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Saturday, June 20, 2009

For the past ten years, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been overseeing the asbestos clean-up in the small town of Libby, Montana, which has been on the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List since 2002.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration declared Libby and the immediate area a “public health emergency”. Under this state of emergency the EPA is increasing clean-up assistance and medical care. According to federal prosecutors, asbestos has taken 200 lives and is the root cause of at least 1,000 illnesses in the surrounding area.

“This is a tragic public health situation that has not received the recognition it deserves by the federal government for far too long,” according to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

In the 1920’s The Zonolite Company began producing vermiculite, a mineral that is often used in insulation. Between 1963 and 1990, W.R. Grace & Company took over the mine operations. Tremolite asbestos was discovered in the vermiculite product. A study conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry discovered that the incidence of asbestosis in the population of the mine site area is far higher than the national average.

Airborne asbestos exposure can lead to mesothelioma, a cancer which develops in the sac surrounding the lungs and chest cavity, the abdominal cavity, or the sac surrounding the heart. Prolonged exposure can lead to lung scarring, asbestosis, and lung cancer. Patients diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma generally are left with six months to a year before death.

The tremolite dust from the mine began leaking into the air from the plant in 1919. This resulted in a hazy asbestos dust cloud covering lawns, cars, clothing, and school athletic fields, creating an issue that citizens of Libby had to deal with on an everyday basis. The large amount of dust gave the impression of the aftereffects of a light sandstorm.

W. R. Grace and Company did not deny that asbestos was found contaminating the vermiculite in the old mine. They said they proceeded in a responsible manner to clean up contamination following the mine closure. Grace will reimburse the EPA for US$250 million of the US$333 million that the EPA and the Department of Health and Human Services has set aside for medical expenses and asbestos clean-up. This money will be invested over the next five years, and does not include the millions in medical costs already footed by the company for residents of Libby and the nearby town of Troy.

“Today is the day that after years of work we were able to succeed in getting this [emergency declaration] done,” Senator from Montana Max Baucus said, speaking at the EPA press conference. “We will continue to push until Libby has a clean bill of health.”

Monday, January 19, 2009

New reports indicate that the proliferation of the Conficker computer worm (also known as Kido or Downadup) has nearly quadrupled in the last four days. The worm has gone from just over 2 million Microsoft Windows computers infected to 8.9 million, according to estimates by anti-virus company F-Secure. Though Microsoft issued a patch with a severity rating of “critical” in mid-October 2008, just days after Conficker was first discovered, many business computers still have not applied the patch.

Most to all of the infected computers are on corporate networks; Conficker cannot spread through the Internet or e-mails. Instead, when an infected laptop connects to a corporate network, the worm searches for vulnerable computers and attempts to guess its password. Conficker also infects any network shares the user may be connected to. The worm has a list of about one hundred common passwords, including “password” and “qwerty“. Conficker also infects USB sticks, which then infect any Microsoft Windows computer the stick is plugged in to.

After it gains access to the computer, Conficker adds itself to the Windows processes “services.exe”, “explorer.exe” and “svchost.exe”, then makes a copy of itself as a DLL file with a random five- to eight-character name. The worm also disables Windows services such as Windows Update and Windows Defender. Conficker also blocks access to most security-related sites, including Windows Update. The worm then checks several websites for the current date, then generates a domain name based on that date and downloads infected files from that domain. This domain is believed to be in Ukraine. Conficker makes itself very hard to remove by registering the downloaded files as kernel drivers and the DLL copy of itself of a service.

Microsoft has advised users to install the patch (security bulletin MS08-067), then run the latest edition of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Monday, August 8, 2005

NASA has postponed the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-114, planned for today.

Officials initially delayed the landing, but finally cancelled any attempts for today citing the reason as “unstable, unacceptable cloud cover [with the] potential for showers in vicinity of landing site.”

Landing the space shuttle craft has been likened to landing a “brick“. The approach to the landing field is at a steep pitch (nose up) and a high rate of descent. The shuttle is not very maneuverable and has one shot at the correct landing approach. Pilots cannot re-fire the engines to circle around for another approach, which is why low cloud cover is of such concern.

Discovery has spent twelve days in orbit. On Tuesday, there will be six landing opportunities: two each at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Edwards Air Force Base in California, and White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. Shuttle managers prefer a landing at Kennedy, but will consider the alternate sites if bad weather in Florida rules out landing there. NASA administrators insist that the shuttle will land tomorrow at one of the three sites, rather than spending yet another day in orbit.

The flight marked the first time a shuttle has been inspected in orbit. The crew made two space walks to effect minor repairs to the Orbiter’s thermal protection system as a result.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

A magnitude 8.1 undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami that has killed at least fifteen people, including six children, in the Solomon Islands. Tsunami warnings have been issued for parts of Australia as well.

According to the US Geological Survey, the magnitude 8.0 quake struck Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 20:39:56 (UTC) about 45 km (25 mi) south-southeast of Gizo, New Georgia Islands, Solomon Islands, at a depth of 10 km.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The head of a day care centre in Manila, Philippines, has boarded a bus containing 32 children and 2 teachers from the centre and is holding them hostage, demanding better education rights and better housing for them.

Jun Ducat and one other armed individual took the party hostage while they were going out on a trip with the day care centre.

The bus has been surrounded by armed Filipino police, and through negotiation, the hostage takers agreed to release all the remaining children on the bus at 11:00am BST (10:00am GMT), but the deadline for this has now passed with no sign of the remaining children being released as per the agreement.

One child has been released from the bus and taken away by police and emergency medical services suffering from a high fever.

Mr Ducat said that he had no intention of harming the people aboard the bus in any way, and indeed, the siege has ended with his surrender.

