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Wisconsin Oil Spill: Enbridge Energy Reports Incident

Timothy Gardner
Huffington Post
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 12:43 UTC
oil spill
© Reuters
FILE - In this July 30, 2010 file photo, crews clean up oil, from a ruptured pipeline, owned by Enbridge Inc, near booms and absorbent materials where Talmadge Creek meets the Kalamazoo River as in Marshall Township, Mich.
* Some 1,200 barrels spill from pipeline in Wisconsin

* Spill is two years after another major Enbridge spill

* Canadian company already battling safety concerns on its line

Washington - The U.S. pipeline safety agency launched an investigation on Saturday into an oil spill in Wisconsin on Enbridge Inc's network that forced the partial shutdown of a main artery carrying light sweet Canadian crude to Chicago-area refineries.

Enbridge's 318,000 barrel per day Line 14 pipeline, part of the Lakehead system, was shut after an estimated 1,200 barrels of oil were leaked. This happened almost two years to the day after another major spill in a different section of the line, in Michigan.

Enbridge Energy Partners said on Friday there was not yet a time frame for when flows would resume, and the cause of the spill had not yet been determined.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Major blackout hits northern Indian cities- 370 million powerless in sweltering heat

Ravi Nessman
Associated Press
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Altaf Qadri/The Associated Press
Stranded commuters wait for their trains to arrive at a train station in New Delhi, India, Monday, July 30, 2012. Northern India was plunged into darkness Monday after a supply grid tripped because of overloading, officials said.
Northern India's power grid crashed Monday, halting hundreds of trains, forcing hospitals and airports to use backup generators and leaving 370 million people - more than the population of the United States and Canada combined - sweltering in the summer heat.

The blackout, one of the worst to hit India in a decade, highlighted the nation's inability to feed a growing hunger for energy as it strives to become a regional economic power.

The country's northern grid crashed about 2:30 a.m. because it could no longer keep up with the huge demand for power in the hot summer, officials in the state of Uttar Pradesh said. However, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said he was not sure exactly what caused the collapse and had formed a committee to investigate it.

The grid feeds the nation's breadbasket in Punjab, the war-wracked region of Kashmir, the burgeoning capital of New Delhi, the Dalai Lama's Himalayan headquarters in Dharmsala and the world's most populous state, the poverty stricken Uttar Pradesh.

By late morning, 60 percent of the power had been restored in the eight northern states affected by the outage and the rest was expected to be back on line by the afternoon, Shinde said. The grid was drawing power from the neighboring Eastern and Western grids as well as getting hydroelectric power from the neighboring mountain kingdom of Bhutan.
      Read More...
Handcuffs

Iran sentences four to death over banking scandal

Yeganeh Torbati
Reuters
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 05:15 UTC
An Iranian court has sentenced four people to death for their roles in a billion-dollar banking fraud scandal that forced bank executives out of their jobs and tainted the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state media reported on Monday.

The embezzlement case, discovered in September 2011, revolved around forged documents allegedly used by the directors of an Iranian investment company to secure loans totaling $2.6 billion to buy state-owned enterprises.

Thirty-nine people were tried for their involvement in the fraud.

"We are typing their sentences now and according to the sentence that was issued, four of the accused in this case were sentenced to death," judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei told the IRNA state news agency.

He did not name the individuals sentenced to death.

Two others were sentenced to life imprisonment and others received sentences ranging from 25 years and down, Mohseni-Ejei was quoted as saying.
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Che Guevara

Occupy the Dam: Brazil's Indigenous Uprising

John Perkins
Common Dreams
Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:17 UTC
In the Amazonian backcountry, tribes are challenging construction of the world's third-largest dam - by dismantling it. Here's what they can teach us about standing up to power.
Image
© Photos courtesy of International Rivers
Indigenous tribesmen stand firm near the Belo Monte Dam.

Last month, hundreds of indigenous demonstrators began dismantling a dam in the heart of Brazil's rainforest to protest the destruction it will bring to lands they have loved and honored for centuries. The Brazilian government is determined to promote construction of the massive, $14 billion Belo Monte Dam, which will be the world's third largest when it is completed in 2019. It is being developed by Norte Energia, a consortium of ten of the world's largest construction, engineering, and mining firms set up specifically for the project.

The Belo Monte Dam is the most controversial of dozens of dams planned in the Amazon region and threatens the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Amazonian people, plants, and animals. Situated on the Xingu River, the dam is set to flood roughly 150 square miles of already-stressed rainforest and deprive an estimated 20,000 people of their homes, their incomes, and - for those who succumb to malaria, bilharzia, and other diseases carried by insects and snails that are predicted to breed in the new reservoir - their lives. Moreover, the influx of immigrants will bring massive disruption to the socioeconomic balance of the region. People whose livelihoods have primarily depended on hunting and gathering or farming may suddenly find themselves forced to take jobs as manual laborers, servants, and prostitutes
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Telephone

Bomb threats lead to evacuation of 8 Walmarts, 2 in Kansas City area

Laura McCallister, DeAnn Smith and Micah Bra
KCTV 5 News
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:58 UTC
US, Missouri - At least eight Walmarts across Missouri have been evacuated Friday evening after bomb threats.

