clasico real madrid barcelona 2012

clasico real madrid barcelona 2012\El Clasico: Part Four. El Clasico: The Copa del Rey. El Clasico: Mourinho’s Revenge. There has been no end to the nicknames given to the most illustrious game in football, with that last one my favourite (it actually went to print!), but everyone knows that this game no longer requires an introduction. Iker Casillas stated that there have been so many Clasicos they are getting "tiring". Well, I guess it does get tiring when you lose continually

marta del castillo images photos 2012

marta del castillo images photos 2012

costa concordia january 2012

costa concordia january 2012
MILAN — The doomed Italian liner which capsized off the coast of Italy was less a ship than a seaborne version of a Las Vegas hotel and most of the 1,023-strong crew were there to run the bars, swimming pools, theatres and casino.

A mixed group of around 40 nationalities with Filipino and Peruvian waiters, English dancers and Spanish musicians, at least two thirds of the crew were aboard to entertain and take care of the passengers, heavily outnumbering qualified seamen.


On a normal quiet cruise around the Mediterranean, that may not be a problem, but it seems to have added to the chaos when the huge Costa Concordia ran aground off the island of Giglio.


“It seems from all the indications that the vast majority of the crew were the equivalent of hotel staff and not sufficiently trained in seamanship skills,” said John Dalby, chief executive with specialists Marine Risk Management (MRM).


When a loud bang was heard as passengers sat down to dinner on Friday night and the multi-storey super-liner began to list heavily, panic erupted and a babble of different languages among the multinational passengers and crew made the rescue more difficult.


“There was total confusion and then mounting panic as the ship tipped further on to its side,” said Mario Pellegrini, the deputy mayor of Giglio, who went out on a small boat to offer advice on the best way to get people on to the island.


“I found no officers on board, not only the captain but also no officers, and the rest of the personnel were all Asian and spoke no Italian and also very little English,” he said.


“They were very willing to help but also very agitated. It was very disorganised and left me with an awful impression.”
Related


THE SEARCH: Five new bodies found in wreckage of the Costa Concordia


PHOTOS: The frantic search for the Costa Concordia missing


MORE PHOTOS: Striking photos as sinking cruise ship Costa Concordia lies in shallow waters


THE CAPTAIN: Coastguard begged Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino to return to ship after crash, recording shows


THE STRUGGLE TO ESCAPE: Incredible tales surface from Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster


THE BIGGER PICTURE: Costa Concordia disaster sounds alarm on cruise industry issues, expert says


THE DIVERS: Cave divers search the claustrophobic underwater corridors of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship


HOURS OF CONFUSION


REUTERS/Max Rossi


Rescue divers retrieve a body from the water near the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off the west coast of Italy, at Giglio island January 17, 2012. Rescue squads used controlled explosions on Tuesday to enter a stricken Italian cruise liner in the increasingly despairing hunt for survivors as authorities almost doubled their estimate of the number missing to 29 people


Passengers have complained that they were left for hours waiting in lifeboats, stairwells and assembly points with no information before the order to evacuate was given.


“We asked for information and all they said was, don’t worry, don’t worry, everything is under control,” Concordia passenger Patrizia Perilli said.


“We could hear the Italian personnel talking in code on the interphone but the staff around us didn’t speak any Italian,”


Many praised individual crew members, who tried their best to reassure frightened passengers but said there was a clear lack of direction from the ship’s officers.


“It was quite surreal, the contrast between the smiles and jokes of the miniclub (playgroup) staff and the ghastly look in the eyes of the children,” said Luciano Castro, 48, as he recounted the efforts of child minders in red clown noses to keep infants calm.


Francesco Schettino, the captain of the ship, is in jail, accused of running the ship aground by going far too close to shore. He faces charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship, leaving the evacuation to the rest of the crew.


An Italian newspaper published what it said was an audio recording of a coast guard trying, and failing, to persuade Schettino to go back on to the ship and help passengers.


Many individual crew members however insist that they prevented a much worse disaster.


“If we hadn’t been trained and if we weren’t ready or capable, there would have been a thousand dead,” said Sergio Iurio, 39, an officer on the ship’s electrical systems.


“We heard passengers complaining that the cooks were manning the lifeboats. Well, the kitchen crew and the waiters were trained to run the lifeboats. They were doing their duty.”


Costa Crociere, the Italian unit of Carnival Corp, the world’s largest cruiseship operator, says errors by the captain appear to have been the cause of the accident but the group’s head said the rest of the crew behaved “like heroes”.


