gas prices could cause near-term disruptions that pinch first-quarter earnings.

On a positive note, Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N) gained 6.3 percent to $22.28 after it said it will reduce dry gas drilling and cut production in response to natural gas prices falling below "economically attractive" levels. Natural gas companies' shares were among the day's best performers, with an index of those stocks (.XNG) rising 3.6 percent.

Research In Motion Ltd (RIM.TO)(RIMM.O) fell 8.5 percent to $15.56 as analysts were skeptical about the resignation of the BlackBerry maker's co-chief executives.

Sears Holding Corp (SHLD.O) fell 3.3 percent to $47.39 after rising as high as $54.76 in what analysts said could be a short squeeze.

The stock is the most shorted stock in the S&P 500, according to Data Explorers, with 94 percent of shares available used to sell short. The retailer has been the best-performing stock in the index for the year, up more than 50 percent.

"That is a classic short squeeze. There have been headlines all over the name now for the better part of a month or so, and it's largely been quite negative," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Trading volume was at about 6.6 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, in line with the daily average of 6.68 billion.

Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by a ratio of about 3 to 2. In contrast, on the Nasdaq, about six stocks fell for every five that rose.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry and; Jan Paschal)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120123/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Video: 13th cruise ship victim found

>>> in italy tonight, new questions are being raised about whether there were more people on board that capsized cruise ship than the official manifest shows. this as the official death toll grew yet again today. nbc's duncan golestani is on the island of giglio with the latest on the search for victims.

>> reporter: all week families of the missing have been waiting for news of their loved ones, including a missing american couple. this is not what they had hoped for. the 13th victim of the costa concordia is brought ashore. this man says divers found the body of a woman on deck seven. like yesterday's victims, she too was wearing her life vest and is believed to have been a passenger. families gathered on the island now have an anxious few days as the woman is identified. because of the time spent in the water, five bodies have still not yet been named, a task even more complicated because authorities now think the cruise liner had unregistered passengers on board. while the search for the missing continues, pressure grows to speed up the salvage operation. the island's residents concerned there isn't a second disaster, a environmental one. the salvage team says it could take seven weeks to extract the half a million gallons of fuel. this fisherman says they fear that this discharge from the tank is polluting the sea. the operation could start as early as tomorrow. it can't come soon enough for the residents of this small, quiet island. duncan golestani, nbc news, giglio, italy.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46093972/

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EU states still divided over details of Iran oil (Reuters)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? European Union envoys failed to agree details of a planned embargo on Iranian crude on Thursday, but diplomats said governments still sought to finalize the ban at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday.

The bloc's 27 countries have agreed in principle in recent weeks to ban oil imports from Iran in order to put more pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

But they remain divided over several issues, primarily the length of a planned grace period that would allow states heavily dependent on Iranian oil to fulfill existing contracts for a period after the ban went into place.

At a meeting on Thursday, senior EU diplomats had been expected to agree to a plan allowing for a grace period until the end of June.

Under this compromise proposal, EU governments would be prohibited from making new contracts with Iran from the time the embargo was imposed, but could purchase crude previously contracted. This exemption would end on July 1.

"No agreement was reached today but we are confident it will be reached on Monday. Not everybody agreed to the compromise," one EU diplomat said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomat said some EU states continued to push for a shorter grace period while others wanted more time to secure alternative supplies of crude.

Tehran denies wanting bombs, as the West alleges, saying it is refining uranium only for electricity generation and medical applications.

EU governments are divided between the desire to ratchet up pressure on Tehran quickly and economic considerations. States such as Greece are concerned about financial costs at a time when Europe is struggling with a two-year debt crisis.

Athens depends heavily on Iranian supplies because Tehran has been offering it preferential credit terms for its crude.

But others say a grace period would significantly blunt the impact of sanctions, because some 80 percent of EU purchases are covered by long-term contracts.

The EU embargo follows stringent new U.S. sanctions signed into law by President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve, which are being gradually implemented but if fully enforced would make it impossible for most countries to pay for Iranian oil.

The unprecedented effort to take Iran's 2.6 million barrels of oil per day off international markets has kept global prices higher and helped cause a sharp fall in Iran's rial currency and a surge in the cost of basic goods for Iranians.

