The Deepwater Horizon oil spill could have been avoided, a soon-to-be-released commission report says

“Systemic” problems caused the Deepwater Horizon blowout and subsequent oil spill and only “significant reform” will prevent another, President Barack Obama’s commission studying the disaster says in its soon-to-be-released report.

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling on Wednesday released a chapter of the report that it says contains the key findings. The report is to be released in full on Tuesday.

“The Macondo blowout was the product of several individual missteps and oversights by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean, which government regulators lacked the authority, the necessary resources, and the technical expertise to prevent,” the report says.

“The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur.”

An April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 men and injured 17 working on the rig, launching the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The Macondo well spewed crude into the gulf for three months before the wellhead was successfully capped.

But nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil — more than 200 million gallons — spilled into the salt waters, washing up onto beaches and penetrating fragile marshes. Birds and other animals were coated in an oily sheen.

The report cites numerous problems:

– Inadequate risk management.

– A flawed design for the cement slurry used to seal the bottom of the well.

– A “negative pressure test” that was incorrectly judged a success.

– Flawed procedures for securing the well.

– Inattention to signals of an impending blowout.

– An ineffective response to the blowout itself.

“Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money),” the report says.

The Deepwater Horizon rig was owned by Transocean and leased to BP. Halliburton was installing the cement casing for the drill operations.

BP spokesman Robert Sholars said the oil giant “has cooperated fully with the commission’s investigation,” stressing “that the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple companies.”

“BP is working with regulators and the industry to ensure that the lessons learned from Macondo lead to improvements in operations and contractor services in deepwater drilling,” Sholars said.

The U.S. Department of the Interior said it, too, was already implementing reforms.

“The agency has taken unprecedented steps and will continue to make the changes necessary to restore the American people’s confidence in the safety and environmental soundness of oil and gas drilling and production on the Outer Continental Shelf, while balancing our nation’s important energy needs,” spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said.

Barkoff referred reporters to an Interior Department Web page detailing changes in regulations and procedures already made or in process.

The commission’s report also concluded that the catastrophe could have been avoided.

“The commission’s findings only compound our sense of tragedy because we know now that the blowout of the Macondo well was avoidable,” said commission co-chairman Bob Graham. “This disaster likely would not have happened had the companies involved been guided by an unrelenting commitment to safety first. And it likely would not have happened if the responsible governmental regulators had the capacity and will to demand world class safety standards.”

Better management would have prevented the incident, but the management problems are not confined to a one company, Graham’s co-chairman, William K. Reilly, said.

“A key question posed from the outset by this tragedy is: Do we have a single company, BP, that blundered with fatal consequences, or a more pervasive problem of a complacent industry?” asked Reilly. “Given the documented failings of both Transocean and Halliburton, both of which serve the off-shore industry in virtually every ocean, I reluctantly conclude we have a system-wide problem.”

A company in northern Germany sold about 3,000 tons of fatty acids contaminated with industrial residue — including dioxin — to companies making animal feed, said Holger Eichele, a spokesman for Germany’s Ministry for Agriculture and Consumer Protection.

In all, the fatty acids were delivered to 25 companies in five of Germany’s 16 states, Eichele said.

Tens of thousands of tons of feed containing the contaminated acids were then delivered to poultry farms in several German states, with a heavy concentration in Lower Saxony.

About 1,000 farms have been shut in Lower Saxony and hundreds have been shut in other states, Eichele said.

In addition, about 130,000 possibly contaminated eggs have been exported from a company in Saxony-Anhalt to a food company in Netherlands, where they were to be used in industrial food production, he said.

The company that sold the fatty acids was raided Wednesday by police, who confiscated documents but arrested no one, the state prosecutor’s office in Schleswig-Holstein told CNN.

Dioxins are a family of toxic chemicals that share a similar chemical structure and have been characterized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as likely human carcinogens.

They will cast ballots on whether to declare independence at polling stations sprinkled across the vast, flat plains of Southern Sudan, an East African landscape long riven by chaos.

War and famine have ravaged generations in the south for as long as anyone can remember. Fighting forced more people from their homes than in any other nation on earth. Hope remained elusive.

Yet the vote has given many southerners the rare sense of exhilaration that is borne of new beginnings.

From January 9 to January 15, the black Christians and animists in the autonomous region of Southern Sudan will vote on whether to declare independence from a northern government dominated by Arab Muslims. The two sides fought a war that killed 2 million people from 1983 to 2005, when a peace treaty set the stage for the upcoming vote.

Nearly 4 million have registered to cast ballots. Few doubt the outcome.

“I have not encountered a single Southern Sudanese who is interested in voting for unity. I would say at least 98 percent of them will vote for separation,” says Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, a former foot soldier in the southern rebel force who now leads the Southern Sudan’s mission in the United States. “This is what we have been fighting for for more than 50 years.”

Jeremiah Awin says he spent more than 10 years fighting with southern rebels. He has no desire to pick up a gun again.

“Now is the time for peace,” he says in the bustling southern capital, Juba. “I will vote safely for separation.”

Daniel Akot, another southerner in Juba, agrees. “I need separation to be peaceful because I have grown up in the war, and I don’t want my children to grow up in the war,” he says.

Voters will receive a ballot with two pictures: One hand signifies independence; two hands, a unified Sudan.

