Reuters Magazine: McLean: Faith-based economic theory (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? The Republican candidates for president have some major differences in their policies and their personal lives. But they have one striking thing in common - they all say the federal government is responsible for the financial crisis. Even Newt Gingrich (pilloried for having been a Freddie Mac lobbyist)says: "The fix was put in by the federal government."

The notion that the federal government, via the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and by pushing housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to meet affordable housing goals, was responsible for the financial crisis has become Republican orthodoxy. This contention got a boost from a recent lawsuit the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed against six former executives at Fannie and Freddie, including two former CEOs. "Today's announcement by the SEC proves what I have been saying all along - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played a leading role in the 2008 financial collapse that wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy," said Congressman Scott Garrett, the New Jersey Republican who is chairman of the financial services subcommittee on capital markets and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

But the SEC's case doesn't prove anything of the sort, and in fact, the theory that the GSEs are to blame for the crisis has been thoroughly discredited, again and again. The roots of this canard lie in an opposition - one that festered over decades - to the growing power of Fannie Mae, in particular, and its smaller sibling, Freddie Mac. This stance was both right and brave, and was mostly taken by a few Republicans and free-market economists - although even President Clinton's Treasury Department took on Fannie and Freddie in the late 1990s. The funny thing, though, is that the complaint back then wasn't that Fannie and Freddie were making housing too affordable. It was that their government-subsidized profits were accruing to private shareholders (correct), that they had far too much leverage (correct), that they posed a risk to taxpayers (correct), and what they did to make housing affordable didn't justify the massive benefits they got from the government (also correct!). Indeed, in a 2004 book that recommended privatizing Fannie and Freddie, one of its authors, Peter Wallison, wrote, "Study after study has shown that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite full-throated claims about trillion-dollar commitments and the like, have failed to lead the private market in assisting the development and financing of affordable housing."

When the bubble burst in the fall of 2008, Republicans immediately pinned the blame on Fannie and Freddie. John McCain, then running for president, called the companies "the match that started this forest fire." This narrative picked up momentum when Wallison joined forces with Ed Pinto, Fannie's chief credit officer until the late 1980s. According to Pinto's research, at the time the market cratered, 27 million loans - half of all U.S. mortgages - were subprime. Of these, Pinto calculated that over 70 percent were touched by Fannie and Freddie - which took on that risk in order to satisfy their government-imposed affordable housing goals - or by some other government agency, or had been made by a large bank that was subject to the CRA. "Thus it is clear where the demand for these deficient mortgages came from," Wallison wrote in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, which has enthusiastically pushed this point of view in its editorial section since the crisis erupted.

But Pinto's numbers don't hold up. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission(FCIC) - Wallison was one of its 10 commissioners - met with Pinto and analyzed his numbers, and concluded that while Fannie and Freddie played a role in the crisis and were deeply problematic institutions, they "were not a primary cause." (Wallison issued a dissent.) The FCIC argued that Pinto overstated the number of risky loans, and as David Min, the associate director for financial markets policy at the Center for American Progress, has noted, Pinto's number is far bigger than that of others - the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated that from 2000 to 2007, there were only 14.5 million total nonprime loans originated; by the end of 2009, there were just 4.59 million such loans outstanding.

The disparity stems from the fact that Pinto defines risky loans far more broadly than most experts do. Min points out that the delinquency rates on what Pinto calls subprime are actually closer to prime loans than to real subprime loans. For instance, Pinto assumes that all loans made to people with credit scores below 660 were risky. But Fannie- and Freddie-backed loans in this category performed far better than the loans securitized by Wall Street. Data compiled by the FCIC for a subset of borrowers with scores below 660 shows that by the end of 2008, 6.2 percent of those GSE mortgages were seriously delinquent, versus 28.3 percent of non-GSE securitized mortgages.

To recap: If private-sector loans performed far worse than loans touched by the government, how could the GSEs have led the race to the bottom?

Another problematic aspect to Pinto's research is that he assumes the GSEs guaranteed risky loans solely to satisfy affordable housing goals. But many of the guaranteed loans didn't qualify for affordable housing credits. The GSEs did all this business because they were losing market share to Wall Street - their share went from 57 percent in 2003 to 37 percent by 2006. As the housing bubble grew larger, they wanted to recapture their share and boost their profits.

