Each
spring and summer, as the air warms up and the sunlight beats down on
the Greenland ice sheet, sapphire-colored ponds spring up like swimming
pools. As snow and ice melt atop the glaciers, the water flows in
channels and streams and collects in depressions on the surface that are
sometimes visible from space. These melt ponds and lakes sometimes
disappear quickly - a phenomenon that scientists have observed firsthand
in recent years.
The natural-color image above was acquired on
July 4, 2010, by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1
(EO-1) satellite. This glacial ice field lies in southwestern Greenland,
not far from Disko Bay (Disko Bugt in Danish) and Davis Strait. The
center of the image is 68.91° North latitude and 48.54° West longitude. › Read More
Carnival Legend back in Florida after week of troubled cruise voyages
By Mark Morgenstein, Holly Yan and Lateef Mungin CNN
March 17, 2013 -- Updated 0752 GMT (1552 HKT)
Carnival 'Legend' faces trouble at sea
Carnival's Dream derailed
(CNN) -- The latest in a series of beleaguered
Carnival cruises made its way back to port early Sunday, capping a
harrowing week for passengers aboard several troubled ships.
The Carnival Legend
arrived in Tampa, Florida, hours ahead of schedule Sunday morning after
propulsion system problems hampered its sailing speed.
The company had to nix a scheduled stop on Grand Cayman because of the technical difficulty.
Carnival cruise is no 'Dream'
-
But Carnival Cruise Lines
said the Legend is still scheduled to head out for its next voyage on
time Sunday afternoon while technicians continue working on the repairs.
"The ship is expected to
operate its normal itinerary with the exception of one port -- Grand
Cayman -- which is being replaced by Costa Maya," Carnival said in a statement.
"Any guests wishing not to proceed based on the change to one port of
call have been given the option of canceling and receiving a full
refund."
The company stressed that all safety systems, steering and hotel services were functioning normally.
But dismayed vacationers from the Legend's last voyage vented their frustration.
"Passengers are now
really pissed off," passenger Rob Bonenfant said via e-mail before the
ship's arrival. "Mood on the ship is getting worse among passengers,
captain is giving limited information."
Carnival Dream: Stuck in the Caribbean
The Legend's malfunction
is the latest in a growing list of woes for the travel company. In the
past month, three other Carnival cruise ships have reported problems.
The Carnival Dream lost
power and some toilets stopped working temporarily last week, and for a
while no one was allowed to get off the vessel docked at Philipsburg,
St. Maarten, in the eastern Caribbean.
Gregg Stark, who was traveling with his wife and two young children on the Dream, said conditions on the ship were deplorable.
"There's human waste all
over the floor in some of the bathrooms and they're overflowing -- and
in the state rooms," he said last week. "The elevators have not been
working."
Another passenger,
Jonathan Evans, said passengers were kept on the ship "despite the fact
that we have no way to use the restrooms on board."
But Carnival told CNN
that based on conversations with the ship's management, a look at
service logs "and extensive physical monitoring of all public areas,
including restrooms, throughout the night, we can confirm that only one
public restroom was taken offline for cleaning based on toilet overflow
and there was a total of one request for cleaning of a guest cabin
bathroom."
Carnival said the ship's emergency diesel generator failed but disputed notions of a widespread system failure.
"The ship's power plant,
propulsion and hotel systems are fully operational. Aside from some
periodic interruptions to restroom and elevator service for a few hours
Tuesday night, at no time have any of the ship's systems and services
not been functional," Carnival said in its statement.
The company said it was flying the more than 4,000 passengers and will give them discounts. By late Saturday, most of the passengers had left St. Maarten by air.
Once all passengers
leave the ship, the Dream's crew will sail back to Port Canaveral on
Sunday, the company said. The ship's next voyage has been canceled.
Passenger David Howard
said he thought conditions were fine aboard the Dream, but said he was
frustrated with how his family and other passengers were treated and by
the "lack of communication."
Howard said he and his
family weren't told until 1:45 a.m. Friday they had to get off the ship
by 7:30 a.m., so they had to rush to pack in the middle of the night.
A message from the captain
Dream passengers received a letter from the captain, according to a passenger who e-mailed a photo of the correspondence to CNN.
Capt. Massimo Marino
told passengers they would be booked on flights to Orlando or another
destination. Passengers with cars at Port Canaveral would be bused from
Orlando to the facility about an hour away.
"We sincerely apologize
for the disappointment this unexpected change has caused and regret we
were unable to provide you with the fun and memorable cruise vacation we
had in store for you," he wrote.
The letter also offers passengers a three-day refund and a half-price cruise in the future.
Crisis communication
expert Tom Donahue said Carnival may be making the right operational
decisions. But the frequency and effectiveness of communications to
passengers -- who have no other information source -- are what
influences the passengers' perspective.
