Billionaire donates for Washington Monument repairs

WASHINGTON?? A billionaire history buff has stepped forward to donate the $7.5 million matching gift that's needed to start repairing cracks near the top of the Washington Monument from last summer's East Coast earthquake.

Businessman David Rubenstein told The Associated Press he was inspired to help fund the repairs to the 555-foot obelisk when it became clear how severely damaged it was by a 5.8-magnitude quake on Aug. 23. The monument received about 1 million visitors a year before the famous landmark was closed to the public after the quake.

The Park Service hopes to have a contractor begin work by the end of August. The repair work is expected to take a year to complete, likely keeping the monument closed for two years.

Largest gift
Congress allocated $7.5 million in December on the condition that private donations would match that amount. The National Park Service and nonprofit Trust for the National Mall are expected to announce Rubenstein's gift Thursday morning. It will be the largest gift to the nonprofit group, which aims to raise $350 million to restore the mall's grounds and facilities.

The combined $15 million in public and private funds is expected to cover the cost of repairing damage directly caused by the quake, said National Park Service spokeswoman Carol Johnson. Repairing water damage will cost more, as would a seismic study or reinforcements to strengthen the obelisk against future earthquakes, she said.

Rubenstein, a co-founder of The Carlyle Group, began building the private equity firm's business in Washington and said he wanted to restore a symbol of the nation and hasten repairs to reopen the landmark.

"This Washington Monument is probably one of the most recognizable buildings in the United States next to the Capitol and the Empire State Building," he said. "It could use a little repair work, and I wanted people to get to see it as soon as possible."

Experts have noted the monument needs more than just a little repair work, though it has been deemed structurally sound.

Extensive repairs needed
The August quake was centered some 40 miles west of Richmond, Va., and felt from Canada to Georgia. It damaged the Washington National Cathedral, where pieces of mortar rained down from its vaulted ceiling. At the Washington Monument, panicked visitors fled down flights of stairs on the day of the big shake, but there were no known deaths or serious injuries in the region.

The earthquake caused numerous cracks to form in the obelisk, which was the tallest man-made structure in the world when it was completed in 1884.

Surveillance video taken the day of the quake and later released by the park service showed the spire shaking violently. Daylight could be seen through some of the cracks, the largest of which was reported to be at least 4 feet long and about an inch wide.

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A report in December recommended extensive repairs and reinforcements to preserve the spire. It said some marble panels were cracked all the way through near the top portion of the monument. Cracks near its peak also have left the monument vulnerable to water damage from rain, engineers noted.

Last fall, daredevil engineers on a "difficult access team" rappelled from the top to conduct a visual inspection of the exterior of the obelisk.

Officials said it's unclear whether the work will require scaffolding to be built around the monument, similar to what was erected during a restoration project from 1999 to 2001.

'A true patriot'
Caroline Cunningham, president of the Trust for the National Mall, called Rubenstein "a true patriot" and said his gift "demonstrates how much people care about this space." She said it should serve as an example for other philanthropists.

There has long been talk of sprucing up the mall at the heart of the nation's capital.

A design competition is under way to develop ways to improve the mall, including the Washington Monument grounds. Finalists will be chosen in May, and the group will seek funding for each project. The nonprofit group has targeted parts of the mall that are run down from over use and neglect as a focus for its restoration efforts.

Rubenstein has made large gifts in recent years to Washington's cultural institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center.

The monument, which he visited recently, was built with private $1 donations eventually totaling over $1 million, Rubenstein said. Construction began in 1848, but funds ran out during the Civil War when the monument was left as an embarrassing stump for years. It was finally completed in 1884 and was the world's tallest man-made structure until it was eclipsed by the Eiffel Tower. It remains the tallest structure in Washington.

Rubenstein owns a copy of the Magna Carta, among other historical documents, and reveres George Washington.

"I like to remind people about American history," Rubenstein said. "George Washington is an incredible figure. When he was the head of the Revolutionary War Army, he could have stayed on as really the head of the government when we won the Revolutionary War, but he put down his arms."

___

Trust for the National Mall: http://www.nationalmall.org

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46050494/ns/us_news-giving/

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Japan independent panel contends govt nuke probe (AP)

TOKYO ? The leader of an investigation panel of Japan's nuclear disaster is vowing it will cut deeper into the case than its government-appointed counterpart.

