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domingo, 28 de febrero de 2010

Todo sobre el terremoto en Chile


Terremoto en Chile: 1,5 millón de viviendas dañadas

Redacción

BBC Mundo



Se calcula que 1,5 millón de viviendas quedaron destrozadas en Chile a causa del terremoto.

En medio del dolor y de la muerte, los chilenos empiezan a contar los daños materiales que dejó el sismo de 8,8 grados en la escala de Richter.

La ministra de la Vivienda, Patricia Poblete, señaló que 1,5 millón de viviendas resultaron afectadas por el sismo y que 500.000 inmuebles fueron severamente dañados.

"En 72 horas tendremos algo más riguroso, pero tardará entre quince y veinte días evaluar todo", expresó Poblete ante los medios de comunicación.

"Siempre el ministerio, en estos cuatro años, ha dado tranquilidad a la familias y acogiendo en la emergencia. Ahora tenemos la misma metodología. Está instalada una manera de trabajar, hay una manera de enfrentar las crisis", dijo la funcionaria según la agencia de noticias Europa Press.

Como informó el periodista de la BBC Jonathan Amos, Chile es un país que cuenta en su historia con una larga lista de terremotos.

"Tanto las autoridades como el pueblo chileno tienen experiencia en actuar ante este tipo de emergencias", aseguró, lo que habría evitado cifras más altas en daños materiales y víctimas.
Sanidad e industria

Pese a la preparación, el gobierno de Chile informó que varios de los hospitales ubicados en la zona de la catástrofe registraron daños graves, por lo que "sus pacientes están siendo reubicados en la red asistencial pública y privada".

Asimismo, se ha reportado que los incendios suscitados tras el terremoto han afectado seriamente a fábricas de plástico en la zona norte de la Región Metropolitana.

La prensa local también ha informado que una sección del Club Hípico de Santiago colapsó.

La agencia de noticias Reuters también informó que varias refinerías y minas de cobre tuvieron que interrumpir su producción.

Según Santiago González, ministro de Minería, estos centros reanudarán su actividad en dos días, aunque descartó que el paro fuera a afectar a la exportación de cobre, una de las principales industrias del país.
Aeropuerto afectado

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El aeropuerto internacional Arturo Merino Benítez de Santiago sufrió graves daños en su infraestructura.

De acuerdo con la Dirección de Aeronáutica Civil, continuará la prohibición de salida de aviones comerciales desde el aeropuerto hacia destinos locales e internacionales, hasta el lunes.

"La rampa que da acceso a los vehículos para que lleguen a la terminal resultó destruida, así como la zona de retiro de equipajes, donde se cayó el techo y hubo rotura de vidrios", informó la agencia de noticias ANSA.

El cierre del aeropuerto provocó la paralización del tráfico aéreo en el país, por lo que varias aerolíneas tuvieron que desviar los vuelos que se dirigían hacia Santiago de Chile a otros aeropuertos de países vecinos.
Oferta internacional

Varias organizaciones mundiales le han ofrecido ayuda a la presidenta de Chile, Michelle Bachelet, para superar la catástrofe.

"Expresamos nuestra más profunda solidaridad con el pueblo chileno a la luz del sufrimiento y las pérdidas causadas por el terremoto", dijo el presidente del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, Luis Alberto Moreno.

Por su parte, el presidente del Banco Mundial, Robert B. Zoellick, expresó su solidaridad con Chile.

"El Grupo del Banco Mundial se encuentra listo para apoyar al Gobierno de Chile en la forma en que lo consideren adecuado".

Tras el terremoto en Chile, el tsunami viaja hacia Asia

Redacción

BBC Mundo



Japón se declaró en alerta por tsunami con previsiones de olas de 3 m.

Varios países a lo largo del Océano Pacífico han sido alcanzados por olas producidas por el tsunami que desató el terremoto de 8,8 grados en Chile y que ahora estaría viajando hacia Asia.

Japón fue uno de los últimos países en declararse en alerta, junto con Rusia. A pesar de que las previsiones avisaban de la llegada de olas de hasta 3 metros, la oficina de meteorología japonesa dijo que el tsunami consistió en olas de unos 30 centímetros.

Las autoridades ordenaron la evacuación de 10.000 personas que viven en las zonas costeras, aunque se estima que lo peor ya habría pasado.

La agencia meteorológica del país pidió a la gente que esté en alerta máxima ante la posibilidad de que nuevas olas lleguen este domingo tras pasar por varias naciones oceánicas.

Hasta las Islas Marquesas, en la Polinesia Francesa, llegó ya una ola de 4 metros, pero no se produjeron daños, según la agencia de noticias AFP.

En Tahití se prohibió el tráfico en las carreteras que se encuentran a menos de 500 metros del mar, y los residentes en zonas de baja altura tuvieron que trasladarse a zonas más altas.
Australia y N. Zelanda


Varios países del pacífico alertaron a su población residente en las costas.

Mientras, en Nueva Zelanda las autoridades advirtieron que olas de hasta 3 metros podrían llegar a las islas, pero no se reportaron víctimas ni grandes daños por el momento.

También en Australia las autoridades alertaron sobre "posibles olas peligrosas, fuertes corrientes oceánicas e inundaciones en la costa" desde Sidney a Brisbane.

El Centro de Alertas de Tsunamis del Pacífico advirtió de posibles daños en todo el océano, pero después dijo que las olas producidas por el terremoto chileno no fueron tan altas como se predijo.

En la tarde del sábado, este organismo eliminó la alerta para Hawaii, archipiélago de Estados Unidos en el Pacífico.

La gobernadora del estado, Linda Lingle, informó a la prensa que no se reportaron daños en ninguna parte del archipiélago y afirmó que "un gran día ya se ha acabado".

clic Lea: retiran alerta de tsunami en Hawaii
Poca profundidad

El sismo fue lo suficientemente grande para causar daños significativos, pero no tanto como para causar grandes daños a largas distancias

Gerard Fryer, geofísico

Un geofísico del Centro de Alertas, Gerard Fryer, le dijo a la BBC que el impacto del tsunami fue bajo porque el terremoto se produjo en aguas poco profundas.

"El sismo fue lo suficientemente grande para causar daños significativos, pero no tanto como para causar grandes daños a largas distancias", dijo.

Los sistemas de alerta han mejorado notablemente en la zona después de que un terremoto y el sucesivo tsunami en Indonesia en 2004 causara la muerte a cerca de 250.000 personas.

1.5 Million Displaced After Chile Quake

Sebastian Martinez/Associated Press

The quake in Chile on Saturday caused severe damage, including in Talca, above. More Photos »
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and LIZ ROBBINS
Published: February 27, 2010
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RIO DE JANEIRO — A strong aftershock struck Chile on Sunday, a day after a destructive 8.8-magnitude earthquake left hundreds of people dead and a long swath of the country in smoky rubble.
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Underwater Plate Cuts 400-Mile Gash (February 28, 2010)
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The death toll was expected to rise, particularly around Concepción, Chile's second-largest metropolitan area, which is roughly 70 miles from the quake's center. The aftershock was reported around 8:30 local time Sunday morning from the capital of Santiago, where it shook buildings, according to Reuters.

More than 1.5 million people have displaced by the quake, according to local news services that quoted the director of Chile's emergency management office. In Concepción, which appeared to be especially hard hit, the mayor said Sunday morning that 100 people were trapped under the rubble of a building that had collapsed, according to Reuters.

Elsewhere in Concepción, cars lay mangled and upended on streets littered with telephone wires and power cables. A new 14-story apartment building fell, while an older, biochemical lab at the University of Concepción caught fire.

In the nearby port of Talcahuano, a giant wave flooded the main square before receding and leaving behind a large fishing boat on the city streets.

"It was terrible, terrible," said Adela Galaz, a 59-year-old cosmetologist who said glasses and paintings fell to the floor of her 22nd-floor apartment in Santiago, 200 miles from the quake's center. "We are grateful to be alive."

President Michelle Bachelet, speaking at a news conference on Saturday night, called the quake "one of the worst tragedies in the last 50 years" and declared a "state of catastrophe."

While this earthquake was far stronger than the 7.0-magnitude one that ravaged Haiti six weeks ago, the damage and death toll in Chile are likely to be far less extensive, in part because of strict building codes put in place after devastating earthquakes.

The quake Saturday, tied for the fifth largest in the world since 1900, set off tsunami waves that swamped some nearby islands before moving across the Pacific. Hawaii began evacuations before dawn, but by early afternoon there — more than 15 hours after the earthquake first struck 6,500 miles away — the fears of a destructive wave had passed. Countries including Japan and the Philippines were on alert and ordered limited evacuations in anticipation of waves hitting Sunday.

Chileans were only just beginning to grapple with the devastation before them, even as more than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country.

In Santiago, the capital, residents reported having been terrified as the city shook for about 90 seconds.

Some people ran screaming from their downtown apartments, while car alarms and sirens wailed during the middle of the night. At least one apartment building collapsed, according to local media, and one highway buckled, flipping cars.

"We are in panic because it has been trembling all day," said Cecilia Vial, 65, an interior decorator in Santiago, who dashed out of her apartment only to return at night because she had nowhere else to go.

