- A confidential report on safety conditions aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, conducted about one month before the rig’s explosion, points to widespread fear of reprisal for reporting employee mistakes that could undermine safety aboard the rig.

“There was a stated fear of reprisal related specifically to the reporting of dropped objects,” states an executive summary of the report obtained by CNN.

“Only 46.3 percent of participants felt that, if their actions led to a potentially risky situation (e.g., forgetting to do something, damaging equipment, dropping an object from height), they could report it without any fear of reprisal,” the report states.

Transocean, the rig operator, commissioned the survey of about 40 employees, about half its staff aboard the Deepwater Horizon.

The report concluded, “Deepwater Horizon was relatively strong in many of the core aspects of safety management.” But it also uncovered fear among workers of suffering reprisal for reporting conditions that could lead to a “risky” situation onboard the rig.

The study also found some Transocean employees entered fake data to try to circumvent a safety system, according to a person familiar with the full report.

The study was based on surveys conducted March 12-16 by Lloyd’s Register Group, a consultant that analyzes the safety of business processes and products. The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded the night of April 20 while drilling BP’s Macondo oil well. Two days later it sank. The Lloyd’s report was completed afterwards; it is dated May 11.

Lloyd’s said it was retained by Transocean to “proactively understand their safety culture and assess the equipment on the Deepwater Horizon.” Transocean has commissioned safety surveys of its staff aboard 20 other drilling rigs.

A spokesperson for Transocean insisted the study of employees aboard Deepwater Horizon reflected the company’s commitment to safety.

“This rig did go seven years without a lost-time incident or any major environmental accidents,” said spokesman Lou Colasuonno. “This rig was exhibit-A for a well-run rig.”

In assessing the safety culture onboard the rig, the consultants gave ratings of between 2.9 to 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5 for policies such as leadership, communication, training and monitoring.

A separate report by a different Transocean consultant on the Deepwater Horizon’s equipment cited at least 26 components and systems out of 129 categories on the rig that were in “bad” or “poor” condition, according to a report in Thursday’s New York Times.

Transocean’s spokesman told CNN all equipment on the Deepwater Horizon was in line with government guidelines. “Every device met regulatory standards,” Colasuonno said.

- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that he is breaking off relations with Colombia. His decision comes as the Organization of American States meets to discuss Colombian claims that Venezuela is protecting FARC and ELN rebels in its territory.

The move is the biggest escalation in a year of simmering tensions between the two countries and their presidents.

Chavez said that under President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia has isolated itself and become “aggressive and violent.”

He called Uribe “crazed” and accused the United States of using Uribe as a puppet.

Uribe is in the final month of a presidency that has had many tensions with neighboring Venezuela, mostly over accusations that rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (also known as FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) have camps in Venezuela.

Chavez said he hoped for better relations with Colombian President-elect Juan Manuel Santos, who was Uribe’s defense minister and whose election was viewed as an affirmation of Uribe’s policies.

The Venezuelan leader spoke from his presidential palace, where he was holding a news conference with Argentine soccer coach Diego Maradona. Maradona’s visit was unrelated to the spat with Colombia.

Venezuela recalled its ambassador to Colombia on Friday in reaction to the accusations of protecting rebels.

Uribe is a two-term president who has received high approval ratings for his tough stand against FARC guerrillas, who have been waging war against the government for decades.

Colombia has accused Chavez of supporting the rebels, and Chavez has said Colombian officials and right-wing paramilitary units have plotted his assassination.

Security analysts say FARC guerrillas operate mostly in Colombia but have carried out extortion, kidnappings and other activities in Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador.

FARC is said to traffic in cocaine to finance its insurgency.

Colombia has also accused another neighbor, Ecuador, of giving refuge to rebels. In 2008, Colombia carried out a raid in Ecuadorian territory that resulted in the killing of a top FARC leader.

Thursday was not the first time Chavez cut off diplomatic ties with Colombia.

A year ago, Chavez “froze” the nations’ relationship over Colombian accusations that Venezuelan weapons had made it into the hands of rebels.

