Toxic fumes continued to hang in the air at an industrial area of Los Angeles Friday, a day after a pipeline run by a company with a checkered history of accidents ruptured and spilled at least 18,000 gallons of crude oil onto city streets.
“We can smell fumes, but we’re all in today for work,” said an employee at Plumbing and Industrial Supply, a business next door to The Gentleman’s Club, a strip joint that served as the epicenter to the spill and was showered in crude during the rupture in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Toxic fumes, health concerns remain after L.A. pipeline rupture
Alex Baer: Who Goes There - Friend or Faux?
Not counting the things that looked like mushed M&M's or maybe some cushion-dried salsa chunks, the best I've ever done is a couple of hard-shell taco divots, a remote control for an oscillating fan, enough unpopped popcorn kernels for a hamster's tea break, a ripped bus transfer, half a poker chip, a pizza crust that could double as a drywall hammer, two wallet-pocket buttons, the keeper-part of ticket stub for a 1993 charity auction, and a dollar-seventeen in change.
Talk about being outclassed. Three roommates in northern New York state found $40,000 in their couch. The one they bought. Second-hand. For twenty bucks.
It was a major oops. The daughter sold it, when her mom was in the hospital for a surgery. But, it all got straightened out. The roommates tracked down the original owner somehow, maybe through the charity shop that had sold them the couch, and then, the original owner and the original cash were all restored to original condition. And they all lived originally, and happily, ever after.
David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald, allowed to appeal against ruling on Heathrow detention
David Miranda, partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, has been granted permission to appeal against a ruling that he was lawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers at Heathrow airport.
The case – which also involves a challenge to the police seizure of computer material related to the US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden – will now go to the court of appeal.
US manipulates number of Gitmo hunger strikers, says detainee
A Yemeni Guantánamo prisoner who was cleared for release four years ago claims 17 people held at the detention facility have been waging a hunger strike and are being subjected to brutal force-feedings by medical officers.
In harrowing letters sent to his attorneys at the U.K.-based human rights charity Reprieve and obtained by Al Jazeera, Emad Hassan said the hunger strikers have been “divided into two groups.”
Big mammals vs. big oil: New pipeline puts humpback whales at risk
In a deep fjord in British Columbia called the Douglas Channel, where the Kitimat River pours runs of Chinook salmon into the Pacific Ocean, fishermen see singing humpback whales fling themselves into the air.
These barnacled, 40-ton whales with long, ridged flippers were harpooned to the brink of extinction in the 1900s. Only through intense conservation efforts have they found safety in ancient migration routes. Mothers birth a single calf in tropical seas and fast for months as it nurses, before migrating thousands of miles up to the North Pacific. There, in enclaves like the Douglas Channel — a critical feeding ground — the whales nourish themselves on krill.
Study: Everyday chemicals that may increase breast cancer risk
Gasoline and chemicals formed by combustion from vehicles, lawn equipment, smoking and charred food are among the largest sources of mammary carcinogens in the environment.
Ruthann A. Rudel, Janet M. Ackerman and Julia Green Brody of the Silent Spring Institute and Kathleen R. Attfield of Harvard School of Public Health identified the highest priority chemicals to target for breast cancer prevention.
U.S. alone among Western countries on lack of paid maternity leave, UN finds
The United States is the only Western country _ and one of only three in the world _ that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers who’ve taken maternity leave from their jobs, a new U.N. study reports.
Two other countries share the U.S. position of providing “no cash benefits during maternity leave,” according to the report, which was released Tuesday by the International Labor Organization: Oman, an absolute monarchy in the Persian Gulf; and Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation where the U.S. State Department says violence against women is so common that 60 percent of men in a U.N. study acknowledged having committed a rape.
Turkish coal mine explosion kills 157, hundreds trapped
An explosion followed by a fire in a coal mine in western Turkey killed 157 miners and trapped hundreds more on Tuesday, a provincial mayor said, in what appeared to be the country's worst mining accident in years.
Rescue workers pumped oxygen into the mine to try to keep those still trapped by the blaze alive as thousands of family members and fellow workers, clamoring for information, gathered outside the town's hospital, held back behind police lines.
FDA approves 'Star Wars' robotic arm for amputees
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a robotic arm for amputees that is named for the "Star Wars" character Luke Skywalker and can perform multiple, simultaneous movements, a huge advance over the metal hook currently in use.
The FDA said on Friday it allowed the sale of the DEKA Arm System after reviewing data, including a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs study in which 90 percent of people who used the device were able to perform complex tasks. These included using keys and locks, feeding themselves, using zippers and brushing and combing hair.
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