Most people who work offshore?on drilling rigs, production platforms, jackups, barges and boats or in submersibles?have heard of laws such as the Jones Act, which exist to protect injured offshore workers and hurt seamen. If there?s a drilling rig explosion, if a boat sinks, if a defective marine crane collapses, the Jones Act can help protect those injured maritime employees because the vessel owner is often liable.
Many maritime workers don?t know that another legal protection, called ?general maritime tort law,? can help when they?ve been injured due to the negligence of a third party?that is, someone besides their employer. Dedicated Louisiana maritime injury lawyer William Gee III has been working to protect injured offshore workers for over twenty years and helps maritime workers understand which offshore injury situations might be covered by general maritime tort law.
An example would be when a seaman is working on a vessel that is owned by someone other than his or her boss and suffers an injury at sea caused by conditions of the vessel itself. General maritime tort law covers several forms of negligence, including:
When the negligent action or inaction of a third party, who is not the offshore worker?s employer, contributes to the cause of an offshore accident;
When more than one party is negligent in the offshore or maritime accident injury;
When an employer is aware of a potentially hazardous condition but fails to address it.
Most general maritime tort cases address the question of whether there was a legal duty to the injured person that was breached. A maritime negligence case examines whether the injury was a foreseeable result of the negligent act or failure to act.
For instance, if drilling rig needed repairs, if a marine crane malfunction was known but hadn?t been fixed or a submersible had a poor maintenance record, the owner of those offshore vessels and equipment could be held liable in the case of a maritime injury. General maritime law also imposes liability on an employer for the negligent and tortuous acts of an employee committed in the course and scope of that employee?s work. If a party?s maritime negligence causes injury, the victim can sue to recover damages for personal injuries, including pain and suffering, as well as certain economic damages, such as loss of future earnings.
If you were injured offshore or lost a loved one due to a wrongful death at sea, call the Law Offices of William Gee III today at 1-800-488-5227 or contact us online. We know maritime law inside and out, and can help you seek justice.
The Law Office of William Gee, III 2014 W. Pinhook Road, Suite 501 Lafayette, Louisiana 70508
1-800-488-5227
This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2012 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Offshore Accidents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Tree nut research may unexpectedly lead to medical advancesPublic release date: 5-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Marcia Wood Marcia.wood@ars.usda.gov 301-504-1662 United States Department of Agriculture - Research, Education and Economics
This press release is available in Spanish.
Prescription drugs that today help patients fight severe fungal infections might tomorrow be even more effective, thanks to unexpected findings from agriculture-based, food-safety-focused studies by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their colleagues.
Petri-dish experiments conducted by now-retired USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research leader Bruce C. Campbell, ARS molecular biologist Jong H. Kim, and their co-investigators suggest that pairing conventional antifungal medicines with natural, edible compounds from plants--such as thymol, extracted from the popular herb thyme--can boost the healing effects of some of these drugs.
Campbell and Kim's work at the ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., with species of Aspergillus mold, for example, has attracted the attention of medical and public health researchers. Found worldwide in air and soil, Aspergillus can infect corn, cotton, pistachios, almonds, and other crops, and can produce aflatoxin, a natural carcinogen.
Aflatoxin-contaminated crops must be identified and removed from the processing stream, at times resulting in large economic losses. Since 2004, Campbell, Kim, and colleagues have carefully built a portfolio of potent, plant-based compounds that kill a target Aspergillus species, A. flavus, or thwart its ability to produce aflatoxin.
Further research and testing might enable tomorrow's growers to team the best of these natural compounds with agricultural fungicides that today are uneconomical to use, according to Kim.
A. flavus and two of its relatives, A. fumigatus and A. terreus, may impact the health of immunocompromised individuals exposed to the fungus in moldy homes. The team reported that thymol, when used in laboratory tests with two systemic antifungal medications, inhibited growth of these fungi at much lower-than-normal doses of the drugs.
A related study provided new evidence to support earlier findings, at Albany and elsewhere, which had suggested that plant compounds such as thymol may sabotage a target fungi's ability to recover from oxidative stress triggered by antifungal drugs.