Carnival Elation
Just like the Carnival
Legend, the Carnival Elation suffered problems with its Azipod, a
crucial part for steering and propelling a vessel.
A tug boat trailing the ship as it travels on the Mississippi River is "purely a precautionary measure," the company said.
Memories of the defeated Triumph
In the most publicized
case, an engine room fire last month left the Carnival Triumph crippled
and adrift in the Gulf of Mexico with more than 4,200 people aboard.
That scheduled four-day
cruise stretched into eight days as tugs pulled the vessel into port in
Alabama. Food was scarce, passengers sweltered in the heat with no air
conditioning, and overflowing toilets and human waste ran down the walls
in some parts of the ship, passengers reported.
A class-action lawsuit against Carnival Corp. followed.
The Triumph is still being repaired at a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, Carnival spokeswoman Joyce Oliva said.
Last week, Carnival
announced it was conducting "a comprehensive review" of all 23 of its
ships after the fire that crippled Triumph.
Carnival President and
CEO Gerry Cahill said the investigation will focus on the prevention,
detection and suppression of fires, engine room redundancies and what
additional hotel facilities might be provided and might run off the
emergency generators.
"We are now focused on
the lessons we can learn from the incident and also what additional
operational redundancies might be available," Cahill said last week.
Another ship, the Carnival Splendor, had a fire in 2010 due to "a catastrophic failure of a diesel generator," he said.
Not doomed
Despite all the recent problems, Donahue doesn't see any long-term negative effects for Carnival or its competitors.
"I don't necessarily see
(last) week's events, or even combined with the Triumph event, as
casting a pall on the cruise industry," he said, noting that several
colleagues and friends who have recently gone on cruises, including on
Carnival, enjoyed their vacations.
"People generally accept
that complex pieces of equipment can encounter challenges. That's not
the hurdle. I don't think anybody considering the cruise would be
unforgiving of an unforeseen event, because those types of events occur
with complex systems. People are far less forgiving (when)
communications around the events seem to be lacking."
CNN's Jake Carpenter, Dave Alsup, Chuck Johnston, Tina Burnside and Marlena Baldacci contributed to this report.
By Charles Riley @CNNMoney February 24, 2013: 11:31 PM ET
' The pace of manufacturing expansion has slowed in China, according to HSBC. ' HONG KONG (CNNMoney) A key gauge of momentum in China's manufacturing sector fell unexpectedly in February, raising concerns about the strength of recovery in the world's second largest economy.
Global bank HSBC said its "flash" index of purchasing managers' sentiment fell to 50.4 in February from January's final reading of 52.3. Any reading above 50 signals expansion in the manufacturing sector.
The index, which had been on a winning streak, is now at a 4-month low. Still, economists are not ringing the alarm bells.
"The underlying strength of Chinese growth recovery remains intact, as indicated by the still expanding employment and the recent pick-up of credit growth," said Hongbin Qu, an economist at HSBC.
The timing of the Lunar New Year further complicates reading of the data.
Many Chinese factories shut down during the holiday as workers return to the countryside, a migration that can skew PMI readings.
Related: Scenes from China's annual migration
Not all of February's decline can be attributed to the holiday, according to economists at Nomura. Still, the government will likely wait for more data before making policy changes.
"We believe China's leaders will wait for the batch of macro data ... before making an assessment of economic conditions and deciding an appropriate policy stance," the economists wrote Monday.
The fate of manufacturing in China is considered a barometer of the global economy due to the nation's role as a powerhouse exporter.
China's economy has grown at an average of around 10% a year for the past three decades, allowing the nation to rocket past competition to become the world's second-largest economy.
While the growth slowed in 2012 to 7.8%, that figure topped government targets and analyst expectations, signaling an exit to the slowdown that had worried economists.
HSBC's final reading of February purchasing managers' sentiment is due on March 1, as is the Chinese government's reading. To top of page
With
their scheduled stay onboard the International Space Station headed
toward its final days, three members of the Expedition 34 crew pose for
some photographs in their Sokol suits in the U.S. Laboratory or Destiny.
From left are NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, commander, with Roscosmos
Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin. The three
crew members will undock their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 8:30
p.m. EDT, March 14, heading for a landing in Kazakhstan northeast of
the remote town of Arkalyk at 11:57 p.m. EDT. They will have spent 143
days in space since launching from Kazakhstan Oct. 23. When the
Soyuz undocks, Expedition 35 will begin aboard the station under the
command of Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency. Hadfield will be
the first Canadian commander. He and his crewmates, NASA astronaut Tom
Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, will tend to the
station for two weeks until the arrival of three new crew members: NASA
astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and
Alexander Misurkin.
As
big as a tennis court and as tall as a four-story building, a
full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope model was on display
from March 8-10 at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in
Austin, Texas.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to Hubble and the largest space telescope to ever be built.