EU diplomats said more discussions will be held in Brussels in coming days, in time for the foreign ministers of the EU's 27 states to make a formal decision. EU policies such as sanctions require unanimity and have to be finalized by ministers.

Other issues remain outstanding. EU states have yet to agree whether to review the economic costs of the embargo before the grace period expires, to check whether countries like Greece had been able to secure sufficient amount of alternative supplies of crude.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/wl_nm/us_iran_eu_sanctions

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Retina cell growth measured by lasers

THE cone cells that help give us our colourful view of the world have been recorded growing in real-time in a living person's eye.

Cone cells in the retina each carry a stack of membranous discs: as they grow they shed older discs and generate new ones. An imbalance in the process can lead to blindness.

Ravi Jonnal and colleagues at Indiana University in Bloomington have found a way to measure cone-cell growth by reflecting part of a laser beam off the cells within the eye of a healthy volunteer. Another part of the laser beam is reflected off a mirror a set distance away.

When the two beams recombine, the pattern of interference allows the team to work out the position of each disc in the cone cell. Taking measurements over several hours allowed Jonnal's team to track each disc, revealing that the cells grow at roughly 150 nanometres each hour (Biomedical Optics Express, DOI: 10.1364/boe.3.000104).

Fred Fitzke of University College London is impressed. "This could lead to major advances in preventing the progress of some of the leading causes of blindness," he says.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Coastguard heard pleading with Italian ship captain (Reuters)

GIGLIO, Italy (Reuters) ? Italian coastguards urged the captain of a stricken cruise liner to return to his listing ship, leaked recordings showed, as divers continued their search for survivors into the night after finding five more bodies in the half-submerged wreck.

The discoveries took the known death toll to 11. A list of 28 missing people was posted on an Italian interior ministry web site, though authorities said that likely included the five found dead on Tuesday that are so far unidentified.

Captain Francesco Schettino has been allowed to leave jail but is under house arrest, blamed by his employer for risking the lives of more than 4,200 passengers and crew and half a billion dollars of ship in a reckless display of bravado.

Rescuers used explosives to blast through the maze of luxury cabins, bars and spas, fast losing hope of finding anyone alive inside the Costa Concordia, which lies semi-submerged on its side after being ripped open by rocks off a Tuscan island.

Dutch maritime services company SMIT said it was ready to start pumping fuel from the stricken liner as early as Wednesday once search operations for missing people have ended and they get the go-ahead from local authorities.

SMIT has been asked by the ship's owner and insurer to salvage up to 2,300 tons of fuel from the 114,500-ton ship and clean up if fuel on the vessel starts to leak.

The giant cruise ship, a floating pleasure palace of bars, spas, state rooms and tennis courts, slid a little on Monday, threatening to plunge below the Mediterranean waters of the surrounding marine nature reserve.

This forced a brief suspension of rescue efforts, which were also halted overnight on Monday though searches were continuing through Tuesday night. A coastguard said they would go on until the entire ship had been checked.

The list of people still unaccounted for on Tuesday evening included 13 German, four French, five Italian and two American passengers, together with four crew members from Italy, India, Hungary and Peru.

Captain Schettino is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck by sailing too close to shore and abandoning ship before all his passengers and crew scrambled off.

He has denied the charges and told magistrates on Tuesday he believed he should be credited with saving "hundreds, if not thousands" of lives because he brought the ship close to shore after it hit a rock, lawyer Bruno Leporatti said.

A judge ruled he could be allowed out of jail on Tuesday and will be placed under house arrest at his home near Sorrento in southern Italy.

The skipper, who underwent toxicology tests, claims he did not abandon the ship while passengers were still aboard.

But newspaper Corriere della Sera released what it said was a recording of ship-to-shore radio communications in which the enraged coastguards repeatedly order him back on board.

"GO BACK ON BOARD!"

"Listen Schettino, perhaps you have saved yourself from the sea, but I will make you look very bad. I will make you pay for this. Damn it, go back on board!" one coastguard says.

Speaking by radio from a lifeboat, Schettino pleads: "Do you realize that it is dark and we can't see anything?"