Most everyone agrees that the majority of southerners will choose independence, but there is less certainty about what will happen after the votes are tallied.

The new nation would face daunting obstacles, from a desperate need for development to the lack of a robust educated class to control the new levers of power.

A flood of refugees, eagerly returning to an independent homeland, could complicate matters in a place that already lacks enough schools and clinics and has few paved roads.

Long-standing grievances among rival southern groups could erupt in violence — several hundred southerners already have been killed in such fighting in the last year or two. Or the north could decline to accept the results or stir tensions by trying to pit one southern faction against another.

The concerns run so deep that last February Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, warned the U.S. Congress of possible genocide.

“A number of countries in Africa and Asia are at significant risk for a new outbreak of mass killing” in the next five years, he said. “Among these countries, a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan.”

Looming over concerns about the future is a suspicion that many in the south harbor of Sudan’s rulers in the north.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes after mass killings and rape in the country’s western Darfur region, says that a southern vote for independence would be like “cutting off a part of the nation’s body but not the end of the world.”

“We are a civilized people,” he said this week in a rare visit to Juba. “Regardless of how painful the results are, we will greet the result with forgiveness, and patience, and acceptance, and an open heart, God willing.”

Al-Bashir also has said that his government will not hesitate to accept the results “because peace is our ultimate goal in our relationship with our southern brothers, even if they choose a path other than unity.”

Yet many worry that the northern-based government will interfere with the referendum, decline to recognize its outcome or stoke tensions between rival southern factions.

The possibilities concern Abdullahi An-Na’im, a native of northern Sudan who teaches law at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a former executive director of Human Rights Watch for Africa and an expert on Islamic law, or sharia. Authorities in Sudan imprisoned him in the 1980s for opposing the imposition of Islamic law in all of Sudan.

He looks to the past for clues to the future.

“The history of Sudan is such that I cannot expect the northern government to have the grace and humanity to let the south go peacefully,” he says.

Kyron Horman's stepmother said she last saw him walking in the hallway of his elementary school on June 4.

The parents of a missing Oregon boy have urged the public to continue helping authorities find their son.

“Please search your properties, your cars, your outbuildings, your sheds,” the immediate family of Kyron Horman said in a statement Wednesday that was read by Captain Mike Shults of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. “Also check with your neighbors and friends who may be on vacation or may need assistance to search their property.

“There are a lot of resources out there to help. Please don’t stop.

“Kyron’s family would like to thank everyone for their support and interest in finding their son,” the statement added. “The outpouring of support and continued effort strengthens their hope.”

The 7-year-old Portland child was reported missing by his stepmother last Friday after he did not return home from school, authorities said.

According to investigators, Kyron’s stepmother said she last saw him Friday morning walking down a hallway towards his second-grade classroom at Skyline Elementary School.

Police have described the incident as an “isolated case” and have no evidence suggesting a crime was committed. “We’re not prepared to call it a criminal investigation at this point,” Captain Jason Gates of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office told reporters Tuesday, “But we are certainly prepared to call it a missing endangered child investigation.”

Shults, who has been serving as a liaison with Kyron’s parents said the family’s “objective is to keep the focus on Kyron and not about anything else.”

A statement by Kristina Porter, Kyron’s teacher, was read at Wednesday’s briefing by Ben Keefer, the principal of Skyline Elementary School.

“The students in Kyron’s class miss him terribly, and we are all wishing for his safe return,” said Porter. “It has been gratifying to see how caring and supportive the children have been with each other throughout this ordeal.”

At Wednesday’s briefing, Gates said a statewide search and rescue plan has been activated in connection with the case. Several hundred search and rescue members and teams from across the state will help in the efforts to locate the child.

Authorities continue to pursue hundreds of tips, most of them from Oregon and Washington.

“We don’t have enough information to satisfy the criteria to complete an Amber Alert or issue an Amber Alert,” Gates explained. “Amber Alerts are designed to find children very quickly when we have specific information.”

Anyone with information on Kyron Horman’s whereabouts is asked to call the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office at 503-261-2847

For those of you who fall into this category and fear being caught short during a water-cooler moment at the office, CNN has put together a bluffer’s guide to the round-ball game and the World Cup.

Phrases to impress your boss

“The referee’s blind!”
An excellent phrase to insert when those around you lament a goal that “never was,” a clear handball or a murderous foul not spotted by the official.

“There’s a case for video technology”
Following your previous observation about the referee’s eyesight, join the calls for video replays to help him make the right decision.

“He’s got two left feet”
As frustration grows with one hapless player in particular, make sure you aren’t left out.

“He missed a sitter!”
When a player misses an easy chance to score.

“It was a blatant dive!”
When a player tumbles to the ground rolling around in apparent agony even though there was no contact from an opposing player.

“Germany are always so efficient”
No fuss, no frills but a victory nevertheless — only to be used if Germany wins a match.

“Can England repeat 1966?”
Use if your boss is an England fan. It’s the only time England ever won the World Cup and the fans there never let you forget it.

Important rules to know

1. Offside
The rule most likely to infuriate players, managers and fans alike. A player is deemed to be in an offside position when he is in his opponents’ half of the pitch and further forward than the last opposition player at the moment a teammate attempts to play a pass to him. Sounds simple, right? When this happens, the opposition wins possession of the ball. All straightforward until your team is denied what looks to be goal by a poor decision by the assistant referee on the touchline. Stand by for plenty of offside flash points and some colorful language.