“Our own judgement, in this particular case is that the crew performed very, very well and we have to thank them again. They were able to evacuate in two hours’ time 4,200 people under very severe circumstances,” Foschi said.


SIZE COUNTS


ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images


Rescuers place explosive charges on the emerged side of the cruise liner Costa Concordia prior to entering on January 17, 2012.


The changing face of the global cruise-liner industry has led to the introduction of liners with ever more space, comfort and entertainment to create scale economies.


But as the economic crisis has bitten, operators have had to slash costs, with fares for a one week cruise on the Costa Concordia as low as 500 euros and growing pressure to make up for costs in other areas, including staff.


“In a ship like the Costa Concordia, the maritime staff number 40-50 people, not more. A lot of the services onboard – cooking, laundry, cleaning, waiters – are outsourced to external staff recruited through specialised agencies, although they also have to receive safety training,” said a senior Italian shipping company official who asked not to be named.


Whether this had any impact on the disaster is unclear and there has been some support for the company’s argument that despite the confusion and delay, the highly difficult nightime evacuation was achieved with relatively little loss of life.


“It’s actually a great result to evacuate 4,000 people and save practically all of them, with the ship listing heavily at night after such a delay in issuing orders,” said Marco Mandirola, President of the IBLA, an association representing tugboat operators and harbour pilots.


“I wouldn’t blame the crew. I think they behaved as professionally as possible. Onboard personnel that aren’t part of the ship’s crew do a series of courses but they’re not sailors,” he said.


International Maritime Organisation rules require that “from the point of view of safety of life at sea, all ships shall be sufficiently and efficiently manned”.


In terms of numbers of staff the rules require that companies “make an assessment of numbers and grades/capacities in the ship’s complement required for its safe operation”.


Massimo Maccheroni, a spokesman for Italy’s Coastguard, said the ship’s safety documentation was up to date.


Even the service personnel have training in basic safety procedures and are supposed to have at least basic English to allow them to communicate with passengers during an emergency, demonstrate safety equipment and help during evacuations.


“English is the basic language and requested by all operators. The problem here was probably panic,” said Andrea Francescato, sales manager at on-line cruise agency Crocierissime.


“If there had been real problems with communication or training there’d have been a lot more deaths,” he said.


Costa says personnel did evacuation drills on their ships every two weeks, and says all members of the crew have a basic safety training certificate.


A spokesman for the company said the crew is divided into teams with specific duties in the event of an evacuation and all shipboard personnel attend theoretical and practical training sessions throughout the year.


But as cruise ships become ever bigger and more sophisticated technology has become more important with computerised systems taking over much of the safety burden and crews dependent on what the equipment tells them.


Passengers themselves receive safety briefings and all passengers are required to follow a computerised emergency drill course by swiping magnetic cards. If they do not follow the course they are contacted within 24 hours, Foschi said.


However, passengers on the Concordia who boarded the ship at the Italian port of Civitavecchia on the day of the accident said they were not due to receive training until the next day.


Foschi has said evacuation procedures were reviewed in November by an outside firm and the port authorities and no faults were found, but the accident will inevitably return the focus to the quality and training of the crew on giant liners.


“In the immediate future aftermath if there is a higher emphasis on the inspection of cruise ships, that may be focused towards the training and qualifications of the navigating crew and the crew that is assisting with emergency responses,“ said Ted Thompson, from the Cruise Lines International Association.

golden globes 2012 winners

golden globes 2012 winners


They came, they saw, they drank. And oh yeah, some of them even won awards. Such were the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards, decided upon by the semi-venerable Hollywood Foreign Press Association and shown on NBC. It was a night of few surprises and seemingly even less preparation on the part of those involved in front of and behind the cameras.

Some of the expected wins (my predictions batted nearly a thousand last week!) were still a treat, including TV wins for Laura Dern and Matt LeBlanc and film wins for Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer, who gave humble, articulate thanks. Then there were other recipients, who seemed to either get stage fright or completely lose their mind, including an awkward Michelle Williams and Meryl Streep (extending her own record with an eighth career win for The Iron Lady), who panicked on not having brought her glasses to the stage and being unable to remember the names of other performances that had wowed her throughout the year. (Her glasses made their way from her table to George Clooney to David Fincher, who seemed to hold on to them rather than get onstage and deliver them to the actress.)


