Volcano ash may reach France, Spain

Eruption of Iceland's most active volcano is unlikely to cause a repeat of last year's major disruption to air traffic, an expert said, despite the island having to shut its main airport and maybe closing its airspace. The Grimsvotn volcano burst into life on Saturday in what experts said was a stronger eruption than its last outbreak in 2004. The plume from the volcano shot 20km into the sky, forming a huge, bubbling mass which seeped above the clouds high over the North Atlantic island.

Experts have said it will probably not cause the same kind of disruption as when Eyjafjallajokull erupted last April, grounding European airlines for days, as its eruptions tend to be smaller and the particles from it less likely to disperse so far into the atmosphere.

Authorities halted flights then due to fears that dust and ash would get into aircraft engines and cause accidents after the cloud was blown into European air traffic lanes.

Europe's air traffic control organisation said, "There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours."

"Aircraft operators are constantly being informed of the evolving situation," the Brussels-based organisation said.

The Isavia civil aviation authority said it had decided to shut the island's main airport, which is about 30 miles from capital city Reykjavik.

"The ash distribution forecast over the next six hours shows that the ash from the volcano will spread over Iceland today, leading to the closure of most Icelandic airports as the day goes on," it said.

Isavia on Saturday imposed a flight ban of 120 nautical miles around the area. Grimsvotn lies under the Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland, the largest glacier in Europe.

When it last erupted in 2004 transatlantic flights had to be re-routed south of Iceland, but no airports were closed.

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Icelandic volcano ash could enter UK airspace

Safety experts have warned that ash from an erupting Icelandic volcano that closed the country's airspace may blow across large swathes of western Europe, raising fears of new flight chaos.

Air safety officials said ash from the Grimsvotn eruption may reach north Scotland by Tuesday before sweeping across Britain to hit France and Spain two days later, as experts said the impact should not be as far-reaching as 2010 when a similar event caused widespread flight cancellations.

Ash deposits were sprinkled over the capital Reykjavik on Sunday, some 400 kilometres to the west of the volcano which spewed a cloud about 20 kilometres into the sky.

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Residents living near to Grimsvotn said the skies had turned black in an eerie echo of last year's eruption of the smaller Eyjafjoell volcano which led to the biggest global airspace shutdown since World War II.

"It's just black outside, and you can hardly tell it is supposed to be bright daylight," Bjorgvin Hardarsson, a farmer at Hunbakkar Farm in the nearby village of Kirkjubaejarklaustur said by phone.

"It's been very dark. You'd think it was night," agreed Vilhelm Tunnarsson, a photographer for local Icelandic media staying at a nearby hotel, adding at times he had been unable to see 30 centimetres in front of him.

At the moment if the volcano continues to erupt to the same level it has been, and is now, the UK could be at risk of seeing volcanic ash later this week," said Helen Chivers, Met Office spokeswoman. "Quite when and how much we can't really define at the moment."

Chivers said the weather situation is set to be different to last year, with the wind direction set to change continuously.

She added: "If it moves in the way that we're currently looking, with the eruption continuing the way it is, then if the UK is at risk later this week, then France and Spain could be as well."

While the ash has grounded aircraft in Iceland, it is not anticipated that it will have a similar impact in the rest of Europe.

Dr Dave McGarvie, volcanologist at the Open University, said that the amount of ash reaching the UK "is likely to be less than in the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption", and said the last two times Grimsvotn erupted it did not affect UK air travel.

"In addition, the experience gained from the 2010 eruption, especially by the Met Office, the airline industry, and the engine manufacturers, should mean less disruption to travellers."

The April eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, in south-east Iceland, caused the worst disruption to international air travel since 9/11. Flights across Europe were cancelled for six-days stranding tens of thousands of people and was estimated to have cost airlines £130m a day.

Eurocontrol, the Europe-wide air traffic control network, said in a statement: "There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours. Aircraft operators are constantly being kept informed of the evolving situation.

Climate change is now critical, says the Climate Commission

NO amount of tree-planting or using biofuels in cars will stop the planet warming, the first report by the Climate Commission warns.

The findings are a blow to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who opposes the Government's carbon tax and has instead proposed to combat global warming through an offsets policy.