Two of the stores are in the Kansas City area.

Two and a half hours after the threats were called in, police declared the scenes as safe.

      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Mississippi church refuses couple's wedding because they are black

Jimmie E. Gates and Alex Mcdaniel
USA Today
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:52 UTC
Image
© ABC News
Te'Andrea and Charles Wilson were denied a wedding at Crystal Springs church in Mississippi
A Jackson, Miss., couple's dream of exchanging vows in the church they had been attending was dashed last week when the church pastor told them that some members had complained about the black couple getting married in the predominantly white First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs

Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson said it was devastating to move their wedding to another church only days before the July 21 wedding. Invitations and the printed program had the date and the church's name on them.

Church insiders say five or six members went to the Rev. Stan Weatherford after seeing the couple's wedding rehearsal two days before their Saturday wedding.

The church pastor said he was surprised by the reaction of some church members.
      Read More...
Handcuffs

Drunken Gang of Girls Stab 63-Year-Old Man on New York City Subway

Jessica Simone and Antonio Antenucci
New York Post
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 02:36 UTC
Image
© G.N. Miller/New York Post
Cuffed: Police detain some of the women allegedly involved in an attack on a straphanger.
Apparently, courtesy isn't contagious on the No. 6 train.

A drunken, rowdy group of young women stabbed a 63-year-old male straphanger this morning after he had the audacity to suggest they pipe down, authorities said.

"The eight females were acting stupid. He just told them, 'Relax, calm down,' '' one police source said.

Cops said the victim, whose name they have not released, was first assaulted and then stabbed in the left shoulder about 6:15 a.m.

Witnesses pointed out his attackers to cops and all eight women, ages 15 to 20, were arrested leaving the 23rd Street station, officials said.

An MTA bus driver who witnssed the bust said the women were carrying bottles of Corona and mouthed off to cops as they cuffed them, screaming "We didn't do anything!" as they were led away.

The man was in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital, cops said.
      Read More...
Info

Spain Angers Feminists with Plan to Tighten Abortion Law

Ingrid Bazinet
Agence France-Presse
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse/Dani Pozo
Women with slogans written on their bodies reading "Yes to life, but I choose" and "Priests and judges out of my body" take part in a protest against a reform of the country's abortion law recently proposed by the Spanish conservative government, at Tirso de Molina Square in Madrid.
Spain's conservative government has provoked a storm among women's groups with plans to tighten abortion laws to make the procedure illegal in cases where the foetus is deformed.

About 100 people took part in a rally in Madrid's central Tirso de Molina square on Sunday to protest against the proposed reform which they argue will take Spain back to the era of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

The crowd, mostly women, chanted "We give birth, we decide" and "Not one step backwards".

"It seems to us to be a throwback to the Franco dictatorship and we are not willing to accept under any circumstances measures that will take away our rights," said Justa Montero, member of the Feminist Assembly, one of the women's groups that organised the protest.

The government announced Friday it would alter an abortion law introduced by its Socialist predecessors in 2010 which gave women the legal right to abortion on demand for up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.

The 2010 law also allowed women the legal right to abort up to the 22nd week of pregnancy in cases where the mother's health is at risk or the foetus shows serious deformities.

In cases of extreme malformation of a foetus, an abortion could be carried out at any time if approved by an ethics committee.
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Handcuffs

Oregon Man Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail for Collecting Rainwater on His Property

Kendra Alleyne
CNSNews.com
Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press
A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to collect and use rainwater.

Gary Harrington of Eagle Point, Ore., says he plans to appeal his conviction in Jackson County (Ore.) Circuit Court on nine misdemeanor charges under a 1925 law for having what state water managers called "three illegal reservoirs" on his property - and for filling the reservoirs with rainwater and snow runoff.

"The government is bullying," Harrington told CNSNews.com in an interview Thursday.

"They've just gotten to be big bullies and if you just lay over and die and give up, that just makes them bigger bullies. So, we as Americans, we need to stand on our constitutional rights, on our rights as citizens and hang tough. This is a good country, we'll prevail," he said.

The court has given Harrington two weeks to report to the Jackson County Jail to begin serving his sentence.
      Read More...
Pistol

Massachusetts Father Shoots Children Before Killing Himself


The Guardian
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:23 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/John Ferrarone
The Benway house on Main Street in Oxford, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors say Daryl Benway killed his daughter and injured his son at the home he had shared with recently separated wife

A man who had recently separated from his wife shot his two children, killing his seven-year-old daughter, before turning the gun on himself, prosecutors said.

A family member called police Saturday night after finding the bodies of 41-year-old Daryl Benway and his daughter, Abigail, in the master bedroom of their two-story Oxford home, Worcester County district attorney Joseph Early said.

Benway's nine-year-old son, Owen, was found shot in the head in the kitchen and was taken to UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center in serious condition. Owen has been in pediatric intensive care, a spokesman for Early said Sunday. He said he had no additional information about Owen Benway's condition, and a hospital spokeswoman would not comment.
      Read More...
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