Separately, a teleprompter glitch seemed to set Rob Lowe off (noticeably more so than it did his co-presenter, Julianne Moore). And speaking of set off, Best Song loser Elton John seemed to pout when shown in the audience during Madonna’s stilted acceptance speech.


Not that her win, even if she were eligible for an Oscar this year, would forebode much. Four of the last five best song winners didn’t even get nominated for the Academy Award. And curiously, four of the last five best picture winners at the Globes, whether it be in the comedy or drama categories, have failed to go on to claim the Best Picture Oscar. So do the awards matter at the Globes?


They do and they don’t. It’s nice that Clooney can claim an additional acting prize—his third in 11 years—from the HFPA, but his public bromance with Brad Pitt is what will really provide ink to the journalists. (And I think with his win behind him, he will publicly espouse Pitt and campaign for him to take the Oscar, thus engendering goodwill and extra exposure.) But the winners, due to constant Internet blogging, industry overexposure and an overall humdrum year, are ultimately an anticlimax. The fashion parade element has more weight than the winners do (for example, I’ve heard no one mention what Jean Dujardin said in his speech, but I’ve seen plenty of reaction to dresses worn by Jessica Biel and Piper Perabo).


This year’s Globes ceremony was also a night for the old guard to come out—Jane Fonda, Michelle Pfeiffer, Harrison Ford and Dustin Hoffman all presented (though Hoffman was relegated to a TV category as part of his promotion of the new HBO show Luck). Some of Hollywood’s master directors were also honored, though in weird ways. Woody Allen won the Screenplay award for Midnight in Paris, Steven Spielberg took the Animated Film award for Tintin, and Scorsese won another Best Director award for the mildly received Hugo.


And, yes, the elephant in the room: crude host Ricky Gervais. I have no problem with his jokes, and it looked like most of his subjects didn’t either. Jodie Foster, Colin Firth, Johnny Depp and Helen Mirren all gamely played along. But did you notice how little hosting he actually did? I think he spent a grand total of just over 12 minutes onstage. Nice work, if you can get it. But here’s the thing: his shtick now feels lazy (ribbing the Kardashians and Justin Bieber reeks of 2010) and familiar, and it makes the awards show about him, when he should be letting the spotlight shine on the nominees. Remember, Ricky: sometimes, silence is golden.

camaro 2012 price - convertible - wallpaper

camaro 2012 price - convertible - wallpaper

Turn one. Brake hard. Breathe easy”- is what the Chevrolet Company has to say in favor of its favorite child the 2012 Chevrolet Camaro. Packed with astounding new features and sparkling charisma, the much awaited version of Chevrolet Camaro will supposedly hit the showrooms with the onset of 2012.The 2012 Camaro has already made its debut in the 2011 Chicago Auto show and only by taking a few glimpse of its tempting interior and outstandingly projected exterior, we can predict that this sedan is going to make big worldwide and will successfully dictate the future generation sedans.

The star was born long past in 1969.Preferably reckoned as a power packed performer, this car included an all-aluminum 427 cubic inches engine, basically designed keeping the racing tracks on mind. With only 69 units of it being made, this Chevrolet Camaro was successful enough in listing its name as one of the legend in the history of automobiles and till today it is still considered as one most envied possession by its proud owners.

In a most recent press release, the General Motors proudly claimed the 2012 Camaro as a “high performance vehicle and not just a Camaro with more power”. In a short yet informative review report, one name stood above all, the Ford Shelby GT500. This ruling auto is the one that Chevrolet hopes to compete although in a much convincing way. The name of the iconic Ford Shelby GT500 roused in a much twisted way. This performance based vehicle mastering in both street and tracks was undoubtedly praised and was ironically challenged by the Chevy. If we take a sneak peak of the preliminary spec sheet of the new Chevrolet Camaro 2012, then we can only foretell that there are chances of raging war between Chevy and the Classic Ford.

icade mobile 2012

Honestly, I can’t stand the iPhone’s touchscreen for serious 3D gaming — does anyone really want to sing the praises of a setup where your thumbs block half the screen?

Enter Ion Audio with the iCade Mobile, a wraparound gamepad you slide your iPhone or iPod Touch into, which gives you a d-pad on the left and a four-button pad on the right. Sure, $80 sounds a little steep considering that’s all you get (no analog thumbsticks, a critical omission) so we’ll cross our fingers and hope the company drops the price to $50 (or less) sometime soon.






Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/01/17/the-7-coolest-gaming-ideas-of-ces-2012/#ixzz1jnLCnZCm

nokia 2012 models

nokia 2012 models