"We cannot go against nature," she said. "This is something that nature did."

Paul E. Simons, the United States ambassador to Chile, said in a telephone interview from Santiago that people he spoke with at the embassy said those 90 seconds "felt like five minutes." He added: "It was definitely an emotional experience."

Mr. Simons said that although the United States had offered aid, Chile's government had not yet requested assistance. All international relief groups were on standby, and the International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents said the Chilean Red Cross indicated that it did not need external assistance at this point.

Although there were long lines at supermarkets and gas stations, and damaged buildings and roads, the capital city, according to residents there, was mostly calm by the late afternoon Saturday. But the scene was grimmer in Concepción and surrounding areas to the south.
In Talca, 167 miles south of Santiago, almost every home in the center of the city was severely damaged, and on Saturday night, people slept on the streets in the balmy night air near fires built with wood from destroyed homes. All but two of the local hospital's 13 wings were in ruins, said Claudio Martínez, a doctor at the hospital. "We're only keeping the people in danger of dying," he said.
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Underwater Plate Cuts 400-Mile Gash (February 28, 2010)
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Dr. Martínez said the hospital staff had tried to take some people to Santiago for treatment in the morning, but the roads were blocked at the time.

Eduardo Martínez, 57, a local resident, said many people on his street had died and that he and his five brothers all lost their homes.

In Chillán, 69 miles from Concepción, a crumbling wall allowed 300 prisoners to escape and incite a riot, according to La Tercera, the nation's largest newspaper. The police captured 60 inmates, but more than 200 were still at large, the newspaper reported on its Web site. With major highways and bridges destroyed, and slabs of concrete jabbing diagonally into the air, transportation slowed or was halted altogether.

Major seaports and airports, including the main airport in Santiago, were out of operation across the central region, Chilean officials said. TV Chile reported that part of the ceiling at the airport had collapsed, but that runways appeared intact. Cellphone and Internet service was sporadic throughout the country, considered one of the most wired in Latin America, complicating rescue efforts.

On Robinson Crusoe, one of the coastal islands hit by early waves, authorities said at least four people had been killed.

President Obama spoke briefly outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, expressing concern for the country and saying the United States would offer aid in rescue and recovery efforts.

"Early indications are that hundreds of lives have been lost in Chile and the damage has been severe," Mr. Obama said.

He told Mrs. Bachelet that the United States was ready to help if needed. "We will be there for her should the Chilean people need assistance," he said

State Department officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been planning a trip to South America beginning on Monday, was also contacting Mrs. Bachelet, with whom she has long had warm personal relations.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also offered his condolences, as well as longer-term aid should Chilean officials signal the need for it.

The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. in central Chile, centered roughly 200 miles southwest of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, the United States Geological Survey reported.

The Geological Survey said that another earthquake on Saturday, a 6.3-magnitude quake in northern Argentina, was unrelated. In Salta, Argentina, an 8-year-old boy was killed and two of his friends were injured when a wall collapsed, The Associated Press reported.

The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was also in Chile: a 9.5-magnitude quake struck in the spring of 1960 that struck near Concepción and set off a series of deadly tsunamis that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan.

But that earthquake, which killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than two million homeless at the time, prepared officials and residents in the region for future devastating effects.

Shortly after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Valparaíso in 1985, the country established strict building codes, according to Andre Filiatrault, the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at the University at Buffalo.

"There is a lot of reinforced concrete in Chile, which is normal in Latin America," Professor Filiatrault said. "The only issue in this, like any earthquakes, are the older buildings and residential construction that might not have been designed according to these codes."

This was in direct contrast to Haiti, which was unprepared for the Jan. 12 earthquake, Professor Filiatrault added.

"If you are considering this magnitude is 8.8, I would be very surprised if the death tolls come close," Professor Filiatrault said.

viernes, 19 de febrero de 2010

Tiger Woods se disculpa


Tiger Woods promete regresar al golf
El deportista se disculpó públicamente por ser "irresponsable y egoísta" al engañar a su esposa; considerado uno de los mejores golfistas de la historia, no dio fecha de su regreso a los campos.
Uno de los golfistas mejor pagados en la historia regresará algún día a los campos verdes. (Foto: AP)
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El golfista lidera la lista de Forbes como el que más ingresos recauda, con 82 millones de dólares.
AT&T termina patrocinio de Tiger Woods
La telefónica finalizó su contrato con el golfista luego de que éste admitiera su infidelidad.
Accionistas, dañados por Tiger Woods
La confesión de infidelidad habría costado a los accionistas de patrocinadoras hasta 12,000 mdd.


ENFOQUE El deporte deja triunfos... y dinero
Deportistas como Juan Martín del Potro y Michael Phelps ganan millones en premios y patrocinios.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Estados Unidos (Reuters) — El golfista estadounidense Tiger Woods se disculpó el viernes públicamente por su infidelidad y expresó vergüenza por lo que dijo ser un comportamiento "irresponsable y egoísta", destacando que volverá al circuito sin especificar cuándo.

"Fui infiel (...), cometí infidelidades. Lo que hice es inaceptable y soy el único culpable", dijo Woods en su primera aparición pública desde que admitió en diciembre haber engañado a su esposa Elin y anunció que se tomaba un descanso indefinido del deporte.

El golfista estadounidense, una de las personalidades deportivas más acaudaladas del planeta, recibía unos 100 millones de dólares al año en acuerdos publicitarios. Algunas compañías, como AT&T y Accenture, dejaron sin efecto los contratos que los unían al golfista.

El deportista, de 34 años, destacó el viernes que volverá a jugar algún día, pero no aclaró la fecha de su retorno.

"Planeo volver a jugar al golf algún día, pero no sé cuándo será. No descarto que sea este año", explicó.

Woods defendió a su esposa y negó las especulaciones de prensa al afirmar que "nunca hubo una situación de violencia doméstica (en nuestra familia)".

Los rumores se generaron después de un extraño accidente de auto que involucró al golfista número uno del mundo en noviembre del 2009, en las afueras de su casa en Florida en medio de la noche.

"Elin nunca me pegó esa noche ni ninguna otra noche", explicó Woods, quien habló ante periodistas en las oficinas centrales del circuito de la PGA en Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Woods, uno de los mejores golfistas de la historia y quien era una de las figuras más atractivas para los patrocinadores, dijo que estuvo en terapia 45 días y que le queda "un largo camino por recorrer".

El golfista destacó que el sábado volvería al centro de tratamiento, del que no dio ningún dato.

Woods destacó que lo que ocurrió es fundamentalmente una cuestión entre él y su esposa, pero reconoció que ha lastimado y decepcionado a otras personas cercanas a él.

El deportista había sido aconsejado por sus colegas y por expertos en relaciones públicas para que ofrezca una disculpa pública antes de volver a competir, y muchos de ellos le sugirieron que además debería presentarse en una entrevista por televisión.

Woods, cuya imagen pulcra se vio demolida por una serie de alegatos sobre su vida privada, se sometió a un tratamiento por adicción sexual en Mississippi, según reportes de prensa. Después de eso regresó a su hogar de Orlando, donde se cree que él y su esposa sueca, Elin, viven separados.

Apologizing, Woods Sets No Date for Return to Golf
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By HARVEY ARATON
Published: February 19, 2010

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — In his first public appearance after the November head-on collision of his squeaky clean image and an unsavory secret life, Tiger Woods was somber in expressing remorse, stern in scolding the news media for stalking his family and reporting untruths, and spiritual in saying he had drifted from the Buddhist principles he was taught as a child.
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Pool Photo by Joe Skipper

Tiger Woods apologized on Friday for marital infidelity and said he was unsure when he would return to golf.
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Full Transcript of Tiger Woods's Statement (February 20, 2010)
Players See Sincerity, but Many Just Prepare to Play (February 20, 2010)
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Reporters listened as Woods made a statement at the Sunset Room at TPC Sawgrass, home of the PGA Tour, on Friday.

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In front of about 40 inner-circle people that included his mother, Kultida, but not his wife, Elin, along with a national television audience, Woods made his most direct statement about admitted infidelities in his marriage.

"I had affairs," he said. "I was unfaithful. I cheated."

Woods said he had mistakenly believed that his enormous success and celebrity made him entitled "to enjoy all the temptations around me." He added: "I was wrong. I was foolish. I don't get to play by different rules."

While creating the impression that his marriage hung in the balance, Woods vigorously defended his wife and refuted reports and speculation that domestic violence had played a role in the episode outside his home in the early-morning hours on Nov. 27 that resulted in Woods's crashing his sport utility vehicle into a fire hydrant and a neighbor's tree in the gated community of Isleworth, an Orlando, Fla., suburb.

"Elin never hit me that night or any other night," he said, as his voice rose and his face hardened. "There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage, ever. Elin has shown enormous grace and poise throughout the ordeal."

