Ex-Official Is Charged After Deaths at Coal Mine
Prosecutors
in West Virginia charged the highest-ranking executive in an investigation about
the 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 miners. He is
the former president of the Green Valley Coal Company, and will plead guilty but
is cooperating with the investigationHe was charged with one felony count of
conspiracy to defraud the US and a second misdemeanor conspiracy count. He knowingly
violated safety laws at Massey’s mines and worked to hide those violations by
giving advance warnings of surprise inspections by the Mine Safety and Health
Administration. In June 2011 Massey Energy agreed to pay $209 million in
restitution and civil and criminal penalties over the explosion, the worst
American mining disaster in nearly 40 years.
This is so sad because this man could have
prevented this accident if he actually cared about his employees. The employees
also should have spoken out about this obvious illegal activity.
On Closest Planet to the Sun, NASA Finds Lots of Ice
Mercury is as cold as ice even though it is the closest
planet to the sun. It has 100 billion to one trillion tons of ice. There is
enough ice to encase Washington, D.C. in a frozen block two and a half miles
deep. It is a counterintuitive discovery for a place that also ranks among the
hottest in the solar system. At noon at the equator on Mercury, the temperature
can hit 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But near Mercury’s poles, deep within craters
where the Sun never shines, temperatures dip to as cold as minus 370.The
same technique was used to detect frozen water below the surface on Mars and
within similar craters on the Moon. The ice is almost
pure water, which means that it arrived within the last few tens of millions of
years.
This is interesting because people always talk
about life on mars, but not life on Mercury. Its really cool and I want to know
more about what this could mean to us as earthlings.
End of the Line for an Oyster Farm
Interior
Secretary ended a longstanding dispute that pitted wilderness advocates against
supporters of a Northern California oyster farm. The farm’s lease from Point
Reyes National Seashore would end on Friday as originally planned. Drakes
Estero, where the oyster operation has existed for the last 40 years, will
become a federally designated wilderness area. The oyster farm is the source of
roughly 40 percent of California’s oysters.
The
department indicated it would do what it could “to help employees who might be
affected by this decision”. Three environmental groups — the Sierra Club, the
National Wildlife Federation and the National Parks Conservation Association —praised
the decision.
It is great that the employees
that will be affected will be helped out by the department. It is important to
not let people suffer even when protecting the environment.
Japan’s Space Agency Says Rocket Information Was Stolen
by Computer Virus
The Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency said that the virus
in a computer at its Tsukuba Space Center northeast of Tokyo was found to be collecting
data and sending it outside the agency. No other computers at the center had
been infected. Japanese defense companies have been recent targets of similar
information-stealing viruses, some previously traced to China. The data stolen
from the space agency included information about a solid-fuel rocket still
under development.
Interesting, people and
agencies can never be too careful-this can be majorly problematic for many
agencies. I hope it did not affect the future of the rocket. Cyber security is
imperative nowadays for the future of many companies and organizations.
Ex-Principal Is Convicted of Sex Abuse
The
former principal of a private school in Brooklyn was found guilty in State
Supreme Court of sexually abusing three boys over the course of a decade,
including one boy who was 7 years old when the abuse started. The jury found
the man, Emanuel Yegutkin, 33, guilty of 75 counts of sexual abuse, including
the top charge, sexual conduct against a child in the first degree, which
carries a maximum 25-year prison sentence. Mr. Yegutkin was the principal of
Elite High School, a private Jewish school for Russian-Americans. In 1996, Mr.
Yegutkin began to abuse the 7-year-old son of a family friend, and also
sexually abused the boy’s older brother. In 2008 he showed pornography to a
third boy. The school had no reports of improper behavior.
This is disgusting. How can
people be so terrible? This man has ruined his own life as well as the lives of
three young boys. I cannot believe that he was a school principal, how utterly despicable.
China
Said to Fuel Illegal Trade in Timber
China has a
booming trade in illegally harvested timber which is spurring the destruction
of fragile ecosystems. The Environmental Investigation Agency has largely
turned a blind eye as wood importers and furniture makers have profited from a
$4 billion industry that harvests wood illegally. The steep increase in illegal
wood mirrors a growing demand in China for ivory, shark fins and endangered. The
unlawful cutting of tropical rain forest is a contributing factor in the
growing violence among loggers, forestry workers and environmental activists in
Africa and Asia. Last year China was the destination for roughly 30 percent of
all the logs traded on the world market, making it the top importer of raw
timber. At least 10 percent of China’s timber imports were illegally harvested,
an amount that would fill 200,000 shipping containers.