Colombia said it had evidence that shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons recovered from FARC guerrillas were of Venezuelan origin. Venezuela denied the allegations and said the rebels may have stolen the weapons from a Venezuelan base.

Paul the psychic octopus may not have
predicted a medal and a soccer jersey in his future, but he now owns
both.

The global phenomenon picked Spain to beat the Netherlands
in the World Cup finals earlier this month.

Nearly two weeks
later, a Spanish delegation from the town of Carballino brought a gift
basket Thursday for the cephalopod in his hometown of Oberhausen,
Germany.

The gifts included a bronze statue that is the symbol of
the town of Carballino, which makes Paul an official ”best friend of
the town.”

The delegation — which included Carballino’s mayor
Carlos Alberto Montes Marques and various businessmen — also gave the
tentacled one an official Spanish soccer jersey.

Businessman
Manuel Pazo was part of the delegation. Pazo has in the past expressed
his intent to buy Paul as the town’s mascot.

Carballino residents
will celebrate Paul again on August 8th in the 43rd “festival of the
octopus.”

Paul not only predicted Spain’s win over the
Netherlands in the final, but also the team’s semifinal success against
Germany.

Before that, he correctly predicted all five of
Germany’s earlier results, and picked Germany to beat Uruguay in the
third-place playoff, ending the tournament with a remarkable
eight-for-eight record.

For each prediction, two mussel-filled
acrylic boxes labeled with a team’s flag were lowered into Paul’s tank.
Whichever box he chose conveyed the winning team.

Sea Life staff,
where Paul lives, have announced he is retiring from the predictions
game, but previously said they were considering offers from around the
globe.

Spain has expressed an interest in Paul,
and a Russian bookmaking company has offered to pay 100,000 euros
(about $129,800) for the octopus.

By Keri Chiodo, Association for Psychological Science

It’s nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person’s ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.

The research was inspired by work on Buddhist monks, who spend years training in meditation. “You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that they express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training or if they were just very special people to begin with,” says Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California - Davis. Her co-advisor, Clifford Saron, did some research with monks decades ago and wanted to study meditation by putting volunteers through intensive training and seeing how it changes their mental abilities.

About 140 people applied to participate; they heard about it via word of mouth and advertisements in Buddhist-themed magazines. Sixty were selected for the study. A group of thirty people went on a meditation retreat while the second group waited their turn; that meant the second group served as a control for the first group. All of the participants had been on at least three five-to-ten day meditation retreats before, so they weren’t new to the practice. They studied meditation for three months at a retreat in Colorado with B. Alan Wallace, one of the study’s co-authors and a meditation teacher and Buddhist scholar.

The people took part in several experiments; results from one are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. At three points during the retreat, each participant took a test on a computer to measure how well they could make fine visual distinctions and sustain visual attention. They watched a screen intently as lines flashed on it; most were of the same length, but every now and then a shorter one would appear, and the volunteer had to click the mouse in response.

Participants got better at discriminating the short lines as the training went on. This improvement in perception made it easier to sustain attention, so they also improved their task performance over a long period of time. This improvement persisted five months after the retreat, particularly for people who continued to meditate every day.

The task lasted 30 minutes and was very demanding. “Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s kind of a perfect index of meditation training,” says MacLean. “People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself. That’s what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted.”

This experiment is one of many that were done by Saron, MacLean and a team of nearly 30 researchers with the same group of participants. It’s the most comprehensive study of intensive meditation to date, using methods drawn from fields as diverse as molecular biology, neuroscience, and anthropology. Future analyses of these same volunteers will look at other mental abilities, such as how well people can regulate their emotions and their general well-being.

Three protein fragments are looking like the guilty parties in celiac disease, an intestinal ailment that affects as many as one in 133 people in the United States. These partial proteins, or peptides, are the part of gluten in wheat, rye and barley that triggers the immune systems of celiac patients, damaging the small intestine. An Australian research team reports the new findings in the July 21 Science Translational Medicine.

Pinpointing these peptides has opened the way for development of a therapeutic vaccine that might help celiac patients tolerate these foods. The research team is pursuing that line of work now, led by study coauthor Robert Anderson, a gastroenterologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Parkville, Australia.