Using plant-derived compounds to treat fungal infections is not a new idea, nor is that of pairing the compounds with antifungal medicines. But the Albany team's studies have explored some apparently unique pairs, and have provided some of the newest, most detailed information about the mechanisms likely responsible for the impact of powerful combinations of drugs and natural plant compounds.
###
Read more about the research in the October 2012 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/oct12/tree1012.htm
ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office of Adjudication, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (866) 632-9992 (Toll-free Customer Service), (800) 877-8339 (Local or Federal relay), (866) 377-8642 (Relay voice users).
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Tree nut research may unexpectedly lead to medical advancesPublic release date: 5-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Marcia Wood Marcia.wood@ars.usda.gov 301-504-1662 United States Department of Agriculture - Research, Education and Economics
This press release is available in Spanish.
Prescription drugs that today help patients fight severe fungal infections might tomorrow be even more effective, thanks to unexpected findings from agriculture-based, food-safety-focused studies by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their colleagues.
Petri-dish experiments conducted by now-retired USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research leader Bruce C. Campbell, ARS molecular biologist Jong H. Kim, and their co-investigators suggest that pairing conventional antifungal medicines with natural, edible compounds from plants--such as thymol, extracted from the popular herb thyme--can boost the healing effects of some of these drugs.
Campbell and Kim's work at the ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., with species of Aspergillus mold, for example, has attracted the attention of medical and public health researchers. Found worldwide in air and soil, Aspergillus can infect corn, cotton, pistachios, almonds, and other crops, and can produce aflatoxin, a natural carcinogen.
Aflatoxin-contaminated crops must be identified and removed from the processing stream, at times resulting in large economic losses. Since 2004, Campbell, Kim, and colleagues have carefully built a portfolio of potent, plant-based compounds that kill a target Aspergillus species, A. flavus, or thwart its ability to produce aflatoxin.
Further research and testing might enable tomorrow's growers to team the best of these natural compounds with agricultural fungicides that today are uneconomical to use, according to Kim.
A. flavus and two of its relatives, A. fumigatus and A. terreus, may impact the health of immunocompromised individuals exposed to the fungus in moldy homes. The team reported that thymol, when used in laboratory tests with two systemic antifungal medications, inhibited growth of these fungi at much lower-than-normal doses of the drugs.
A related study provided new evidence to support earlier findings, at Albany and elsewhere, which had suggested that plant compounds such as thymol may sabotage a target fungi's ability to recover from oxidative stress triggered by antifungal drugs.
Using plant-derived compounds to treat fungal infections is not a new idea, nor is that of pairing the compounds with antifungal medicines. But the Albany team's studies have explored some apparently unique pairs, and have provided some of the newest, most detailed information about the mechanisms likely responsible for the impact of powerful combinations of drugs and natural plant compounds.
###
Read more about the research in the October 2012 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/oct12/tree1012.htm
ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office of Adjudication, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (866) 632-9992 (Toll-free Customer Service), (800) 877-8339 (Local or Federal relay), (866) 377-8642 (Relay voice users).
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
From its inception, YouTube?s algorithmic copyright cop, Content ID, has been rife with problems ? at least from the user?s perspective. Overbroad takedowns, a confusing dispute process, and little in the way of accountability turned the ?filter? into an easy censorship tool. On Wednesday, however, YouTube announced several changes that should help users fight back against bogus takedowns, and help prevent those takedowns in the first place.?
The Content ID system works by scanning videos on the site for content matching one or more of the over 10 million registered samples that partners have provided to YouTube. In the case of a match, it follows the "business rules" set by the assigned rightsholder, which can include blocking or "monetizing" the upload. If a rightsholder has requested a block, viewers see the familiar error message that indicates that the video has been pulled for copyright reasons. If the business rules are set to "monetize" the video, YouTube gives the rightsholder a portion of the revenue generated from ads run alongside the video.
Users could always dispute Content ID claims, but the process was confusing and there was no means to challenge a denial. Now, an eligible user (a broad category that appears to include verified users "in good copyright standing") can file an appeal in any situation where Content ID has flagged her video and the rightsholder has rejected her dispute. In the case of an appeal, the copyright holder must either release the claim or file a formal DMCA takedown.