The report, which pulled together the latest peer-reviewed science on climate change, concluded that the controversial science behind climate change was beyond denial.

"The atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and ice caps and sea levels are rising," it said.

"Global surface temperature is rising fast; the last decade was the hottest on record. Human activities — the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation — are triggering the changes we are witnessing in the global climate.

The report also is highly critical of climate change sceptics, whom it claimed were intimidating climate scientists and confusing the public.

A Federal Parliament forum on climate change will be held tomorrow against a backdrop of Opposition Leader and climate change sceptic Tony Abbott's commitment to a carbon offsetting policy.

Coalition policy would see polluters and government investing in ways of storing greenhouse gases - in forests, biofuels or the earth - rather than being penalised for not reducing emissions.

But report author Professor Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, said yesterday offsetting simply could not substitute for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"We have to reduce fossil fuel use and while locking away CO2 can be a good thing, it can't work alone. It must be accompanied by fossil fuel use and emissions reductions," he said.

"Putting CO2 into, say, soil, doesn't actually remove it from the ecosystem and it can be vulnerable to changes in land use. And if we get temperatures in the future higher than expected, offsetting might make warming worse because that carbon, that CO2, you paid people to put back into the earth can go back up into the air.

"Poorly constructed offsetting could lock in more severe climate change for the future."

Prof Steffen said the next decade was critical with Australia already suffering social, environmental and economic consequences of warming.

Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the Director of the Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, said the report should guide politicians and compel them into action.

"It is vitally important that responsible governments everywhere face up to the urgency of the situation that we face with respect to climate change, and to act on the recommendations of their experts," he said.

"They must listen to the experts, devise meaningful responses and act immediately on this important issue.

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Icelandic volcano eruption grounds flights

A volcanic eruption under Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull, forced the closure of the main international airport in Iceland, the second disruption in 13 months to the island nation’s air traffic.


The eruption sent an ash plume more than 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) into the air, causing delays today of some Scandinavian trans-Atlantic flights. “We expect the ash cloud to enter Norwegian airspace over the course of the night,” said Jens Petter Duestad, chief of control centers for Norwegian airport operator Avinor.


Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport was shut down this morning amid fears that the ash plume might damage jet engines. The halt grounded 11 airplanes in Iceland, affecting about 2,000 passengers. Another 13 airplanes will be unable to land in the country.


An eruption began at about 6 p.m. yesterday in a Grimsvotn Lake crater underneath Vatnajokull, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Reykjavik. The volcano is the most active in Iceland and its last eruption ended in 2004.


Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption on April 14, 2010, closed European airspace for six days at a cost of $1.7 billion, according to an estimate then by the International Air Transport Association. Iceland, with about 320,000 inhabitants, is one of the world’s most volcanically and geologically active countries and eruptions are frequent.


Ash soon covered nearby villages and reached the capital, Reykjavik, nearly 400 kilometres to the west. ''It's just black outside, it is supposed to be bright daylight,'' Bjorgvin Hardarsson, a farmer, said.

Iceland's airport administration, Isavia, announced yesterday that the country's main airport, Keflavik, was shutting and basically all the country's air space was closing.
Last year's eruption caused the world's biggest air-space shutdown since World War II, lasting almost a month.

Festival crowd flocks to Hicks' book signing

David Hicks received a standing ovation at his first public appearance, at the Sydney Writers Festival today.

Hicks is the Australian who was branded a terrorist by the US Government and spent five and a half years in Guantanamo Bay, after he was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, and sold to the Americans.

Hicks was being interviewed by journalist Donna Mulhearn following the publication of his book Guantanamo : My Journey about his experiences as a freedom fighter and then enemy of the United States.

The audience of 900 were people of all ages, most of whom clapped during his talk and gave him a standing ovation at the end.

At times, the quietly-spoken Hicks found it difficult to recount some of his experiences of torture inside Guantanamo.

During the interview, Hicks repeated his assertion that not only was he not fighting for al-Qaeda but had not even heard of the terrorist group until his American interrogators mentioned the name.

Hicks, who grew up in Adelaide and was a high school drop-out, said he had converted to Islam to gain a sense of belonging. He travelled to Kosovo and Kashmir to help suffering civilians after he had worked in Japan as a horse trainer.

