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Chevron Corp. said Tuesday it will cut 2,000 jobs this year and sell some overseas operations as it revamps its struggling refinery, marketing and transportation operations. The job cuts represent almost 12 percent of its 17,000 workers in the so-called downstream part of its business and just over 3 percent of its overall work force. Executives of the second-largest U.S. oil producer are still deciding where nike air max and when they will eliminate the jobs as they try to complete the restructuring by the third quarter, company spokesman Lloyd Avram said. Additional cuts are expected next year. Chevron said it will also seek bids for the Pembroke refinery in southwest Wales, and fuels marketing, aviation and lubricants businesses in the Caribbean and some markets in Central America. Refineries, which turn crude into gasoline, diesel and other fuels, struggled amid rising oil prices and falling demand last year. In addition, new refineries are being built. "Downstream conditions are likely to be difficult for the next several years," Mike Wirth, executive vice president of Chevron's global downstream business, said in a statement. Argus Research analyst Phil Weiss said he believes Chevron is making the right move but he questions whether the producer will get a good price for the assets in the difficult business environment. Major oil companies worldwide have battled weak demand that cut into profits Max 90 at refineries. Royal Dutch Shell recently said it would cut an additional 1,000 jobs in 2010, mostly at its refining operations. France's Total SA said Monday that it will end refining operations at its plant in Dunkirk, France, in response to falling demand. In the fourth quarter, Chevron lost $613 million in its refining operation compared with a $2 billion profit in the year-ago quarter. The company has said it will reduce spending by $1 billion this year on downstream businesses, which include refining, marketing and transportation. Chevron wants to focus its downstream portfolio in North America and the Asian-Pacific region, and is shifting its production toward natural gas and Asian assets. In addition to seeking bids for the Pembroke refinery and for fuels marketing, air max aviation and lubricants businesses in the Caribbean and Central America, Chevron said it is reviewing refinery operations in Hawaii and other undisclosed operations outside South Africa, Avram said. Chevron, based in San Ramon, Calif., said severance charges are expected to range from $150 million to $200 million on an after-tax basis in the first quarter. The company has about 60,000 employees worldwide, including about 17,000 in downstream operations that include refining, marketing and retail operations. It laid off 1,900 employees in downstream operations last year. Shares of Chevron closed down 34 cents at $74.30.

Coffee drinkers can take heart from a series of studies presented this week at American Heart Association conferences in San Francisco. For example, coffee drinkers appear to have a lower risk of hospitalization for abnormal heart rhythms. And there's no indication that having a few cups every day increases the risk of atherosclerosis, the thickening of blood vessel walls that can lead to heart attacks and other problems. What's more, something in coffee other than caffeine might be responsible for a reduced risk of diabetes for women who regularly imbibe java. Not every report at the AHA's annual conferences on Cardiovascular Disease nike air max Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism was totally upbeat for coffee lovers. One report did find a potential link between coffee drinking and high blood pressure, but the effect was described as "modest." And, like the other studies, it came hedged with the caveat that the finding wasn't based on a controlled trial -- the gold standard for assessing risk and benefit -- but from observational studies, which don't exclude all possible factors. The heart rhythm research looked at the rate at which 130,054 members of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program were hospitalized for heart rhythm disturbances. About 2 percent of them had hospital stays because of such abnormalities, the most common being atrial fibrillation. But the risk was 18 percent lower for those who reported drinking four or more cups of coffee a day, compared to those who didn't drink coffee, said Dr. Arthur Klatsky, a senior consultant in cardiology for the program, who led the study. "It might be a surprise, because coffee does give some people the jitters," Klatsky said. "And I don't think we're ready to tell people they should drink coffee to prevent heart rhythm problems." The study didn't offer any reason why coffee might reduce heart rhythm problems, Klatsky said. "It could be that coffee drinkers have better diets or exercise more. We can't say for sure that it might not be related to minor heart rhythm problems that don't require hospitalization." The bottom line: "Coffee drinkers don't have to quit because they have heart rhythm problems," Klatsky said. "That's about as far as we can go." Another study that has followed more than 3,000 men and women for 20 years found no association between coffee consumption and atherosclerosis for just about every demographic group -- men and women, blacks and whites, smokers and nonsmokers. Participants in the study included people whose coffee consumption ranged from none to more than four cups a day. "Based on these data, there does not appear to be any substantial association Max 89 between coffee drinking and increased or decreased odds of developing atherosclerosis or its progression over time," study leader Jared Reis, an epidemiologist with the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, said in a prepared statement. The third study, based on a report from