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The decommissioned aircraft carrier Ex-USS Forrestal (CV 59) departs Naval Station Newport for a three-day cruise to Philadelphia in June, 2010.
The decommissioned aircraft carrier Ex-USS Forrestal (CV 59) departs Naval Station Newport for a three-day cruise to Philadelphia in June, 2010.
The U.S. Navy's first "supercarrier" is being sold for just 1 cent to a ship breaker.
The ex-USS Forrestal, launched in 1954 and decommissioned in 1993, is the first of three conventional (non-nuclear) carriers due to be scrapped in the coming years. The Forrestal is best known for a devastating fire in 1967 that engulfed the ship's flight deck, killing 134 sailors and wounding 161 others.
Navy crewmen try to put out a fire aboard the USS Forrestal in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of Vietnam, July 29, 1967.
Navy crewmen try to put out a fire aboard the USS Forrestal in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of Vietnam, July 29, 1967.
In a statement, the U.S. Navy says All Star Metals, which was awarded the contract for the ship, is developing a final tow plan to get the ship "from its current berth at the Navy's inactive ship facility in Philadelphia to All Star Metals' facility in Brownsville. The ship is expected to depart Philadelphia before the end of the year."
The minimal payment reflects the net price proposed by All Star Metals, "which considered the estimated proceeds from the sale of the scrap metal to be generated from dismantling," the statement said.
Stars and Stripes says of the ship's famous fire:
"[The] Forrestal was in the Gulf of Tonkin the morning of July 29, 1967, for the Vietnam War effort when stray voltage triggered a rocket to launch from an F-4 Phantom on the flight deck.
The rocket struck an armed A-4 Skyhawk — piloted by a young Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III — rupturing the fuel tanks and sparking a chain reaction of fires and explosions on the deck, which was parked full of planes.
The crew fought the flight deck fire for an hour, but other fires blazed into the next day."
The Navy says it made the Forrestal available for donation in June 1999 as a museum or memorial, but didn't get any viable offers.
Just getting back to the World Series would have been exciting enough for Bostonians, but in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, the Red Sox's success brings a new rallying point for a wounded city. Still, there's always the danger of trivializing tragedy.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
World Series begins tonight. The Boston Red Sox host the St. Louis Cardinals at Fenway Park. Fans will take the chance to pay tribute to victims and heroes of this year's Boston Marathon bombing. To many, the Boston Red Sox' worst to first season symbolizes the Boston strong resilience the city has emphasized since that marathon. NPR's Tovia Smith reports.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: We might as well just stipulate from the get-go that no group of guys playing ball on a field could ever compensate for the lives or limbs lost at the Boston Marathon. Of course not. But fans says what the Sox are doing this season is a little more than just winning ball games.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: It goes well beyond sports for sure. You know, these players are showing that we're winners and saying, look at us, world, we were knocked down but we're not out.
SMITH: Kristan Fletcher and Courtney Hughes admit they're not quite diehard fans, but they came to Fenway to buy team jerseys, hats and beards to outfit all the doormen at the hotel where they work. As they put it, it just makes everybody feel better.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I think we lost a little bit of ourselves and we're getting it back now. Exactly. I mean it's just - Lord knows, this will just be the little boost that we need.
SMITH: Indeed, Sox fan Michael Fournier says he purposely took a detour to work just to pass by Fenway and bask in the glory. Even if you're one who usually cringes at the whole sports as metaphor for life thing, it's hard to resist the parallel, he says, of the city's recovery from the darkest of places and the Red Sox' rise from rock bottom.
MICHAEL FOURNIER: It's like our backs were up against the wall and somehow we always come back. Boston strong. We just keep pumping.
DAVID ORTIZ: I just want to say one thing, this is our bleep city.
SMITH: Red Sox slugger Big Poppy or David Ortiz offered the clean version last week of the defiance he first expressed without the bleep shortly after the marathon.
PETER DIMARTINO: I just got goosebumps, like the whole crowd was into it. The place was electric, you know.
SMITH: Peter DiMartino, who was severely injured at the marathon, hobbled onto the field at Fenway to throw out a first pitch last spring and then a little more steadily this month as he and his fiance were invited to shout out: Play ball. In rehab, DiMartino says, he continues to make progress and take steps that once felt impossible, and he says he is buoyed and proud to see his team do the same.
DIMARTINO: The Red Sox are just one step away from being back on top again, and Boston is showing everybody else who's boss.