Indeed, the SEC lawsuit specifically says Fannie and Freddie began to do more risky business not to meet their goals, but rather to recapture market share - and they began to do so aggressively in 2006, when the market was already peaking. So while the GSEs played a huge role in blowing the bubble bigger than it otherwise would have been - and the numbers in the SEC complaint are huge - they followed, rather than led, the private market.

It's also very hard to look at what happened in the crisis and conclude that nothing went wrong in the private sector. Note that the other Republican members of the FCIC refused to sign on to Wallison's dissent. Instead, they issued their own dissent. "Single-source explanations," they said, were "too simplistic."

Yet despite all that, the one-note Republican refrain hasn't changed. The explanation is obvious: The "government sucks" rant polls well with conservatives. Mix in an urge to counter the equally simplistic story from the left - that the crisis was entirely the fault of greedy, unscrupulous bankers - and you get a strong resistance to the facts. Maybe there's a deeper reason, too. For many, belief in the all-knowing market was (and is) almost a religion. This financial crisis challenged that faith by showing the market would indeed allow loans to be made that could never be paid back, and by showing that highly paid financial services executives aren't gods, and that many of them are stupid and venal and all too human.

So maybe the Republican orthodoxy is understandable, but that doesn't mean it isn't scary. Of course, there's the great line from Edmund Burke: "Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it." Our housing market is a mess that threatens to drag down the entire economy, and whoever is president in 2013 needs to have a plan. Denying the facts is not a good start.

(Bethany McLean is a Reuters columnist, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and co-author with Joe Nocera of "All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis." Any opinions are her own.)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/bs_nm/us_reuters_magazine_mclean_faith_based

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Halliburton 4Q profit jumps 50 pct

(AP) ? Halliburton is reporting that its net income jumped nearly 50 percent in the final three months of 2011 as rising oil prices sparked new drilling projects.

The Texas-based company posted earnings of $906 million Monday, or 98 cents per share, for the fourth quarter. That compares with $605 million, or 66 cents per share, for the same part of 2010.

Excluding a $15 million charge, Halliburton earned $1 per share in the quarter. Revenue increased 36.9 percent to $7.06 billion.

For the full year, Halliburton Co. earned $2.84 billion, or $3.08 per share, compared with $1.84 billion, or $2.02 per share, in 2010. Annual revenue increased 38.1 percent to $24.8 billion.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-23-Earns-Halliburton/id-bec3932638764dd8adddcf555657c394

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High court: warrant needed for GPS tracking (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.

The decision was a defeat for the government and police agencies, and it raises the possibility of serious complications for law enforcement nationwide, which increasingly relies on high tech surveillance of suspects, including the use of various types of GPS technology.

A GPS device installed by police on Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones' Jeep helped them link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government's installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required.

"By attaching the device to the Jeep" that Jones was using, "officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote. He concluded that the installation of the device on the vehicle without a warrant was a trespass and therefore an illegal search.

All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, a decision the American Civil Liberties Union said was an "important victory for privacy."

Washington lawyer Andy Pincus called the decision "a landmark ruling in applying the Fourth Amendment's protections to advances in surveillance technology." Pincus has argued 22 cases before the Supreme Court and filed a brief in the current case on behalf of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group with expertise in law, technology, and policy.

The Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said the court's decision is "a victory for privacy rights and for civil liberties in the digital age." He said the ruling highlights many new privacy threats posed by new technologies. Leahy has introduced legislation to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that specifies standards for government monitoring of cell phone conversations and Internet communications.

Scalia wrote the main opinion of three in the case. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor also wrote one of the two concurring opinions that agreed with the outcome in the Jones case for different reasons.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote, in the other concurring opinion, that the trespass was not as important as the suspect's expectation of privacy. Police monitored the Jeep's movements over the course of four weeks after attaching the GPS device.

"The use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy," Alito wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor in her concurring opinion specifically said she agreed with Alito on this conclusion.

Alito added, "We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the four-week mark."