The coastguard shouts back: "So, what do you want to do, to go home, Schettino?! It's dark and you want to go home? Go to the bow of the ship where the ladder is and tell me what needs to be done, how many people there are, and what they need! Now!"

Officials did not confirm the tape's origins but other shouts heard in the background added authenticity. The Coast Guard official on the tape told a local newspaper he could tell by the "tone of the captain's voice" that something was very wrong. Schettino's lawyer said he would not comment.

The owners of the vessel - the biggest passenger ship ever wrecked and twice the tonnage of the Titanic - accused their captain of causing the disaster by sharply deviating from the charted course.

The ship foundered after striking a rock as dinner was being served on Friday night. The owners say the captain swung inshore to "make a bow" to the islanders, who included a retired Italian admiral. Investigators say it was within 150 meters of shore.

Most of the passengers and crew survived despite hours of chaos and confusion after the collision. The alarm was raised not by an SOS from the ship but mobile phone calls from passengers on board to Italian police on the mainland.

Video taken from a rescue helicopter in the early hours of Saturday, using a night vision camera, showed an extraordinary scene of dozens of passengers being gingerly lowered on ropes down the upturned hull of the ship into rescue boats.

The wreck, with a long gash below the waterline, looms over the normally tranquil island of Giglio.

The father of the ship's head waiter told Reuters his son had telephoned him before the accident to say the crew would salute him by blowing the ship's whistle as they passed close by Giglio, where both the waiter, Antonello Tievoli, and his 82-year-old father Giuseppe live.

Costa Cruises chief executive Pier Luigi Foschi on Monday blamed errors by Schettino for the disaster. He told a news conference the company would provide its captain with any assistance he required. "But we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error," he added.

Foschi said company vessels were forbidden to come closer than 500 meters to the Giglio coast. Schettino denies being too close and says the rock he hit was not marked on charts.

The ship is resting in about 20 meters (60 feet) of water but could go down by as much as 130 meters if it shifts free from the rocks.

(Additional reporting by Silvia Ognibene, Silvia Aloisi, Kate Hudson and Catherine Hornby, Writing by Barry Moody and Philip Pullella; Editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/wl_nm/us_italy_ship

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'Glee' Casts Rachel's Dads: Brian Stokes & Jeff Goldblum Will Debut & Sing On Valentine's Day Episode

TVLine:

As far as parental cliffhangers go, it's second only to the identity of the Mother on a certain CBS sitcom: "Glee" has finally cast Rachel's gay dads, and TVLine can reveal which musically-inclined actors landed the plum parts.

A show insider confirms to TVLine exclusively that onetime "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" detective Jeff Goldblum and Broadway veteran Brian Stokes Mitchell have been tapped to play Hiram and LeRoy Berry, the adoptive parents of Lea Michele's character.

Related on HuffPost:

Read the whole story: TVLine

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/17/glee-casts-rachels-dads_n_1212107.html

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Audio: Cruise captain pleaded not to reboard ship

A scuba diver recovers a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A scuba diver recovers a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian naval divers recover a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian naval divers recover a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian naval divers recover a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian naval divers recover a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

ROME (AP) ? Five more bodies were pulled Tuesday from the wreckage of a crippled cruise ship off Tuscany, and a shocking audio emerged in which the ship's captain was heard making excuses as the Italian coast guard repeatedly ordered him to return to oversee his ship's evacuation.

Prosecutors have accused Capt. Francesco Schettino of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship before all passengers were evacuated during the grounding of the Costa Concordia cruise ship Friday night.

The death toll nearly doubled to 11 on Tuesday when divers extracted five more bodies, all of them adults wearing life jackets, from the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point, according to Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro. He said they were thought to have been passengers.

Prior to that discovery, the coast guard had raised the number of missing to 25 passengers and four crew. Italian officials gave the breakdown as 14 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans, one Hungarian, one Indian and one Peruvian.

But there was still confusion over the numbers, and the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin listed 12 Germans as confirmed missing.

The Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 people when it hit a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday night. That occured after Schettino made an unauthorized deviation from the cruise ship's programmed course, apparently as a favor to his chief waiter, who hailed from the island.

Schettino has insisted that he stayed aboard until the ship was evacuated. However, a recording of his conversation with Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco that emerged Tuesday indicates he fled before all passengers were off ? and then resisted De Falco's repeated orders to return.