Panel chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa said Monday he wants to provide socially and globally significant insights. The 10-member team was appointed by Parliament and is bipartisan.

Its investigators are the first with the power to subpeona witnesses.

The government's own investigation said in preliminary findings last month that Japan's nuclear crisis management was marred by erroneous assumptions about equipment, delayed disclosure of radiation leaks and other problems.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant that was damaged by last March's earthquake and tsunami has been declared stable.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_nuclear

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Judge says Lindsay Lohan doing well on probation (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? Lindsay Lohan received her second favorable probation report in a row and a judge told the actress that she appears to be on track to complete a strict program by the end of March.

Lohan appeared in court for less than five minutes Tuesday to update the judge on her progress in completing strict probation terms that were imposed in November after a series of missteps by the actress.

By all accounts, the rigid program has benefited Lohan, with Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner telling Lohan that she received favorable reports from probation officials and her community service program. Lohan is doing mandatory cleanup duty at the county morgue and attending frequent psychotherapy sessions, with Sautner requiring Lohan to appear in court monthly for updates.

"Just keep doing what you're doing, you appear to be doing it well," Sautner told Lohan.

The model and actress arrived early for Tuesday's hearing, wearing black slacks, a blue blouse and matching sweater.

The "Mean Girls" star will have to work at the morgue 15 times before she returns to court on Feb. 22.

Sautner said Lohan appears to be on track to complete morgue duty and court-mandated therapy by March 29, just shy of five years after the actress' problems began with a drunken driving arrest on Memorial Day weekend in 2007. After that, she will probably be placed on informal probation that won't require court appearances.

She has struggled with the terms of her sentence since then, prompting judges to send Lohan to jail and rehab repeatedly. Tuesday's hearing marked the second straight hearing in which the actress wasn't on the receiving end of threats of further punishment.

Lohan's spokesman, Steve Honig, said before the hearing that his client has made her morgue service her "primary focus."

The actress remains on probation for both the drunken driving case and a misdemeanor grand theft case filed after she took a necklace without permission in January 2010. She pleaded no contest to taking the $2,500 necklace and served 35 days on house arrest last summer.

___

Follow Anthony McCartney at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_en_mo/us_people_lindsay_lohan

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Panel clears audit firms of Olympus scandal blame (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) ? An unofficial panel of experts cleared global accounting groups KPMG and Ernst & Young of any responsibility for a $1.7 billion accounting fraud at Japan's Olympus Corp, though the role of the firms remained under official review.

The scandal, one of corporate Japan's worst, had raised questions over the role of the two audit firms, which signed off on the accounts of the maker of medical equipment and cameras before the 13-year fraud finally surfaced in October.

But the panel of lawyers set up by Olympus to look at the role of auditors said in a report on Tuesday that five individual auditors were responsible for 8.4 billion yen ($109 million) in damages.

Olympus said later it was suing the five former and current individuals, seeking up to 1 billion yen in damages.

The panel effectively found the fraud, identified by a separate investigation as having being hatched by two former top executives in the 1990s to conceal losses, had been too well covered up for the external audit firms to have unraveled it.

"The masterminds of this case were hiding the illegal acts by artfully manipulating experts' opinions," the report said.

Neither KPMG's Japanese unit, KPMG AZSA LLC, which was the firm's external auditor until 2009, nor Olympus' current auditor, Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC, was found to have violated its legal duties, the panel said.

Ernst & Young and KPMG, however, still face possible sanctions by the country's accounting industry body and financial regulator, which have launched probes into the matter.

The company is already suing its president and 18 other executives, past and present, for up to 3.6 billion yen in compensation for the accounting scam, which has halved Olympus' share price and put it under pressure to raise capital.

Fresh lawsuits against individual auditors would only add to what is already an extraordinary chapter in Japanese corporate governance, with Olympus being mostly run and internally audited by people it is suing for mismanagement or a failure of duty.

Olympus said last week that all board members subject to the lawsuit would quit at an emergency shareholders meeting to be held in March or April.

OLYMPUS LIKELY TO KEEP LISTING

A decision, however, to clear the auditing firms could bolster Olympus' chances of keeping its Tokyo Stock Exchange listing, a critical prerequisite for its campaign to remain an independent company with access to fresh equity capital.

Suing Ernst & Young ShinNihon would likely leave it without an auditor and make it hard to meet exchange requirements. But Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) is still looking into the auditors' roles.

