8 Missing in Mexico After Vessel Sinks

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

A charter fishing boat with 44 people aboard sank into the Sea of Cortez off Mexico on Sunday, leaving at least one person dead, the United States Coast Guard said. Eight people, seven of them Americans, were still missing late Monday night.

Survivors of a capsized boat sat inside a helicopter after being rescued by the Mexican Navy in San Felipe on Monday.

“Initial reports from Mexico are that it was bad weather and possibly waves,” said Lt. Sean Groark, a spokesman for the Coast Guard. “We’re focused on really trying to save people. The water temperature in the Sea of Cortez is very warm, the air temperature is really warm; that increases the chance of survival. It actually increases it a lot.”

Twenty-seven Americans and 17 other passengers and crew members were aboard the boat when it foundered at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, about 60 miles south of the port of San Felipe, the Coast Guard said. Many were able to swim ashore, and they alerted local authorities that the ship, the Erik, had gone down. Others were rescued by the Mexican Navy.

The Associated Press reported that the accident occurred on the second day of a weeklong trip, which was an annual Fourth of July ritual for many of the people on the boat.

The company that operates the boat, Baja Sportfishing Inc., said in an e-mail message: “We are devastated by this horrible tragedy.? Every effort is being made to assist the authorities in the search.? Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families.”

Michael Ng of Belmont, Calif., told The A.P. that he and another fisherman were rescued as they tried to paddle toward the shore, using a cooler to help keep themselves afloat.

“I’m relieved I’m alive,” Mr. Ng said, “but I’m scared for the people who haven’t been found yet.”

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The Lede: Wildfire Continues to Burn Near Nuclear Facility in New Mexico

Video of a “controlled burn” carried out on Wednesday near the western boundary of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The laboratory explained on YouTube that “firefighters conducted the burn to remove fuel available to the Las Conchas Fire.”

Updated | 7:50 p.m. The Las Conchas wildfire in northern New Mexico has blazed through nearly 93,000 acres since Sunday and stands poised to become the largest in the state’s history, according to officials.

A U.S. Forest Service Web site with information on the fire includes a frequently-updated map showing the area currently affected.

According to firefighters, efforts near the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility, were holding the fire at bay. As our colleague Kirk Johnson reported earlier this week, the lab was created during World War II as the cornerstone of the Manhattan Project, the country’s first nuclear weapons development program. Kevin Roark, a laboratory spokesman, described the plant’s present mission as ensuring the “safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.”

Controlled burns, like the one shown in the video above, have been set to deprive the fire of fuel, and water has been sprayed to moisten flammable materials. There were no fires burning on the laboratory’s 36-square-mile property Thursday.

“In my professional opinion,” Los Alamos County Fire Chief Doug Tucker said Wednesday evening, “there is a less than ten percent chance of spot fires on Lab property this evening, diminishing tomorrow.”

The Laboratory Director, Charlie McMillan, said Thursday that nothing unusual was appearing in area air samples and that the risk to the lab were “lower today than they were earlier in the week.”

Winds, however, were expected to reach 40 miles per hour later on Thursday, and the fire remained only three percent contained, so efforts to combat the flames continue. The lab, which has been closed since Monday, would stay shuttered through Friday, said a laboratory spokesman, Jeff Berger, though essential functions and personnel would remain.

Lab representatives are using the facility’s Twitter account to get information to the public and the press, and even to combat false rumors, Mr. Berger said. One recent update described firefighting measures near the Los Alamos radioactive waste storage and disposal facility, called Area G.

Earlier this week, The Associated Press reported that an anti-nuclear group, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, “said the fire appeared to be about 3 1/2 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a low-level radiation dump site in southern New Mexico.”

Officials at the laboratory at first declined to confirm that there were such drums at Los Alamos, but, as CBS News reported on Tuesday:

lab spokeswoman Lisa Rosendorf said such drums are stored in a section of the complex known as Area G. She said the drums contain cleanup from Cold War-era waste that the lab sends away in weekly shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. She said the drums were on a paved area with few trees nearby and would be safe even if a fire reached the storage area.

Laboratory representatives are also posting pictures of the firefighting efforts on the facility’s Flickr page, where a photo stream usually dedicated to experiments and lab equipment has become dominated by fire trucks, smoke and flames. (Earlier in the week, NASA posted this satellite image, of the blaze around Los Alamos on Monday.)