SMITH: The Red Sox say they've been more inspired by the survivors and heroes of the marathon than vice versa. They say it galvanized the team and continues to motivate them. The Be Strong logo still flashes at Fenway just as it does in pubs and souvenir stands around the city. But there are some who scoff at it all, saying the slogans and merchandising trivialize the tragedy and never should've stretched into the post-season.
KYRA CHAMBERLAIN: You want to keep the experience positive of the World Series, and to make you think about the Boston bombing, it brings you down immediately.
SMITH: Boston fans, Kira and Scott Chamberlain say it's time the Sox separate from the marathon attack.
SCOTT CHAMBERLAIN: Drop it. It's over. Okay? It's gone. It's history, okay? It's a new time. It's a new day. Move on.
SMITH: Besides, as tempting as it is to hitch the city's spirits to the Sox' success, it's also a risky proposition. It's all good as long as they're winning.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
DIMARTINO: I'm knocking on wood right now.
SMITH: Marathon survivor and Sox fan Peter DiMartino won't even utter the what-if.
DIMARTINO: That's not gonna happen.
SMITH: To Boston fans it would be a kind of poetic justice to see Boston a world champ this year. Even one St. Louis fan lurking outside Fenway half-conceded the point. We're not giving away a World Series, she said, but if Boston wins, it would do their hearts good. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
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LONDON (AP) — Bank of England policymakers appear more optimistic over the British economy but are showing few signs of wanting to tighten monetary policy soon.
Minutes from the Oct. 8-9 meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee released Wednesday show all nine members voted to keep the main interest rate unchanged at the record low of 0.5 percent and maintain monetary stimulus at current levels.
"The news on the month had continued to suggest a robust recovery in activity in the United Kingdom," the minutes said. "Monetary stimulus remained considerable and confidence appeared to be rising."
But it remains unclear as to whether such factors could produce a sustained recovery, particularly because the country needs its trading partners to also recover more firmly, the policymakers said in the minutes.
"The outlook for the United States seemed slightly softer on the month, the recovery in the euro area remained modest, and there remained a risk of a sharp slowdown in emerging economies," the statement said. "Overall, therefore, there was a risk that the recovery in the United Kingdom might be less well balanced between exports and domestic consumption than was ultimately needed."
The deliberations of the policymaking panel are being viewed through the prism of the bank's new "forward guidance," which new Governor Mark Carney introduced this summer. The purpose of the guidance is to provide markets, individuals and businesses a clear steer on where interest rates will be in coming months. The latest guidance was that rates would remain low until unemployment drops significantly. So the economy's recent improvement has prompted many in the financial markets to wonder whether interest rates may rise sooner than originally anticipated.
The minutes show policymakers are in no hurry to alter policy despite the improved trends across the economy — but they are being vigilant.
The bank noted that unemployment, which stands at 7.7 percent, was dropping a little faster than they anticipated when the Bank presented its latest quarterly economic update in August. That's important because the core of the forward guidance is to keep interest rates at the current record at least until unemployment falls to a 7 percent threshold. When it does so, policymakers will assess their stance.
The publication of the minutes had little impact on the pound, which was trading at $1.6145 in early afternoon trading in London. Though down 0.5 percent on the day, the pound's weakness is largely a function of the dollar's recovery from widespread selling the previous day in the wake of soft U.S. unemployment data.
One positive factor cited by policymakers was the revival in the housing market, where mortgage approvals for house purchases rose strongly to around 62,000 in August. Part of the reason behind the strength of the housing market is the mortgage guarantee component of the Help to Buy Scheme, a government plan that helps homebuyers come up with their down payments.
October 23, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
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>> BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK: Apple unveils slew of new iPads, MacBooks, Mac Pro, and apps, by Dan Miller: "...a brand new iPad model (the iPad Air), and added a Retina screen and an A7 processor to the iPad mini. It announced an updated line of Retina MacBook Pros while also naming December as the shipping month for its new Mac Pro (the black cylinder that looks like it belongs on Darth Vader's desktop). It showed off updated iLife and iWork suites for the Mac, iOS, and iCloud.com. And it announced that the latest version of OS X--Mavericks--would be available immediately after the event, and for free." [We count more than 200 articles in the tech press about the announcements. Here are the best.] Macworld
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>> UNPLANNED OBSOLESENCE: The decline of Wikipedia, by Tom Simonite: "The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage." MIT Technology Review
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FEED ME, SEYMOUR: Comments? Questions? Tips? Shoot mail to Trent or Woody. Follow @gegax or @woodyleonhard.
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Don Was.