2. Free-kicks
When a player is penalized for committing a foul, handball or offside, a “free and unchallenged” kick of the ball is awarded to the opposition. Try not to foul a player near your goal because a sharp-shooter like Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo will send the ball crashing into the top corner of the net with deadly precision.

3. Penalties
Another type of free-kick awarded when a player is fouled inside the 18-yard area around an opponent’s goal. The fouled player, or teammate of that player, is then allowed to take a shot from a white spot 12 yards (around 11 meters) from the goal. Prepare yourself for contrasting views from football fans, often less than complimentary about the referee, when a penalty is awarded. This is also the way to decided drawn matches in the later stages of the tournament when you can also liberally use the phrase “nail biting”.

3. Red and yellow cards
Yellow cards are shown to a player by the referee after a particularly nasty foul or if they question his decision in a less than polite manner. A second offense by that player usually leads to a second yellow card, which automatically becomes red and means an “early bath”. Straight red cards mean a player has been particularly naughty and can expect a day off when the next match comes around.

Football terms to memorize

1. Square ball
Refers not to another controversial ball design, but rather a simple pass of the ball sideways to a teammate.

2. Through-ball
When a player passes the ball forward past two or more defenders to a teammate, usually a striker, who is in position to run through on goal to score.

3. Cross
Nothing religious, it refers to the delivery of the ball, either in the air, or along the ground, from either side of the pitch towards the opponent’s goal for a teammate.

4. Dribble
Funnily enough this is a skilful technique where a player runs past opponents with the ball apparently glued to his feet. Watch Argentina star Lionel Messi for a master class.

5. Header
As you would expect. For the best players, the head is as good as their feet. The hardest part of the skull is the forehead so use that for maximum power.

6. Volley
Kicking the ball when it’s reached you in the air, like in tennis. This is a technique which can lead to spectacular goals or derisive cheers from fans if the ball ends up in “row Z” of the stand.

7. Tackle
Taking the ball off an opponent, robbing him of the ball and often leaving him on his backside.

8. Foul
A tackle where you usually hack away at the opponent’s feet first before running off the with ball. Not allowed.

9. Professional foul
A pre-meditated foul, usually a last-ditch desperate act to stop an almost certain goal. The methods have become sophisticated though so it often takes a sharp-eyed referee to make the right call. A professional foul will often lead to a red card (see above).

10. Man-marking
Nothing like as serious as it sounds. Man-marking is when a player shadows an opponent to crowd him out and give him no space to run with the ball or pass it. Some players will hold or grab any part of their opponent’s anatomy to hinder their progress.

TV commentator’s jargon

1. Group of death
With each of the 32 teams split into eight mini-leagues, the competition to qualify for the knockout stages is fierce. Some groups are so tough that a fancied team is bound to fail. For example, five-time winners Brazil, the elegant Portuguese and a talented Ivory Coast side are all in one group.

2. Brazilian flair
Football may have started in England, but it was made sexy by Brazil. Since the days of the great Pele, Brazil’s yellow-shirted national team has thrilled fans the world over with the swagger and individual brilliance of players that often grew up playing on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

3. Total football
A football philosophy developed by the Dutch in the 1970s in which every outfield player is able to play in the position of any of his teammates. According to football aficionados, this makes the team structure completely fluid, adaptable and ultimately difficult to play against. It nearly worked for the Netherlands, but not quite.

4. Route one
The antithesis of Brazilian flair. It usually involves a more “industrial” method of kicking long aerial passes from defense to big, physical players in attack. Not pretty but it can be very effective.

5. Playmaker
The creative player in the team that makes it tick. Italians refer to this key attacking position as “il Fantasista.”

6. Hand of God
England and Diego Armando Maradona may face each other again more than two decades since the Argentine superstar famously scored with his hand against the English at Mexico in 1986. After the game, Maradona said the goal was scored “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.”

World Cup moments not to miss

1. Brazil
Obviously! The mighty Brazilians could probably field two teams, such is the depth of talent available to them. Unfortunately the slightly rotund but prodigiously-talented Ronaldinho has been left out of the squad. However, the team still boasts a mouth-watering array of talented players such as attacking midfielder Kaka, striker Robinho, and the super-fit defender Dani Alves of Barcelona.

2. Diego Maradona
The cigar-smoking footballer turned coach is a god in his native Argentina. He lifted the trophy as a player in 1986, was banned from the competition for doping in 1994, and suffered with drug and alcohol problems after he retired. A troubled figure, Maradona is compulsive viewing nonetheless.

As manager of Argentina’s national team he has arguably the strongest squad in the competition, though critics point to a turbulent qualifying campaign as proof that he cannot mould them into a winning team. Expect interesting press conferences.

3. Lionel Messi
Considered the world’s greatest player, the diminutive Argentine is viewed by many as the next Maradona. However he has yet to reproduce his extraordinary club form with Barcelona for his national team. Capable of beating entire teams on his own, he could easily disappoint if the rest of team play as poorly as they did trying to qualify for South Africa.

4. Wayne Rooney
England’s World Cup hopes rest on the stocky Manchester United striker whose temper has been his biggest enemy in the past. Rooney’s last World Cup ended with one of those red cards after his boot made firm contact with the groin of a Portuguese player. Since then he has become a father and family life is said to have mellowed him.