Regarding the issue of duration, Scalia wrote that "we may have to grapple" with those issues in the future, "but there is no reason for rushing forward to resolve them here."

Alito also said the court should address how expectations of privacy affect whether warrants are required for remote surveillance using electronic methods that do not require the police to install equipment, such as GPS tracking of mobile telephones. Alito noted, for example, that more than 322 million cellphones have installed equipment that allows wireless carriers to track the phone's location.

"If long-term monitoring can be accomplished without committing a technical trespass ? suppose for example, that the federal government required or persuaded auto manufacturers to include a GPS tracking device in every car ? the court's theory would provide no protection," Alito said.

Sotomayor agreed. "It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to their parties," she said.

A federal appeals court in Washington had overturned Jones's drug conspiracy conviction because police did not have a warrant when they installed a GPS device on his vehicle and then tracked his movements for a month. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court.

The case is U.S. v. Jones, 10-1259.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_hi_te/us_supreme_court_gps_tracking

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European crisis to slow world economy, IMF says (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A recession in Europe will slow the global economy this year, the International Monetary Fund predicted Tuesday, while urging world leaders to focus on growth more than budget cuts.

The IMF forecasts global growth of 3.25 percent this year, slower than the 4 percent pace it projected in September.

The 17 nations that share the euro will shrink 0.5 percent this year. In September, the IMF had predicted 1.1 percent growth for the region.

Europe's recession should have only a modest impact on the United States. The IMF projects 1.8 percent growth for the year, unchanged from its September estimate.

Steep budget cuts will slow growth further and undermine market confidence, the IMF said. The global lending organization's message runs counter to the push for budget cuts advocated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The world recovery, which was weak in the first place, is in danger of stalling," Olivier Blanchard, the fund's chief economist, said at a news conference. "The epicenter of the danger is Europe."

European governments should avoid extreme austerity measures ? spending cuts and tax increases ? in weaker economies, such as Italy and Spain, the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook. And healthier European countries whose governments are facing lower interest rates "should reconsider the pace" of their short-term budget cuts.

"The good news," Blanchard said, is that "with the right set of measures, the worst can be avoided, and the world can be set back on track."

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde made a similar argument Monday during a speech in Berlin.

Many European governments do need to cut deficits, Blanchard said, "but at an appropriate pace."

It may take two decades or longer to pay off the debts accumulated during the 2008 financial crisis and global recession, Blanchard cautioned. He notes that it took that long to pay off the debts Europe ran up during World War II.

European governments should also build up the region's permanent bailout fund, Blanchard said. That's necessary to support larger nations, such as Italy and Spain, that are paying high interest rates on their debts.

Last week, the IMF said it is seeking $500 billion to boost its own resources in the event more lending is needed in Europe or elsewhere.

European banks, meanwhile, are cutting back on lending in order to boost their capital reserves, the fund said. That's likely to hammer Central and Eastern European economies this year, which depend heavily on European bank loans.

The cutbacks will also slow growth in many Asian economies, the IMF said. European banks finance a big chunk of that region's exports.

Still, the hit to China will be relatively modest: It is forecast to grow 8.2 percent this year, down from the fund's earlier projection of 9 percent.

U.S. policymakers should take steps to rein in the long-term costs of government health programs and Social Security, the IMF said. But those cuts should be phased in over the long-term. Immediate cuts could slow the economy further.

One reason the IMF expects the U.S. economy to remain sluggish is because governments at all levels will likely cut back on spending. The IMF assumes the Social Security payroll tax and extended unemployment benefits will extended for the full year. Last month, Congress agreed to extend them only through February.

Without a full extension of both measures, the U.S. economy will fare much worse, the IMF said.

Lagarde warned Monday that the world economy faced the risk of a painful recession this year. She called on policymakers to avoid the stalemates that prevented Europe and the United States from resolving difficult budget and economic problems last year.

"It is not about saving any one country or any one region," she said. "It is about saving the world from a downward economic spiral."

The IMF's projections followed a similar mark-down in global growth estimates last week by its sister lending organization, the World Bank.