"You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear?" De Falco shouted in the audio tape.

Schettino resisted, saying the ship was tipping and it was dark. At the time, he and his second-in-command were in a lifeboat and the captain said he was coordinating the rescue from there. He also said he was not going back on board the ship "because the other lifeboat is stopped." Passengers have said many lifeboats on the exposed port side of the ship didn't winch down after the ship had capsized.

De Falco shouted back: "And so what? You want to go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!"

"You go aboard. It is an order. Don't make any more excuses. You have declared 'Abandon ship,' now I am in charge," De Falco shouted.

At one point, De Falco vowed "I'm going to make sure you get in trouble. ...I am going to make you pay for this. Go on board, (expletive)!"

Schettino was finally heard agreeing to reboard on the tape. But the coast guard has said he never went back, and had police arrest him on land.

The 52-year-old Schettino, described by the Italian media as a genial, tanned ship's officer, has worked for 11 years for the ship's owner and was made captain in 2006. He hails from Meta di Sorrento, in the Naples area, which produces many of Italy's ferry and cruise boat captains. He attended the Nino Bixio merchant marine school near Sorrento.

Schettino recounted his version of events before prosecutors and a judge at a preliminary hearing Tuesday as to whether he should stay jailed, as requested by prosecutors. The judge deferred an immediate decision. The captain could face up to 12 years in prison on the abandoning ship charge alone.

Schettino's attorney, Bruno Leporatti, said that in the hearing, the captain had insisted that after the initial crash into the reefs, he had maneuvered the ship close to shore in a way that "saved hundreds if not thousands of lives."

Passengers, however described the evacuation as chaotic.

Steve and Kathy Ledtke, who live in Fort Gratiot, Michigan, said they were sitting down to a late dinner Friday when they realized something had gone wrong. Kathy Ledtke told WDIV-TV that it seemed no one was in charge.

"It was complete chaos, and it was every man for himself," Kathy Ledtke said. "Nobody knew where to go."

Earlier Tuesday, Italian naval divers exploded holes in the hull of the grounded cruise ship, trying to speed up the search for the missing while seas were still calm. Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the holes would help divers enter the wreck more easily.

"We are rushing against time," he said.

The divers set four microcharges above and below the surface of the water, Busonero said. Video showed one hole above the waterline less than two meters (6 feet) in diameter.

Mediterranean waters in the area were relatively calm Tuesday with waves of just 12 inches (30 centimeters) but they were expected to reach nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters) Wednesday, according to meteorological forecasts.

A Dutch shipwreck salvage firm, meanwhile, said it would take its engineers and divers two to four weeks to extract the 500,000 gallons of fuel aboard the ship. The safe removal of the fuel has become a priority second only to finding the missing, as the wreckage site lies in a maritime sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Preliminary phases of the fuel extraction could begin as early as Wednesday if approved by Italian officials, the company said.

Smit, a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based salvage company, said no fuel had leaked from any of the ship's tanks and that the tanks appeared intact. While there is a risk the ship could shift in larger waves, to date it has been relatively stable perched on top of rocks near Giglio's port.

Smit's operations manager, Kees van Essen, said the company was confident the fuel could safely be extracted using pumps and valves to vacuum the oil out to waiting tanks.

"But there are always environmental risks in these types of operations," he told reporters.

The company said any discussion about the fate of the ship ? whether it is removed in one piece or broken up ? would be decided by Italian ship operator Costa Crociere and its insurance companies.

The Miami-based Carnival Corp., which owns the Italian operator, estimated that preliminary losses from having the Concordia out of operation at least through 2012 would be between $85 million and $95 million, along with other costs. The company's share price slumped more than 16 percent Monday.

It was not yet clear if the ship ? which was completed in 2006 ? would ever be able to return to service.

Carnival said its deductible on damage to the ship was approximately $30 million. In addition, the company faces a deductible of $10 million for third-party personal injury liability claims.

Carnival said other costs related to the grounding can't yet be determined.

___

Barry contributed from Milan; Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-17-EU-Italy-Cruise-Aground/id-76e1b3ad77a8428c8f75e6566e23a35b

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