This move helps to address one common criticism of Content ID: that it goes above and beyond the requirements of the DMCA, operating outside of it and rendering users subject to new rules that have neither the accountability nor the appeals process of the actual law. In cases where Content ID system has overreached, this new procedure requires rightsholders to return to the process set out in the DMCA for removing content. In turn, that requires the rightsholders to swear under penalty of perjury that there is an actual infringement, and allows for the video to reappear after a counter-notice.
YouTube also announced a technical change that it's referred to as "smarter claim detection." The video site has acknowledged that Content ID sometimes makes mistakes ? either by misidentifying content, or correctly identifying content but failing to recognize it as a clear fair use ? and has improved its algorithms to help recognize these mistakes. Following this update, some of these possibly mistaken claims will be considered "low-confidence" matches, and rightsholders will have to manually review those matches to confirm that there is actually an infringement.
This change in particular brings Content ID closer to the Fair Use Principles for User Generated Content that we proposed along with other public interest groups. It should also help to address the recent automated takedowns that have generated some unwanted attention for programs like Content ID. In August, a NASA video of the Curiosity landing on Mars was automatically blocked due to a mistaken copyright claim. And last month two separate livestream videos were removed ? one of the annual Hugo awards and one from the Democratic National Convention ? in circumstances also involving automated takedowns. Requiring human intervention in more cases is a big improvement, and will reduce these sorts of situations where copyright bots shoot first and humans ask questions later.
These changes have been a long time coming and we?re glad to see them. Equally pleased, we expect, will be the many users who have want to fight back when a rightsholder decides to play judge, jury, and executioner of their lawful speech.
SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics reported a record quarterly profit of $7.3 billion, nearly double last year's figure, as strong sales of high-end TVs and Galaxy smartphones more than offset reduced orders for chips and screens from Apple Inc, its main rival and leading customer.
Most analysts, however, expect a run of four straight record quarters to end in December as the South Korean group, the world's leading maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, ramps up its marketing to counter Apple's new iPhone and other products in a crowded $200 billion global smartphone market.
Samsung may have spent around $2.7 billion on marketing in July-September alone around the London Olympic Games and new Galaxy promotions, Credit Suisse has estimated.
This year's expected record profit of 28 trillion won ($25 billion) will also trigger higher performance related payouts to many of Samsung's 206,000 staff early next year. And Samsung may have to set money aside this quarter if it fails in an appeal to overturn an August 24 U.S. court verdict that awarded more than $1 billion in damages to Apple for patent infringements by Samsung.
"Fourth-quarter profit will be pressured by one-off expenses: performance payouts and some $1 billion in legal provisioning relating to the Apple litigation. Excluding those, core earnings will remain solid and a swing factor is how much Samsung spends on marketing," said Lee Sun-tae, analyst at NH Investment & Securities.
Analysts expect earnings to decline until the second quarter of next year as a slump in computer sales and a weak global economy sap demand for chips and electronics products.
SMARTPHONE HEAVY?
"The biggest risk for Samsung is competitive product line-ups from its rivals such as the iPhone 5. Because handsets drive most of its profits, one misstep in handsets could result in losses for the whole Samsung group," said Byun Han-joon, an analyst at KB Investment & Securities.
Profit at Samsung's mobile division is likely to have more than doubled in July-September to around 5 trillion won - around two thirds of total group profit - as smartphone shipments topped 58 million, including up to 20 million Galaxy S IIIs.
Ahead of full quarterly results due by October 26, Samsung estimated its July-September operating profit jumped 91 percent to 8.1 trillion won from a year ago, beating an average forecast of 7.6 trillion won in a Reuters survey of 16 analysts. That would be more than a fifth higher than the previous record in April-June. The company, valued at around $197 billion, estimated its third-quarter revenue at 52 trillion won, in line with forecasts.
Samsung shares fell 0.5 percent to 1.36 million won ($1,200) on Friday. The stock has risen more than 7 percent since the U.S. patent defeat in August. Apple shares have gained less than 1 percent.
CHEAP AS CHIPS
Strong handset sales made up for reduced profits from its chip business, as prices of its mainstay dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, used in computers and mobiles, dropped 14 percent in the September quarter. DRAM chips now trade below what it costs most contract manufacturers to make them, and will squeeze near-term earnings, analysts say. Tablets and smartphones, the real growth areas, use far smaller memory storage.