"We believe KPMG hasn't done anything wrong and will be cleared by Japanese regulators," Hideyo Uchiyama, chairman of KPMG Asia Pacific, told Reuters on the sidelines of a presentation in Taipei.

"At this point, KPMG has not made changes in the way it supervises its local unit, as it is waiting for the regulators' ruling," he added, speaking through an interpreter.

The Tokyo exchange has yet to conclude whether Olympus should remain listed.

Olympus has admitted to having used improper accounting tricks to conceal massive investment losses under a scheme that began in the 1990s, when Japanese stock markets had fallen heavily and the yen strengthened markedly.

The scandal came to light after Olympus fired its British chief executive, Michael Woodford, in October, prompting him to blow the whistle on the firm's dubious bookkeeping.

Woodford later launched a campaign to be reinstated but withdrew after failing to win support from Japanese institutional investors.

An Olympus shareholder filed suit on Tuesday against 14 past and present directors for firing Woodford, asking them to pay damages of 1.34 billion yen ($17.5 million) to the company, lawyers for the shareholder - an individual residing in Nara, western Japan - said in a statement.

The fraud relied on complex transactions, many of them involving offshore vehicles, which were presented in Olympus' financial statements as legitimate acquisitions or investments.

It was only late last year that some of these deal payments were exposed as shams, especially a $687 million advisory fee paid to a boutique U.S. financial firm for the $2 billion acquisition of British medical equipment firm Gyrus in 2008. At a third of the purchase price, the fee was the world's largest.

Tuesday's report found former standing corporate auditors Minoru Ota and Katsuo Komatsu, current outside corporate auditors Makoto Shimada and Yasuo Nakamura, and current standing corporate auditor Tadao Imai had breached their fiduciary duty.

It also held Ota responsible for 3.7 billion yen in damages. He headed the accounting division in the 1990s.

The other four were collectively held responsible for about 4.7 billion yen in damages because they had overlooked Olympus directors' illegal activities, it added.

A panel set up by Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC to review its auditing of Olympus said last month it had not found any problems, although a separate investigative committee appointed by Olympus had been critical of the auditors' role.

KPMG's chairman, Michael Andrew, said in November that his firm had done the right thing in its actions regarding Olympus.

Olympus President Shuichi Takayama will hold a news conference on Wednesday at 1 p.m. (0400 GMT), the company said, to discuss its response to the panel's report.

Olympus shares fell 2.1 percent to their lowest close since January 6, while the benchmark Nikkei average rose 1 percent.

($1 = 76.84 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Mari Saito in Tokyo and Faith Hung in Taipei; Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Ian Geoghegan)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120117/bs_nm/us_olympus_auditors

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Fuel tanker off Nome, gearing up delivery

ANCHORAGE, Alaska?? A Russian tanker with a cargo of much-needed fuel for Nome was moored less than a half mile from the Alaska town's iced-in harbor Sunday morning, holding for disturbed ice to refreeze before crews can finish work to deliver the fuel, the Coast Guard said.

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Teams on the ground were preparing to deploy two small drones to survey the ice before laying down a fuel hose from the tanker to the shore.

"Today's unmanned flight operations will involve imaging the work to lay the hose and provide an aerial perspective the the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the industry team to support their spill response planning/preparations," Greg Walker, who runs the drone program at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, told msnbc.com Sunday morning.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, which cleared a path through hundreds of miles of Bering Sea ice for the tanker, was nearby.

"We were able to successfully navigate that last bit of ice," Coast Guard spokesman Kip Wadlow said. "We were able to get it pretty much right on the money, in the position that the industry representatives wanted to start the fuel transfer process."

Coast Guard webcam: http://bit.ly/wEsemi

The crew of the 370-foot tanker Renda was working to ensure the safe transfer of the 1.3-million gallons of fuel through a segmented hose that will be laid on top of the ice to the harbor, located about 2,100 feet from the ship, Wadlow said in a telephone interview from Nome Saturday night.

Wadlow said he doesn't know how long it will be before fuel flows as crews must wait 12 hours, or until about 5 a.m. (6 a.m. PST) Sunday, to ensure that the disturbed ice has refrozen.

At that point, crews must build some sort of road or pathway over the ice for the hose to rest on. Then the hose's segments will have to be bolted together and inspected before the fuel can begin to flow.