Mr Hicks was convicted by a US military commission on charges of providing material support for terrorism but has faced no charges in Australia.

The US Military Commissions Act of 2006, ''which is the one I was forced to plead guilty under'', had since been scrapped by US President Barack Obama, Mr Hicks told the festival.

''Because of that my US lawyers say that my conviction is now null and void,'' he said.

Mr Hick said he never hurt anyone, and never planned to hurt anyone during his time in Kosovo and Pakistan and Kashmir.

''I went overseas with the intention to help people. Some people may think it's a bit weird, a bit strange, impulsive, naive - OK. But my intentions were good. And unfortunately I ended up being detained and tortured and accused of being a terrorist.'' A long queue formed as Mr Hicks signed copies of his book, under the gaze of the ABC's Australian Story cameras, but he refused to answer media questions.

World air traffic:Iceland Erupts Again

Plume of smoke has risen 20km (12 miles) into the sky from the volcano.

But Iceland's Meteorological Office says the eruption should not cause widespread disruption to air traffic.

Last year, ash clouds from another Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokul, led to the closure of a large section of European airspace.

Governments feared that ash particles could cause aircraft engines to fail, and the closure caused chaos to air travellers.

Different ash

Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, a spokeswoman for the Isavia civil aviation authority - which has imposed a flight ban of 120 nautical miles (222 km) around Grimsvotn - said: "We have closed the area until we know better what effect the ash will have."

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Glaciologist Matthew Roberts: the eruption "shouldn't have any far-reaching effects"

But officials say it is unlikey to have the same impact as last year.

Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said the 2010 eruption was a rare event.

Icelandic Met Office website reported that ash is falling in the vicinity of the Vatnajokull glacier. This also includes towns of Hofn i Hornafirdi and Kirkjubaerklaustur as well as farmland nearby. The plume is up to 12 miles (20km) high, but the basalt eruption is meant to give the ash a density that will prevent a Eyjafjallajokull-style spreading.

Other effects associated with Grímsvötn is glacial flooding. As lava protrudes the Vatnajokull glacier and the ice is melted, water is produced.

There has been some confusion about this eruption. Icelandic authorities have found themselves disambiguating to the global media that Grímsvötn is not the more powerful Eyjafjallajokull, which disrupted air traffic last year. Although Grímsvötn Volcano has interrupted air traffic in the past, it has never downed international flights. This particular eruption is not expected to interrupt European air traffic in the next 24 hours.

Authorities were reportedly reassuring the nearby locals that there is no need for evacuations.

According to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, in 1783 this very volcano's 16.7 mile long fissure system (known as 'Skaftar') "produced the world's largest known historical lava flow during an eruption". It lasted for seven months and damaged crops and livestock. This in turn also caused a famine resulting in the death of one fifth of Iceland's population.

Macy's Stors

Macy's, Inc. (NYSE: M) is a department store holding company and owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's department stores. Macy's Inc.'s stores specialize mostly in retail clothing, jewelery, watches, dinnerware, and furniture.

Macy's Inc. is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio and operates just over 850 stores in the United States. The company's Macy's locations and related operations account for 90 percent of the company's revenue, while luxury-oriented Bloomingdale's stores and associated ventures represent the balance of the company's business. Macy's is well known for its flagship department stores, most notably in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, the former Dayton's in Minneapolis, the former Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh, the former Burdine's in Miami, the former Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, and the former Marshall Field's location in Chicago and the former Famous Barr in St. Louis.

May Department Stores acquisition

On July 18, 2005, Federated Department Stores announced that they would acquire May Department Stores company for $11 billion in cash and stock. Also part of the buyout was the bridal and formal unit of May, consisting of David's Bridal and After Hours Formalwear. Federated would also assume $6 billion of May's debt, bringing total consideration to $17 billion. 

The deal would create the nation's largest department store chain with over 1,000 stores and $30 billion in annual sales. To help finance the deal, Federated agreed to sell its combined proprietary credit card business (but still administrated by FACS Group, a subsidiary of Federated) to Citigroup. The merger was completed on August 30, 2005, after an assurance agreement was reached with the State Attorneys General of New York, California, Massachusetts, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Federated announced plans to sell 80 store locations in 2006, having pledged in its settlement to sell most of them as viable businesses, with preference being given to a group of thirteen competitors. This number could fluctuate pursuant to Federated's negotiations with various mall landlords and its final decision regarding using former Macy locations for its luxury Bloomingdale's operation.