The 187-member IMF conducts economic analysis and provides emergency lending to countries in financial distress.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_bi_ge/us_imf_world_economy

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Doomed liner's captain trades blame with shipowners (Reuters)

GIGLIO, Italy (Reuters) ? The operators of the Costa Concordia faced questions over their share of the blame for the shipwreck, as divers recovered another body from the stricken liner Sunday, bringing the known death toll to 13.

Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of steering the 290 meter-long cruise ship too close to shore while performing a maneuver known as a "salute" in which liners draw up very close to land to make a display.

Schettino, who is charged with multiple manslaughter and with abandoning ship before the evacuation of 4,200 passengers and crew was complete, has told prosecutors he had been instructed to perform the maneuver by operator Costa Cruises.

Prosecutors say he steered the massive ship within 150 meters of the Tuscan island of Giglio, where it struck a rock that tore a large gash in its hull, letting water flood in and causing the 114,500-tonne ship to capsize.

It is now lying on its side on an undersea ledge, half-submerged and posing a growing environmental threat with the risk that it could slide into deeper waters.

As the search continued into a ninth day, divers found the body of a woman on a submerged deck near the bow of the vessel, bringing the total number of known dead to 13, only eight of whom have been identified.

As the days have passed, there have been growing questions about the ultimate responsibility for the accident, which Costa Cruises has blamed on "unfortunate human error" and placed firmly on the shoulders of the captain. It has suspended Schettino and will not be paying his legal fees.

Costa chief executive Pier Luigi Foschi has said that ships sometimes engage in "tourist navigation" in which they approach the coast but that this is only done under safe conditions and he was not aware of any riskier approaches so close to the shore.

Costa is a unit of Carnival Corp, the world's largest cruise line operator.

According to transcripts of his hearing with investigators leaked to Italian newspapers, Schettino told magistrates Costa had insisted on the maneuver to please passengers and attract publicity.

"It was planned, we were supposed to have done it a week earlier but it was not possible because of bad weather," Schettino said, according to the Corriere della Sera daily.

"They insisted. They said: 'We do tourist navigation, we have to be seen, get publicity and greet the island'."

He said he had performed similar maneuvers regularly over the past four months on the Costa Concordia and on other ships in the Costa fleet along the Italian coast line which is dotted with small islands that are popular with tourists.

"But we do it every time we do the Sorrento coast, Capri, we do it everywhere," he said.

Foschi, who visited Giglio Sunday, declined to respond to Schettino's comments.

"As an investigation by magistrates is currently underway, we cannot give out any information," he said.

BROKEN BLACK BOXES

Italian newspapers have also published photographs of the Costa Concordia apparently performing the "salute" close to other ports including Syracuse in Sicily and the island of Procida, which is near Naples and Schettino's hometown of Meta di Sorrento.

Schettino said the fatal maneuver of January 13 was originally intended to bring the ship half a mile from the shore, "but then we brought it to 0.28" (of a nautical mile), he said.

Investigators have said the actual point of impact was much closer to the shore but establishing the exact sequence of events could be complicated by problems with the recording equipment used to track the ship's progress.

Schettino said the black box on board had been broken for two weeks and he had asked for it to be repaired, in vain.

In the hearing, Schettino insisted he had informed Costa's headquarters of the accident straight away and his line of conduct had been approved by the company's marine operations director throughout a series of phone conversations.

He acknowledged, however, not raising the alarm with the coastguard promptly and delaying the evacuation order.

"You can't evacuate people on lifeboats and then, if the ship doesn't sink, say it was a joke. I don't want to create panic and have people die for nothing," he said.

Costa says Schettino lied to the company and his own crew about the scale of the emergency.

Documents from his hearing with a judge say he had shown "incredible carelessness" and a "total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency."

Taped conversations show ship's officers told coastguards who were alerted by passengers that the vessel had only had a power cut, even after those on board donned lifevests.

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UNREGISTERED PASSENGERS?

Adding to the growing debate about the ship's safety standards, Franco Gabrielli - head of Italy's Civil Protection authority which is coordinating the rescue operations - said a number of unregistered passengers may have been on board.

Relatives of a missing Hungarian woman told authorities she was on the Costa Concordia with a member of the crew, but her name was not on the list of passengers, he said.

