Tony Hayward will leave BP at the upcoming October

Prepare “got away” with golden lifeboat when the ship was aground. Maybe that’s the right impression for the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of oil company BP, Tony Hayward. When the company he led was a problem with leaking oil wells that pollute waters of the southern United States (USA), Hayward would leave it preached. He did not go empty-handed, but brought abundant coffers. If so leave the British company that Hayward will soon receive a pension amounting to 600 000 pounds sterling per year. Hayward reportedly will leave in October following the BP refinery oil spill tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico. According to BP’s pension scheme, as quoted from the page of the BBC, Monday, July 26, 2010, BP employees who joined before April 2006 can receive a pension at any time at the age of 53 years. Hayward, who has worked with BP for 28 years, is entitled to receive the facility.

In addition to pensions, Hayward will also receive one-year salary plus benefits worth more than one million pounds sterling. Thus, the total retirement package to be received later Hayward approximately 11 million pounds sterling. British executives were also able to maintain its shareholding in BP. Those shares could be worth several million pounds sterling depending on the performance of BP shares on the stock.

Although the official announcement from BP will be made on this Tuesday, the news that the Hayward will retire in October will aggressively overseas media reported yesterday. His position will be replaced by a colleague, a U.S. citizen named Robert Dudley. While according to the news, Hayward will be promoted to non-executive positions at BP’s joint venture in Russia. Hayward is one of BP’s boss is reaping a lot of criticism. That followed a statement-related statement handling oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico are considered to offend the local community.

Soldiers from four NATO countries marched for the first time in Russia's annual Victory Day parade

MOSCOW, May 9 Soldiers from four NATO countries marched for the first time in Russia’s annual Victory Day parade marking the victory in World War II, observers said.Troops from Britain, France, Poland and the United States marched alongside 10,000 Russian forces while about two dozen world leaders attended the 65th anniversary, the BBC reported Sunday. The parade also featured tanks, ballistic missiles and a fly-over of 127 aircraft.Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told spectators lessons from World War II “urge us to show solidarity.””Peace is still fragile and it is our duty to remember that wars do not start in an instant,” Medvedev said. “It is only together that we shall be able to counter modern threats.”

Victory Day parades involving more than 102,000 service personnel and more than 200,000 veterans were conducted in 36 Russian cities, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.Medvedev said the march on the Red Square “symbolizes our readiness to defend peace, to prevent the revision of the results of the war, to prevent new tragedies.”(UPI)

17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland

A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano spread out across Europe on Friday causing air travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11 attacks.About 17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland, aviation officials said. Airports in Britain, France, Germany, and across Europe were closed until at least Saturday.”I would think Europe was probably experiencing its greatest disruption to air travel since 9/11,” said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain’s aviation regulator.”In terms of closure of airspace, this is worse than after 9/11. The disruption is probably larger than anything we’ve probably seen.”

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.

Vulcanologists say the ash could cause problems to air traffic for up to 6 months if the eruption continues, but even if it is short-lived the financial impact on airlines could be significant.The fallout hit airlines’ shares on Friday with Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair down between 0.8 and 2.2 percent.The International Air Transport Association said only days ago that airlines were just coming out of recession.

“LIMITED COMMERCIAL SIGNIFICANCE”

The flight cancellations would cost carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa about 10 million pounds ($16.04 million) a day, transport analyst Douglas McNeill said.

“To lose that sum of money isn’t a very pleasant experience but it’s of limited commercial significance as well,” he told BBC TV. “A couple of days like this won’t matter too much. If it goes on for weeks, that’s a different story.”The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (4 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.Officials said it was still spewing magma and although the eruption could abate in the coming days, ash would continue drifting into the skies of Europe.

Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock that can damage engines and airframes.

In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, gliding toward the ground before it was able to restart its engines.The incident prompted the aviation industry to rethink the way it prepared for ash clouds.

Of the 28,000 flights that usually travel through European airspace on an average day, European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said it expected only 11,000 to operate on Friday while only about a third of transatlantic flights were arriving.The British Meteorological Office showed the cloud drifting south and west over Europe. Eurocontrol warned problems would continue for at least another 24 hours and an aviation expert at the World Meteorological Organization said it was impossible to say when flights would resume.”We can only predict the time that flights will resume after the eruption has stopped, but for as long as the eruption is still going on and still leading to a significant eruption, we cannot say,” said Scylla Sillayo, a senior official in the WMO’s aeronautical meteorology unit.

AIRSPACE CLOSED

Britain’s air traffic control body said all English airspace would be closed until 8 p.m. EDT on Friday although certain flights from Northern Ireland and Scottish airports were being allowed to take off until 1800 GMT.”When the experts give us the all-clear we’ll get the operation back up and running,” Paul Haskins, head of safety at National Air Traffic Service, told BBC radio.

There were no flights from London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which handles some 180,000 passengers a day, while officials at Germany’s Frankfurt airport, Europe’s second busiest, said flights would be suspended from 2 a.m. EDT.Around 2,000 people slept overnight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a spokeswoman said, adding they did not expect airspace in the Netherlands to reopen soon.

