Federal officials named an international consulting company Wednesday to conduct an independent audit of the fund created to compensate people and businesses for money lost because of last year's BP
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TOPEKA, Kan. ? Holiday travelers were breathing a sigh of relief Wednesday after a storm that dumped up to 15 inches of snow and forced the closure of interstates across the Great Plains moved out of the region, allowing crews to clear drifts and stranded motorists to leave roadside hotels.
The storm was blamed for at least two fatal car accidents as it crawled from eastern New Mexico and Colorado through the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and Kansas. The fierce winds and heavy snowfall closed several major roadways before weakening Tuesday and moving into Missouri and toward the Great Lakes.
But another storm threatened some of those areas hit earlier in the week, including the Rockies and parts of Wyoming, New Mexico and western Kansas. Those areas could see another round of snow and wind over the next few days, but it won't be as heavy as the recent storm, according to meteorologist Brian Barjenbruch of the National Weather Service in Topeka, Kan.
"It's tough to match what we had in some areas with this past storm," he said early Wednesday.
Meanwhile, authorities still reported snow drifts of up to 10 feet high in southeast Colorado, and Texas officials warned drivers to stay off the road in the Panhandle so crews could remove ice and snow. Some highways in the western half of the Oklahoma Panhandle remained closed early Wednesday, with transportation officials warning of hazardous conditions.
At least 40 people were stranded at the Longhorn Motel in Boise City, Okla., where manager Pedro Segovia said blowing snow had created drifts 2- and 3-feet high and closed the main road.
"Some people cannot even get out of their houses. There is too much snow," Segovia said Tuesday. "It was blowing. We've got big piles. It's real bad."
Receptionist MaKenzee Grove sympathized with the 50 or so people stranded at the hotel where she works in Guymon, about 60 miles east of Boise City.
"I have this rinky-dink car that does not do well in this," Grove said. "If we wouldn't have had the wind, it wouldn't have been as bad. The winds ... made the drifts really bad."
A few guests traveling to Oklahoma City managed to leave Tuesday, but others were staying another night until all the roads were clear, she said.
Officials reopened Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico, and portions of Interstate 70 in western Kansas that had been closed Tuesday. New Mexico reopened a closed section of Interstate 25, the main route from Santa Fe to the Colorado line, after crews cleared drifts as high as 5 feet.
In Kansas, schools in Manhattan canceled classes Tuesday, anticipating several inches of snow. The National Weather Service reported later that 3 inches or less fell.
To the east, a cold rain pelted the Topeka area, turned into a mix of light sleet and snow without much accumulation and tapered off. Forecasters said the storm became less potent as it moved northeast toward the Great Lakes.
Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Ben Gardner said the patrol dealt with dozens of accidents in which motorists slid off highways Tuesday.
"We had ice-covered roads, covered by snow packed on top," he said.
The late-autumn snowstorm lumbered into the region Monday, turning roads to ice and reducing visibility to zero. Many of the areas hit had enjoyed relatively balmy 60-degree temperatures just 24 hours earlier.
The storm was blamed for at least six deaths, authorities said. Four people were killed when their vehicle collided with a pickup truck in part of eastern New Mexico where blizzard-like conditions are rare, and a prison guard and inmate died when a prison van crashed on an icy road in eastern Colorado.
The Colorado Army National Guard said it rescued two stranded motorists early Tuesday in eastern Las Animas County, in the state's southeast corner, using a special vehicle designed to move on snow. Smaller highways in that area remained closed.
___
Associated Press writers Jeri Clausing in Albuquerque, N.M.; Matt Curry in Dallas; and Tim Talley in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
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As the perennial holiday sales fracas between Apple and the rest of the consumer electronic world hits high gear, I am left to wonder if the passing of the company's founder and chief guiding force Steve Jobs will have any negative implications on the final tally of Apple products sold. By all accounts, Jobs was not only a visionary but a hands-on leader, with implications in the technology and design of his products down to the smallest details.
Other factors such as the release of new products from competitors have to be taken into account The release of cheaper smartphones from Samsung and the potential iPad slayer, Kindle Fire, which also comes with a lower price tag are two products in direct competition with Apple. Apple's iPhone is also in competition with Google's Android. According to Nielson, Android has recently surpassed the iPhone as the mobile device with an operating system more used by consumers in the United States.
Will consumers approach Apple products with trepidation, wondering if the latest updates, add-ons and new technologies from the electronics giant will be sub-par without Jobs?
Yung Trang, president of Techbargains.com, a website that offers deals on consumer technology, has not seen a slowing of Apple's sales due to the passing of Jobs and does not predict it anytime soon.