Devoid of his ubiquitous Nike cap, Woods wore a dark sport coat and light-blue shirt with the collar open. He spoke for almost 15 minutes at a lectern in front of a blue curtain. Three wire service reporters were permitted to watch but not ask questions at the T.P.C. Sawgrass clubhouse near the Professional Golf Association's headquarters. The rest of a news media contingent, which was 300 strong and included journalists from Japan, Australia and Norway, jammed into two ballrooms at the Marriott Sawgrass resort to watch the tightly controlled event.

Acknowledging reports that he had undergone counseling for 45 days, Woods said he would continue the treatment beginning Saturday. He did not reveal the nature of the counseling.

Woods also did not address a return to the PGA Tour until near the end of his statement, saying: "I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out that it will be this year."

That hedge was interpreted as a positive sign by the PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem. "The good news today is that he does plan to return and could return this year," Finchem said in a news conference afterward.

But in raising the possibility of a return sooner rather than later, Woods also treaded on his Tour colleagues merely with the timing of his reappearance, before the third round of a match play tournament in Arizona, sponsored by Accenture — a company that dropped Woods as its spokesman in the wake of his sensational fall from grace.

In a letter to the PGA Tour policy board, a copy of which was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, Finchem struck a mollifying tone in explaining why the event was held Friday. He wrote that "Tiger's therapy called for a week's break at this time" and that "accordingly, there was very little flexibility in the date for the announcement."

During Finchem's news conference Friday, when he called Woods an "American hero," he also said he understood why Woods had chosen such a tightly controlled format as the first step in a lengthy process to heal himself, possibly his marriage and his relationship with the public.

"Candidly, what else do we need to know, at this point?" he said.

But the offer by the Woods camp to have three golf writers attend was rejected by the Golf Writers Association of America because the group did not want its members to be "used as props, standing in the back of the room, lending credibility to a staged presentation," said Vartan Kupelian, the association's president.

The three reporters who were inside the T.P.C. Sawgrass clubhouse were from The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News. They arrived about 10 minutes before Woods appeared to speak to find the audience seated in three rows. "It was like church, very somber," Doug Ferguson of The A.P. said.

In the back row sat Tour officials. Woods's mother was in the front, flanked by two Woods employees, Amy Reynolds and Kathy Battaglia. Nearby was his former college roommate at Stanford, Notah Begay III, a golfer on the PGA Tour.

Woods spoke in a calm, measured tone, beginning by addressing the unthreatening environment he had insisted on. "Many of you in this room are my friends," he said. "Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have cheered me or you've worked for me or you've supported me."
He paused and added, "Now every one of you has good reason to be critical of me." He proceeded to lambaste himself as "selfish" and "foolish." He said he had betrayed his carefully crafted image as a person to look up to.
Related
Full Transcript of Tiger Woods's Statement (February 20, 2010)
Players See Sincerity, but Many Just Prepare to Play (February 20, 2010)
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Schedule/Results
Stats | Earnings
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Stats | Earnings
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"Parents used to point to me as a role model for their kids," he said. "I owe all those families a special apology. I want to say to them that I am truly sorry."

How Woods's first step will play to the audience at large remains to be seen, but two companies — Upper Deck and TAG Heuer — released statements saying that they were encouraged by Woods's statement and that their relationships with him would continue.

While some of the players at the Accenture tournament refused comment, others offered understanding and support.

"I've got a couple of good friends at home that have gone through the alcohol-abuse program with A.A., and similar steps are taken in the healing process where you have to make amends to the people you've hurt, and you have to start the bridge to the other side," Stewart Cink said. "And I think that's where Tiger is. It sounded heartfelt to me."

Ben Crane said: "I thought it was an amazing conference. I thought Tiger was very humble. And, you know what? I think we all love him as a golfer and as a family man. And we want to see what's best for him, and I think everything he did is going to help him get back soon and help him."

The strongest support for Woods came from Kultida Woods, who tearfully embraced her emotional son when he finished his statement. "I'm so proud to be his mom, period," she said. "As a human being, everyone has faults, makes missteps and learns from it."

Picking up on Woods's theme of a news media witch hunt, she said: "He didn't kill anybody. He didn't do anything illegal."

In the weeks and months ahead, even after he returns to the sport he has dominated for years, Woods's sincerity will be debated over and over. But however staged his statement, there was one undeniable truth spoken by Woods regarding the state of his marriage and his reputation as he tries to go forward.

It was a profound message he said came from his wife, not a speechwriter.

"As Elin pointed out to me, my real apology to her will not come in the form of words," he said. "It will come from my behavior over time."

Weekend Shuttle Sightings--Double Flyby Alert


Space Weather News for Feb. 19, 2010
http://spaceweather.com

DOUBLE FLYBY ALERT:  Space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, Feb. 19th, at 7:54 pm EST.  This sets the stage for a weekend of double flybys.  The ISS and Endeavour will be circling Earth in  mutual proximity, streaking through the night sky as distinct points of light.  The show will continue until Endeavour lands at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, Feb. 21st, at 10:16 pm EST. Check the Simple Satellite Tracker to see if you are favored with an apparition: http://spaceweather.com/flybys

NEW AND IMPROVED: SpaceWeather's Satellite Tracker app for the iPhone and iPod touch has been improved.  It now predicts flybys worldwide, uses GPS location services, and more.  Check it out at http://simpleflybys.com .

GREAT NORTHERN LIGHTS:  This past week, Arctic sky watchers have seen some of the best auroras in years.  It's another sign that the sun is coming back to life after a long, deep solar minimum.  Recent images may be found in our photo gallery; start browsing here: http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_01feb10_page3.htm

 

lunes, 15 de febrero de 2010

Hoy es dia de los presidentes en EUA

Los peores presidentes en la historia de Estados Unidos.

Martin Van Buren
8th president, 1837-1841

Making himself nearly disappear completely from the history books was probably not the trick that the "Little Magician" Martin Van Buren had in mind, but his was the first truly forgettable American presidency.

Van Buren was largely done in by an economic crisis brought on by banks offering easy credit while benefiting from little or no central regulation. (Sound familiar?) The President's extravagant lifestyle made him an easy scapegoat for political opponents, and the ensuing economic crisis overshadowed his deft handling of early sectional tensions. He was soundly defeated by William Henry Harrison in 1841.

William Henry Harrison
Harrison has the inglorious distinction of having had the shortest presidential term, dying of pneumonia after just 30 days in office. The pneumonia may or may not have been exacerbated by his Inaugural address, the lengthiest ever and one delivered in freezing temperatures without aide of a coat or a hat. Clocking in at almost two hours, the long-winded speech set a record that still stands. It is Harrison's most noteworthy accomplishment in office.

John Tyler
10th president, 1841-1845

After John Tyler earned the vice presidency on the strength of a campaign slogan that tacked him on as an postscript — "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" — his fate as a historical footnote seemed likely. And when he ascended to the presidency following the death of William Henry Harrison, being dubbed "His Accidency" made it a lock.

Tyler was so deeply unpopular during his presidency that all but one of his cabinet members resigned in protest when he vetoed a bill establishing a national bank. Shortly after, he was expelled from his own party and the House of Representatives tried to issue impeachment charges against him. Tyler, unable to recapture his own party's presidential nomination in 1845, left to support the nascent Confederate movement. He died in the Confederate House of Representatives, fighting another losing battle to the last.

Millard Fillmore
13th president, 1850-1853

Millard Fillmore's rise to the presidency reads like a Horatio Alger tale. Born in a log cabin on New York's frontier before rising through the state's political machine to the highest office in the land, all the ingredients for a great story were there. But his presidency would provide an utterly forgettable ending.

Fillmore became president after the unexpected death of Zachary Taylor and became myopically focused on the Compromise of 1850, which tried to quell sectional concerns by setting the balance of slave states and free states after the Mexican-American War. Here he would prove to be on the wrong side of history, treating the conflict—as the New York Times famously observed—as a political, rather than a moral question. In his desperation to broker the act through, however, he ended up with legislation that united everyone only in their displeasure and did little to ameliorate the tensions that would eventually lead to civil war. Instead, another log cabin-born president would ultimately be remembered for saving the Union. And Fillmore? Fillmore who?

James Buchanan
15th president, 1857-1861

Millard Fillmore just stalled the Civil War — James Buchanan made it a near certainty. Claiming that his hands were bound by the Constitution, Buchanan believed the best action to quell the threat of secession was no action at all. Sympathetic to the South, Buchanan supported the Dred Scott decision, and when Southern states stated their intention to withdraw from the Union, he called their actions illegal but said he had no authority to stop it. He hoped to negotiate a compromise but didn't bother to seek reelection, leaving behind little record of accomplishment and the Civil War looming starkly on the horizon.


Rutherford B. Hayes
A Republican presidential candidate loses the popular vote in a disputed election, but wins the White House after months of partisan wrangling. It's not a lie — history does repeat itself. Rutherford B. Hayes squeaked into office thanks only to a congressional commission's narrow vote. Though if you thought George W. Bush had enemies, consider this — Hayes' official Inauguration was secretly held inside the White House, for fear of the trouble his opponents might stir up.

A former Ohio Representative and governor, Hayes scored points from good-government types for appointing Cabinet members regardless of political ties, though his reputation took a hit after he called in federal troops to squash widespread railroad strikes in 1877. The troops opened fire on workers and killed dozens.