the long-running Women's Health Study, provided a possible explanation for a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes -- the kind that generally develops later in life -- among coffee drinkers. Researchers compared 359 post-menopausal women newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and 359 women without the disease. They found that women who drank four or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day had a 56 percent lower risk of developing the condition than those who did not drink coffee. That reduced risk appears to be due to the effects of caffeine on a protein that binds to sex hormones, said Dr. Atsushi Goto, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who presented the report. But the finding is preliminary and requires further study, Goto added. The report linking consumption of one to three cups of coffee a day with a air max slightly increased risk of high blood pressure came from Dr. Liwei Chen, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health, using data from six studies that included more than 172,000 participants. "Based on our results, long-term coffee drinking might be a risk factor for hypertension, but the effect is very moderate," Chen said. "We definitely need more research and evidence to clarify our findings based on the meta-analysis of published prospective studies. Meanwhile, I think it is important for people to consider lowering their coffee drinking if they are concerned about their blood pressure." nike max max shoes

A jury convicted an amateur photographer Thursday for the third time in the murder of a 12-year-old girl and also found him guilty in the brutal stranglings of four women, whose deaths went unsolved for decades until investigators discovered DNA and other evidence tying the cases together. Jurors took less than two days to find Rodney James Alcala, 66, guilty of five counts of first-degree murder after six weeks of grueling testimony. Alcala, a UCLA graduate with prior convictions for sexual molestation and rape, showed no emotion as the verdicts were read. The jury also found true special circumstance allegations of rape, torture and kidnapping, making him eligible for the death penalty. Jurors return next week for the penalty phase. Alcala, who represented himself, has been sentenced to death twice wholesale ed hardybefore for 12-year-old Robin Samsoe's murder, but both convictions were overturned. The four other cases were heard for the first time this year. Minutes after the verdict, Samsoe's older brother stood in the hallway and called his mother as his relatives enveloped the two prosecutors in bear hugs. Robert Samsoe, who was 15 when his sister was murdered, said he thinks daily about what his sister would be like if she were still alive. The blond-haired girl, who would have been 42, was passionate about drama and ballet and spent hours debating with friends which was better, ballet or gymnastics. "Robin would have been a teacher, I think, and she would have been a great mom and a great aunt," he said, tearing up. He added that the crime and the ensuing 30 years of litigation have taken a heavy toll. "I would have probably had a childhood" without the murder, he said. "When this happened, our lives got turned upside down. It separated a family. There's more to it than just Robin." Investigators arrested Alcala a month after Samsoe disappeared on ed hardy denim June 20, 1979 while riding a friend's bike to a ballet class in Huntington Beach in Orange County. Her body was found 12 days later in the Angeles National Forest, where it had been mutilated by wild animals. Alcala's parole agent quickly recognized him from a police sketch and called authorities. Alcala, who at the time was awaiting trial for the rape of a 15-year-old girl, has been in custody ever since. But prosecutors only added the murders of four Los Angeles County women in 2006 after investigators discovered forensic evidence linking him to those crimes, including DNA found on three of the women, a bloody handprint and marker testing done on blood Alcala left on a towel in the fourth victim's home. Bruce Barcomb, the brother of Alcala's first known victim, 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, said he had almost given up hope that police would solve the case. "DNA technology never entered my mind," he said. "There was a one-in-100 billion chance of a match — and it was Jill." The jury heard testimony that two of the four adult victims wereAir Max posed nude and possibly photographed after their deaths; one was raped with a claw hammer; and all of them were repeatedly strangled and resuscitated during their deaths to prolong their agony. Prosecutors also alleged Alcala took earrings from at least two of the victims as trophies. The Samsoe case, which was first tried in 1980, presented more of a challenge for prosecutors. No one saw her abducted and investigators were unable to recover forensic evidence from her mutiliated body. The trial focused almost entirely on the Samsoe murder and Alcala chose not to address the four other cases when he testified in his own defense. Prosecutors relied on witnesses who saw a curly-haired photographer taking pictures of Samsoe, her friend and other teenagers on the beach minutes before she disappeared. Photos of one of the girls were later found in his possession. Also key to the trial was a pair of gold ball earrings that Samsoe's mother said belonged to her daughter. The earrings were found in a jewelry pouch in a storage locker that Alcala had rented in Seattle. Investigators found other earrings in the same pouch, including a small rose-shaped stud that contained a trace of DNA from another of Alcala's alleged victims, Charlotte Lamb. Alcala maintained, however, that the gold ball earrings were his and introduced a video of himself as the winning contestant on a 1978 episode of "The