"I think most consumers realize that Steve Jobs had a hand in the development of all current Apple products," Trang wrote to me in an email. "Any slowing in sales is more due to competitive pressures from devices like the Kindle Fire rather than Steve Jobs passing at this point."
This sentiment is shared by Andrew Schrage, founder of Money Crashers, a website devoted to helping people make wise financial decisions. Schrage believes that Apple has created a unique line of products that competitors hope to replicate but often fall short.
"I certainly don't own any crystal ball, but if I were a betting man, I'd say that Apple will survive this hit," Schrage said. "I firmly believe that Apple will emerge in the end as a thriving and highly profitable company that will continue to deliver the latest and greatest innovative devices in the world of technology to the American public. The culture, vision, and product should remain consistent, and I think that in the long run, Apple will continue to be on the cutting edge of electronic devices."
Both Schrage and Trang also agree that Jobs was a great team builder, an innovator who set up his company to maintain solidarity and continue to be on the forefront of technology after his passing.
Consumer experience designer Mike Wittenstein believes that Jobs not only put together a great team but also left roadmap to future technology for that team to follow.
"Personally, I'm looking forward to Apple televisions, laptops with touch screens, and more Apple-like interfaces in things that work with Apple's products, (like in-car dashboards, etc)," Wittenstein said. "Rather than seeing Steve Jobs' death as an end of an era, the gift of his business design for Apple, the capabilities he created for the company, and the examples of his leadership and Apple's accomplishments will inspire current and future employees for years to come."
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(Reuters) ? If the death of Kim Jong-il hastens reunification of North and South Korea, the two long-hostile neighbors may be better served by a go-slow approach like Hong Kong's return to China rather than Germany's swift union.
Knowing when or if the two might be rejoined is impossible, and modeling the costs and benefits is not much easier. The paucity of data from North Korea means even the most basic assumptions on economic growth are guesstimates.
While unification still is a remote possibility, the leadership change in Pyongyang only intensifies speculation about it.
This much seems clear: reunification could lift millions of North Koreans out of poverty and boost average income by at least tenfold. But it would probably slow South Korea's growth rate for a decade or more.
Estimates on what reunification might cost range from tens of billions of dollars to more than $1 trillion -- roughly equal to South Korea's annual output -- depending on the speed and depth of integration. A relatively quick and extensive union, like Germany's, would be far costlier than a limited re-engagement along the lines of Hong Kong's return to China in 1997.
"Put crudely, the economics come down to the movement of Southern money north, or the movement of Northerners south," Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics said in an emailed response to questions from Reuters.
A gradual, phased integration may be easier on paper than in reality. If reunification comes suddenly, like what happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it may be impossible to control the flow of people or money.
Germany is often cited and frequently studied as the obvious precedent. Like the two Koreas, East and West Germany were divided by war, political ideology and economic models. South Korean media has reported that German academics and former officials came to Seoul in November to consult on reunification.
But Germany's model of swift integration may be prohibitively expensive for Korea. When the two Germanys reunited in 1990, East Germany's population was about one-quarter the size of West Germany's, while per capita income in the West was nearly four times higher than in the East.
North Korea's population of 25 million people is believed to be about half of South Korea's, while per capita income in the South is more than 17 times higher than in the North.
That means the cost of narrowing the gap between North and South would be enormous. Researchers at Washington State University and Sogang University found that a German-style reunification would mean that after 25 years, South Korea's per capita GDP would be 20 percent lower than it would have been had the countries remained separate.
Goohoon Kwon, a Goldman Sachs economist based in Seoul, published research in 2009 arguing that a unified Korea could overtake France, Germany and possibly Japan in 30 or 40 years, and the cost could be manageable with the right policy choices.
"The least expensive option would be a China/Hong Kong-style integration, which allows two economic and political systems to coexist in a country with limited inter-Korean migration," he wrote in the 2009 research note.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has promoted a form of integration that is more Hong Kong-esque than German, beginning with massive investment to upgrade North Korea's rusting infrastructure to prepare the country for re-introduction into the global economy.
But accepting such largesse would undermine the legitimacy of the North Korean leadership, something the late Kim was loathe to do and his young son, the "Great Successor" Kim Jong-un, would most likely reject as well.
IS IT WORTH IT?
For impoverished and malnourished North Korea, any type of reunification would undoubtedly lift living standards. It is less evident how South Korea would benefit.
An influx of young workers might help ease demographic strains. South Korea is a rapidly aging society with by far the lowest birth rate among the 34 member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
But that may widen income inequality by pushing down wages for low-skilled South Korean workers while benefiting the wealthier who could employ cheaper labor.