"In theory, there could be an unknown number of people who were on the ship and have not been reported missing because they were not registered," Gabrielli said.

Of the 13 bodies found, only 8 had been identified - four French nationals, an Italian, a Hungarian, a German and a Spaniard. At least 20 people are still unaccounted for.

Minor pollution from detergents and disinfectants aboard the shipwreck had been detected in the waters around the vessel but there was no sign that the heavy fuel in its tanks was leaking, Gabrielli said.

He said tests were being carried out daily on the waters around the ship and a nearby desalination plant that provides drinking water for the island's residents.

"The tests for toxic substances are negative so far," Gabrielli said. "The only significant elements detected, which luckily are not worrying yet, relate to ... detergents and disinfectants used on the ship, for the swimming pool or to clean the bathrooms for example."

Environment experts have warned that contamination of the pristine waters around Giglio, which is in the middle of a national marine park, is already under way and it is imperative to start recovering the fuel oil as soon as possible.

(Writing by Silvia Aloisi and James Mackenzie; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120122/wl_nm/us_italy_ship

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Air Force launches military satellite into space (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? The Air Force has sent into space a satellite that is expected to improve communications with military drones in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Officials say a Delta 4 rocket carried the WGS 4 satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:38 p.m. Thursday.

It's the fourth in a series of military satellites that have been put into place since 2007. The next one is expected to be ready to launch next year.

WGS stands for Wideband Global SATCOM. The satellites are replacing aging Defense Satellite Communications System spacecraft and have 10 times the speed and capacity of the older satellites.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_he_me/us_rocket_launch

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FDA clears safety test to screen Tysabri patients

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new diagnostic test to help identify patients who have an increased risk of developing a rare brain infection while taking Biogen Idec's multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri.

Tysabri is one of a handful of drugs used to control multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease in which the body attacks its own nervous system. Prescribing of the drug has been tightly controlled by the FDA because of a rare infection that causes inflammation of the brain, known as multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML. Currently there is no treatment or cure for PML, which usually causes death or severe disability.

The newly approved Stratify JCV test is designed to detect a common virus that increases the likelihood of developing the brain infection. The John Cunningham virus is harmless in most people, but can become dangerous in patients taking immune system-suppressing drugs like Tysabri.

Doctors can use the results of the blood-based test, combined with facts about the patient's medical history, to determine whether they are at risk of developing the brain infection. Other factors that influence a patient's risk include how long they've been taking Tysabri and whether they've previously taken other medications that weaken the immune system.

The test was developed by Quest Diagnostics.

The FDA also updated Tysabri's label to specify that patients who test positive for the virus have a higher risk of developing PML.

"This label change marks an important advance in assisting people with MS and their physicians to make better-informed decisions concerning the challenges of balancing effectiveness with safety," said Dr. Nicholas LaRocca, vice president of the National MS Society.

Tysabri was temporarily pulled from the market shortly after its launch in 2005 after three patients taking the drug developed PML. FDA allowed the drug back on the market the following year but under a restricted distribution program. Only doctors and pharmacies registered with the company's distribution program are permitted to prescribe and dispense the drug.

Biogen, based in Weston, Mass., sells Tysabri through a partnership with Elan Corp., an Irish drugmaker.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2012-01-20-Biogen%20Drug-Safety%20Test/id-cd46aa760605452cb15b0a0242b1381c

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Oil rig arrives for Cuba offshore exploration work (Reuters)

HAVANA, Jan 19 (Reuters) ? A Chinese-built drilling rig to be used in the first major exploration for oil in Cuba's offshore waters arrived on Thursday off the coast of the communist-ruled island's capital.

The rig, known as Scarabeo 9, could be seen as it sailed slowly westward, miles off the north coast and Havana's famed Malecon seaside boulevard.

Its arrival went mostly unnoticed by people in the capital, but it was a long-awaited and landmark day for the island's oil industry, which believes the platform will tap into rich oil fields in Cuba's part of the Gulf of Mexico.

Starting next week, Spanish oil giant Repsol YPF, working in partnership with Norway's Statoil and ONGC Videsh, a unit of India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp, is expected to drill at least two wells in Cuban waters about 70 miles from the Florida Keys.