Dating Game." He told jurors the grainy video clip showed him wearing the earrings under his long, feathered hair a year before Samsoe was killed. He accused prosecutors of lumping the four Los Angeles women in with Samsoe ed hardy outlet to inflame the jury and pointed out lapses in witnesses' recollections of that day. The other women murdered were Georgia Wixted, 27, a nurse from Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, a legal secretary from Santa Monica; Jill Parenteau, 21, a key punch operator from Burbank; and Barcomb, a teen who had run away to Los Angeles from Oneida, N.Y. weeks before her murder. Prosecutor Matt Murphy said Thursday he would call as witnesses in the penalty case two of Alcala's earlier victims, including the teenager whose rape case against Alcala was pending in 1979 when he murdered Samsoe. Alcala was convicted of sexually assaulting the other woman in 1968. Carmelo Anthony

Fewer airliners crashed around the world last year, but more people died in the accidents, an industry group said Thursday. The number of deaths rose to 685 from 502 the previous year, the International Air Transport Association said. Yet the number of deadly accidents dropped to 18 from 23 the year before, a major accident rate that was the second-lowest on record, the association said. The good news is that the accident rate is half of what it was in the 1990s, a safety expert said. Better warning systems help keep pilots from flying planes into the ground and help them turn to avoid midair collisions, said Jim Burin, director of technical programs at the Flight Safety Foundation. The bad news is that the accident rate improved mainly in the first half of the last Air Maxdecade, Burin said. "The last half we basically haven't improved at all," he said. "It's been pretty static." Three accidents accounted for most of the deaths: • Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Brazil to France with 228 people aboard on June 1. French authorities announced Wednesday that they will begin a new $13 million search for the remains of the Airbus A330. • A Yemenia Airways Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros Islands on June 30, killing 152 people on board. A 12-year-old girl clinging to debris survived. • A Russian-made jetliner bound for Armenia crashed in northwest Iran shortly after taking off from Tehran on July 15. All 168 people on board were killed. The annual number of deaths has fluctuated over the past decade, peaking in 2005 at 1,035, the association said. The major accident rate for 2009 — 0.7 accidents per million flights — was the second lowest ever and is more than a third lower than the rate 10 years ago, the association said. The rate is based on Western-built jets destroyed, substantially damaged or written off as Air Max Tn 10losses by air carriers. Burin, whose aviation safety organization is based in Alexandria, Va., said pilots flying planes into the ground were once the top cause of airline crashes, but those kinds of accidents have been all but eliminated by better warning systems. Another improvement was replacement of many cockpit gauges with computer screens that are easier for pilots to read and give them quicker to access more information, Burin said.

Latvia sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction Friday, officials said. The town formerly known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse. A representative of a Russian investor won the bidding contest in Latvia's capital, Riga, with an offer of 1.55 million lats ($3.1 million), said Anete Fridensteina-Bridina, a spokeswoman for the Baltic country's privatization agency. She said the buyer was Aleksejevskoje-Serviss, a Russia-based firm, though she could not provide details. It wasn't immediately clear what plans the buyer had for the 110-acre basketball shoes(45 hectare) property, which is located in western Latvia about 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Riga. The town contains about 70 dilapidated buildings, including apartment blocks, a school, barracks and an officers' club. Built in the 1980s, Skrunda-1 was a secret settlement not marked on Soviet maps because of the two enormous radar installations that listened to objects in space and monitored the skies for a U.S. nuclear missile attack. Like all clandestine towns in the Soviet Union, it was kept off maps and given a code-name — which usually consisted of a number and the name of a nearby city. After the Soviet Union fractured in 1991, a newly independent Latvia was eager to scuttle all Soviet military bases and expel Russian troops. Russia's Defense Ministry, however, continued to rely on Skrunda's early warning system, and as a result the radar base was for years used as a negotiation tool between Washington and Moscow. One of the radar buildings — dubbed Pechora — was enormous, soaring 60 meters (180 feet). In May 1995, it was ceremoniously blown up by a U.S. demolition firm using over a ton of dynamite. Finally, in 1998 the last residents of Skrunda-1 departed, leaving behind hundreds of vacant apartments and dozens of buildings. Talk about transforming the town into a recreational area went nowhere, and finally two years ago Latvia's government decided to put Air Maxthe entire settlement on the auction block. Sarmite Stradniece, a resident of Skrunda, which is 3 miles (5 kilometers) south of Skrunda-1, praised the idea to sell the former military base. "They need to restore that place and let some people live there," she said. The fact that the town was sold to a Russian investor is bound to bother nationalists in Latvia, who are leery of Russian capital buying real estate in the tiny Baltic state, but privatizations officials insisted the sale was a success. "It fetched 10 times the starting price," Fridensteina-Bridina said, "and finally something can be done with the town." Tracy McGrady