5. South Africa
Though their form has improved dramatically in the last six months, they could face the ignominy of becoming the first host country to fail to qualify from the group stage. The tournament needs “Bafana Bafana” to make progress from a group that includes Mexico, Uruguay and France to keep this football-mad nation at fever pitch.

State-run Press TV quoted Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the National Security and Foreign Policy in the Iranian Parliament, as saying legislators would meet on Sunday to “push for legislation to reduce” Iran’s relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He did not offer details of a likely response to Wednesday’s Security Council action, approved by 12 of the 15 members. Brazil and Turkey opposed the measures, and Lebanon abstained.

China supported the sanctions and on Thursday, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, sharply criticized Beijing, saying Chinese support for the new measures would “affect its standing in the Muslim world.”

“There was a time when China called the United States a paper tiger,” he said. “I am perplexed that China accepted the resolution against Iran in the Security Council. What name does China deserve?” he asked, accusing China of “two-faced behavior” in its divergent policies toward the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.

For their part, Turkey and Brazil had reached a contentious deal with Iran last month on an exchange of nuclear fuel that they hoped would avert a worsening confrontation with Tehran. In a speech on Thursday, Turkish prime minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan called the Security Council vote an error.

“We would not want to participate in such a mistake because history will not forgive us,” he told a meeting of ministers from the Arab League, Reuters reported.

The sanctions are designed to curb military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program and has taken a more central role in running the country and the economy.

Although Iran insists that its nuclear efforts are strictly for peaceful purposes, its actions have raised suspicions in the West that it Tehran is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

The nuclear relationship is governed by formal agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency that provide for inspectors to visit nuclear facilities, such as the main, publicly known enrichment plant at Natanz, and require Iran to notify the nuclear body of its plans to build new facilities.

The agency offered no immediate comment on the Iranian threats.

Western officials familiar with the nuclear debate, who spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said that I.A.E.A. inspectors were currently able to visit Iranian facilities, albeit within a “minimal level” of cooperation.

In the past, the officials said, Iranian threats to downgrade ties to the I.A.E.A. have been followed by measures to curb inspectors’ authority and to slow notification of its intentions. The newest threats could lead to further restrictions on inspectors’ visits, the officials said.

The officials said Western governments believed that Iran might also react to the sanctions by expanding its enrichment process at Natanz, doubling the number of centrifuges producing uranium enriched to 20 percent.

Currently, Iran is using a cascade of 164 centrifuges — machines that enrich, or purify, uranium for use in bombs or reactors — to produce uranium to 20 percent purity. But it has a second cascade of the same size that has not yet been activated, the officials said.

In February, Iran also said it planned to build 10 more nuclear-fuel enrichment plants — two within the next year — and had identified “close to” 20 sites for such facilities.

Earlier this month, I.A.E.A. inspectors reported that Iran has produced over 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium, all of which would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be converted to bomb fuel.

Until recently, all of Iran’s uranium had been enriched to only 4 percent, the level needed to run nuclear power reactors. While enrichment to 20 percent purity does not allow Iran to build a weapon, it moves the country closer to that goal.

The singer won video of the year for Cowboy Casanova and also performance of the year for Temporary Home.

Keith Urban took home the male video of the year award for ‘Til Summer Comes Around, while Miranda Lambert’s White Liar scooped best female video.

The awards, which took place in the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, were voted for by fans.

Collaborative video

Collecting one of her awards, Underwood addressed her “awesome fans”.

She said: “They were there before I had anything, an album, a record deal, a tour or anything like that. They built me from the ground up.”

Urban, who was accompanied to the ceremony by his wife Nicole Kidman, took to the stage to perform Hit The Ground Runnin’ with John Mayer.

Meanwhile, Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now was named group video of the year, and duo video of the year went to Brooks and Dunn for Indian Summer, just two months before they perform together for the last time on their Last Roundup tour.

“We were not expecting this,” Brooks said. “So much that Mr Dunn has gone to the restroom – in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“I told you you should be here. I am not bringing this to you. You’re going to have to come and get it. This is the kind of thing that will make them think we’re going to break up the duo,” he joked.

The trophy for collaborative video of the year went to Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins for Hillbilly Bone, while Luke Bryan’s Do I was named weekend breakthrough video of the year.

Google is “almost certain” to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to Privacy International (PI).

The search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project.

Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake.

But PI is convinced the audit proves “criminal intent”.

“The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation,” said PI in a statement.

This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added.

Scotland Yard

“The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute,” said Simon Davies, head of PI.

In the UK the ICO has said it is reviewing the audit but that for the time being it had no plans to pursue the matter.

PI however does intend to take the case to the police.

“I don’t see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard,” said Mr Davies.

The revelation that Google had collected such data led the German Information Commissioner to demand it handed over a hard-disk so it could examine exactly what it had collected.

It has not yet received the data and has extended the original deadline for it to be handed over.

The Australian police have also been ordered to investigate Google for possible breach of privacy.

‘Systematic failure’

According to Google, the code which allowed data to be collected was part of an experimental wi-fi project undertaken by an unnamed engineer to improve location-based services and was never intended to be incorporated in the software for StreetView.

“As we have said before, this was a mistake. The report today confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted wi-fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns,” said a Google spokesman.

“This was a failure of communication between and within teams,” he added.

But PI disputes this explanation.

