Costa Concordia disaster took place as the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia hit a reef and capsized on 13 January 2012, off the Italian coast. The vessel ran aground at Isola del Giglio, Italy, resulting in the evacuation of 4,232 people on board. At least six passengers and crew died, 42 others were injured, two seriously, two passengers trapped below deck have been rescued, and about 40 are still unaccounted for. The captain and first officer have been arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter after sailing much closer to the shore than allowed, but loss of navigational power and steering control has not been ruled out. The Costa Concordia entered service in July 2006 and was the largest ship built in Italy at the time of her construction, at 114,500 tons and 290.2 meters, costing 450 million euros.
On 13 January 2012, Costa Concordia ran aground on a reef at around 21:00 local time (UTC+1) off Isola del Giglio, having left Civitavecchia earlier that evening at the beginning of a seven-day cruise starting in Savona and visiting Marseille, Barcelona, Palma, Tunis, and Palermo. According to the local coastguard, 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew members were on board at the time.
At 17:48 UTC La Repubblica reported that the captain had stated that they were 300 metres (330 yd) from the rocks (i.e., about the length of the vessel) and that they hit a rock that was not marked on nautical charts. This reef was about 800 metres (870 yd) south of the entrance to the harbour of Giglio. The vessel continued for approximately another 1,000 metres (1,100 yd) until just north of the harbour entrance. The vessel then turned in an attempt to get close to the harbour. This turn shifted the centre of gravity to the starboard side of the ship, and it listed over to that side initially by about 20°, finally coming to rest at an angle of heel of about 80°.[11] According to the local coast guard, the ship has a 50-metre (160 ft) gash on its port side,[10] with a large rock embedded in the ship's hull.
Some passengers jumped into the water to swim to shore, while others, ready to evacuate the vessel, were delayed by crew members up to 45 minutes, as they resisted immediately lowering the lifeboats. Three people reportedly drowned after jumping overboard, and another seven were critically injured. Local fire chief Ennio Aquilino said his men, "plucked 100 people from the water and saved around 60 others who were trapped in the boat.
Of the passengers, 989 were Italians, 569 were Germans, 462 were French, 177 were Spanish, 126-129 were Americans, 127 were Croatians, 108 were Russians, 74 were Austrians, 69 were Swiss, 47 were Brazilian, at least 34 were Dutch, 26 were Hong Kongers, 25 were British, 21 were Australians, 17-18 were Argentines, 13 were ROC Taiwanese, 12 were Canadians, 12 were PRC Chinese, 11 were Portuguese, 10 were Colombians, 10 were Chileans, 9 were Turkish, and 1 was a New Zealander. Other passengers were of Mexican, and Irish nationalities. Of the crew members, 12 were British, 6 were Brazilian and at least one was Peruvian.
At least six people died (including two French tourists and a Peruvian crew member), 42 others were injured, two seriously, two passengers trapped below deck have been rescued, and about 40 are still unaccounted for. Costa has indicated the actual number may be considerably less, as the company is researching which passengers and crew members were definitively on board at the time of the grounding.
Passengers and crew were housed in all available buildings and makeshift shelters in Giglio Porto and elsewhere on Isola del Giglio.
The captain, 52-year-old Francesco Schettino, with a tenure of 11 years, and the ship's first officer have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and abandoning ship. They were being questioned as of 14 January 2012.Officials are trying to determine why the ship did not issue a mayday and why it was navigating so close to the coast. "At the moment we can't exclude that the ship had some kind of technical problem, and for this reason moved towards the coast in order to save the passengers, the crew and the ship. But they didn't send a mayday," said officer Emilio Del Santo of the Coastal Authorities of Livorno, "The ship got in contact with us once the evacuation procedures were already ongoing.
Due to the appearance of the disaster and the size of the ship, news commentators and eye-witness accounts have compared the disaster to that of the sinking of the RMS Titanic a hundred years earlier.
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Costa Concordia is a Concordia-class cruise ship owned and operated by Costa Cruises. She was built at Fincantieri's Sestri Ponente yards in Italy. The name Concordia was intended to express the wish for "continuing harmony, unity, and peace between European nations".
She is the first ship in the Concordia class, with sisters Costa Serena, Costa Pacifica, Costa Favolosa, Costa Fascinosa and Carnival Splendor built for Carnival Cruise Lines. Costa Concordia entered service in July 2006 and is the largest ship to be built in Italy, at 114,500 tons.
The ship garnered international attention in January 2012 when she ran aground off Isola del Giglio, Italy, resulting in the evacuation of over 4,000 people on board. At least 3 passengers died, 42 others were injured, and 41 are still unaccounted for.
The then-unnamed ship was ordered on 19 January 2004 in Fincantieri and built in the Sestri Ponente yard in Genoa, as yard number 6122. She was launched at Sestri Ponente on 2 September 2005,and at the time of her construction was the largest Italian cruise ship ever built. She was delivered to Costa on 30 June 2006.
Costa Concordia is 290.20 metres (952 ft 1 in) long, with a beam of 35.50 metres (116 ft 6 in) and a draught of 8.20 metres (26 ft 11 in). She is propelled by six Wärtsilä diesel engines of 75,600 kilowatts (101,400 hp), which can propel her at 19.6 knots (36.3 km/h).