Story: Tricky fuel transfer awaits tanker nearing Nome

There has been a lot of anxious waiting since the ship left Russia in mid-December. It picked up diesel fuel in South Korea before traveling to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where it took on unleaded gasoline. Late Thursday, the vessels stopped offshore and began planning the transfer.

A fall storm prevented Nome from getting a fuel delivery by barge in November. Without the tanker delivery, supplies of diesel fuel, gasoline and home heating fuel Nome are expected to run out in March and April, well before a barge delivery again in late May or June.

Earlier Saturday, Sitnasuak Native Corp. board chairman Jason Evans provided details of the transfer process.

Once the hose is laid down, he said personnel will walk its entire length every 30 minutes to check it for leaks. Each segment of hose will have its own spill containment area, and extra absorbent boom will be on hand in case of a spill.

Story: Ultra-harsh winter prompts critical fuel shortages in Alaska

Evans said he hopes the crew will begin unloading Sunday.

The state is requiring that the fuel transfer be initiated only in daylight hours, but it can continue in darkness, Betty Schorr, industry preparedness program manager for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, has said. Nome has just five hours of daylight this time of year.

The transfer could be finished within 36 hours if everything goes smoothly, but it could take as long as five days, Schorr said.

"It's kind of like a football game, we're on the five yard line and we just want to work into the goal line," said Evans, whose hometown is Nome.

Evans, however, cautioned that delivering the fuel is only half the mission.

"The ships need to transition back through 300 miles of ice," he said. "I say we're not done until the ships are safely back at their home ports (in Seattle and Russia)."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46004221/ns/weather/

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Ultrabook or tablet? Compal shows off hybrid reference design (video)

We knew CES would bring a slew of Ultrabooks, but who could have predicted 2012 would be the year of the franken-gadget? So far this week, we've seen Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga, two hybrids from Gigabyte and a pair of 13- and 5.5-inch tablet prototypes from Toshiba. And that's saying nothing of Intel's Nikiski prototype and its promise of accelerometer-based gaming on Ultrabooks. With that as our backdrop, we have the Compal QAV20, a reference design sitting in Intel's booth, alongside all the plain, months-old laptops we've already reviewed. From afar, it looks like the Samsung Series 7 Slate, but up close you'll see it has a larger, 13.3-inch, 1366 x 768 display, along with a keyboard dock. On the inside, meanwhile, it packs a Core i5 ULV CPU -- the same guts you'll find inside other Ultrabooks.

In our brief hands-on, we were stunned by how light the fiber glass device feels -- certainly, it's much less dense than the similarly sized Yoga. The dock itself is home to various ports, including Ethernet, dual USB 2.0 sockets, HDMI and a headphone jack. And though it's no Transformer Prime dock, it's still light enough that you shouldn't have problem stuffing it in your bag. No word on what, if any, OEMs will re-badge this, but no matter -- we've gotten video and photos for you to peruse even if this thing never makes it to market. And no, we didn't film this in the Batcave; Intel just loves it some blue mood lighting.

Gallery: Compal QAV20 hybrid reference design hands-on

Continue reading Ultrabook or tablet? Compal shows off hybrid reference design (video)

Ultrabook or tablet? Compal shows off hybrid reference design (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Angelina Jolie, Pedro Almodovar may soon collaborate (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? First-time director Angelina Jolie and Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar made the most of an afternoon red-carpet event on Saturday, playfully striking a deal to work together on a movie.

Jolie and Almodovar were speaking separately to reporters at the American Cinematheque's annual event for the Golden Globe Awards' foreign-language nominees, when they took a break from interviews to greet each other and talk shop.

Almodovar joked about improving his English and then eagerly agreed when Jolie expressed an interest in working with him.

"So you promise, one day? When all these cameras are gone, we'll find a film together?" Jolie asked Almodovar, to which he responded, "Yes. Absolutely."

In the meantime, the future filmmaking collaborators have a busy awards season. Both have films in the running in the foreign-language category at Sunday's Golden Globes Awards in Los Angeles.

Jolie's "In the Land of Blood and Honey," a drama about the Bosnian War of the 1990s with dialogue in Serbo-Croatian, and Almodovar's sci-fi-tinged thriller "The Skin I Live In" are both nominated.

Their fellow nominees are Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation," from Iran, Chinese director Zhang Yimou's "The Flowers of War" and the Belgian drama "The Kid With a Bike," by sibling filmmakers Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120115/film_nm/us_angelinajolie_pedroalmodovar

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