Methane warnings ignored before NZ mine disaster

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand coal mining company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels before an underground explosion killed 29 workers two years ago, an investigation concluded.

The official report released Monday after 11 weeks of hearings on the disaster found broad safety problems in New Zealand workplaces and said the Pike River Coal company was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets.

“The company completely and utterly failed to protect its workers,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

The country’s labor minister, Kate Wilkinson, resigned from her labor portfolio after the report’s release, saying she felt it was the honorable thing to do after the tragedy occurred on her watch. She plans to retain her remaining government responsibilities.

The Royal Commission report said New Zealand has a poor workplace safety record and its regulators failed to provide adequate oversight before the explosion.

At the time of the disaster, New Zealand had just two mine inspectors who were unable to keep up with their workload, the report said. Pike River was able to obtain a permit with no scrutiny of its initial health and safety plans and little ongoing scrutiny.

Key said he agrees with the report’s conclusion that there needs to be a philosophical shift in New Zealand from believing that companies are acting in the best interests of workers to a more proscriptive set of regulations that forces companies to do the right thing.

The commission’s report recommended a new agency be formed to focus solely on workplace health and safety problems. It also recommended a raft of measures to strengthen mine oversight.

Key said his government would consider the recommendations and hoped to implement most of them. He would not commit on forming a new agency. Workplace safety issues are currently one of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

In the seven weeks before the explosion, the Pike River company received 21 warnings from mine workers that methane gas had built up to explosive levels below ground and another 27 warnings of dangerous levels, the report said. The warnings continued right up until the morning of the deadly explosion.

The company used unconventional methods to get rid of methane, the report said. Some workers even rigged their machines to bypass the methane sensors after the machines kept automatically shutting down — something they were designed to do when methane levels got too high.

The company made a “major error” by placing a ventilation fan underground instead of on the surface, the report found. The fan failed after the first of several explosions, effectively shutting down the entire ventilation system. The company was also using water jets to cut the coal face, a highly specialized technique than can release large amounts of methane.

The report did not definitively conclude what sparked the explosion itself, although it noted that a pump was switched on immediately before the explosion, raising the possibility it was triggered by an electrical arc.

The now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges it committed nine labor violations related to the disaster. Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 violations and his lawyers say he is being scapegoated.

An Australian contractor was fined last month for three safety violations after its methane detector was found to be faulty at the time of the explosion.

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple sells three million iPads over first weekend

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Rare John Lennon letter to Eric Clapton up for auction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – John Lennon held out the promise he could bring out more musical greatness in legendary guitarist Eric Clapton in a letter that could fetch as much as $ 30,000 when it is sold at auction next month, the organizers of the sale said on Monday.

The signed, hand-written letter by the Beatle, who died in 1980 at the age of 40, is one of a selection from some of the world’s great musicians that will go under the hammer in Los Angeles at the Profiles in History auction on December 18.

In a draft letter dated September 29, 1971, Lennon expressed his respect and admiration for British guitarist Clapton and suggested that they form a band together.

“Eric, I know I can bring out something great, in fact greater in you that had been so far evident in your music. I hope to bring out the same kind of greatness in all of us, which I know will happen if/when we get together,” Lennon wrote in the letter.

The letter will hold special significance for Beatles fans as auctioneer Joe Maddalena said it was widely known that there were problems in the Fab Four’s relationships with each other, and that Clapton had almost become a Beatle.

Clapton played in the Plastic Ono Band, formed by Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 before the breakup of the Beatles in 1970. He also played on the George Harrison song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, which was on the Beatles’ White Album.

“There was a point in time when George Harrison thought about leaving the band and his replacement was Clapton, so this letter is a link of what could have been,” Maddalena said.

The letter is one of 300 manuscripts and letters from literary, musical and political greats, that will be auctioned from the holdings of an American collector.

“What we know of history is from the written word, without these letters, it would all be verbal. It’s a really unique area of collecting as you’re getting a glimpse into people’s minds,” Maddalena said.

Other highlights include a handwritten letter from George Washington, with a pre-sale estimate of up to $ 300,000, and a Charles Dickens manuscript with an obituary of novelist William Thackeray, expected to fetch between $ 40,000 and $ 60,000.