This week's Sense of Place focus on Detroit calls for a resurrection of the very first installment of a World Cafe series called Producer Profiles. This archived session from 1992 features Don Was. In the profile, Was discusses the work he's done with a number of artists, including Bonnie Raitt (Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw).
The musician was — and still is — a member of the band Was (Not Was), but had been doing more production work that extended to fellow Detroit native Iggy Pop, as well as Bob Dylan and a list of others. Even though Was had already produced such hits as "Love Shack" by The B-52's, he wouldn't let on to any knowledge that he could predict a song's potential popularity once it was complete.
Detroit officially makes its case for bankruptcy before a federal judge on Wednesday. The city is currently saddled with $18 billion in long-term debt, and officials see bankruptcy as their only choice.
Detroit officially makes its case for bankruptcy before a federal judge on Wednesday. The city is currently saddled with $18 billion in long-term debt, and officials see bankruptcy as their only choice.
In Detroit on Wednesday, a federal trial begins that will determine whether that city is eligible for the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy.
Hundreds of the city's creditors are lining up to oppose the bankruptcy, arguing that Detroit is violating Michigan's constitution and that if officials tried harder they could find enough savings to pay the city's bills.
Officials here say a declining population, decades of mismanagement and at times corrupt city government has cost Detroit a lot of tax revenue, leaving it drowning in red ink.
So much so that in March, the governor appointed Kevyn Orr to be an emergency manager and take control of the city's finances. He spent months crafting payment arrangements with some creditors, but hundreds of others rejected offers that amounted to accepting pennies for every dollar they were owed by Detroit.
Orr says that leaves Detroit with roughly $18 billion in long-term debt, and no other option but bankruptcy.
"There's no way out," Orr says. "The mountain of debt we have to climb over simply is insurmountable without some kind of process to resolve it. We simply cannot pay it. That's it."
Where Business Stands
Detroit's business community overwhelmingly agrees with Orr.
Dan Gilbert owns Quicken Loans, the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and in recent months has bought more than $1 billion worth of buildings in Detroit's downtown. He's betting that Chapter 9 protection will allow Detroit to get out from under its crushing debt load and pour money back into city services, which would help make his investments pay off.
"As hard as that is to sort of suspend democracy, for a short period of time if you will, my view is, let's get it over with," Gilbert says. "Let's get it done. Let's stop talking about it [and] go through the pain and then move forward, and I think it will fade into the background."
But some of Detroit's longest-standing creditors are fighting a bankruptcy declaration, arguing that it would create big problems for them.
At the headquarters of AFSCME Council 25, the union representing the majority of city workers here, a half-dozen retirees are making phone calls. Juanita Scott says Detroit's potential bankruptcy puts her pension, her health care and her future on the chopping block.
"Because they're going to cut my medical, that's going to really hurt me bad," says the 86-year-old Scott. "Right now I'm under three different doctors' care and trying to stay in my neighborhood."
Scott says she has to have a burglar alarm because all the houses around her are going vacant. "This whole thing of bankruptcy, it's just bad," she says.
The union leadership argues Detroit's bankruptcy filing itself violates state prohibitions against cutting public pensions. Union attorney Herb Sanders even questions if Detroit is truly insolvent, because the state forbade city officials from approving tentative labor agreements that he says could have saved millions annually.
"When you think that the purpose of bankruptcy is to restructure debt, is to save the city money, and if that is your true intent then why wouldn't you sign the collective bargaining agreement with the unions that would indeed do that?" Sanders says.
The Possibility Of Lawsuits
The union will argue in court Wednesday that Detroit did not bargain in good faith. But bankruptcy attorney Douglas Bernstein says the judge may see things differently.
"There's no bright line which says what constitutes good faith and what isn't good faith," Bernstein says. "There's isn't an awful lot of precedent in Chapter 9."
Bernstein's firm worked with several of Detroit's creditors who decided not to fight the city's bankruptcy filing. He says those creditors and the city will be thrown into financial turmoil if the court finds Detroit is not eligible for Chapter 9 protection. The likely result would be a flood of lawsuits, he says.
"So they'll be fending off all the creditors in a variety of courtrooms where everybody in the creditor body is trying to get the best deal for themselves rather than in an organized, unified setting in the bankruptcy court," he says. "So you would have chaos."
And chaos is the last thing Detroiters need in a city that has seen more than its share of it in recent years. Former officials sent to prison for corruption, high unemployment and crime rates, faltering city services and now a fight over what's left in the city's coffers.