Eurocontrol said airspace was closed over Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the north of the Czech Republic, northern France including all Paris airports, and at airports in northern Germany, Austria and parts of Poland.

Polish officials said if the disruption continued, it might force a delay in Sunday’s funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife who were killed in a plane crash last Saturday.Airlines across Asia and the Middle East have also canceled or delayed flights to most European destinations.

However, as the ash plume drifted south over Europe, Irish officials said most of the airspace over Ireland had reopened.The air problems have proved a boon for rail companies. All 58 Eurostar trains between Britain and Europe were operating full, carrying some 46,500 passengers, and a spokeswoman said they would consider adding services if problems persisted.(Reuters)

Micro-blogging service Twitter can be used to predict the future box-office takings of blockbuster films

Micro-blogging service Twitter can be used to predict the future box-office takings of blockbuster films, according to researchers at Hewlett Packard (HP).The computer scientists studied 3 million messages – known as tweets – about 25 movies, including Avatar. They found the rate at which messages were produced could be used to accurately predict the box office takings before the film opened. Further analysis of the content of the messages could predict ongoing success.

“Our predictions were incredibly close,” Bernardo Huberman, head of the social computing lab at HP, told BBC News.For example, he said, the system predicted that zombie film The Crazies would take $16.8m in its first weekend in the US. It actually took $16.06m. The team forecast that romantic drama Dear John would take $30.71m in its first US weekend. It took $30.46m. The unpublished research has been posted on the Arxiv website.

Social sentiment

The team were able to make their first-weekend revenue predictions by analysing the torrent of tweets about a particular film in the run up to its release. “We developed algorithms to analyse these tweets and measure the rate at which they were produced, said Dr Huberman. “Our intuition was that the faster people tweet, the more likely they are to go and see it.”

The teams were then able to forecast the ongoing success of a film, including its second weekend revenues, by doing what is known as sentiment analysis. This analyses the content of tweets and decides whether it is positive, negative or neutral. “It’s tapping into collective intelligence,” said Dr Huberman, who carried out the work with Sitaram Asur, also of HP.

The team trained their system using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online tool that pays people to perform small tasks that computers would struggle to complete. “We got people to classify tweets and we used that to calibrate the sentiment analysis,” explained Dr Huberman. Again, the system tracked the fortunes of movies and outperformed other predictive systems such as the Hollywood Stock Exchange, he said.

For example, analysis showed a boom in positive sentiment about the Oscar-nominated The Blind Side after it was released, but showed the opposite effect for New Moon, which initially sold well but rapidly lost viewers. “Word of mouth builds audience,” said Jan Saxton, vice president and senior films analyst at Adams Media Research. She highlighted the film My Big fat Greek Wedding, which she said became the “film of the year” in 2002 by recommendations.

“If word of mouth becomes a faster, more effective marketing tool, then the effect on the movie business could be profound.” Both Dr Huberman and Ms Saxton said that the demographic of Twitter – which tends to be young, tech-savvy and reasonably affluent – may limit the utility of the system for analysis of some trends, such as those aimed at children.

However, Dr Huberman believes it could be of use in forecasting other trends, such as how well a gadget or product will sell. Elements such as sentiment analysis are also being used by other groups. For example, it is being used by an organisation called Tweetminster to monitor the UK general election to work out whether online buzz correlates with the winners.

President Tassos Papadopoulos body found

Police confirmed the Republic of Cyprus have discovered the remains of former President Tassos Papadopoulos, Tuesday, March 9, 2010. December last year, one day before the first anniversary of his death Papadopoulos for lung cancer. As quoted from the page of the BBC, the remains found in a cemetery in the capital Nicosia. DNA tests proved that the body is a body Papadopoulos. But the theft was the motive has not been revealed. According to police, the theft was planned.

Papadopoulos died in Nicosia at the age of 74 years in 2008. Veteran Greek Cypriot politician took office as president in 2003, but lost the general election in 2008. In these elections, Papadopoulos was defeated by Demetris Christofias, former coalition partner. One of the achievements under the leadership of Cyprus is a membership Papadopoulos of Cyprus in the European Union in 2004.

166 people were killed by snow falling off mountains in the Salang Pass north of Kabul

166 people were killed by snow falling off mountains in the Salang Pass north of Kabul, triggering a massive rescue operation. The authorities say that they expect to find more bodies as they wind down the rescue operation. The area has been hit by more than 12 avalanches since Monday. Correspondents say that it has been one of the country’s worst natural disasters. Freezing conditions The ferocity of the avalanches was so great that windows of cars and buses were smashed while some tumbled into the valley below, officials say.Many of the dead were killed as their vehicles plunged down the mountainsides, while others perished in the freezing conditions.

Rescuers are using bulldozers, pick axes and shovels in the search for survivors. The highway that winds through the mountainside remains littered with abandoned or snow-packed cars. Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said that scores more vehicles remain buried beneath massive snow floes and they could contain more bodies. “The latest information we have is that 166 people were killed and 125 others have been rescued and taken to hospital,” he told the AFP news agency. “We’re not clear yet on how many cars are still under the snow, but police have been working on recovery since yesterday and are hoping to bring the operation to an end soon.