“The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn’t add up. This is complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked,” said Mr Davies.

“It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management and of duty of care,” he added.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders said he wanted to be part of government.

The election saw the centre-right Liberal Party (VVD) emerging as the largest party, one seat ahead of the centre-left Labour Party.

The Christian Democrat party of outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende suffered a big defeat.

Weeks of coalition negotiations are expected to follow the election.

With more than 99% of votes counted, the VVD had 31 of 150 seats, while Labour had 30.

As the party with the most seats, VVD leader Mark Rutte could now become the first prime minister from his political camp since World War I.

Headscarf tax

The unexpected big winner was the anti-Islam Freedom Party, the PVV, which took its number of seats from nine in the last parliament to 24 – its best-ever finish.

The campaign had been dominated by a debate over the economy, which was thought to have eclipsed immigration as an election issue.

But the strong showing for the Freedom Party, led by the controversial Geert Wilders, is a sign that immigration was still a powerful theme, correspondents say.

Mr Wilders has campaigned to stop the “Islamisation of the Netherlands”.

He wants the Koran banned, and has suggested a tax on headscarves worn by Muslim women.

“Nobody in The Hague can bypass the PVV anymore,” he said on Thursday, AFP news agency reported. “We want to be part of the new government.”

The Netherlands is the first country in the eurozone to vote since a crisis erupted earlier this year over the single European currency, amid concerns about debt in Greece and other southern states.

The Dutch economy was contracting for a year before the country emerged from recession in the third quarter of 2009.

Mr Rutte has advocated steep budget cuts, a pared-down government and a reduction in benefits for immigrants.

“The Netherlands can emerge stronger from the crisis by taking measures now,” he said after the vote.

The VVD, which had 21 seats in the outgoing parliament, had topped opinion polls for several weeks. Labour lost two seats compared with the previous elections in 2006.

Balkenende quits

Final results will not be declared until 15 June, when all overseas votes have been counted.

Without an outright majority in the 150-seat parliament, the VVD and Labour will now have to try to forge a coalition with at least two other parties, the BBC’s Geraldine Coughlan reports from The Hague.

Mr Rutte has reportedly said he would not exclude any party from a possible coalition. During the campaign, he said he would have a coalition in place by 1 July if his party won – though analysts questioned whether this would be possible given the closeness of the result.

After the Christian Democrats plummeted to a historic low, outgoing leader Jan Peter Balkenende resigned his position as party leader and said he was quitting politics – though he also said he would stay on as caretaker prime minister until a new coalition was formed.

The party won 21 seats, 20 fewer than at the last election in 2006.

Mr Balkenende described his party’s crushing election defeat as “disappointing”.

“The outcome is clear. I’ve told the president of our party that I will be resigning as party leader and that I won’t be serving as a member of parliament,” he said.

The election – the fourth since 2002 – was called after the centrist coalition government, between the Christian Democrats and the Labour Party, collapsed in February.

The government fell when Labour withdrew from the coalition after refusing to extend the Dutch contribution to the Nato force, as outgoing PM Balkenende wanted.

Dutch troops are therefore expected to leave Afghanistan by August.

A presidential spokesman said he would express his condolences to relatives.

The meeting comes as BP shares in the UK fell to their lowest level since 1997 amid fears the US will impose huge penalties on the firm.

Mr Obama has come under mounting political pressure over his handling of the crisis.

Oil has been leaking into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April and sank off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, killing the 11 workers.

‘Anti-British rhetoric’

President Obama will express his “heartfelt condolences” to their families during the private meeting at the White House, his spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

“And I think he’s eager to discuss with them what their family was telling them about safety conditions and what type of changes can and must be made in the regulatory framework to ensure that deepwater drilling that goes forward is done in a way that is safe and not life-threatening,” Mr Gibbs added.

Amid growing public anger in the US, President Barack Obama is keen to show he is on top of the situation and will make his fourth visit to the region on Monday.

His administration has been steadily applying more pressure on BP, and the US justice department is considering legal action to make sure BP has enough funds to cover the damage and compensate those affected by the slick.

BP says a containment cap system placed on the blown-out well last week collected 15,800 barrels of oil on Wednesday – slightly up on the 15,010 barrels collected in the previous 24-hour period.

The company has come under increasingly sharp attack by some US politicians for its handling of the spill, described as the worst environmental disaster the US has faced.

Shares in the British oil giant have nearly halved over the last couple of months.

The UK government on Thursday sought to play down fears expressed by some senior figures of “anti-British rhetoric” in the US.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who will discuss BP with President Obama this week, said he understood the US government’s “frustration”.

The software basically adds the automatic diagnostics system in Windows 7 to older versions of Microsoft’s operating system.

The software, currently available as a trial or beta version, is intended for users of Windows XP and Vista.

The package also tries to anticipate how security updates will affect a PC before they are installed.

Bug watch

Once installed, the software gets updates about known issues with Windows or any connected devices, and regularly checks to see if a host machine has fallen victim. Once fixes become available it will tell users they are ready or attempt to apply them.

The software has onboard fixes for about 300 of the most widely encountered problems that stop Windows working as it should.

The software also maintains a list of the hardware and software on a machine so if the automatic fix does not solve a problem, it will be able to help users supply detailed information to Microsoft’s support staff about what has gone wrong.

Those signing up and downloading the Fix It software can use it on several different machines.