First Lady Lucy Hayes, a temperance supporter, became known as "Lemonade Lucy" after banning liquor from the White House. But on the flip side of the fun spectrum, President Hayes began the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, which continues each spring. And for this, we remember him.


Chester Arthur
21st President, 1881-1885

Chester Arthur was one of five Presidents who was never elected — he took office after James Garfield's assassination and served nearly a full term.

His political rise took place in the not-quite-squeaky-clean New York political machine, where he had a reputation for cronyism and allegedly demanded kickbacks from workers to support the Republican party. So he shocked many observers by becoming a reformer in office, ushering in the civil service commission to crack down on the rampant spoils system. Even Mark Twain said it would be "hard to better" his administration.

But Arthur's do-gooder streak didn't particularly please other Republicans, and he became one of the few Presidents to fail to win his own party's nomination for re-election. Historians suspect he didn't campaign very aggressively for it, as early in his term he learned — but kept secret — that he had a fatal kidney disease. He died less than two years after leaving office.



William McKinley
25th President, 1897-1901

Quick — which President is on the $500 bill? William McKinley, obviously. (And yes, they did make $500 bills for a while.)

McKinley was a savvy politician who listened carefully to the public. Though he opposed it at first, McKinley brought the country to war with Spain in 1898 as Pulitzer and Hearst's "yellow journalism" juiced the nation's appetite for a fight. America's claim to Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay count among the war's legacies.

McKinley was shot by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Alerted by McKinley's aides, Thomas Edison sent a brand-new x-ray machine to Buffalo after a bullet couldn't be found inside McKinley's body. But doctors, thinking McKinley was improving, never used it. He died of gangrene eight days after he was hit and was replaced in office by his far more memorable vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt.


Warren G. Harding
29th President, 1921-1923

The original "Warren G," Harding is widely considered one of the country's worst Presidents.

He was an Ohio newspaper publisher who eventually rose to U.S. Senator, where he preferred poker, socializing and, it was said, womanizing to working. Republican bosses favored Harding, however, finding him charismatic and pliant, and he won the presidency in 1920 promising to restore pre-World War I "normalcy" (his mangling of the word "normality" was ridiculed by critics).

In office Harding appointed a slew of corrupt officials, prompting the Teapot Dome bribery scandal which sent a Cabinet secretary to prison for the first time. An accused adulterer, Harding was the subject of a best-selling memoir from a woman claiming to be his mistress and mother of his illegitimate daughter.


Harding died in office. He lives on, in part, as a cautionary tale told by author Malcolm Gladwell. In his book Blink, Gladwell says the "Warren Harding error" led supporters to assume he'd be a good President simply because he appeared stately and presidential. It didn't quite work out that way.




jueves, 11 de febrero de 2010

Toyota...


Toyota anuncia retiro global del Prius y otros híbridos

Redacción

BBC Mundo


Reproduzca el contenido en Real Player o Windows Media

La empresa automotriz Toyota anunció este martes el retiro de 436.000 autos híbridos, principalmente del modelo Prius, debido a una falla en su sistema de frenos.

La noticia se dio a conocer pocas horas después del retiro de esos modelos del mercado japonés. La medida afecta a casi 200.000 Prius vendidos en el archipiélago.

En lo que va de año la compañía ya ha tenido que retirar millones de vehículos debido a problemas en el acelerador y la alfombrilla.

clic Lea: Accionistas de EE.UU. demandan a Toyota

El presidente de Toyota, Akio Toyoda, quien ya tiene que tratar con el daño causado a la imagen de la marca por otros problemas técnicos, explicó que los detalles del plan para sacar del mercado estos nuevos cientos de miles de autos serán anunciados a última hora de este martes.

"Hemos decidido retirarlos porque creemos que la seguridad de nuestros clientes es nuestra prioridad", dijo Toyoda en rueda de prensa.

El Prius fue el auto más vendido en Japón en 2009 y es el modelo híbrido más popular en todo el mundo.
En el software


Toyota ha venido sufriendo repetidas controversias por problemas en varios de sus modelos.


Hasta la fecha ha habido unos 200 reclamos en Japón y Estados Unidos sobre el sistema de frenos del Prius que no se activan en ciertas condiciones una vez se presiona el pedal.

Se cree que esto afecta a unos 270.000 Prius vendidos en Estados Unidos y Japón desde mayo pasado.

Toyota culpa de los problemas a un fallo en un software de frenado y asegura que ya se ha arreglado en los vehículos de este año.

El fabricante de autos también anunció que suspenderá las ventas de los modelos híbridos Sai (de venta exclusiva en Japón) y Lexus HS250h (vendido globalmente) al tiempo que ordenó el retiro de los que ya están circulando. Las razones también tienen que ver con los frenos.

clic Lea: Toyota admite falla en frenos del Prius
Línea abierta
retiros de toyota
Septiembre 2007, EE.UU.: 55.000 Camry y Lexus por alfombrado
Octubre 2009, EE.UU.: 3,8 millones de autos Toyota y Lexus debido a problemas en el alfombrado
Noviembre 2009, EE.UU.: la cifra de vehículos retirados por alfombrado aumenta a 4,2 millones
Enero 2010, EE. UU.: 2,3 millones de autos Toyota se retiran por problemas en el pedal del acelerador (de esos, 2,1 millones ya estaban entre los que tenían fallas en el alfombrado)
Enero 2010, EE.UU.: 1,1 millones de Toyota se retiran por el alfombrado
Febrero 2010, Europa: 1,8 millones de Toyota salen del mercado por fallas en el pedal
Febrero 2010, Japón y EE.UU.: 200 quejas de fallas en el sistema de frenos del nuevo Prius. Nuevo retiro de autos.


El Departamento de Transporte de Estados Unidos anunció la semana pasada que estaba investigando el problema de frenos del Prius, debido a que el gobierno había recibido 124 informes de conductores sobre el tema, que incluía cuatro accidentes.

La investigación estadounidense mirará las alegaciones sobre la pérdida momentánea del sistema de frenos cuando se viaja por superficies desiguales.

El presidente de la empresa escribió hace poco al diario estadounidense Washington Post que estaba en contacto con la Secretaria de Transporte de ese país, Ray LaHood, a quien le aseguró que la comunicación se mantendrá abierta, será más frecuenta y que Toyota estará "más atenta en responder" a las autoridades.

Hasta ahora Toyota ha tenido que retirar ocho millones de vehículos de otros modelos por problemas en el acelerador o en las alfombrillas.

Según el corresponsal de la BBC en la ciudad japonesa de Toyota, Alastair Leithead, la empresa ha sido golpeada duramente en todo el mundo. El impacto en sus finanzas podría durar meses o inclusive años.

Antes del anuncio del retiro del Prius en Japón, Toyota estimaba que las pérdidas alcanzarían los US$2.000 millones. Se espera que la salida del híbrido aumente la cifra.

clic Lea también: Imagen de Toyota en "trizas"

Honda también anuncia retiro de autos

Redacción

BBC Mundo



Honda anunció que también está retirando cientos de miles de autos en Estados Unidos debido a posibles desperfectos.

En un nuevo golpe para la industria automotriz japonesa, la firma Honda confirmó que está expandiendo una orden anterior de retiro de autos con problemas en sus bolsas de aire, para incluir a más de 400.000 unidades adicionales, la mayoría de ellas en Estados Unidos.

La medida, que empezó en 2008 con el retiro de 4.000 vehículos, y continuó con otros 510.000 unidades en 2009, se extiende ahora a 437.000 autos adicionales, incluyendo cerca de 59.000 unidades vendidas en México, Canadá, Japón, Taiwán y Australia.

La noticia llega menos de 24 horas después de que el mayor fabricante de autos del mundo, Toyota, pidiera otro retiro masivo de vehículos para arreglar problemas con el sistema de frenos de sus vehículos híbrido, en especial el modelo Prius.

clic Lea: Toyota ordena retirar el Prius

El retiro incluye a los populares modelos Accord, Civic Odissey, Pilot, CL y CR-V de 2001 y 2002, así como al modelo Acura TL de 2002.

"No podemos estar completamente seguros de que el inflador de la bolsa de aire del conductor en los vehículos llamados a revisión funcionará como fue diseñado", dijo el comunicado de Honda.
Demasiada presión

La empresa dice que, en algunos de los carros, el sistema de inflado de las bolsas de aire puede activarse con demasiada presión.

Honda identificó doce incidentes en los que la bolsa de aire se infló excesivamente y estalló, arrojando pequeños fragmentos de metal, informa el corresponsal de la BBC en Washington, Steve Kingstone.

clic Lea también: Todos contra Toyota

En uno de los casos, el desperfecto resultó en una muerte.

Los ingenieros de Honda han buscado resolver el problema, pero en un comunicado, la empresa admite que no puede estar totalmente segura de que las bolsas de aire "funcionen de acuerdo a como fueron diseñadas", añadió el corresponsal.

En su nueva versión, la orden de retiro cubre a 9.000 vehículos en México, 1.300 en Taiwan y 700 en Australia, así como 4.000 en Japón.