As it is, celiac patients deal with their condition by avoiding wheat, rye and barley.

“This is an impressive and very comprehensive study,” says immunologist Ludvig Sollid of the University of Oslo. “The authors find that most celiac patients make a response to the three gluten peptides.”

That response lies at the heart of the problem. Most people digest these cereals effortlessly, but people with celiac disease have a genetic predisposition that causes an aberrant immune response to gluten. That in turn damages the walls of the small intestine and sabotages their ability to absorb food. Celiac disease can cause painful bloating, diarrhea, constipation, lethargy and other problems. Its genetic underpinnings are poorly understood.

In contrast, the cereal side of the equation is now becoming clearer. Scientists fingered gluten in the 1950s as the celiac trigger, but the gluten protein is complex, and the scanning technology needed to sort out its offending components has become available only recently.

The Australian team put that technology to use. First they gave more than 200 celiac patients in Australia and Britain wheat, barley and rye in foods for three days. This mobilized immune T cells to mount an attack on gluten. The researchers used these T cells to measure the patients’ immune reactions to 2,700 compounds found in gluten. Using the new scanning technology to narrow the field, they found that while dozens of peptides elicited some immune response, three stood apart from the rest. One appears in a type of wheat gluten. Another is found in rye gluten. And a third peptide shows up on certain gluten proteins in all three cereals.

The Australian team has begun an early-stage clinical trial using these peptides in a vaccine that aims to desensitize celiac patients and make them tolerant of the compounds. The group expects to report preliminary safety results later this year.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Earnings from economic bellwethers 3M, UPS and Caterpillar catapulted stocks on Thursday as investors shed some of their fears about the strength of the recovery.

The parade of prominent names reporting profits continued after the market’s close. Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) reported a 48 percent rise in quarterly profit late on Thursday. In regular trading its shares rose 2.9 percent to $25.84, but they were down 0.2 percent after hours.

In other after-hours action, online retailer Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) earnings fell far short of Wall Street’s estimates, sending its shares 13.5 percent lower to $103.88.

During the regular session, the major indexes posted their largest daily gains in more than two weeks, led by United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N), which rose 5.2 percent after it raised its profit outlook. The world’s largest package delivery company is viewed as a barometer of consumer and business demand.

“UPS guiding higher is a very good sign since the amount of shipping volume is directly correlated to the strength of the economy,” said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer of OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois.

Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N), up 1.7 percent to $68, and 3M (MMM.N), up 3 percent to $84.75, were among multinationals that raised their outlooks, suggesting the global economy may also be on a stronger footing.

“The companies that are doing well generally are the ones that have significant overseas revenues or some kind of unique product,” said Kim Caughey, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) gained 201.77 points, or 1.99 percent, to 10,322.30. The Standard & Poor’s 500 (.SPX) added 24.08 points, or 2.25 percent, to 1,093.67. The Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) rose 58.56 points, or 2.68 percent, to 2,245.89.

Thursday’s rally reversed losses from a day earlier after testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke soured investors on the economic outlook.

But for the fourth time this month the S&P 500 came close but failed to break through 1,100, a level that is proving to be a tough hurdle and could be in the way of further gains.

Earlier on Thursday, data showed weekly applications for unemployment insurance rose. Job growth has slowed after strong gains early in the year, cutting into household spending and holding back the economy’s recovery from the toughest recession since the 1930s.

“We can’t find a story that’s going to convince us unemployment is going to materially get better any time soon and that weighs on the consumer, who controls a lot of the economy,” Caughey said. “That’s a prevailing negative force investors think about.”

Home resales declined less than expected but still hit a three-month low in June, while the median home sale price rose by 1 percent from the previous year.

KB Home (KBH.N) rose 3.9 percent to $11.06 and Lennar Corp (LEN.N) added 3.1 percent to $14.76. The PHLX Housing index (.HGX) jumped 4.2 percent.

Advancers outnumbered decliners by almost seven to one on the New York Stock Exchange, and by five to one on the Nasdaq.

