Oil companies brace for possible Gulf storm (Reuters)

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A tropical depression hovering over the central Gulf of Mexico on Friday threatened to bring heavy flooding to the energy infrastructure-heavy Gulf Coast in the coming days.

Tropical depression 13, which could become Tropical Storm Lee later on Friday, has already prompted oil and gas producers to shut down platforms and evacuate workers from the offshore oil patch that provides about a third of the nation's oil production and about 12 percent of its natural gas.

The slow-moving system that has essentially parked about 210 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River could bring up to 20 inches of rain over southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama through Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Thursday declared a state of emergency, citing the likelihood coastal and inland areas would be drenched by up to 15 inches of torrential rain within 48 hours.

Heavy, prolonged rains could pose a severe test to low-lying New Orleans and its protective levee system.

The Gulf Coast is home to 40 percent of U.S. refining capacity and 30 percent of natural gas processing plant capacity. Much of that infrastructure is in southeast Texas and near the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi.

"They're calling for 18 to 20 inches of rain in spots over the next several days. You've got big issues," said Aaron Studwell, a meteorologist with Wilkens Weather in Houston.

Will Hinson, spokesman for Exxon Mobil Corp's joint-venture 192,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana, said the plant was prepared and was operating normally.

Other refiners also said they were prepared for bad weather and were monitoring the system.

Major Gulf producer Royal Dutch Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh said on Friday the company had "minimal" production impacts, but had evacuated 500 workers and may evacuate more. Shell operates six oil and gas platforms in the Gulf.

Other producers, including BP Plc and Anadarko Petroleum Corp, were shutting all output and evacuating all workers.

Studwell said the system was about 190 miles southwest of the center of Mississippi Canyon and 75 miles south-southwest of Green Canyon, the two areas of the Gulf with the highest concentrations of oil and gas platforms.

(Reporting by Kristen Hays and Erwin Seba; editing by Jim Marshall)

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States brace for grad rate dips as formula changes (AP)

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Heather Hollingsworth And Dorie Turner, Associated Press – 55?mins?ago

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – States are bracing for plummeting high school graduation rates as districts nationwide dump flawed measurement formulas that often undercounted dropouts and produced inflated results.

Education wonks long have suspected the statistics used by some people to determine how their neighborhood high school is faring — or even where to buy a house — can be figured using various formulas that produce wildly different results.

Now, many states are facing a sobering reset: Some could see numbers fall by as many as 20 percentage points.

Liz Utrup, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Education Department, said graduation rate numbers will soon appear to decrease "across the board" as states move to a uniform calculation that requires them to track each student individually, giving a more accurate count of how many actually finish high school.

"Through this uniform method, states are raising the bar on data standards, and simply being more honest," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said.

Most states are required to convert to the new calculation this year, but the number won't count as part of federal No Child Left Behind benchmarks until the 2012-13 school year. Schools that consistently miss those measures face sanctions.

All but two states — Idaho and Kentucky, which need more time to develop student tracking systems — will start submitting the new numbers to the federal government starting late this summer.

States that converted to the new formula already have seen drops ranging from modest to massive. Michigan had a nearly 10 percentage point fall when they made the switch in 2007. About half of states are not yet using the new calculation.

Florida's graduation rate remained about stable, at 79 percent, when it adopted the new graduation rate in the 2009-10 school year. It would have been nearly two points higher if it had continued under the old calculation.

States making the switch this year are offering estimates of expected dips and discussing the change in school board meetings. In Kansas, the graduation rate is expected to tumble from 89 percent to 80 percent, with one district in the state anticipating a 20-point drop. Georgia said its overall rate — now at 80 percent — could plummet about 15 percentage points.

"We're certainly concerned no matter what with that number under 100 percent," said Kelly Smith, superintendent of Belle Plaine schools in Minnesota, which is transitioning to the new formula this year. "The new system isn't changing what we're doing in our schools, and we need to get that point across."

Matt Cardoza, a spokesman for Georgia's Department of Education, said while he worries the public may think that high numbers of students are suddenly failing to finish school, the new formula could produce "a more accurate picture of how many of our students are actually finishing high school with a diploma."

Jay Greene, who heads the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, said he started studying graduation rates in 1999 because he determined many of them made no sense.

"The initial reaction was that I was mistaken, that I couldn't know," said Greene. "And I pressed the issue with reporters and at meetings and basically asked the question, `If it's true that you have a 1 percent annual dropout rate, how come you have twice as many ninth and tenth and graders as you have graduates?'"

Much of the blame for past problems went to something called the "leaver method," a popular calculation for determining graduation rates that also has gained a reputation for being the most generous. The method, used by about half the states last year, works like this: If a school had 100 graduates and 10 students who dropped out from their freshmen to senior year, 100 would be divided by 110, giving the school a graduation rate of 90.9 percent.