Also on the auction block is a signed, handwritten letter from German composer Ludwig van Beethoven to Tobias Haslinger, a friend of his publisher, in which the musician discussed the second performance of his Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis, two of his most revered works.

The letter, written in German, is undated, but both the Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis debuted in performances in 1824. Because of the rarity of the letter, it is estimated it will sell for between $ 40,000 and $ 60,000.

Other items going under the hammer include a signed letter in Russian by composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which has a pre-sale estimate of $ 10,000 to $ 15,000, and a letter by composer George Gershwin dated March 24, 1932, in which he compares his compositions “Rhapsody in Blue” and “An American in Paris”.

The Gershwin letter is expected to sell for as much as $ 3,000, according to the auction house.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Patricia Reaney; and Peter Galloway)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Appeals court questions Arizona’s late-term abortion ban

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A federal appeals court panel on Monday sharply questioned lawyers defending an Arizona law that bans late-term abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy except in medical emergencies, which opponents say is the toughest in the United States.

In San Francisco, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case after it blocked the Republican-backed Arizona law from going into effect earlier this year. Three abortion providers challenged the law in court.

The Arizona law bars doctors from performing abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in medical emergencies, and could send doctors who perform them to jail.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing to stop the law, said it was more extreme than similar laws elsewhere, because the way Arizona measures gestation means it would bar abortions two weeks earlier than in other states.

Those states also set the limit at 20 weeks but have different ways to calculate gestation time. Arizona already bans abortions at the point of viability, when a fetus might survive outside the womb, generally at 23 to 24 weeks.

Judge Andrew Kleinfeld, a panel member appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, repeatedly expressed concern that the law might not afford women the opportunity to abort a fetus with birth defects in cases where the defects are not apparent until just before 20 weeks.

He also questioned the need to prohibit abortions at that stage of the pregnancy, especially for fetuses bound to develop “horrible birth defects.”

“They’re basically born into hell and then die,” Kleinfeld said. “I don’t see how the courts could act before viability” of the fetus.

“With due respect, that’s the woman’s problem,” responded David Cole, Arizona’s solicitor general. “She should have made that decision earlier.”

William Montgomery, the attorney for Maricopa County in Arizona who also defended the law before the appeals panel, said new medical evidence showed a fetus has the capacity to feel pain during an abortion at 20 weeks of development.

But Judge Marsha Siegel Berzon called that a “red herring” in terms of the constitutional questions the law raises.

The three-judge panel did not say when it could make a final ruling in the case. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, but has allowed states to place restrictions on the procedure from the time of viability unless the woman’s health was at risk.

In July, days before the 9th Circuit panel blocked the law until it could fully consider the case, U.S. District Judge James Teilborg ruled that the Arizona measure was consistent with limits federal courts have allowed.

Talcott Camp, deputy director of the ACLU reproductive freedom project, said the Arizona law’s exception to allow late-term abortion applies only in immediate emergencies if delay can jeopardize a woman’s life or seriously harm her health.

“The medical emergency exception is truly, horrifically narrow,” she said in a phone interview. “This is a law that allows her to get an abortion only when she is in emergency crisis.”

Aside from Arizona, seven U.S. states have put laws into effect in the past two years banning late-term abortions, based on hotly debated medical research suggesting a fetus feels pain starting at 20 weeks of gestation, according to the ACLU.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Cynthia Johnston. Desking by Christopher Wilson)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Small margin splits dramatically different candidates

WASHINGTON (AP) — Suspense over the too-close-to-call presidential race has partly obscured the fact that Americans on Tuesday will choose between two dramatically different visions of government's proper role in our lives. The philosophical gulf between the two nominees is wide, even if the vote totals may be razor-thin.

With record numbers of people on food stamps and other assistance, President Barack Obama emphasizes "we're all in this together" — code for sweeping government involvement. His campaign theme song is "We Take Care of Our Own." Romney wants smaller government, including fewer regulations — rejecting Obama's contention that they're needed after the meltdowns in financial and mortgage markets and a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His theme song is the individualist anthem, "(I Was) Born Free."

For all their philosophical differences, neither man has hit Americans between the eyes with the painful truth of what it will take to tame deficit spending, driven by the public's demand for low taxes and high services.