Toyota, ¿cómo rehacer una imagen dañada?

Redacción

BBC Mundo



Toyota llamó a revisión millones de autos en todo el mundo.

Los gobiernos, medios de comunicación y, más importante, los consumidores han puesto en tela de juicio la reputación de Toyota, luego de que la empresa automotriz japonesa llamara a revisión millones de autos en todo el mundo.

Diversas empresas a lo largo de la historia sufrieron duros golpes a su reputación. Y, en mayor o menor medida, volvieron a dar pelea.

La pregunta que surge es cómo hará el mayor fabricante de vehículos del mundo para recuperar su buena imagen.

Una imagen que fue construida durante décadas en base, principalmente, a la calidad, eficiencia y confiabilidad de sus productos.

Una imagen que puede tardar días en derrumbarse y, advierten analistas, podría llevar años –o incluso décadas– en volver a erigir.

clic Lea: ¿Qué hacer si su Toyota fue afectado?
La experiencia de Toyota

"El daño a la reputación ya está hecho. Ahora no se trata del mensaje. Se trata de cientos de vendedores y millones de consumidores

Jeff Hess, profesor de marketing en la Universidad Politécnica Estatal de California

Los llamados a revisión no son anormales en la industria automotriz. De hecho, Toyota ya lo tuvo que hacer en 1989 cuando lanzó su marca de lujo Lexus.

En aquel momento, Lexus se vio afectado por una serie de fallas. Toyota no dudó y suspendió la producción.

La compañía envió empleados a recoger cada uno de los 8.000 autos involucrados. Le dieron un vehículo a los usuarios hasta que la reparación estuviera lista y luego devolvieron el auto reparado, recién lavado y con el tanque de combustible lleno.

Ahora los especialistas en torno al manejo de crisis aseguran que la compañía japonesa debe actuar con honestidad y apertura.

Como recuerda el corresponsal de BBC Mundo en Washington, Carlos Chirinos, ya en 2008 Toyota invirtió US$4 millones para labores de cabildeo.

En la actual crisis la firma contrató a abogados y a expertos en relaciones públicas, y en los canales de televisión estadounidenses ya aparece una campaña para recuperar la buena reputación de la compañía.

Pero puede que ello sólo no sea suficiente.


Toyota estimó en US$2.000 millones el costo del llamado a revisión.

"El daño a la reputación ya está hecho. Ahora no se trata del mensaje. Se trata de cientos de vendedores y millones de consumidores", aseguró a la agencia Reuters Jeff Hess, profesor de marketing en la Universidad Politécnica Estatal de California y ex analista de la industria automotriz.

Mark Rechtin, uno de los editores de Automotive News, le dijo al programa World Today de la BBC que el público estadounidense no suele prestar demasiada atención a las revisiones de vehículos, pero que la reacción esta vez es más extrema.

"Lo que estamos viendo es un poco de una fiebre de revisión. Pienso que los consumidores han pasivamente ignorado las revisiones en Detroit por años, casi al punto de estar esperándolas", explicó.

"Pero uno empieza a escuchar cosas como trampas de muerte de Toyota (…) es un cambio de paradigma… es un fervor, casi un pánico", indicó Rechtin.

clic Lea: Honda también anuncia retiro de autos
El público, acostumbrado

Según el especialista, el público ya está acostumbrado a ciertos llamados a revisión.

Lo que estamos viendo es un poco de una fiebre de revisión. Pienso que los consumidores han pasivamente ignorado las revisiones en Detroit por años, casi al punto de estar esperándolas

Mark Rechtin, editor de Automotive News

Ford, la firma estadounidense, vio cómo su imagen salía perjudicada tras vuelcos que involucraron a su camioneta Ford Explorer en 2000.

Y sin ir más lejos, el año pasado la compañía llamó a revisión unos 4,5 millones de vehículos por un fallo en un interruptor defectuoso.

En tanto, la automotriz alemana Audi realizó en la década de los '80 una masiva llamada a revisión en EE.UU luego de que un fallo en el acelerador fuera relacionado con seis muertos y 700 accidentes.

Las ventas de Audi cayeron en EE.UU. un 83% entre 1985 y 1991.
La lección de Tylenol


Toyota es el mayor fabricante de autos del mundo.

Fuera del rubro automotriz, otras empresas también han sufrido duros golpes a su imagen.

Un caso que cobró relevancia en su momento fue el de Perrier, la distinguida compañía francesa de agua mineral embotellada.

En 1990 un laboratorio de Carolina del Norte encontró benceno, un químico utilizado en gasolinas, en algunas botellas.

Alrededor de 160 millones de botellas debieron ser retiradas del mercado.

En la industria farmacéutica el caso de Johnson & Johnson será recordado. En 1982, siete personas murieron en EE.UU. tras consumir cápsulas contaminadas con cianuro del producto Tylenol, pensado para aliviar dolores y bajar la fiebre.

La reacción fue inmediata y la retirada, total: 31 millones de frascos. Las pérdidas pasaron los US$100 millones.

Pero la marca aún sigue entre las más vendidas. Eso ocurrió, aseguran los expertos, debido a la rápida y efectiva respuesta de la compañía.

At Toyota's Home Base, Townspeople Are Worried
By Michael Schuman / Toyota City Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010



Toyota City, Japan
Kimimasa Mayama / Bloomberg / Getty
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For bespectacled Sirou Hirayama, times have never been so bad. He and his wife Kiyomi, standing behind the counter at the Toyomi pharmacy in downtown Toyota City, home to Japanese car giant Toyota Motor, complain that the global recession has so punished the local economy that his sales are down 20% from 18 months ago. Now, with Toyota facing a crisis over the safety of its cars, Hirayama fears more hard times down the road. "Toyota was known for quality cars. Now that's changed 180 degrees," he says. "I'm fearful of the impact. The whole area is dependent on Toyota."

That gloom is enveloping Toyota City. The town of 420,000 in eastern Japan has been synonymous with Japanese manufacturing prowess for decades. The residents were so proud of Toyota that in 1959 they changed the city's then name, Koromo, to match its most important citizen. But the town's fortunes rise and fall with Toyota's. The firm's sprawling factory complexes lie only a short distance from the town center, and, as in any company town, the paychecks of Toyota employees are the main source of support for its restaurants and shops. According to city statistics, 77,000 people in the town work in auto-related industries. The entire region is connected to Toyota, with independent suppliers of parts spread through the surrounding countryside and nearby cities. "Toyota is the biggest company in this area," says Masahiko Hosokawa, a business professor at Chubu University in Nagoya, the closest major metropolis to Toyota City. If Toyota's crisis depresses its global sales, "it will have an impact here," he says.
(See the 50 worst cars of all time.)

The timing is terrible. In recent months, Toyota City — which boasts Detroit as a sister city — has shared some of the pain felt by its American counterpart. The region is still suffering from what locals call the Toyota shock. After the Lehman bankruptcy, when the worst of the financial crisis bit and the U.S. car market collapsed, Toyota reduced production and shed temporary workers, sending a damaging ripple through the region. The scars are clearly visible on the town's streets, riddled with closed shops and restaurants. Ryuichi Watanabe, an agent at the local branch of the Able property brokerage, says rents are down some 20% from two years ago, with many apartments lying empty. He worries the worst may be yet to come. "The myth of Japanese quality has crumbled," he says. "That means less markets and a negative impact on the entire economy."

Toyota City already gives an impression of a town under siege. Toyota's giant headquarters building is inaccessible — like a fortress at war. A spokesman for the city wouldn't grant TIME an interview with officials, saying the government won't comment on the issues of one company. Toyota employees are keeping their lips tightly sealed as well. Those approached on the streets, their Toyota company IDs clearly visible, politely bow their heads and say they are unable to comment. Only one young employee, who wouldn't give his name, mutters, "We're not sure what is going to happen."
(See pictures of Detroit's decline.)

Yasuteru Kamiya has no doubt though. The proprietor of the Happy End café in Toyota City's center sees Toyota's current crisis as yet another stop in the town's 30-year decline. Toyota City, he says, has never regained the bustle it enjoyed back in the 1980s, during the go-go years when Japan was the rising force of the global economy. Since the Toyota shock, Kamiya's sales are down 50%. "We're very worried that we can't continue," he says. And that all depends on Toyota.

— With reporting by Terrence Terashima / Toyota City

Ex-Toyota lawyer points to electronic throttle control
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By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — A former in-house lawyer for Toyota alleged Wednesday that the automaker's unintended acceleration issues are caused by electronics snafus in cars, not just floor-mat jams and sticky gas pedals.

"It's the electronic throttle control," said Dimitrios Biller, who worked for Toyota from 2003 to 2007 defending against rollover accident lawsuits, in an interview Wednesday with ABC News.

Biller is suing Toyota, alleging that it withheld data in civil lawsuits and from the government, and is being countersued by the automaker.

In his first interview since filing his lawsuit last year, he said he learned of the electronics glitches while he was a lawyer for Toyota and said his evidence for that would still be considered privileged.

Toyota has said it has no evidence that cars' electronics are the cause of the problem that is the subject of complaints to safety regulators alleging accidents, deaths and injuries.