Samsung is expected to invest less in chips next year due to the drop in demand, which could be bad news for semiconductor equipment manufacturers such as ASML. Kwon Oh-hyun, promoted to Samsung CEO in June, said late last month that the group has yet to finalize its 2013 investment plans.
Samsung is beefing up its product line-up, with the latest phone-cum-tablet Galaxy Note expected to go on sale in the United States this month, and its ATIV smartphones that run on Microsoft's new Windows system to compete with Nokia's Lumia series.
TAKING NOTE
Samsung's mobile division chief JK Shin last week predicted Note II sales could be three times higher than those of its predecessor model in the three months after launch - suggesting sales of around 10 million devices by the end of this year.
Some analysts see the Note II, a stripped-out, cheaper version of the Galaxy S III and rising NAND flash memory chip prices helping Samsung deliver higher fourth-quarter profit. Nomura on Friday predicted October-December profit could be up to 10 percent more than the 8.1 trillion won in July-September.
In a note on Friday, Citi analyst Henry Kim predicted strong October-December profits, driven by a recovery in semiconductors, though telecoms operating margins could decline by 5 percentage points to 15 percent as it spends more on marketing. "The semiconductor division will show the strongest momentum," he said.
Despite a bruising series of patent disputes and the reputational risk of the U.S. court defeat in August, Samsung's brand value has surged this year as it shipped more handsets and smartphones than any of its rivals. The value of the Samsung brand has jumped to 9th in the world - up from 17th last year - at $32.9 billion, according to brand consultancy Interbrand. That's more than Toyota Motor, but less than half of second-ranked Apple's $76.6 billion.
($1 = 1112.6500 Korean won)
(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
NEW YORK (AP) ? What seemed inevitable for the NHL has now become reality. The league canceled the first two weeks of the regular season on Thursday, the second time games have been lost because of a lockout in seven years.
The initial announcement was made in a two-paragraph statement from the league. It isn't clear if those games will be made up, allowing for a complete 82-game regular season, if a deal can be struck soon with the locked-out players.
Unable to work out how to split up $3 billion in hockey-related revenues with the players' association, the NHL wiped out 82 games from Oct. 11 through Oct. 24 ? beginning with four next Thursday, which would have been the league's opening night.
"We were extremely disappointed to have to make today's announcement," NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement. "The game deserves better, the fans deserve better, and the people who derive income from their connection to the NHL deserve better.
"We remain committed to doing everything in our power to forge an agreement that is fair to the players, fair to the teams, and good for our fans. This is not about 'winning' or 'losing' a negotiation. This is about finding a solution that preserves the long-term health and stability of the league and the game. We are committed to getting this done."
The union countered Thursday by saying the NHL forced the lockout onto the players instead of letting the season go on as planned.
"The decision to cancel the first two weeks of the NHL season is the unilateral choice of the NHL owners," NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr said in a statement. "If the owners truly cared about the game and the fans, they would lift the lockout and allow the season to begin on time while negotiations continue.
"A lockout should be the last resort in bargaining, not the strategy of first resort," he added. "For nearly 20 years, the owners have elected to lock out the players in an effort to secure massive concessions. Nevertheless, the players remain committed to playing hockey while the parties work to reach a deal that is fair for both sides. We hope we will soon have a willing negotiating partner."
Although there have been negotiations between the league and players in recent days ? unlike a three-month break at the start of the 2004-05 lockout that forced the cancellation of the entire season ? the two sides haven't gotten any closer to a deal on core economic issues.
"Obviously, (cancellations) might have been expected but it's also disappointing because we set out to negotiate," New York Rangers goalie Martin Biron said in a telephone interview. "We wanted to get a deal and wanted to avoid a work stoppage or any cancellations.
"We're still working hard to find a solution and find a way to get the core economic stuff figured out with the league and getting a deal that is fair for everybody and lasts."
In the previous lockout, the NHL and the union didn't get together between early September and early December.