I think
that this is a situation of people not caring about the welfare of others or
the environment because it is not happening locally. Even if it was, they wouldn’t
necessarily care. It is so awful that people are so indifferent unless things
are happening directly to them.
Federal Government to Sell Wind Farm Leases
The
federal government plans to sell leases for wind farms off the
coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Virginia.
The leases for the two areas, which total more than 430 square miles, will be
sold next year. One area for lease is about 10 miles off Rhode Island’s shore,
and the other is about 27 miles off the southern part of Virginia. Each area
could be developed to generate enough electricity to power 700,000 homes.
It is awesome that people are finally making
moves in the government to promote positive energy. I hope that in the near
future we will all have wind and solar energy to power our homes and
businesses.
Jane Holtz Kay, a Prophet of Climate Change, Dies at
74
Her 1997
book, “Asphalt Nation,” said that in less time than it takes you to read this
sentence, Americans riding around in cars and trucks will dump another 180,000
pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.She died in Boston on Nov. 5 at
74. Her book proposed ways to reverse the environmental damage caused by
suburban sprawl: by returning to the city, using public transit, living one’s
daily life, as much as possible, within walking distance. “She was a big
believer in doing things.” She died of complications of
Alzheimer’s disease. Ms. Kay wrote three books on conservation of natural
resources and urban environments. “Asphalt Nation,” offered a unified vision
for saving the cities and the planet and achieving social harmony by
overthrowing the cultural dominance of the internal combustion engine. “Here at
the so-called top of the food chain,” she wrote, “the water we drink, the food
we eat, the entire way we live, is corrupted by a toxic artifact. The car, its
pollutants, its highways, its trips.”
Her ideas follow the same view of our class. Cutting
back is the key, if we don’t do so soon, we will be in big trouble. Unfortunately,
people believe that they cant make a difference when they really can. If everyone
altered their life slightly, we could make a big difference in our futures.
William Turnbull, Scottish Sculptor, Dies at 90
William
Turnbull, a Scottish sculptor known for his blending of modernism with archaic
and primitive forms, died on Nov. 15 in London. He was 90 From postwar European
figurative sculpture, as reflected in works by Alberto Giacometti and Henry
Moore, he turned toward an organic form of semi-abstraction as displayed by
Constantin Brancusi, then to a hard-edged and geometric Minimalist trend before
returning to his earlier figurative style. He was best known for simplified,
rough-looking forms with tactile surfaces that he distilled from ancient but
sophisticated objects like votive goddess figures, masks, totems, stone tools
and arrowheads, as well as ancient architecture like the dolmens of Stonehenge.
He was a
talented artist, I looked up his name an artwork. I appreciated his style, and
the fact that he got to live to a ripe old age. His legacy will live on.
Establishing His Name, No Matter How You Say It
Basil Soda is a Lebanese
fashion designer who was having a trunk show at Jimmy’s New York boutique in
Gravesend, which will carry his collections for the
first time next spring. The correct pronunciation is BAH-seel. Mr. Soda is
known for structured flourishes (he studied architecture at the Holy Spirit
University of Kaslik in Lebanon for two years) and high price tags (according
to Elizabeth Lepore, an owner of Jimmy’s, a ready-to-wear evening dress costs
around $2,500). He is far from an
industry novice, having worked for his fellow Lebanese designer Elie
Saab for four years before striking out on his own in 2000, but he has
been attracting new attention for his celebrity
dressing. He is hoping to expand his ready-to-wear business.
It is fantastic that smaller scale designers are
getting their names out there by dressing celebrities. It would be much more
fantastic if he was environmentally savvy or socially conscious. Hopefully that
will begin to trend more prevalently in the near future.
Delta and JetBlue Waive Change Fees After Sandy-Hit Schools Shorten
Breaks
When Hurricane Sandy made
landfall, JetBlue and Delta Air Lines offered to waive change fees for
travelers who needed to change their flights. More than a month later, the
carriers offered a second wave of amnesty to a very small niche: passengers
whose children attend schools affected by the hurricane. Dozens of public
schools across New York City and Long Island were forced to close for several
days because they were used as evacuation centers. Because families with school
calendars plan ahead, several New Yorkers had already planned vacations. Today
Jet Blue and Delta Air Lines responded, announcing that they will waive change
fees for those who were scheduled to travel Feb. 15 to Feb. 24, the school
holiday.
Good for
those people, many are still cleaning up their homes and are trying to get
their stuff together but don’t want to lose money on their tickets. Good call Jetblue
and Delta, good publicity and public relations.
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