About 8.86 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, below last year’s estimated daily average of 9.65 billion.

 

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – Key ships stationed over BP’s
crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to evacuate Thursday
ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie, and engineers have grown so
confident in the leaky cap fixed to the well head that they will leave
it closed while they are gone.

Tropical Storm Bonnie, which blossomed over the
Bahamas and was to enter the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend, could delay
by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud
and cement, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and BP officials conceded. Even if it’s
not a direct hit, the rough weather will push back efforts to kill the
well by at least a week.

“While this is not a hurricane, it’s a storm that
will have probably some significant impacts, we’re taking appropriate
cautions,” Allen said in Mobile, Ala.

Allen issued the order Thursday night to begin moving
dozens of vessels from the spill site, including the rig that’s
drilling the relief tunnel engineers will use to permanently throttle
the free-flowing crude near the bottom of the well. Some vessels could
stay on site, he said.

“While these actions may delay the effort to kill the
well for several days, the safety of the individuals at the well site
is our highest concern,” he said in a statement.

A week of steady measurements through cameras and
other devices convinced Allen they don’t need to open vents to relieve
pressure on the cap, which engineers had worried might contribute to
leaks underground and an even bigger blowout. The cap was attached a
week ago, and only minor leaks have been detected.

Allen said earlier in the day that evacuating the
vessels could leave the well head unmonitored for up to a few days. He
said he ordered BP to make sure that the ships carrying the robotic
submarines watching the well are the last to leave and the first to
return.

It was unclear Thursday night whether some of the
vessels would go back to port or head further south in the Gulf out of
the path of the storm and await orders once the storm passes. The Coast
Guard cutter Decisive, the hurricane guard for the vessels at the spill
site, was awaiting instructions. In an evacuation, the Decisive is the
last vessel to leave the area.

Bonnie caused flooding in Puerto Rico, the Dominican
Republic and Haiti before reaching tropical storm strength later Thursday, and Allen
said crews expected sustained wind above 39 mph at the spill site by
early Saturday.

Seas already were choppy in the Gulf, with waves up
to five feet rocking boats as crews prepared to leave, and more of the
smaller boats involved in the coastal cleanup were called into port,
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said he expects local
leaders in coastal parishes to call for evacuation of low-lying areas as
early as Friday morning.

At the spill site, the water no longer looks thick
with gooey tar. But the oil is still there beneath the surface, staining
the hull of cutters motoring around in it.

One large vessel — the Helix Q4000 — is burning off
oil collected from the water, and bright orange flames flared at the
side of the ship.

Scientists say even a severe storm shouldn’t affect
the well cap, nearly a mile beneath the ocean surface 40 miles from the Louisiana
coast. “Assuming all lines are disconnected from the surface, there
should be no effect on the well head by a passing surface storm,” said
Paul Bommer, professor of petroleum engineering at University of Texas
at Austin.

Charles Harwell, a BP contractor monitoring the cap,
was also confident.

“That cap was specially made, it’s on tight, we’ve
been looking at the progress and it’s all good,” he said after his ship
returned to Port Fourchon, La.

Before the cap was attached and closed a week ago,
the broken well spewed 94 million to 184 million gallons into the Gulf
after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11
workers.

Work on plugging the well came to a standstill
Wednesday, just days before authorities had hoped to complete the relief
shaft. Allen said Thursday he has told BP to go ahead preparing for a
second measure called a static kill that would pump mud and cement into
the well from the top, a move he said would increase the relief well’s
chances for success. BP will have to get final approval from Allen
before starting the procedure.

Vice President Joe Biden visited cleanup workers in southern Alabama, and
said he was cheered the cap could remain on.

“After the storm’s passage we will be right back out there,” Biden said.

The size of the monkey’s femur bone (far
right) suggested it had “stout legs”

Scientists have examined
fossilised remains of a tiny, extinct monkey that were retrieved from an
underwater cave in the Dominican Republic.

The researchers believe the fossil to be around 3,000 years
old, but say the species itself could be very ancient.

This reveals clues about the origin of primates in the
region.