Malaysia's Petronas, in partnership with Russia's Gazprom Neft, will also drill a well using the Scarabeo 9. The rig has been contracted from its owner Saipem, a unit of Italian oil company Eni.

All the wells will be in water at least a mile deep, like that of the BP well that blew out and spilled millions of gallons of oil in the U.S. part of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Cuba has said it may have 20 billion barrels of oil in its parts of the Gulf, but the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated about 5 billion.

Repsol drilled the only previous offshore well in Cuba in 2004 and said it found oil, but said it was not "commercial."

It has been trying for several years to bring another rig for more drilling, a task that was complicated by the longstanding U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and the limits it places on the amount of U.S. technology that can be used.

The Scarabeo 9, a semi-submersible rig that floats on four giant pontoon legs and has living quarters for more than 200 crewmembers, was built in China, then sent to Singapore in late 2010 for completion.

The only part of the rig said to be American-made is the blowout preventer, the part that failed in the BP disaster.

Cuba is hoping oil will ease its chronic economic woes and bring energy independence. It currently receives 115,000 barrels a day from its oil-rich socialist ally Venezuela.

Cuban exile leaders in the United States fear that oil could help the communist government stay in power for years to come. They have filed several pieces of legislation trying to scuttle the offshore project.

Floridians have worried that Cuba could suffer a BP-style blowout that would send oil into the Straits of Florida and stain the coast and coral reefs of both the island and the U.S. state 90 miles to the north.

Drillers in Cuban waters could get within about 45 miles of Florida, more than twice as close as they can in U.S. waters, where no oil exploration is permitted with 125 miles of the Florida coast.

At Repsol's invitation, a team from the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard inspected the Scarabeo 9 last month in Trinidad and Tobago and found it to "generally comply with existing international and U.S. standards."

(Reporting by Jeff Franks; Editing by Tom Brown and Cynthia Osterman)

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

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Shadows of the Moon Hide 'Fluffy' Dirt & Water Ice (SPACE.com)

Some of the most intriguing areas on the moon are the hardest to see.

These spots, called permanently shadowed regions, are always dark and never reflect sunlight, so telescopes and satellites have no way to image them in regular light. Now, researchers have used a more devious method to view these areas and found that they may be relatively abundant in water ice.

The permanently shadowed regions are located on the moon's poles and are usually deep in craters where sunlight can't reach. To view these areas, scientists used light that's reflected off hydrogen atoms floating throughout the universe that spreads in all directions, even hitting areas in shade. This light, called lyman alpha emission, shines in a particular, narrow wavelength band.

"Instead of sunlight reflected straight off the craters themselves, we go an indirect route," said study co-author Kurt Retherford, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Tex. "Our light shines off hydrogen atoms spread throughout the solar system."

?

The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project, calibrated to measure this emission, is aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite circling the moon. New data from the project found that the moon's shaded regions are darker in lyman alpha emission than other areas of the moon. [Gallery: Our Changing Moon]

?

"Our best explanation for this difference in reflectance at the poles is that the surface is more porous and fluffier," Retherford told SPACE.com. "It's a powdery, flour type of material."

Scientists think that water might be responsible for the fluffy dirt at the moon's poles. Small particles of water frost moving in and out of grains of dirt may result in more holes between the grains, giving it a porous texture.

Previous studies have found that the dirt at lower latitudes on the moon, which are exposed to sunlight, might include up to 0.5 percent water ice. The new study indicates that water could account for up to 2 percent of the dirt in the permanently shaded regions.

"You would expect there to be more in the permanently shadowed regions than what we see outside," Retherford said.

The finding fits in with scientists' growing realization that the moon, once thought to be bone dry, may contain small but significant stores of water.

"One day, when an astronaut goes to these regions, we need a better sense of what they would see," Retherford said. "Most previous measurements of water pertain to water that's very beneath the surface. But we're really dealing with what the surface of these things looks like. The water that's there is going to be some of the more accessible stuff to astronauts in the future."

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20120119/sc_space/shadowsofthemoonhidefluffydirtwaterice

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