Its two recalls covering more than 5 million vehicles — one to deal with floor mats that jam under accelerators, the other to fix sticky gas pedals — will fix the problem, Toyota contends.

Last month, it stopped selling eight models until they could be repaired.

As for Biller's latest allegation, Toyota said Biller "did not handle unwanted-acceleration cases" and "continues to make inaccurate and misleading allegations about Toyota's conduct that we strongly dispute."

Biller's attorney, Joseph Wohrle, confirmed that Biller handled at least one unintended acceleration case for Toyota in 2005.

At the Chicago Auto Show media preview Wednesday, Toyota was blanketed with questions about its recalls, overshadowing its unveiling of a new version of its full-size Avalon sedan.

"I can tell you for years we have exhaustively tested these systems," said Bob Carter, the vice president in charge of the Toyota brand in the U.S. "There is simply nothing there to say electronic controls are causing the problems. ... We have exhaustively tested every scenario."

Lingering doubts about Toyota safety are turning away customers. A study by Kelley Blue Book finds 27% who were considering a Toyota for their next vehicle purchase before the latest recall say they are no longer interested. Doubts are extending, too, to Toyota's Scion youth-oriented brand and the Lexus luxury label.

Biller, who left Toyota with a $3.9 million settlement, alleges in federal court filings here that the automaker didn't properly disclose data in 300 rollover lawsuits.

Toyota has countersued, alleging that Biller is violating attorney-client privilege and terms of his settlement.

Contributing: Sharon Silke Carty in Chicago

Behind the Troubles at Toyota
By Bill Saporito / Toyota City Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010



A row of 2010 Toyota Priuses at a dealership in Daly City, Calif.
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What's wrong with Toyota?

Not much. At least not from an engineering, mechanical or even a quality point of view. You don't reach the top gear in the global auto industry unless you make outstanding cars, which Toyota does — most of the time. Though cars are familiar machines, they are also highly complex ones. To create a modern car, a company has to design, engineer, build, buy and then assemble some 10,000 parts. Sell 7.8 million cars, as Toyota did worldwide in 2009 — a horrible year for the industry — and there are billions of new parts with the potential to go kerflooey. Inevitably, some do.

What makes the recall since November of nearly 9 million Toyotas that are susceptible to uncontrolled acceleration and balky brakes such a shocking story is not so much the company's manufacture of some shoddy cars or even its dreadful crisis management — though those are errors that will cost it more than $2 billion in repairs and lost sales this year. It's something more pernicious: the vapor lock that seems to have seized Toyota's mythologized corporate culture and turned one of the most admired companies in the world into a bunch of flailing gearheads. Not only is Toyota producing more flawed cars than in the past, but an organization known for its unrivaled ability to suss out problems, fix them and turn them into advantages is looking clueless on all counts.
(See the 50 worst cars of all time.)

Although the recalls seemed sudden, the evidence has been piling up. Literally. According to a report from Massachusetts-based Safety Research & Strategies (SRS), a consumer-advocacy group, there was a spike in the number of unintended-acceleration incidents in some Toyota vehicles in 2002, about the same time that Toyota introduced its electronic throttle control. The problem was initially blamed on a floor mat or vehicle trim that, if it came loose, could jam the accelerator pedal in an open-throttle position. That was followed by the first of several National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations, in 2003, and two small recalls in 2005 and 2007. But accidents mounted, and last November the company had to take back nearly 3.8 million U.S. Vehicles — its biggest-ever recall — to address the problem.

Modifying the floor mats, though, didn't fix things. Toyota at first refused to believe that there was a mechanical problem with its pedals, blaming customers for improperly installing the floor mats. But by the time Toyota got around to a second recall, on Jan. 21, this one of 2.3 million vehicles, its reputation was in tatters.
(See the top 10 product recalls.)

There was no place left to park the blame. The company backhandedly singled out a U.S. Partsmaker — CTS Corp., of Elkhart, Ind. — as the supplier of defective pedals while exonerating a Japanese company, Denso, that makes the same part. But CTS CEO Vinod M. Khilnani wasn't about to take the fall. He says his company met Toyota's engineering specifications and notes that the recalls tied to unintended acceleration extend to vehicles built as long ago as 2002. "CTS didn't become a Toyota supplier until 2005," he says.

There was more to come. In early February, Toyota managed to back over any remaining political goodwill it had when it voluntarily recalled more than 400,000 Prius and other hybrid cars — this time, to update software in the antilock brake system that could cause a glitch if the car traveled over a bumpy surface. The Lexus is Toyota's top-selling luxury model — bad enough — but the Prius is its darling, a car that demonstrated the company's ability to solve technical issues that kept other automakers from fielding gas-electric hybrids, at the same time clinching Toyota's green cred. Only last month at the Detroit Auto Show, executives described the Prius as the cornerstone of Toyota's future growth. Toyota planned to sell a million hybrids a year globally, most of them in North America.

As Toyota dithered, it lost hold of the wheel. Lawyers and politicians took charge. In Washington, Toyota executives are poised to replace bankers as populist targets before a congressional hearing. "Toyota drivers have gone from being customers of the company to being wards of the government," says Jim Cain, senior vice president of Quell Group, a marketing-communications firm in Detroit, and a former Ford media-relations executive. "It's absolutely the worst possible position to be in." Tort lawyers around the U.S. have filed class actions. SRS says it has identified 2,262 instances of unintended acceleration in Toyotas leading to at least 819 crashes and 26 deaths since 1999.

At Toyota dealerships, meanwhile, customers have had to haul their cars in to have the sticky gas pedals repaired. Loyal Toyota owners now have a reason to flirt with other brands, though switching could cost them: trade-in prices for Toyotas have fallen. And at global headquarters in Toyota City, Japan, corporate officers belatedly grasped the seriousness of the situation and tried to make amends. "I apologize from the bottom of my heart for all the concern that we have given to so many of our customers," a chastened Akio Toyoda, grandson of the corporation's legendary founder, Sakichi Toyoda, told reporters in Nagoya, taking the requisite deep bow of the disgraced.

The Little Company That Could
So what happened? What went awry at the car company whose widely admired Toyota Production System (TPS) had made it the paragon of the art of manufacturing?
The reputation for quality that Toyota has damaged in just a few months took decades to build. Though Toyota was founded in the 1930s, its climb to global prominence started after World War II as the company became one of the exemplars of Japan's miracle — the creation of a successful, technologically advanced economy out of the ashes of war. In the 1950s, the company experimented with ways to manufacture cars more efficiently. Ironically, Japan's awful postwar poverty acted as a spur. The production techniques of American car companies — with heaps of stored components awaiting assembly, and ample machinery to do it — was just too wasteful and expensive for Japan. Toyota had to learn to do more with less. The result was TPS — or, more generically, lean manufacturing. Inventories were all but eliminated by employing just-in-time delivery techniques, in which suppliers brought components to the assembly line only when needed.

One organizing philosophy behind TPS is popularly ascribed to a concept called kaizen — Japanese for "continuous improvement." In practice, it's the idea of empowering those people closest to a work process so they can participate in designing and improving it, rather than, say, spending every shift merely whacking four bolts to secure the front seat as each car moves down the line. Continuous improvement constantly squeezes excess labor and material out of the manufacturing process: people and parts meet at the optimal moment. Kaizen is also about spreading what you've learned throughout the system. And then repeating it. It's the reason, for instance, that when Toyota assumed full control of the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., which it had co-owned with GM, it got way more productivity and quality out of it than GM could with essentially the same workforce and equipment.
(See the most exciting cars of 2010.)

Sakichi Toyoda developed another concept, jidoka, or "automation with a human touch." Think of it as built-in stress detection. At Toyota, that means work stops whenever and wherever a problem occurs. (Any employee can pull a cord to shut down the line if there is a problem.) That way, says Steven Spear of MIT, author of Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and an expert in the dynamics of high-performance companies, "When I see something that's not perfect, I call it out, figure out what it is that I don't know and convert ignorance to knowledge."
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That was the idea. But the fact that Toyota has produced so many imperfect cars is evidence that its system developed faults. Management experts like John Paul MacDuffie, a co-director of the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, place the blame on the company's headlong growth in the past 10 years. In 2000, Toyota produced 5.2 million cars; last year it had the capacity to make 10 million. Since 2000, when Toyota had 58 production sites, it has added 17. In that time, in other words, Toyota has added the capacity of a company virtually the size of Chrysler in a stated ambition to become the world's No. 1 auto company.
(See pictures of Japanese design's greatest hits.)

But rapid expansion puts enormous pressure on any company's ability to transmit know-how and technology, especially over long distances and across national cultures. When Toyota opened its Georgetown, Ky., plant in 1988, hundreds of work-team specialists and other experts were transplanted from Japan for several years to make sure the new plant fully absorbed the Toyota way. That kind of hand-holding may still be possible, but it isn't as easy. How can that be fixed? Says Spear: "The big deal is this question, Does an organization know how to hear and respond to weak signals, which are the problems, or does it have to hear strong signals? You have to listen to weak signals. By the time you get to strong signals, it's too late."