This year's voters are unlikely to make big changes in Congress. After dramatic swings in the past three congressional elections, and ongoing assessments of the tea party's influence, power may not end up shifting on Capitol Hill for a while. The fiercely divided Congress may continue to block major presidential initiatives, regardless of who's in the White House, unless there's the type of bipartisan breakthrough that has proven elusive.

An Obama win presumably would keep the government roughly on its current course. Congressional Republicans would be unable to rescind his biggest domestic achievement, "Obamacare," which eventually will require everyone to have health insurance.

Writ large, Obama's approach to governing is a new generation of the New Deal and the Great Society. The federal government tries to balance interests such as energy exploration and the environment, private enterprise and consumer protection.

Romney's approach echoes Ronald Reagan's declaration that government is the problem, not the solution.

In a January GOP debate, Romney said: "Government has become too large. We're headed in a very dangerous direction. I believe to get America back on track, we're going to have to have dramatic, fundamental, extraordinary change in Washington to be able to allow our private sector to once again re-emerge competitively, to scale back the size of government."

Romney later said, "I was a severely conservative governor" of Massachusetts (a label at odds with his actual record there).

It's unlikely that a Romney presidency would reshape the federal government to the extent such rhetoric suggests. Like many politicians, Romney is more expansive with his promises than with details for achieving them.

He vows to slash spending and put the nation on a path to balanced budgets, for instance. Pressed for details, Romney offers few beyond ending the tiny federal subsidy to public television and "Big Bird."

Obama has gone a bit further in specifying how he would reduce the deficit. Unlike Romney, he would raise taxes on the wealthiest.

In a 50-50 nation, however, no politician wants to be the first to forcefully tell voters why it's impossible to achieve their three-pronged desire of keeping taxes low, keeping government services level and balancing the budget.

No matter who is president, the huge domestic challenge of 2013 will be to persuade Congress to compromise on tax and spending issues.

Many GOP lawmakers are adamant about keeping tax rates lower for everyone — including the richest households — than they were in Bill Clinton's presidency, which produced the last balanced budget. Congressional Democrats insist that any deficit-reduction plan include increased revenues, from the wealthiest taxpayers if no one else, along with spending cuts.

The package of major tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to hit on Jan. 1 — the "fiscal cliff," which could start a new recession -- will pose a huge challenge to whoever wins Tuesday.

Because of congressional gridlock, a Romney presidency might produce more dramatic changes through the other branches of government. Romney repeatedly has said he'd like to see a reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. He might be able to appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court to fulfill that wish.

It's hard to know how U.S. society, so accustomed to the abortion status quo of four decades, would react to states suddenly outlawing the procedure.

Hurricane Sandy is a reminder of how different political philosophies can affect people at more mundane, day-to-day levels. Romney has suggested shifting much of the responsibility for emergency management from the federal government to the states. That approach might have severely tested New Jersey this fall. But conservatives grow weary of looking to Washington to solve problem after problem.

In unguarded moments, politicians sometimes show their clearest philosophical leanings. Romney's much discussed remarks at a private fundraiser — criticizing the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes — suggested he sees a world of givers and takers. Such societies, he says, are in danger of having the government-dependent takers overwhelm the job-creating givers.

Republicans, on the other hand, pounced on Obama's non-scripted "you didn't build that" comment, his contention that people who built businesses had help, from teachers, family and other supporters — and sometimes the government. Obama said he was noting that successful businesses rely on government roads, schools, water, police protection and other tax-paid amenities.

The "you didn't build that" controversy underscored philosophical differences that voters will choose between Tuesday. Obama and Romney look at the same set of facts — in this case, successful businesses — and seize on different aspects.

The election winner may have a hard time pushing his agenda through a divided Congress. But voters have a vivid choice about what that agenda should look like.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Charles Babington covers national politics for The Associated Press.

An AP News Analysis

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Newspaper discloses new Cameron text messages

LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.

Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.

In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”

Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Dizzying array of media streams spotlight election

NEW YORK (AP) — The days of watching Election Night coverage on a single television set may soon be a quaint anachronism.

Americans have an array of alternatives for following returns on Tuesday night. Television news divisions are throwing everything they have into the story. People will be able to construct their own media experiences, seek out desired information instead of waiting for it, participate in conversations and hear analysis that reflects their own perspectives or none in particular.