The free software can be downloaded from Microsoft’s support pages. Windows XP users wanting to use it must have Service Pack 3 for the operating system installed.

The Fix It service began in late 2008, when Microsoft began using the logo to highlight automatic fixes on its support pages that dealt with very common problems.

Anyone clicking on the logo kicked off a download that tried to fix that problem automatically.

Microsoft, like many other software firms, has built a vast database of faults and problems as technology built into Windows reports back about crashes and other bugs that machines encounter.

However, this is by no means the first such volcanic eruption in Iceland to affect human activities. Long before the advent of air travel, the eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano in 1783-84 had profound effects on climate, not just in Iceland but around the globe.

Volcanologists Thorvaldur Thordarson and Stephen Self estimated that a comparable event in the modern era would release enough ash and other eruptive materials into the atmosphere that the resulting ash cloud and sulfuric haze would probably disrupt air travel over much of the Northern Hemisphere for about five months. But there were impacts well afield of Iceland and Europe at the time of Laki.

Besides releasing clouds of ash into the atmosphere that can disrupt visibility and damage airplane engines, eruptions can cool the climate with the reflection of incoming solar radiation from the troposphere by volcanic sulfur-rich ash, which can decrease temperatures significantly for months or years in some cases.

Just such an aerosol effect is believed to have disrupted the Earth’s thermal balance during the Laki event, cooling some Northern Hemisphere regions by as much as 1 or more degrees Celsius below the long-term average.

Highly unusual conditions were described in the summer of 1783 after Laki, including poisonous volcanic fumes that killed perhaps 25 percent of the population of Iceland, persistent haze and oppressive heat in Europe, and blood-red sunrises over North America, Europe and other locations. The Laki eruption was believed to have caused thousands of deaths because of unusual conditions in Europe that summer, along with the severe cold of the following winter.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to suggest that the extreme cold of 1783-84 over much of the Northern Hemisphere was connected to the Laki event. In North America, Laki has been blamed for the starvation of Inuit populations from severe cold in northwestern Alaska, based on Inuit oral history as well as tree-ring density data investigated by Gordon Jacoby and others, who estimated that conditions were about 4 degrees Celsius colder than the mean.

The density record of temperature-sensitive white spruce for this region showed extremely low values in the summer of 1783, known in Inuit lore as “the summer that did not come”.

This observation was used to infer that this was the coldest summer in at least the past 400 years.

Such tree-ring records, along with other so-called proxy archives, can provide a wealth of information about volcanic events and their varying impacts around the globe because of resulting shifts in atmospheric circulation and other climate changes, dating for centuries prior to the period of instrumental record.

The effects of major volcanic eruptions such as Laki can also be felt elsewhere on the globe, often far from their actual location. For example, significant cooling and strong dynamical effects after the Laki event and other high-latitude eruptions are believed to have caused decreased flow of the Nile River in Egypt and weakened African and Asian monsoons based on climate model simulations, with potentially very significant impacts on food and water supplies.

Tree-ring, coral and ice core records also indicate the effect of major volcanic events in the tropics of monsoon Asia for low-latitude eruptions such as that of Tambora, Indonesia, in 1815 and other such events of the past several centuries, although this climate signal is also complicated by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

Although the current eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland appears not to be comparable in intensity to those of Laki and Tambora, it will have some effects, such as those on air travel, that were never realized back in those simpler times.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rosanne D’Arrigo.

By the end of the day on Sunday, a total of 63,000 flights had been canceled in the four days since ash from a volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland closed the airspace of a large swath of Europe, according to air traffic authority Eurocontrol. The air travel and freight disruptions are costing airlines at least $200 million a day and perhaps billions more to the affected economies, one industry group warned.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso ordered formation of a group to study the impact of the volcanic ash cloud on the European economy. “The volcanic ash cloud has created an unprecedented situation,” Barroso said in a statement Sunday. “I have asked Vice President Kallas to coordinate the Commission’s response and fully assess the impact of the situation created by volcanic ash cloud on the economy, and the air travel industry in particular.”

The Eurozone — the 16 European nations united under the euro currency — is in the midst of a shaky recovery. After shrinking 4 percent last year, the Eurozone is expected to grow only 1 percent this year, according to a forecast by Ernst & Young released last Friday.

“The key is how long this eruption and the disruption last,” said Frederic Neumann, an HSBC economist in Hong Kong. “If it’s just a couple weeks, from a macroeconomic standpoint it’s just a blip on the radar … if it lasts for months and months, then it’s a different story.”

Right now, how long it will last is anyone’s guess.

“Each day we’ve gone to check out Virgin (Atlantic Airlines) and each day they just tell us to keep checking on the Internet,” said Andy Loftus, who is stranded in New York. “But when we check the Internet, the Internet doesn’t tell you anything. So you have to keep going back to the airport.”

The last time the volcano under Eyjafjallajokull glacier blew was 1821 and continued for two years. The amount of ash and its concentration over European flight paths is constantly changing due to geological and meteorological forces.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said Sunday if the ash cloud continues “moving as it moves, then tomorrow almost 50 percent of European [Union] space will be risk free.” That would allow more flights to resume, he said. “But we’ll see [Monday] what the picture shows.”