North Korea has mandatory schooling through age 16, but it is hard to gauge how well educated its potential work force actually is.
Hyung Seok Kim of Sogang University and Seung Mo Choi at Washington State, who released a paper on reunification costs in October 2011, pointed out that East and West Germany had similar average years of schooling in 1990.
"But Western German workers had higher wages after reunification, implying that the education quality of the West was higher than the East, while the quantity may have been similar," they wrote in an email to Reuters.
Mineral-rich North Korea could be a boon for the South, which imports nearly all of its mineral needs, according to Goldman's Kwon. North Korea's mineral resources, including magnesite, coal, uranium and iron ore, were valued at around 140 times its 2008 GDP, he said.
There is also the potential peace dividend. North and South Korea are technically still at war. The North Korean military absorbs an estimated 30 percent of GDP. The two countries combined have more than 1.8 million people serving in the military, out of a combined population of just 75 million.
Shrinking the military could put hundreds of thousands of people into more productive work, and might even help lift South Korea's ultra-low birth rate.
"If you demobilize all those people, you do create the potential for a baby boomlet, along the lines of what you saw in the United States at the end of World War II," said Robert Kelly, an assistant professor at Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea.
STOPPING THE RUSH
In an ideal scenario, a gradual and controlled integration would lift North Korea's growth so dramatically that it more than makes up for the slowdown in the South. In other words, the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts.
If, say, 0.5 percent of North Korea's population were permitted to migrate each year, they could conceivably be absorbed into the South Korean economy with little difficulty. Capping investment flows to the North would reduce the risk that South Korea is left with too little capital.
But a more rapid influx of immigrants could cause social strains. South Korean attitudes toward the North tend to vary by generation. Those who are old enough to remember life before the countries were divided tend to favor reunification and view the entire Korean peninsula as one. Those born later are likely to have less of an emotional tie, and may think the cost of supporting the North outweighs the benefit.
Pusan's Kelly said grand ideas about controlling the flow of people and money would probably go out the window if the border were to open suddenly -- if, for example, the North Korean government collapsed.
The sheer number of people who might want to leave North Korea would make it very difficult to control the movement without a massive occupying force.
"To keep 15 million people penned in, think about the police force you'd have to have," Kelly said. "The emotional outburst when unification comes will make it very difficult to accomplish those phased, step-by-step transfers."
(Reporting by Emily Kaiser in Singapore; Additional reporting by Jonathan Thatcher. Editing by Dean Yates)
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WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration and at least one of its allies say they are pleased that Russia has decided to support U.N. Security Council action aimed at halting violence in Syria but won't support Russia's proposed resolution unless changes are made.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday that Russia's surprise introduction of a Security Council resolution on Syria was an "important step" and a sign of growing unity on the importance of opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime's brutal crackdown on reformers.
"It's clear from the steps that Russia took that more and more of the international community is coming together as one to say to Syria and to the Assad regime that we can no longer tolerate the kind of killings that are going on, the kind of abuse of human rights that have gone on in Syria and that Assad needs to step down," Panetta told a news conference in Ankara, Turkey.
In Washington, the State Department called the Russian move "good news" but said the U.S. wouldn't vote for the resolution unless it distinguishes the actions of peaceful protesters from those of the government. In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry echoed that stance.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters that "the Russians have recognized that the U.N. Security Council can't be silent any longer and that we've got to use that organization to make clear that the violence needs to end."
But she stressed the administration has concerns about the draft. "We wouldn't be prepared to accept it as written, particularly because it appears to create a sense of parity between these peaceful protesters and the action of the regime, which has been extremely brutal and violent," she said.
The French Foreign Ministry said France was "ready to work with all its partners" on Syria "but underlines that the Russian text as it now stands has parts that are not acceptable."
"In particular, it's unacceptable to put on a par the repression of the Syrian regime and the resistance of the Syrian people. Every day thousands of people demonstrate peacefully and are victims of a bloody repression," it said.
The United Nations estimates that 5,000 people have been killed in violence since protests against the Assad regime started nine months ago.
Despite the severity of the situation, Russia, along with China, had opposed U.N. Security Council action on Syria.
But on Thursday, Russia surprised council members by introducing a draft resolution that "demands that all parties in Syria immediately stop any violence irrespective of where it comes from." The draft, however, does not mention sanctions, something that Western nations have been pushing.
Nuland said the U.S. wants to work with Russia, as well as with the Arab League, which has condemned the violence, to ensure that all concerns are addressed.
Despite the reservations, Nuland said the Russian move "begins a new process in New York that we very much welcome."
___
Baldor reported from Ankara. Jamey Keaten contributed to this report from Paris.
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