“There is fear there will be more dead bodies in the vehicles that are being pulled out of the snow,” he said. An army battalion backed up by heavy machinery and other digging equipment had been deployed to the pass for rescue and recovery work, a senior defence ministry official said. He said that although the road has now been cleared, it remains closed to the public to allow for emergency efforts. Rescuers are searching farther afield for victims in cars, trucks and buses that were pushed far off the road, officials say.

Some 2,500 people have been rescued so far. The area is often affected by heavy snow and has been hit by avalanches in the past, the BBC’s Martin Patience says from Kabul. The road through the Salang Pass is the only major route over the Hindu Kush mountains linking southern Afghanistan to the north and Central Asia that remains open throughout the year. Reaching 3,400m (11,000 ft) at the pass, the road is one of the highest in the world. It was finished in the 1960s with Soviet help.

Ugandan army says that it has killed a senior commander

LRA revels are being pursued in DR Congo

The Ugandan army says that it has killed a senior commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army militant group in the Central African Republic (CAR).Bok Abudema was killed on Friday along with one of his fighters, while two women found with them were freed, an army spokesman told the BBC. The army said LRA leader Joseph Kony was moving between the CAR and Sudan.

Ugandan forces have been operating outside the country’s borders for a year in a campaign to destroy the LRA. They have been deployed in northern Democratic Republic Congo and southern Sudan as well as the CAR to track down the LRA, which once operated in northern Uganda. Army spokesman Lt Col Felix Kulayigye said that Mr Kony was moving between the CAR and Darfur in southern Sudan in order to escape Ugandan army patrols.

Bok Abudema is only one of a number of senior LRA commanders who have been cornered and killed, says the BBC’s Africa editor, Martin Plaut. Others have surrendered but the LRA is scattered across a remote region of dense forests and swamps, savannah and deserts – ideal territory for guerrilla operations, our editor says.

Last month the UN human rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, demanded the capture of LRA leaders for crimes against humanity and gave details of the killings, torture and rape of hundreds of civilians by the rebels. She accused the movement of killing at least 1,200 civilians between September 2008 and June 2009.(BBC)

Copenhagen have summit a new topic to discuss a new agreement

There have been concerns that the Copenhagen summit will not bear a strong agreement.But analysts assess the presence of so many heads of state that will change the estimates.The UN’s annual meeting to discuss the climate is usually attended by environment ministers.Delegated ari 192 countries will attend the summit are trying to design a new climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who will be attending the summit said the new agreement will be born if the head of government support.maybe now it could happen.But Chinese leaders, the United States and India called the state’s biggest maker of pollution are not included in the list will be present.But the BBC’s  environment correspondent Roger Harrabin said, the move will undoubtedly increase the political influence.(BBC’s)

Storm blamed for Brazil power cut

A severe storm has been blamed for widespread power cuts in Brazil which lasted more than five hours, the government said.

The strong winds, heavy rain and lightning brought down a power line in Brazil, cutting two other lines and ultimately shutting Itaipu dam.In the worst blackout to hit Brazil in years, up to a fifth of the population was left without power on Tuesday.Neighbouring Paraguay was also briefly left in the dark.Initial suspicion had focused on the Itaipu hydroelectric plant, which supplies 20% of Brazil’s power, but officials there said the facility was working normally.

Lithium clue for planet-hunters

A survey of stars known to possess planets shows the vast majority to be severely depleted in lithium.To date, scientists have detected just over 420 worlds circling other stars using a range of techniques.Garik Israelian and colleagues tell the journal Nature that future planet hunts could be narrowed by going after stars with particular compositions.Scientists think events early in the star’s formation may be responsible for producing the lithium phenomenon.Theory holds that planets grow from a disc of dusty material that develops around infant stars.The researchers propose that this disc and its contents alter the young star’s spin, mixing its upper layers more effectively into the interior where its contents can be “burnt” in the fusion processes that power it.

“When discs form around stars there is interaction of angular momentum between disc, planets and parent star; and this interaction affects the rotation of the parent star and that will affect the lithium abundance,” said Garik Israelian from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain.The relative low abundance of lithium in our Sun’s upper layers has long been a fascination for scientists.

Researchers who have studied meteorites with compositions unchanged since the beginning of the Solar System say the element’s presence in our star ought to be 140 times greater than is observed.Physicists know the Sun’s upper layers as viewed today do not convect deeply enough to take any lithium to a location that is sufficiently hot to burn the element. This suggests mixing conditions must have been different in the past.

The outcome of the research is a tool astronomers can now use to help pinpoint the right type of stars where they are likely to detect planets.”Suppose you had 50 or 100 candidates for parent-bearing stars,” explained Dr Israelian.”Those which have a very low abundance of lithium will be the best candidates around which you might find planets,” he told BBC News.

Astronomers detect exoplanets, as they are called, using a number of methods.One technique looks for the gravitational “wobble” a massive planet will induce in its parent star.Another approach is to monitor a star for extended periods in the hope a planet will pass across its face. This transit reveals the planet’s presence by making the star’s light dim ever so slightly.(daily mail)