The ash cloud is delaying key talks on the issue most troubling the Eurozone — Greece’s mounting debt woes. The Greek Finance Ministry issued a statement that talks with European officials and the International Monetary Fund over details of a $40 billion bailout for Greece is delayed at least until Wednesday, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Meanwhile, the air industry in Europe — already battered by the financial crisis and labor disputes such as strikes at Lufthansa and British Airways this year — is putting on pressure to reopen the skies.

“This crisis is costing airlines at least $200 million a day in lost revenues and the European economy is suffering billions of dollars in lost business,” said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association. He told CNN on Monday that if flight restrictions continue, some small and medium-sized airlines could be put in jeopardy.

IATA criticized European governments “for their lack of leadership in handling airspace restrictions” and “urged a re-think of the decision-making process” for closing European skies.

Even airlines based far from the ash face a financial knock-on effect: Thai Airways, based in Bangkok, estimates the cloud is costing the airline $3 million a day and has stranded 6,000 of its passengers.

The HMS Ark Royal and HMS Ocean were making their way back to British waters, while the Defense Ministry worked to pinpoint locations that most need help.

Transport across Europe has been crippled since the eruption beneath southern Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier worsened last week, prompting local evacuations and shutting European airspace.

With planes languishing at airports, stranded travelers have crammed onto boats and trains and hired cars in a bid to reach their destination.

“I believe this is one of the most serious transport disruptions we have faced,” Brown said. “It’s got financial consequences as well as human consequences and we will do everything in our power to make sure all the arrangements are in place to help people where possible to get back home.”

Brown said that he had spoken to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero about using airports in Spain — which have been less affected by the air travel chaos — as a hub through which to bring people back to Britain, the agency reported. Further information would be released later today, Brown added.

Brown added that a third Royal Navy vessel, HMS Albion, en route to pick up troops in Spain, may also be able to assist.

UK travel has been badly hit by the ash cloud, with airspace largely shut since last Thursday morning and not expected to open until 0000 GMT Tuesday at the earliest. Heathrow, to the west of London, is one of the world’s major international airports and has seen no activity the past five days.

Some European airports reopened Sunday, including several in France and Germany, and all 16 that had been closed in Spain. But officials in each country emphasized that decisions were being made around the clock and could change at any time.

A few dozen test flights Sunday offered hope that the skies over much of Europe may be safe for air travel, but officials made no promises that the massive disruptions due to volcanic ash are about to go away.

“The results coming from these flights is… there’s no impact in the area,” European Union Secretary of State Diego Lopez Garrido said.

Two key air travel groups issued a joint statement Sunday pushing authorities to ease flying restrictions. Airports Council International (ACI) Europe, which represents airports, and the Association of European Airlines (AEA) said they question “the proportionality of the flight restrictions currently imposed.”

But an expert who has flown into the skies to check conditions said he believes it will be “a few days yet” before it’s safe to fly.

European transport ministers plan to discuss the results of flight tests at a technical meeting Monday.

British Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis said Sunday that officials were working around the clock to establish whether safe flight paths could be identified.

“Urgent discussions are taking place with European and international regulatory agencies. We want to be able to resume flights as soon as possible, but safety remains my paramount concern,” Adonis said.

Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, said airports have lost close to €136 million ($184 million) so far. More than 6.8 million passengers have been affected, he said in a statement, adding that the effect is worse than after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

“While safety remains a non-negotiable priority, it is not incompatible with our legitimate request to reconsider the present restrictions,” he said.

“While Europe’s airlines and airports consider safety to be an absolute priority, they are questioning the proportionality of the flight restrictions currently imposed,” ACI Europe and the AEA said in their joint statement. “The eruption of the Icelandic volcano is not an unprecedented event and the procedures applied in other parts of the world for volcanic eruptions do not appear to require the kind of restrictions that are presently being imposed in Europe.”

Airlines have been losing at least $200 million a day, according to the International Air Transport Association, the trade group representing airlines.

But an expert who has flown over Europe to check the air said he saw “dangerous” conditions.

Guy Gratton, head of the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements at Britain’s Cranfield University, flew into the skies Thursday and saw “a really strange and complex set of layers of ash,” with a layer of perfectly clear air suddenly giving way to a layer of ash, he told CNN. If particles of ash enter a jet engine, when they come out they can solidify on turbine blades, he said.

A group of his colleagues took to the skies Sunday, and in some places saw “quite high concentrations of ash,” he said.

“I suspect it’s going to be a few days yet” before it’s safe to fly, Gratton added.

Some European airports reopened Sunday, including several in France and Germany, and all 16 that had been closed in Spain. But officials in each country emphasized that decisions were being made around the clock and could change at any time.

After Hewlett-Packard bought the computer services company last August for $13.9 billion, it immediately began hacking the work force. Led by a master cost-cutter, Mark V. Hurd, H.P. laid off 25,000 E.D.S. workers, and cut the salaries of some by more than 20 percent. Mr. Hurd even stripped the E.D.S. brass of their plush offices and corralled them into 6-by-6-foot cubicles.

But despite the risk that disgruntled employees and customers would walk out the door, the acquisition has paid off big for H.P. — so well, in fact, that an important rival has decided to strike a similar deal. Dell announced Monday that it was paying $3.9 billion for Perot Systems, the Texas computer services company started by H. Ross Perot after he left E.D.S.