Schools weren't dinged if students took more than four years to graduate. When students disappeared, they often were classified as transfers, even though some of them had actually dropped out. Many schools weren't required to document that transfers showed up somewhere else.

"You have to be honest with the data," said David Doty, superintendent of the Canyon School District in Utah. "If the data doesn't mean anything, there's no point in using it anyway."

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, used the National Governors Association to push for graduation rate changes while he led Virginia from 2002 to 2006. His motivation, he said, was a desire to see how his state stacked up.

Virginia was boasting 90 percent or better graduation rates during Warner's drive for a uniform rate, but that dropped to 81 when the new formula was adopted in 2008.

Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Education settled on a formula similar to the NGA's: the number of graduates in a given year, divided by the number of students who enrolled four years earlier. Also, schools must document transfer students or they'll artificially deflate the graduation rate.

Schools weren't necessarily being subversive in the way they calculated their rates, said Ryan Reyna, senior policy analyst with the National Governors Association. Many states used imperfect formulas because they couldn't track students who moved, which is being fixed with the addition of new state-level systems that identification numbers to each student.

Experts hope the changes will draw attention to the dropout issue and lead to resources being focused on the problem. That is happening in Kansas and other states, where officials are developing a system of early indicators to alert schools that a student is at risk.

"We're going to take an honest look in the mirror and see how real our graduation rate is and where we need to cut the dropout rate," said former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which has extensively studied the nation's hodgepodge system of graduation rates. "You've got to know how deep the hole is in order to develop a strategy for getting out of it."

___

Associated Press writer Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this report. Turner reported from Atlanta.

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Rebels brace for attacks as Gaddafi threatens Europe (Reuters)

DAFNIYA/AL-QAWALISH, Libya (Reuters) – Rebel fighters braced for further attacks on Saturday from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi after the Libyan leader staged a show of support at home and threatened to strike his enemies abroad.

Rebels in Misrata said the death toll in the western town, a longtime insurgent stronghold, had risen to seven from six, with at least 17 wounded, after a heavy attack by Gaddafi artillery the day before.

A rebel spokesman in the town on the Mediterranean coast, who gave his name as Youssef, told Reuters: "The situation is calm today in Misrata. Yesterday seven rebels were killed. We expect fighting this evening."

Rebels have advanced on two fronts against Gaddafi forces in recent days, but government troops have fought back and Gaddafi has also sought to encourage his forces.

In a defiant speech late on Friday, Gaddafi threatened to export the war to Europe in revenge for the NATO-led military campaign against him, and to crush his enemies.

The "traitors" ranged against him in Libya and elsewhere will "fall under the feet" of the Libyan masses, he said.

In Tripoli and 800 km (500 miles) to the south in the desert town of Sabha, tens of thousands -- swelled by representatives of the tribes of the region -- gathered for Friday prayers in what appeared to be an attempt to show that Gaddafi enjoys widespread support in the areas he still controls despite the rebel gains of recent weeks.

Gaddafi supporters rallied in Tripoli's Green Square, underscoring his refusal to step down after four decades in power and five months of fighting.

Speaking on Libyan television, Gaddafi threatened to send hundreds of Libyans to carry out revenge attacks in Europe.

"Hundreds of Libyans will martyr in Europe. I told you it is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But we will give them a chance to come to their senses," he said in an audio speech.

HEAVY FIRE

While the insurgents have advanced on two fronts, rebels in Misrata have come under heavy artillery fire from Gaddafi's forces.

A rebel sympathizer in Misrata told Reuters opposition forces had been moving closer to neighboring Zlitan, one of a chain of government-controlled towns blocking their advance to Tripoli.

As they advanced, pro-Gaddafi troops inside the city fired rounds of explosives to block their progress, the sympathizer said in an email.

"The rebels are waiting for NATO backup or for Gaddafi forces to run out of ammunition to make a move to take the city center," he said.

On the other major front, in the Western Mountains region southwest of Tripoli, NATO warplanes bombed forces loyal to Gaddafi several times on Friday, their bombs landing about 3 km (2 miles) east of the village of Al-Qawalish, according to one rebel fighter.

After weeks of static fighting, the rebels have made significant advances this week: pushing west from Misrata to within 13 km (8 miles) of Zlitan, where large numbers of pro-Gaddafi forces are based, and seizing the village of Al-Qawalish in the southwest.

Taking Al-Qawalish brings them closer to having control of a major highway into the capital.

Rebel advances over the last two weeks have allowed normal life to resume in towns no longer within shelling distance of Gaddafi's troops.

Rebels staged a military parade on Friday evening in Zintan, driving tanks through the streets of town in the Western Mountains. People fired rifles in the air including one small boy who opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle while perched on his father's shoulders.

(Additional reporting by Lamine Chikhi in Sabha, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Tarek Amara in Tunis; Writing by Giles Elgood)

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