On January 12, 2006, Federated announced its plans to divest May Company's Lord & Taylor division (55 stores in 12 states) by the end of 2006 after concluding that chain did not fit with their strategic focus for building the Macy's and Bloomingdale's national brands. On June 22, 2006, Macy's announced that NRDC Equity Partners, LLC would purchase Lord & Taylor for US$1.2 billion, and completed the sale in October 2006.

On September 9, 2006, May Company division stores Famous-Barr, Filene's, Foley's (the prior two were former Federated stores in their own right), Hecht's, The Jones Store, L. S. Ayres, Marshall Field's, Meier & Frank, Robinsons-May, and Strawbridge's brands ceased to exist as Federated replaced most of them with the Macy's masthead, and a select few converting to the Bloomingdale's brand. The conversion of Marshall Field's in Chicago has been particularly criticized, with many customers boycotting the State Street store and staying away from the emporium in droves. The Chicago Tribune continues to report on the poor reception of Macy's in Chicago. 

Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh also had a dislike to the change most due to the concern of the local parade run by the store. Other stores like Famous-Barr in St. Louis also disliked the change, but not nearly as much as Marshall Field's.

Downsizing

On Wednesday, February 6, 2008, Terry Lundgren announced the localization strategy and the company's plan to shed 2,550 jobs. This new localization strategy is known as "My Macy's."

Employees of the Macy's North headquarters office in Minneapolis, the Macy's Northwest headquarters office in Seattle, and the Macy's Midwest headquarters office in St. Louis were given pink slips, as Macy's pared its seven regional centers to four. Buyers, accountants and senior executives lost their jobs. About 40 new jobs will be created in May as part of the restructuring.

By 2009, the company expects to save $100 million a year from the cuts.

On February 2, 2009 Macy's said it will cut 7,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its work force, and slash its dividend as it looks to lower expenses. Cincinnati-based Macy's Inc. said the work force reduction includes positions in offices, stores and other locations. The cuts will include some unfilled jobs. "Reducing our workforce is an unfortunate outcome of the current economic environment, and I am frustrated that so many of our people will be unable to move forward with us as we proceed into a very exciting future for Macy’s and Bloomingdale's" said Terry J. Lundgren, chairman, president and chief executive officer. "

Macy's will also begin getting rid of its division structure and integrating its functions into one organization, effective immediately. Macy's central buying, merchandise planning, stores senior management and marketing functions will be located primarily in New York. Corporate-related business functions, such as finance and human resources, will be primarily in Cincinnati. To buy with local consumers in mind, Macy's developed a concept called "My Macy's", in which the buyers and planners all look at what the local consumer base is looking for in their local Macy's store. This will help bring a better sense of branding, sizing and marketing to each Macy's store nationwide.

CEO for big Bloomie's outlet:Macy's

NEW YORK, May 20 - Macy's Inc (M.N) will take it slowly as it expands its Bloomingdale's outlet stores, preferring to wait for the right locations even as developers woo the upscale retailer, its chief executive said.

Macy's, which operates 41 full service Bloomingdale's department stores, last month said it would open another three Bloomingdale's outlets stores this year, on top of the four it opened last year.

"We haven't assigned a number (of stores)," CEO Terry Lundgren said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. "We'll play it by ear over the next several years as we roll out."

Outlets are no-frills stores where department store chains traditionally have sold returned or unsold merchandise at steep discounts. More recently, some retailers have ordered merchandise, typically more affordable, specifically for outlet stores.

In recent years, luxury chains such as Saks Inc (SKS.N), Nordstrom Inc (JWN.N) and Coach Inc (COH.N) have opened more outlets to cater to bargain-hunters who love top brands, a source of revenue growth. Saks, for instance, closed six department stores last year, and now operates more outlets than full service stores.

Lundgren said the company was willing to wait to get into the right outlet malls.

Top outlet mall developers are wooing Bloomingdale's, he said.

"The outlet center developers are highly interested in Bloomingdale's because they know we'll bring additional traffic to the centers," he said.

Bloomingdale's accounts for about 10 percent of overall Macy's Inc stors.