When weak signals started coming out in 2002, Toyota's top management wasn't listening. By then, the heroic stage of Japan Inc. was over; parts of its business culture had become sclerotic. Compared with the nimbleness seen in Silicon Valley, Japan's manufacturers and their systems began to be seen as inflexible, too removed from a changing global economy to adapt. Analysts describe a Toyota management team that had fallen in love with itself and become too insular to properly handle something like the current crisis. "The reaction to [the situation] is a very Japanese thing," says Kenneth Grossberg, a marketing professor at Waseda University's business school in Tokyo. Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan, says Toyota's managers don't understand how sensitive the American public is to auto-safety issues. "Their focus on the customer has been nonexistent," he says. "Toyota is famous for having an arrogant culture. They're so used to dealing with successes that when they have a problem, they're not sure how to respond."

Kingston puts his finger on one failing in modern Japanese corporations like Toyota: those lower in the organization find it difficult to deliver bad news to managers. Nearly every company faces this issue from time to time. "But this is a brand-threatening, life-endangering crisis," he says. Changing the way Toyota works won't be easy, says Grossberg. "Management cannot turn on a dime. They have so much invested in doing things the Toyota way," he says.

How to Lose Influential Friends
The recalls came at time when Toyota was regaining momentum after losing $4.9 billion in its latest fiscal year, as recession-racked consumers parked their money. For much of the past year, hundreds of Toyota employees in the U.S. didn't build cars at all, instead attending classes or doing "maintenance" work on half-built vehicles at idled factories in Texas and Indiana. Toyota kept the workers on in anticipation of better times ahead. Now the company is looking at another year of losses and significant overcapacity in North America.
On top of criticism that it has been slow to fix its vehicles, Toyota has wrecked its political cover. Although the company had artfully balanced both U.S. political parties by designing green cars and building them in red states, its goodwill was strained in recent weeks by the decision to close its manufacturing plant in Fremont, just across the bay from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home base in San Francisco. The shutdown of the plant in March will wipe out 5,400 jobs and hit hard the more than 1,000 suppliers that work with the factory. "I think they offended the Democratic delegation in California," says Sean McAlinden, executive vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. The fact that Toyota had to deny persistent reports it was planning to move its U.S. headquarters out of Southern California didn't help. Then came the airing of a horrifying 911 call from a passenger in a Lexus ES 350 in California with a jammed accelerator. Four people were killed in the ensuing crash. "No politician is going to stand up and defend Toyota after that," says Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insights at TrueCar.

The NHTSA, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), did Toyota no favors either. Although there have been some rumblings that the DOT was coming down too hard on the top competitor of the federally controlled General Motors — a.k.a. Government Motors — the agency actually fumbled no fewer than six separate inquiries into possible safety problems with Toyotas since 2003. In each case, the DOT ended the probes with little or no further action. That changed as the tragic evidence mounted. And when Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood blurted out advice to Toyota owners to avoid driving their cars — advice he hastily withdrew — he more or less forced the issue.
(See the best cars from the 2009 Detroit Auto Show.)

In Detroit, which has had its own problems with quality, there is no outright rejoicing over Toyota's troubles. But there is a sense of an opening to win some business, and a certain pleasure in seeing the spotlight of criticism focus on a foreign carmaker. "There was always this assumption in the mainstream media that Toyota was better," says a senior GM executive. "Hopefully this will help even things out a little bit. Maybe from now on, Toyota will be treated as just another car company."

That, it certainly isn't. Toyota is still an extraordinary outfit, one likely to set the pace in the automotive industry for years. But it can't do so without addressing its shortfalls. Complexity is the enemy of any manufacturer, and rapid growth increases it. "Toyota faced excessive or overwhelming complexity that even its strong capability could not handle adequately," notes University of Tokyo professor Takahiro Fujimoto, who is affiliated with the Wharton School's IMVP.
(Read "Toyota's Recall Will Test Customer Loyalty.")

Toyota's bosses are desperately hoping the worst is behind it. The company has resumed production at five factories in North America after shutting down sales of eight key models to repair the sticky accelerator pedals. Dealers will be able to sell existing inventory once the pedals are repaired, says Jim Lentz, Toyota's top U.S. sales executive. The faulty pedal has been redesigned, and new models coming off the assembly lines are getting new pedal assemblies.

The company has also been trying to repair its relationship with consumers. "We have not lived up to the high standards you have come to expect from us. I am deeply disappointed by that and apologize. As the president of Toyota, I take personal responsibility," Akio Toyoda wrote in the Washington Post.

Lentz, who defended Toyota recently at the Detroit Auto Show, said that while the recall is embarrassing, "it doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our edge on quality." It's way too early, he insists, to tell what kind of impact the multiple recalls will have on Toyota's sales.

It's not too early to say that consumers have not seen the last of massive, worldwide recalls of cars — in part because car companies have adopted the Toyota approach. Ford's new and highly praised strategy is to build "world cars" the way Toyota does, reducing the cost of manufacturing by making sure that more of its models share common parts on a relatively small number of platforms, built at plants around the world. That sounds like the epitome of manufacturing efficiency in our globalized economies. But it also explains why the brakes that caused the Prius' recall are found on Toyota's luxury Lexus 300 too. It's a system that all but guarantees that there are no small problems when a part goes bad, only big ones. In fact, global ones.

There's no sense in reinventing the wheel — going back to an industry in which every car demands a factory full of specific parts. But as the world's most famous automobile company has just demonstrated, if you're in the business of making cars, you'd better make sure your wheel works.

— With reporting by Alex Altman / Washington

Ultimo momento en Haiti


Unasur: US$300 millones para Haití

Paúl Mena Erazo

Ecuador



UNASUR anunció un fondo de US$100 millones para ayudar a Haití.

La Unión Suramericana de Naciones (Unasur) resolvió este martes en Quito establecer un fondo de US$100 millones para la ayuda de la región a Haití, y solicitar al Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) un crédito por US$200 millones para el país caribeño a largo plazo, a una tasa de interés mínima, y pagado por los países miembros del bloque regional.

Los presidentes de Ecuador, Rafael Correa; Perú, Alan García; Colombia, Álvaro Uribe; y Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, junto con el presidente de Haití, René Preval, y delegaciones de los restantes países suramericanos, acordaron que toda la ayuda de la Unasur será canalizada a través del gobierno haitiano.

Los participantes de la reunión coincidieron en la necesidad de fortalecer las instituciones en Haití, tras el terremoto del pasado 12 de enero que ha dejado más de 200 mil muertos.

clic Lea también: Número de víctimas "llega a 230.000"

"A Haití le falta alimento, le falta apoyo, pero también le falta Estado", dijo el presidente Lugo.

De allí que la Unasur establecerá comisiones que trabajen junto con el gobierno haitiano en infraestructura y vialidad, agricultura, y salud, que fueron las tres áreas de necesidad planteadas en la cita por el presidente Preval.

Respecto del fondo de US$100 millones para Haití, el presidente pro témpore de Unasur, Rafael Correa, señaló que en el marco de la Cumbre del Grupo de Río que se efectuará los días 22 y 23 de febrero próximos en Cancún, México, se efectuará una nueva reunión de Unasur para definir el monto que entregará a dicho fondo cada país suramericano.

La asistencia anunciada por la Unasur incluye el envío de carpas y la ayuda en la construcción de albergues para atender necesidades urgentes del pueblo haitiano. Igualmente, se exhorta a los países miembros a llevar adelante procesos de regularización migratoria a favor de haitianos, así como mecanismos de eliminación temporal de aranceles a productos provenientes de Haití.

El grupo suramericano además resolvió que embarcaciones de Perú, Venezuela, Brasil y Argentina recorrerán el Pacífico y el Atlántico para recoger la ayuda en vituallas que cada país suramericano tiene destinada para Haití.
Cooperación Sur-Sur

El paquete de ayuda a Haití acordado por la Unasur se enmarca en una estrategia de cooperación Sur-Sur, que plantea un respaldo a corto y largo plazo al gobierno haitiano en la reconstrucción del país, y que es aludida por varios mandatarios de la región para emitir una crítica abierta a la ayuda que llega desde Estados Unidos y Europa.

Queremos inaugurar una nueva forma de cooperación Sur-Sur. La cooperación Norte-Sur es asistencialista y masiva el momento de la desgracia, pero luego se olvidan

Rafael Correa, Presidente de Ecuador


"Queremos inaugurar una nueva forma de cooperación Sur-Sur. La cooperación Norte-Sur es asistencialista y masiva en el momento de la desgracia, pero luego se olvidan (…) El momento de la desgracia repletan de ayuda muchas veces inmanejable, muchas veces inapropiada, casi siempre a través de ONGs y organismos internacionales", manifestó el presidente Correa, y lamentó que gran parte de la ayuda se la efectúe dejando de lado al gobierno local.

Por su parte, el presidente de Haití, René Preval, agradeció la ayuda de los "países del sur que quieren ayudar a otro país del sur".