Plenty of employees have complained about H.P.’s tactics, but the company says it has persevered through the turmoil to keep most of E.D.S.’s customers. Last quarter, H.P.’s operating profit margin on services hit 13.8 percent, the highest in a decade. And the combined company’s services division is H.P.’s biggest business in terms of revenue — a remarkable metamorphosis for what has long been viewed as a slow-growth PC and printer maker.

On Wednesday, H.P. will take another big step toward full integration of E.D.S., extinguishing the 47-year-old company’s name. The new name, H.P. Enterprise Services, reflects the union of the services operations at the two companies.

“I acknowledge that we have done a lot of hard stuff, but this is all about getting H.P. in a position where we can compete and win,” said Ann Livermore, an executive vice president at H.P. who heads its services and data center products businesses.

In talks with E.D.S. employees, executives have put it more bluntly. At one meeting in August, Andy W. Mattes, who runs H.P.’s services business in the Americas, said that the deep salary reductions and broad cost cuts were for the good of the remaining employees.

“Just letting things go on will result in much more bleak and horrible scenarios,” Mr. Mattes said, according to an audio recording of the meeting.

The bloodletting pains Mort Meyerson, who served alongside Mr. Perot at E.D.S. and Perot Systems for many years. “It’s sad to see this happen because of the decades of work the men and women of E.D.S. put into the company,” he said. “But that’s what happens in business.”

H.P. executives concede that the company’s aggressive pruning comes with costs, as workers fret about their futures and the overall business endures some disruption.

But they say that tough actions were needed to bring E.D.S. in line with competitors like I.B.M., Infosys and Wipro Technologies.

By common business yardsticks, the Hurd touch on E.D.S. appears to have worked better than investors and analysts had expected.

When H.P. announced its intent to buy E.D.S. in May 2008, H.P.’s share price sank. E.D.S. had developed a reputation as a bloated has-been that had burned investors in the past through bad deals, accounting issues and an overreliance on services contracts with the government and automakers.

And while E.D.S. received high marks from customers for its role in taking over their technology operations, it required far more people than competitors to accomplish the task.

“It was almost, the closer you were to E.D.S., the more concern you had about the acquisition,” said Shannon Cross, an equities analyst with Cross Research.

E.D.S.’s own efforts to lower costs had stalled, particularly since the company lacked the financial resources to undertake a major reorganization, according to Joe Eazor, a former E.D.S. executive who is now a senior vice president and general manager of services at H.P.

Investors were also worried about change-of-control provisions in contracts that would allow customers to renegotiate or cancel long-term deals with E.D.S.

But H.P. has held onto 199 of the top 200 accounts at E.D.S., according to Mr. Eazor. Some of the deals have been reworked, but H.P. points to its improving operating margins in services as evidence that any reductions in revenue have been minor.

Meanwhile, as sales of printers, PCs and data center gear have plummeted during the recession, H.P. has used services to bolster its overall revenue and profits. “The deal has really helped insulate them from the downturn,” said Ben Reitzes, an analyst with Barclays Capital. “Without E.D.S., things could have been a lot worse.”

According to analysts, H.P. may have engineered the deal at just the right time. The down economy gave H.P. time to perform its painful restructuring and primed the company to grow when the good times returned.

Historically, E.D.S. promoted computing gear from H.P. rivals like Sun Microsystems, Xerox and Cisco Systems. But Mr. Eazor says that more of H.P.’s own hardware is slated to go into deals that are currently up for bid.

H.P. has been criticized by some analysts and derided by competitors for declining to detail the value of the services deals it has signed, as is industry practice. During a meeting this week with analysts, H.P. plans to reveal that it recently closed 32 deals valued at more than $100 million and that its customer service scores rose over the past year.

Niall Quinn, the director of commercial management for Aviva, an insurer, said that H.P. had held up well under the pressure of the acquisition. In March, Aviva picked H.P. over I.B.M. for a $1 billion, 10-year outsourcing contract in Britain.

But, while Aviva has committed to H.P. for the long haul, Mr. Quinn said he had short-term concerns.

“Mark Hurd is a bit focused on hitting numbers on a quarterly basis, and some of the things he’s done, people in Europe find quite amazing,” Mr. Quinn said. “The layoffs are a concern because what you’re buying is tremendous expertise.”

H.P.’s critics, including current and former employees, warn that the company has done away with too many high-salaried, veteran executives. Jeff Kelly, who had run the E.D.S. business in the Americas, left the company in March, leaving a gap in the company’s most crucial region. His successor, another E.D.S. veteran, Mike Koehler, left in May. Now Mr. Mattes, who came from the H.P. side, is in charge.

The heads of finance, human resources, sales and software services left E.D.S. earlier this year as well.

Current and former employees, who requested anonymity because they signed nondisparagement agreements with H.P. or are afraid of being fired, complain that H.P.’s tactics work better for a product company. In the services realm, customers depend on their long-standing relationships with executives and sales team leaders.

In addition, morale has dipped, particularly in the United States, where most salary cuts have taken place, these people say.

I.B.M., H.P.’s biggest competitor in services, contends that customers have been complaining about disruption in their H.P. accounts.

“In the services business, if cost-cutting and price are the only levers you have to compete, it’s not sustainable,” said Dave Liederbach, the general manager of I.B.M.’s outsourcing business. “The chaos that results in a client situation will be severe.”

H.P. paints a much different picture, saying that for the first time, it has enough salespeople and services expertise to go up against I.B.M. for some of the largest, most lucrative contracts.