Back then, the key words in the negotiations were salary cap, linkage and cost certainty. Commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners were committed to getting a deal that linked team costs to revenues, so each club would know exactly how much it had to spend on payroll and what number it couldn't exceed.
Thus a salary cap was born for the first time in NHL history. The league produced record revenue during the seven years of that deal, which turned out much better for the players than expected.
There are no major philosophical issues this time as there were with the salary cap fight, but the sides are far apart in financial figures. Players received 57 percent of hockey-related revenue in the deal that expired Sept. 15, and the NHL wants to bring that number below 50 percent ? perhaps as low as 47 percent.
The players' association, led by Fehr ? the former baseball union chief ? has rejected that idea.
"The leadership that we have with Don and his team is really trying to look at the big picture and not just a number," Biron said. "We understand that there is some tweaking and some things that have to be fixed in our proposal, but it seems that the owners are on a one-way mission to cut salaries."
The NHL claims the union hasn't done near enough to try to get closer to the league's proposal and appears willing to wait for the NHLPA to come around.
Daly said the league had already lost $100 million in revenues from canceled preseason games. The players will begin feeling the real sting when they don't get their first paychecks of the season Oct. 15.
During the last lockout, Bettman followed through on his vow to cancel the season if a deal wasn't reached by a February deadline. A new collective bargaining agreement wasn't completed until July, long after major damage had been done. It marked the first time a North American professional sport lost an entire season to a labor dispute.
In 2004, Daly announced Sept. 29 that there wouldn't be any hockey in October. New proposals and negotiations in December and January did little to push the sides toward a settlement, and Bettman announced Feb. 16 that the season had been lost. It marked the first time since a flu epidemic in 1919 that the Stanley Cup wasn't awarded.
Earlier this week, U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey sent a letter to Bettman and Fehr, urging them to consider the economic impact on their state if the dispute isn't resolved.
The letter warned that the absence of New Jersey Devils' games in Newark could mean millions of dollars in lost economic activity and jobs in especially tough economic times. The Devils advanced to the Stanley Cup finals last season, creating a financial boost to the city just five months ago.
Now, the lockout comes on the heels of the NBA's Nets moving from Newark to Brooklyn, N.Y.
Lautenberg renewed his call for a settlement after the games were called off Thursday.
"This cancellation of regular season hockey games is a blow to businesses and workers in Newark and in hockey towns across the country," he said in a statement. "Local jobs and millions of dollars of economic activity are being placed at risk every day that this dispute continues.
"The NHL should keep in mind communities, workers, and families that are being hurt by its decision to pursue a lockout and cancel these games. Owners and players must find a way to start the season before the economies in Newark and other communities are further damaged."
Colonial Copyright: Intellectual Property in Mandate Palestine, by Michael D. Birnhack, has just been published by Oxford University Press. This blogger has not yet seen it, though he is sure that a review copy will soon be available to the same publisher's Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP). When this happens, 1709 Blog readers will be alerted so they'll have a good chance of getting their review request accepted. If you don't yet know Michael, he's a Professor of Law, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and a not inconsiderable copyright scholar.
The book is quite unusual, and not a little intriguing. According to the publishers:
"When the British Empire enacted copyright law for its colonies and called it colonial, or Imperial, copyright, it had its own interests in mind. Deconstructing the imperial policy regarding copyright offers a startling glimpse into how this law was received in the colonies themselves. Offering the first in-depth study from the point of view of the colonized, this book suggests a general model of Colonial Copyright as it was understood as the intersection of legal transplants, colonial law, and the particular features of copyright, especially authorship.
Taking as a case study the story of Mandate Palestine (1917-1948), the book details the untold history of the copyright law that became the basis of Israeli law, and still is the law in the Palestinian Authority. It queries the British motivation in enacting copyright law, traces their first, indifferent reaction, and continues with the gradual absorption into the local legal and cultural systems. In the modern era copyright law is at the forefront of globalization but this was no less true when colonial copyright first emerged. By shining a light on the introduction and reception of copyright law in Mandate Palestine, the book illuminates the broader themes of copyright law: the questions surrounding the concept of authorship; the relationship between copyright and the demands of progress; and the complications of globalization".
More details of the book can be found on the publisher's website here.
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