“I accept that I should be jailed because what I did was against the law,” Ducat said in an interview with Associated Press. No child was reported physically injured, but they are undergoing medical checkups and psychological debriefings.

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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

After a 244-year span in print, the Encyclopædia Britannica will discontinue its published volumes.

With less than 1% of revenue coming from print versions, Jorge Cauz, Britannica’s president, indicates there simply is not sufficient demand for the print publication. In the last 11 years demand has plummeted due to competition from Wikipedia and Britannica’s own digital version.

With a $1,395 price tag for the print version, many people have switched to the online version of Britannica or free sources such as Wikipedia. Critics of Britannica are often quick to point out that Wikipedia is regularly updated by tens of thousands of users on a wider range of topics. Britannica remains confident that their customers will appreciate their style of articles and the expert contributors.

Britannica peaked in sales in 1990 with 120,000 sets sold. The 2010 edition will be the last in print and has sold 8,000 sets to date; with 4,000 sets remaining.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Princeton, New Jersey —According to Ryan Walsh, editor of the websites for both the Princeton Journal of Science and American Foreign Policy, internet news service Wikinews was the topic of a report by Federico Baradello in a Princeton University course on mass media and public policy. The course, offered through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, studies “the impact of policy on the content, presentation, influence, and technology of a rapidly-evolving 21st century news media,” according to the school.

Walsh, currently a junior at Princeton, characterized the report in an email to Wikinews user Pingswept as “great” and added that “everyone in the class seemed to enjoy learning about Wikinews, and Federico was a great speaker.”

According to an email from Baradello, the report, which took place on Monday, 21 February 2005, provided a “basic overview of its history (evolution), ownership, viewership, and position in the news market.” It included a live demonstration of adding new content to Wikinews. The barebones content provided in the demonstration was developed into this article.

Baradello’s report is available on the course’s blog. His final course paper on the decentralization of news gathering includes a case study on Wikinews with commentary from Jimmy Wales and will be available in PDF form by late May.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The San Diego, California suburb of Chula Vista has responded to the recent housing crisis with an aggressive blight control ordinance that compels lenders to maintain the appearance of vacant homes. As foreclosures increase both locally and throughout the United States, the one year old ordinance has become a model for other cities overwhelmed by the problem of abandoned homes that decay into neighborhood eyesores.

Chula Vista city code enforcement manager Doug Leeper told the San Diego Union Tribune that over 300 jurisdictions have contacted his office during the past year with inquiries about the city’s tough local ordinance. Coral Springs, Florida, and California towns Stockton, Santee, Riverside County, and Murietta have all modeled recently enacted anti-blight measures after Chula Vista’s. On Wednesday, 8 October, the Escondido City Council also voted to tighten local measures making lenders more accountable for maintenance of empty homes.

Under the Chula Vista ordinance lenders become legally responsible for upkeep as soon as a notice of mortgage default gets filed on a vacant dwelling, before actual ownership of the dwelling returns to the lender. Leeper regards that as “the cutting-edge part of our ordinance”. Chula Vista also requires prompt registration of vacant homes and applies stiff fines as high as US$1000 per day for failure to maintain a property. Since foreclosed properties are subject to frequent resale between mortgage brokers, city officials enforce the fines by sending notices to every name on title documents and placing a lien on the property, which prevents further resale until outstanding fines have been paid. In the year since the ordinance went into effect the city has applied $850,000 in fines and penalties, of which it has collected $200,000 to date. The city has collected an additional $77,000 in registration fees on vacant homes.

Jolie Houston, an attorney in San Jose, believes “Lenders will respond when it costs them less to maintain the property than to ignore local agency requirements.” Traditionally, local governments have resorted to addressing blight problems on abandoned properties with public funds, mowing overgrown lawns and performing other vital functions, then seeking repayment afterward. Chula Vista has moved that responsibility to an upfront obligation upon lenders.

As one of the fastest growing cities in the United States during recent years, Chula Vista saw 22.6% growth between 2000 and 2006, which brought the city’s population from 173,556 in the 2000 census to an estimated 212,756, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Chula Vista placed among the nation’s 20 fastest growing cities in 2004. A large proportion of local homes were purchased during the recent housing boom using creative financing options that purchasers did not understand were beyond their means. Average home prices in San Diego County declined by 25% in the last year, which is the steepest drop on record. Many homeowners in the region currently owe more than their homes are worth and confront rising balloon payment mortgages that they had expected to afford by refinancing new equity that either vanished or never materialized. In August 2008, Chula Vista’s eastern 91913 zip code had the highest home mortgage default rate in the county with 154 filings and 94 foreclosures, an increase of 154% over one year previously. Regionally, the county saw 1,979 foreclosures in August.

Professionals from the real estate and mortgage industries object to Chula Vista’s response to the crisis for the additional burdens it places on their struggling finances. Said San Diego real estate agent Marc Carpenter, “that kind of measure will add additional costs to banks that have been hit really hard already and ultimately the cost will be transferred down to consumers and investors.” Yet city councils in many communities have been under pressure to do something about increasing numbers of vacant properties. Concentrations of abandoned and neglected homes can attract vandals who hasten the decline of struggling neighborhoods. Jolie Houston explained that city officials “can’t fix the lending problem, but they can try to prevent neighborhoods from becoming blighted.”

CEO Robert Klein of Safeguard, a property management firm, told the Union Tribune that his industry is having difficulty adapting to the rapidly changing local ordinances. “Every day we discover a new ordinance coming out of somewhere”, he complained. Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman from the California Association of Mortgage Bankers agreed that uneven local ordinances are likely to increase the costs of lending. Hobbs advised that local legislation is unnecessary due to California State Senate Bill 1137, which was recently approved to address blight. Yet according to Houston, the statewide measure falls short because it fails to address upkeep needs during the months between the time when foreclosure begins and when the lender takes title.