"Aprecio mucho esta ayuda que no es pequeña y que viene de países hermanos que también tienen dificultades", manifestó Preval.
Breve encuentro informal Uribe-Correa

La cita de la Unasur fue el escenario para la primera visita a Ecuador por parte del presidente colombiano Álvaro Uribe tras la ruptura de relaciones diplomáticas entre ambos países ocurrida en marzo de 2008, como consecuencia de un bombardeo colombiano a una base de las FARC en territorio ecuatoriano.

Concluida la reunión, los presidentes Uribe y Correa mantuvieron en el Palacio de Gobierno un breve encuentro informal, que más tarde fuera seguido por declaraciones de ambos mandatarios respaldando el proceso de normalización de las relaciones diplomáticas.

Más allá de que afuera del Palacio de Gobierno unas 50 personas realizaron una protesta pacífica contra Uribe, el presidente colombiano dijo haber sentido el afecto del pueblo ecuatoriano durante su corta visita.

De su parte, el presidente Correa manifestó que "sin jamás olvidar lo que pasó, aprendiendo del pasado pero viendo hacia el futuro, es claro que lo que más conviene a los dos pueblos es tratar de normalizar lo más rápidamente posible las relaciones".

Finding Parents in Haiti's Rubble Was Easy Part
Juan Fach for The New York Times

Jean-Paul Coffy, right, with his father, visits his mother at a hospital in the Dominican Republic.
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By SARAH KRAMER
Published: February 10, 2010

Jean-Paul Coffy arrived in darkness at the three-story house he grew up in, in the Nerette neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, a concrete-and-tin home where his parents still lived and he visited each year.
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Two Charities Start Fund to Help Haitians in New York (February 11, 2010)
Small Fund-Raisers for Victims Start to Add Up (February 11, 2010)
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Juan Fach for The New York Times

Zilania Joacin, Jean-Paul Coffy's mother, in the corridor of a Dominican hospital. Her husband and son keep a vigil.

It was six days after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, and Mr. Coffy, a musician and teacher from Chicago, had not heard from his parents, siblings, uncles, cousins or friends. So Mr. Coffy's wife, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, had persuaded him to go.

"I came in with a candle in my hand," Mr. Coffy said. "And I am screaming their names, and they are answering!"

His mother thought he was a ghost. "Oh my God, oh my God, why is God punishing me? Making me think my son is here, and I know he can't get here," he recalled her crying out that night. "And I said, 'It's really me. I'm here, I'm here.' "

Mr. Coffy found his parents near a back room — the only part of the house still standing — having survived on bonbon salé, a Haitian cracker similar to Saltines.

In the three weeks since, they have traveled eight hours across Haiti's dusty roads and slept in the hallways of hospitals in the neighboring Dominican Republic, and Mr. Coffy has spent thousands of dollars on securing government documents, as well as on fixers, housing, food and patchwork transportation, as he tries to secure permission for his parents to return with him to Chicago.

Mr. Coffy shared his ordeal — not unlike that of countless other United States residents in Haiti trying to help family members — in a series of telephone interviews from the Dominican Republic.

His father, Reserve Coffy, 68, was unharmed in the earthquake, but his mother, Zilania Joacin, 67, a diabetic who recently had a hip operation, broke the same leg, which was "so swollen you couldn't touch it," Mr. Coffy said.

That first night together, the three of them slept in the open air, afraid to stay in the house's surviving room. In the morning, Mr. Coffy realized why no one had heard his parents' calls for help. Their block was filled with wreckage and the stench of the dead.

After hours of walking and picking his way through the debris, he found a working pharmacy still stocked with the blood pressure medicine his mother needed, another with insulin and a third with painkillers. He paid three times the normal cost.

A brother and a sister died in the earthquake, and another brother is still missing. Of his surviving siblings in Haiti, one has two children who broke legs in the quake, and the others are poor and scattered through the countryside. So Mr. Coffy decided to take his parents to Santo Domingo, where he thought it would be easier to get help.

But Caribe Tours, the bus company he took to Haiti from the Dominican Republic when he flew in from Chicago, would not let his parents board without passports, which were lost in the earthquake; so he paid 2,000 Haitian dollars — about $250 — to wrangle a shaded pickup truck known as a tap tap to take them to the border town of Las Caobas, his mother stretched out on a mattress, wailing at each bump in the road.

He managed to get papers granting his parents a one-month stay in the Dominican Republic, paying about $500 to a fixer. Another $58 bought the full back seat of an air-conditioned bus to Santo Domingo, the capital.

It was there that Mr. Coffy and his parents visited four hospitals. At one, a private clinic, X-rays showed that Ms. Joacin would need a hip replacement, but because her leg was infected she would have to wait three months.

Father and son held each other that night on a small bench beside her bed. "It was the first time that I actually slept," Mr. Coffy remembered. "It had been three days."

The one-night hospital stay cost $359, depleting Mr. Coffy's bankroll, so his wife has wired him $3,600 from Chicago. Mr. Coffy, the sixth of nine children, had been sending about $500 a month to his parents before the earthquake, he said.

Ms. Joacin was given a cast for her leg and a cot in a hallway at Darío Contreras, a large public hospital teeming with earthquake survivors. The Dominican Republic's health ministry estimated that the country's hospitals had cared for about 7,000 Haitians as of Tuesday. Worried that the hospital food — oatmeal, white rice, spaghetti — would worsen his mother's diabetes, Mr. Coffy sneaked meals in from the outside for her and hid them under a table. He also posted a little sign near her head: "Do not feed her in any way."

After more than two weeks in the hospital, spent mostly in the hallway, Mr. Coffy and his parents moved Monday night into a room with two beds at a church facility. On Tuesday, Mr. Coffy received new passports for his parents from the Haitian Embassy; he had an appointment scheduled for Thursday with the United States Consulate in Santo Domingo to apply for temporary visas to take them to Chicago. Another possibility would be humanitarian parole, a special temporary immigration category that is rarely granted.

His case will be particularly difficult, immigration experts say, because Mr. Coffy, while a legal resident with a green card, is not a United States citizen.

"You can imagine the number of injured Haitians who have loved ones in the states who want to get here," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the nonprofit Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center.

Mr. Coffy lives in Kenwood, a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, with his wife, Yakini Ajanaku-Coffy, and their 10-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. The couple met in 1994 when she was Chicago's cultural attaché for Haiti and he was the keyboardist in a Haitian band, the Boukman Eksperyans; having returned to Chicago in 2002, after living for years in Haiti, the couple now run a music-themed preschool called La Grande Famille.

After deciding that Mr. Coffy would travel to Haiti to look for his family, the couple pulled together supplies like cereal bars and water purification tablets, and $1,500 in cash, including $1,000 from the mother of his son's best friend (others have donated more than $7,000 through a blog).The couple traded cellphones, since hers is a BlackBerry, so he could get e-mail messages. Hours later, they were at O'Hare International Airport with their son, Akin, who was crying.

"He said, 'Dad, you could die there,' " Mr. Coffy said.

Mr. Coffy had promised Akin that he would return by Feb. 3, but now says it might be another month.

When Akin asked his mother last week when his father would be back, she told him: "When the job is done, baby, when the job is done. He didn't go this far to turn back."

lunes, 8 de febrero de 2010

Big Sunspot Sparks Solar Activity



Space Weather News for Feb. 8, 2010
http://spaceweather.com

BIG SUNSPOT: The sudden emergence of big sunspot 1045 over the weekend has caused a sharp uptick in solar activity.  The active region has produced three M-class and almost a dozen C-class solar flares since it appeared on Saturday.  The strongest blast, an M6-class eruption on Feb. 7th, may have hurled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras in the nights ahead as a result of this activity. Also, ham radio operators are picking up strong solar radio bursts using shortwave receivers.  Sample sounds and images may be found at http://spaceweather.com.

SPACE WEATHER ALERTS:  Would you like a call when the next geomagnetic storm erupts?  Sign up for Spaceweather PHONE:  http://spaceweatherphone.com

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domingo, 7 de febrero de 2010

A&P features frozen; Weight Watchers rolls treats



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Feb. 1, 2010


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Short Takes

A&P makes frozen foods part of in-store coupon promotion

Shoppers at A&P, Waldbaum's, SuperFresh and Pathmark have a new way to find bargains in the chains' frozen foods, grocery and produce departments.

H-E-B names Boyan president

San Antonio, Texas-based H-E-B has named Craig Boyan, its COO, to the additional post of president, the company announced.

A&P taps Marshall as CEO

Ron Marshall will take on the roll of president and CEO at The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Montvale, N.J., effective Feb. 8., the company stated.

New Products

Weight Watchers rolls out new frozen novelties

A pair of new frozen novelties from Weight Watchers International , New York, launches in March to provide consumers looking for sensible indulgence new treat options.

Farmland debuts fajitas in time for grilling season

Fajitas are popular, fun and become even more attractive as grilling season approaches, so Farmland Foods , Kansas City, Mo., is providing consumers with an easy way to get them sizzling indoors or out.

Kraft introduces healthy, convenient cheese snacks

At a time when more people are looking to better manage their health, Kraft Foods , Northfield, Ill., is introducing 100 Calorie Cheese Bites as a way of satisfying the growing consumer demand for on-the-go but better-for-you snacks.

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