It also suggests that many ecologically valuable treasures
could be discovered by the unusual field of “underwater palaeontology”.

Dr Alfred Rosenberger from Brooklyn College in New York, US,
led the examination of the creature’s bones, the results of which were
published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

He explained that the bones, which included a skull that was
almost complete, were found by a team of scuba divers who were exploring
an underwater cave in the area.

“It’s miraculous that they even saw it,” he told BBC News.

“When they discovered it, they were fearful the bones were
exposed, so they moved the material to a little nook to protect it.”

Having sought official permission to remove the fossil from
the cave, Dr Rosenberger returned to with the scuba divers to retrieve
it in October of last year.

The divers packed the skeleton into tupperware boxes in order
to bring it safely to the surface.

‘Stout little monkey’

Dr Rosenberger said the monkey - only the second specimen of
the species Antillothrix bernensis ever found - probably
measured about 30cm (12in) from head to toe.

But the shape of the legs came as a
surprise.

“Its femur or thigh bone was very thick. So it had sort of
stout legs, which is something we didn’t expect.

“We don’t really have any living examples of New World
monkeys that have stout legs like that.”

Dr Rosenberger thinks the creature went extinct
relatively recently.

He said that it may have behaved similarly to a koala bear -
clinging to the trunks of trees, rather than leaping from branch to
branch.

“That’s a very rough analogy, he said.

“But there’s something very interesting about the ecological
niche it inhabited.”

The fossil also adds to evidence that there were several
lineages of primates in the Caribbean, instead of one ancestor that
moved into the region millions of years ago from which all modern
species evolved.

Dr Rosenberger said it was likely that several species
travelled “over the water” to inhabit the island of Hispaniola.

“And even though these particular bones might be relatively
young, we’re pretty sure that the arrival of these animals occurred well
over 10 million years ago.

Scientists believe the creature went
extinct relatively recently, but may have been very ancient

“That’s an exciting part of the story - if you compare the
dental remains of our monkey to other fossils that we know of, we see
strong similarities with Patagonian fossils that are around 15 million
years old.”

Dr Sam Turvey, a researcher from the Zoological Society of
London in the UK, said the discovery emphasised how much we still had to
learn about the “original mammal fauna” of the Caribbean.

“It’s now possible to reconstruct what this mysterious animal
looked like and how it evolved,” he said.

“The Caribbean islands have experienced the world’s highest
level of mammalian extinction over the past 10,000 years.

“With this improved knowledge of a recently extinct species,
it might be possible to understand what caused it to disappear from
Hispaniola.”

Rights groups collected evidence that white phosphorus was used in civilian areas

The Israeli military will restrict its use of artillery shells containing white phosphorus, it has told the UN.

The controversial weapons cause deadly burns and rights groups say they are banned from use in civilian areas.

The Israel Defense Forces used weapons containing white phosphorus during a 22-day assault on Gaza which began in December 2008.

In its report to the UN, the IDF said steps would be taken in future to avoid civilian casualties.

“The IDF chief of general staff ordered the establishment of a clear doctrine and orders on the issue of various munitions that contain white phosphorus,” the report said.

“These instructions are currently being implemented.”

Burning

During the Israeli offensive on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military used white phosphorus rounds in densely populated areas, the UN and Human Rights Watch said.

Part of a UN compound burned down after it was hit by chunks of the burning chemical which ignites on contact with air.

The weapon has been used on battlefields to create cover for advancing troops and to flush infantry out of their positions, but human rights groups say international law bans its use in civilian areas.

Burning phosphorus sticks to skin and will continue to burn flesh until the supply of oxygen is cut off.

Palestinians and rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans died in the conflict, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.

War crimes

The Israeli military say that the attack was launched to prevent rockets being fired into southern Israel from Gaza.

The UN has sharply criticised both sides in the conflict.

A report by the former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Richard Goldstone, accused both the IDF and Hamas of war crimes.

The Goldstone report has been condemned by the Israeli government as biased.

Hamas has also denied its fighters committed war crimes.

Israel’s latest report to the UN, posted on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also says it has launched 150 investigations into the conduct of its soldiers during the offensive.