Kael Mcilsey blog

US man charged with planting bomb in Detroit

A US man with a years-long grudge against the FBI was charged with planting a bomb at a federal building in Detroit that sat undetected for three weeks, officials said Thursday.

The abandoned tool bag was discovered by an FBI employee outside the building on February 25 and reported to security, charging papers said.

A security guard took the bag inside, but it was not run through an x-ray machine until March 18, when the bomb squad was called after wires and electrical components were revealed to be inside a metal box in the bag.

The FBI traced the type of bag and a timer found inside to a Home Depot store in Iron Mountain, Michigan, nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Detroit.

Police in Iron Mountain told the FBI they frequently received faxes in the middle of the night from Gary John Mikulich, 42, complaining about the FBI and their "so-called 'card system,'" which he alleged was to blame for the death of his father and thousands of other people.

Mikulich also owns a white Oldsmobile which appeared to be "identical" to a vehicle shown on the Home Depot surveillance footage, the charging papers said.

"Based on the foregoing evidence there is probably cause to believe that Gary John Mikulich maliciously attempted to damage or destroy by means of an explosive" the federal building, FBI agent Mark Davidson said.

Mikulich will appear in court Friday to face the charges and faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

It remained unclear why the bag was not tested immediately after it was found, but a Homeland Security spokesman told the Detroit Free Press the security guard who stored the bag without testing it was suspended from work.

"The FPS will continue to review the circumstances of this incident and take appropriate action with the contract service provider to ensure that proper protocols are followed," spokesman Chris Ortman told the paper.

Warner Bros Adds More Titles to Facebook Movie Rental Service

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Warner Bros. recently started deliveringat a price of $3 per title, starting out with Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight.

Now, the company made available five additional titles: Inception, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Yogi Bear and Life as We Know It.

These new titles are available through each film's official Facebook Page. To rent a movie, users need to click on the "watch now" icon, pay with their , and they will get a 48-hour window to watch the movie through their Facebook account.

There's no official word on any upcoming titles, but we're sure that Warner Bros. will be adding this functionality to other movies in its catalog, which have a significant Facebook following. All of this is available only to consumers in the U.S.

Crisis management puts huge strains on firms, CEOs

Crisis management expert Caroline Sapriel has plenty of experience of the colossal pressure on corporate chiefs such as Tokyo Electric's Masataka Shimizu, hospitalized as his firm battles nuclear catastrophe.

Firms such as airlines, oil majors and utilities may sometimes run scenario-based exercises, hold discussions and hire outside consultants such as her to brace for disaster. But when it strikes, she says corporate structures and personnel are often by their very nature still brutally unprepared.

As the stock price nosedives and media bays for blood, managers themselves are often simply in shock as they face the reality of potential deaths and difficult decisions. Part of her role is supporting them through those strains, she says.

"Executives aren't military commanders," Sapriel told Reuters from the Brussels headquarters of her crisis management consultancy CS&A. "They're not trained for crisis management. The whole style of management these days is often do things by consensus. That simply doesn't work in a crisis. It's much more about command and control. The strains are enormous."

Preparation is key, she says, but many companies are simply not willing to be honest in advance about what might go wrong.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T) -- known as TEPCO-- said on Wednesday that chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata would take over operations from president and CEO Shimizu, barely seen since the quake and tsunami that crippled its plant. It said Shimizu had been taken to hospital suffering from high blood pressure.

Crisis managers say TEPCO is facing one of the most challenging forms of corporate disaster -- potentially open- ended and endangering health and human life. As oil giant BP (BP.L) found in last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, that can be a very uncomfortable place to be.

Governments, policymakers, regulators and other officials may also be feeling the heat -- and taking in out on the firm. A "good crisis" might sometimes be the making of a politician, but in the corporate world managers know there is little upside to being the face of an industrial disaster.

"The first thing you often find is that... not a single senior member of a company is willing to talk directly to the media for fear of being the one to take the fall for the crisis," said U.S.-based crisis consultant Eric Dezenhall.

"In some companies, the key to becoming CEO is to avoid being blamed for any particular debacle and people know that."

DISASTER CLICHES

With BP in the Gulf of Mexico, Sapriel said too much pressure was put on CEO Tony Hayward who also became the media point man and something of a hate figure in the U.S. Ultimately, he resigned after a string of gaffes that included being photographed going sailing at the height of the crisis.

"You do need the man at the top to make some statements to show he's in charge and he cares -- he can't disappear altogether -- but if they are out front every day they are going to start to make mistakes," she said.

At the same time as having to handle relations with the media, and populations and politicians, firms themselves may still be struggling to get a handleon what has happened.

"Everyone in these crises conform to certain cliches -- the company tends to try and want to make things look better than they are, and the media... portray a massive conspiracy," Dezenhall said. "What is usually really happening is that the company itself doesn't know what the hell is going on."

Insiders admit that attempting a cover-up can sometimes look appealing -- but ultimately can do more harm than good. BP was also criticized for initially underestimating the volume of oil released into the Gulf, perhaps a sign of wishful thinking.