The laboratory’s Twitter feed also points to relevant video and information elsewhere on the Internet, like this time-lapse video of the fire posted on YouTube by a blogger named Michael Zeiler:

Mr. Zeiler explained on YouTube:

On this fourth day of the devastating Las Conchas fire which is threatening Los Alamos, New Mexico, the night sky finally cleared enough to see the flames licking all around the labs and the city.

This time-lapse video is comprised of 113 photographs taken 30 seconds apart. Each photograph is shown for one second. My vantage point is from my home on a ridge just to the north of Santa Fe.

You can see quick changes in the fires, stars in the sky, and emergency vehicles making their way on fire duties. The brightest lights are the headquarters of the Los Alamos labs and other technical areas are to the left. To the right is the Los Alamos town site. Below the headquarters is the suburb of White Rock.

Earlier this week, Mr. Zeiler posted this striking video of the fire on his YouTube channel:

Updated information on the fire can be found on the laboratory’s Web site and at an inter-agency site called New Mexico Fire Information.

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Mexico Takes Aim at a Titan in Telecom

 

But over the last few weeks, a series of developments is threatening to chip away at Mr. Slim’s dominance.

First, Mexico’s antitrust agency imposed a $1 billion fine on the wireless company Telcel, the local unit of Mr. Slim’s pan-Latin company América Móvil. Then, at the end of last month, the Mexican congress approved a tough new antimonopoly law that raises fines for monopolistic practices and permits prison terms for executives who have been found to engage in them.

Last week, a Supreme Court ruling halted a legal maneuver that Mr. Slim’s companies had used to fight lower tariffs. The decision gives new heft to the country’s telecom regulator as it begins to slash the high interconnection fees that América Móvil charges other companies.

The flurry of activity after years of inaction suggests that at last Mexican authorities may be willing to challenge Mr. Slim and make good on their pledge to provide a more competitive environment for the telecommunications industry.

The actions also send a signal to other large companies in Mexico that they too may soon come under closer scrutiny. For years, powerful companies have resisted regulation by tying up rulings in the courts and using their political influence.

It is too early to tell, though, how effective the efforts will be and whether they will stick.

América Móvil’s Mexican units, the mobile carrier Telcel and the fixed-line firm Telmex, will continue their legal challenges, and analysts say the fine may not be paid for years, if ever. Meanwhile, Telmex now claims more than 80 percent of all fixed lines and Telcel more than 70 percent of wireless phones.

Despite the new antitrust law, Mexican lawmakers and regulators have stalled on other measures to haul telecommunications rules into the 21st century.

And as the July 2012 general election approaches, political support for tougher regulation against Mr. Slim — widely reported to be the world’s wealthiest man — and other magnates may wane as parties jockey for support from the business elite. (Mr. Slim is the second-largest shareholder in The New York Times, behind the Sulzberger family, and in 2009 extended a $250 million loan to The Times, which the company says it intends to repay in early 2012.)

“The big companies believe that when the law is applied to them it’s because of personal animosity and that the law only applies to their enemies,” said Eduardo Pérez Motta, the president of the Federal Competition Commission, which imposed the billion-dollar fine. “They think it is a country of favors, friendships and privileges.”

Executives at Mr. Slim’s companies argue that they benefit the Mexican people by reaching the country’s poorer communities, while their competitors want to sell only to the rich. Indeed, in almost half of the country, Telmex is the only company with any infrastructure at all, because its concession requires it to be there.

In public appearances, Mr. Slim responds to questions about monopoly power by arguing that he has taken on powerful international competitors such as AT&T and that there are multiple players in the Mexican market. He often hands out charts showing how Mexico compares favorably to many other developing countries in mobile coverage, and argues that international studies showing that Mexico’s prices are high are skewed by exchange rates. He also says that he faces a barrier because regulators refuse to grant him a pay-TV license, while cable companies now compete with him by offering phone and Internet service.

Business competition is viewed as an important issue for Mexico’s economic future. Studies from the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggest that Mexico’s monopolies stunt its growth. Although the economy expanded an estimated 5 percent in the first quarter, that pace still lags other large Latin American economies.

Big companies control many basic goods and services, including cement, beer, corn flour, and medicine distribution. The resulting high prices, Mr. Pérez Motta argues, harden Mexico’s gap between rich and poor because it forces poor families to spend more of their income on staples.

It is the fight over telecommunications, though, that has grabbed the recent attention.