Costa Concordia has 1,500 staterooms; 505 have private balconies and 55 have direct access to Samsara Spa; 58 suites have private balconies and 12 have direct access to the spa. Costa Concordia has one of the world's largest wellness centers at sea, the Samsara Spa, a two-level, 6,000 m (20,000 ft) wellness area, with gym, a thalassotherapy pool, sauna, Turkish bath and a solarium. The ship has four swimming pools, two with retractable covers, five spas, and a poolside screen on the pool deck.
There are five onboard restaurants, with Club Concordia and Samsara taking reservations-only dining. There are thirteen bars, including a cigar and cognac bar and a coffee and chocolate bar.
Entertainment options include a three-level theater, casino, and a discotheque. There is a children's area equipped with PlayStation products. The ship has a Grand Prix motor racing simulator and an Internet café.
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Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, could all but quash his rivals' presidential aspirations with a victory in South Carolina on January 21 after winning the first state-by-state nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Voters in South Carolina - who have favored Republicans in nine of the last 10 presidential elections - appear to have shrugged off attacks on Romney by rivals who accuse him of killing jobs as a private equity executive for Bain Capital in the 1990s.
The poll showed 37 percent of South Carolina Republican voters back Romney. Congressman Ron Paul and former Senator Rick Santorum tied for second place with 16 percent support.
Newt Gingrich and another Republican presidential hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have been highlighting Bain deals that resulted in job losses in South Carolina, including some at a Georgetown steel plant on the Intracoastal Waterway.
“We’re going to go to Georgetown,” Gingrich said. “Georgetown has a steel mill which was closed. Capital wasn’t put at risk. Capital was drained out of that company. Gov. Romney ran saying he created 100,000 jobs in the private sector.”
Audience members groaned.
“Mr. Speaker,” moderator Mike Huckabee interrupted, “we’ve said we will not allow any comment on the other candidates.”
“I’m just trying to answer his question,” said Gingrich, one of five GOP presidential candidates who made separate appearances at the forum.
To raise questions about a company “is not the same as attacking capitalism,” Gingrich continued. If Republicans avoid challenging the former Massachusetts governor’s record at Bain, he said, President Obama’s reelection team will not be so kind in the fall. “Every single candidate has to be prepared to answer the questions before the nomination so that we know that whoever we nominate is capable of surviving the fall campaign.”
With South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary a week away, Romney’s campaign has pushed back hard at Gingrich and Perry for casting his private equity career in a dark light. Since Friday, Romney has been running a TV ad in South Carolina saying, “We expected the Obama administration to put free markets on trial, but as the Wall Street Journal said, ‘Mr. Romney’s GOP opponents are embarrassing themselves by taking the Obama line.
GRAND BEND—It is the dead of winter in Canada, but a white-sided cottage on a sandy ridge overlooking Lake Huron will always be a summer place for U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. It is where he spent his summers at the beach, enjoyed fireworks on Independence Day and watched his handsome, silver-haired father George, then governor of Michigan, swim in the lake.
It all happened in a Canadian cocoon, a tiny, gated community called Beach o’ Pines which hugs the shore near Grand Bend.
The elder Mitt Romney, who died in 1995, jokingly called himself a “Summer Canadian.”
Youngest son Mitt still clings to those memories — and the Canadian property.
Six decades after his father paid $31,900 in 1950 for a 52-metre lakefront lot, Mitt and his siblings still own it, still use it and still keep their telephone number in the local directory under “G. Romney.”
It’s one of several vacation properties Mitt Romney owns. But this one has special significance.
“You can understand why they hold on to it,” says Bob Sharen, a long-time local realtor. “For many families, a cottage is where their happiest memories live.
But let me pose this question. What if the economy is in pretty decent shape by the fall? The creation of 200,000 private-sector jobs in December is nothing to scoff at. In fact, Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, emailed me Monday morning in response to my question about the unemployment rate in this election year to say: “Based on the growth in the adult population, employment levels in Dec. 2011, and a couple of alternative assumptions about how fast the labor force will grow over the next 10 months, it appears to me than employment growth will have to average 155,000 to 170,000 over the next 10 months to hit” a jobless rate by Election Day of 8 percent. He cautions that the labor force participation rate (LFPR, explained here) could affect that a bit, requiring a somewhat higher number. Fair enough. But Burtless also told me in an earlier conversation that the LFPR rose over the last quarter of 2011, meaning more people participated in the work force and looked for jobs—which in turn means that “yeah, but people are taking themselves out of the labor market” is slowly becoming a smaller and smaller asterisk.
So—170,000 jobs a month? Consider this: We averaged 133,000 jobs per month in 2011, and the year gone by was certainly pretty crappy, especially the first seven or eight months of it. Is it insane to think we’ll average considerably better than that in 2012?
Romney is already a uniquely bad messenger for this particular year for the reasons laid out above. But if by Election Day we’ve been adding that many jobs a month every month for basically a year, Romney’s message will be irrelevant. Oh, he’ll get 47, 48 percent of the vote, because we’re a divided country, and he’ll take back a couple of states Obama picked off because of the singular historical circumstances of 2008. But a majority will not want to change horses, especially when the other horse is carrying Romney’s kind of personal baggage and is promising policies that are warmed over versions of the policies that created the economic crisis in the first place. I have no great confidence in the brilliance of Obama’s political team, but this should not be too hard, even for them, and Mitt can find himself a nice quiet room in La Jolla to go ponder the what-if’s.