"OPENNESS ONLY WAY"

"The key thing is to be upfront and keep a good flow of information," said Mark Pursey, a former spokesman for UK mobile phone operator Vodafone and now head of PR firm BTP Advisers.

"There is a temptation to present the best case scenario but you can get caught out if things get worse. With BP, I think there was a pressure not just to soothe the worries of people in the Gulf of Mexico but also very anxious investors."

Fellow PR adviser and political lobbyist Kevin Craig, managing director of London-based PLMR, is even more emphatic.

"Openness is the only way," he said. "Anything else -- be it a denial or repetition of myths -- will only make the problem worse in the long-term."

As often, in Japan one of the criticisms of both government and company has been one of perceived mixed messages. Officials said Tokyo residents should avoid giving tap water to infants because of radiation levels, then reversed that the next day. There have also been conflicting messages on radiation levels.

"With Japan, they probably should have been more open earlier," said Sapriel. "One of the general patterns with crises is that they get worse before they get better -- but companies can often be in denial about that. It's hard to be forthcoming when there is little reassuring to say."

Amid all the attention, however, U.S.-based Dezenhall says firms and managers must not lose sight of the fact that their true priority is fixing the problem, not managing the media.

"Everyone talked of the BP oil spill as a PR crisis -- but it wasn't PR that was the root of it," he said. "Once they stopped the well leaking, the crisis turned...If the company sees the crisis as being fundamentally about PR, it's unlikely they've got the diagnosis correct."

British Columbia unveils budget in political vacuum

VICTORIA, British Columbia (Reuters) – British Columbia introduced a "status quo" C$41.9 billion ($42.3 billion) budget on Tuesday designed to give financial wiggle room to the Canadian province's next premier.

But the package could soon run into trouble if voters overturn a controversial tax deal with the federal government.

The budget projects a C$925 million deficit for the 2011-2012 fiscal year that begins in April, with spending up about 2 percent and total revenue expected to increase 3.4 percent as the province's resource-based economy makes a slow, steady recovery.

The 2010-2011 fiscal year is expected to end with a C$1.26 billion deficit, down from the C$1.7 billion projected when that budget was introduced last March.

The new budget is being unveiled into a political vacuum as the B.C. Liberal government picks a leader at the end February to replace Premier Gordon Campbell, who is stepping down after a wave of voter anger over a new tax policy. The opposition New Democrats are also picking a new leader.

Officials wrote a "status quo" budget, with no major spending to tax initiatives and C$350 million contingency fund, to give "as much flexibility as possible" to whoever takes over a premier, Finance Minister Colin Hansen said.

But the budget and government will face a major test this year, when voters will decide whether to scrap an agreement by Campbell last year to merge the provincial and federal sales taxes and create into a harmonized sales tax (HST) that covers more goods and services.

"It is true if the HST does not survive the referendum there will be increased risks to the plan," Hansen told reporters, adding that scrapping the HST would put the province's economy in "uncharted waters."

The vote in the westernmost Canadian province is scheduled for September but the opposition New Democrats say they will introduce legislation on Wednesday to move it up to June.

In addition to reducing tax revenues, the province would have to repay about C$1.6 billion that Ottawa agreed to pay it to accept the tax deal that is similar to deals already struck by Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.

The government is forecasting the province will return to balanced budgets in two years, but those forecasts also assume the HST survives.

The province's total debt is forecast to rise to C$53.4 billion from last budget's C$47.3 billion, with the taxpayer-supported debt-to-GDP ratio increasing to 17.5 percent from 16.5 percent.

"We are living within our means," Hansen said.

But the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation said the rising debt level was "alarming" and on a per-capita basis, the province is much higher than in other jurisdictions with resource economies.

Provincial economists, who have a tradition of giving conservative economic forecasts, are projecting British Columbia's economy will grow by 2 percent in 2011, which is less than 2.7 percent forecast by private sector economists.

The province's economy, which weathered the recession better than much of North America, has still been hit by the slow recovery of the U.S. housing market and low natural gas prices.

($1=99 Canadian cents)

(Reporting by Allan Dowd; Editing by Frank McGurty)

U.S. marshal killed serving arrest warrant in W. Virginia

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (Reuters) – A deputy U.S. marshal was fatally shot and two others were wounded on Wednesday as they were trying to arrest a West Virginia man. who also was killed in the exchange, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

Charles Smith, 50, opened fire with a shotgun as several marshals entered his home at about 8:30 a.m. in Elkins, West Virginia, about 140 miles northeast of Charleston, said Jeff Carter, spokesman for the Marshals Service in Washington, D.C.

The marshals were serving an arrest warrant on Smith, wanted on cocaine charges, Carter said.

As the marshals entered Smith's home, they were struck by the shotgun blast. They returned the gunfire, killing Smith, Carter said.

He said one deputy marshal died of his wounds. A second was recovering at a local hospital, and the third was treated and released.

Smith was wanted on a charges related to possession with intent to distribute cocaine, Carter said.

The marshals' names were not immediately released.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Jerry Norton)