Virtually all of the media organizations covering the election promise an abundance of information available online, from interactive maps that display state-by-state results to data from exit polls.

It’s expected to be a huge night for social media. And news organizations say they will monitor the conversations and have their own journalists actively participate.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bypass tops stents in diabetics with diseased arteries

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Diabetics with more than one diseased artery fared significantly better if they underwent bypass surgery than those who received drug coated stents following artery clearing procedures to improve blood flow to the heart, according to data from a five-year study presented on Sunday.

After five years, the bypass group had a lower combined rate of heart attacks, strokes and deaths of 18.7 percent versus 26.6 percent for the stent group in the 1,900-patient study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The result was deemed to be highly statistically significant, researchers said.

Previous studies had demonstrated the superiority of bypass surgery over the use of bare metal stents – tiny mesh tubes used to prop open cleared arteries. Researchers suspected that newer stents coated with drugs to prevent reclogging might negate some of the bypass advantage, but that turned out not to be the case.

“The advantages were striking in this trial and could change treatment recommendations for thousands of individuals with diabetes and heart disease,” said Dr. Valentin Fuster, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who presented the findings at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Los Angeles.

There was a higher incidence of stroke in bypass patients — 5.2 percent versus 2.4 percent. Stroke is a known risk of the surgical procedure in which a piece of a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body is grafted on to re-route blood flow around a blocked heart artery.

But deaths from any cause were significantly lower with bypass surgery than those who received artery clearing angioplasty and a drug eluting stent – 10.9 percent compared with 16.3 percent. There were also twice as many heart attacks among diabetics in the stent group within five years – 99 vs 48, which Fuster called “very significant.”

More than one million bypass surgeries or stenting procedures are performed in the United States each year and some 25 to 30 percent of those involve diabetics with multiple diseased arteries, researchers said.

If the results of this study alter clinical practice, it could eat into lucrative profits of the companies that sell drug coated stents, such as Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corp and Medtronic Inc. Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson supplied the stents used in the study, but J&J has since exited the stent business.

Dr. David Williams of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study, called the results “very convincing.”

“I think the (treatment) guidelines will recognize this and I do think it will be adopted,” he said.

However, Fuster cautioned that longer term follow-up of patients was necessary.

“We always want to know how long the effects last,” he said. “The gap could begin to close or the results could get better and better.”

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot and Deena Beasley; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Despite storm damage, election officials hopeful

NEW YORK (AP) — Power generators are being marshaled, polling locations moved and voting machines hurriedly put into place as officials prepare to hold an national election in storm-ravaged sections of New York and New Jersey barely a week after Superstorm Sandy.

Organizers expressed guarded confidence Sunday that the presidential vote will proceed with no major disruptions in most areas hit by the storm, though it was unclear whether the preparations would be enough to avoid depressed turnout in communities where people still lack power or have been driven from their damaged homes.

Some voters will be casting ballots in places different from their usual polls.

In Long Beach, N.Y., a barrier-island city that was inundated with water during the storm, the number of polling places will be cut to four, down from the usual 11. Residents of the devastated borough of Sea Bright, on the New Jersey shore, will have to drive two towns over to vote.

But with two days to go until Election Day, officials in both states said Sunday that they were overcoming many of their biggest challenges.

Hundreds of emergency generators have been rushed into place to ensure power at polling places, even if the neighborhoods around them are still dark. Electric utilities were putting a priority on restoring power to others and had assured election officials they would be up and running by Monday.

Of the 1,256 polling locations in New York City, only 59 needed to be moved or closed, said Valerie Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the city's Board of Elections. Most were in coastal areas of Brooklyn and Queens or other neighborhoods where buildings normally used for voting had been turned into shelters.

Some New York City leaders remained worried. Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted that the polling-place changes would affect some 143,000 New Yorkers.

"Over the next day, it's going to be critical that the Board of Elections communicate this new information to their poll workers," he said.

The board, which is independent of the mayor's office, has historically had problems opening all voting locations on time, even in a normal year, the mayor noted.

Just east of the city, in Nassau County, Elections Commissioner William Biamonte warned that some voting locations would have a "paramilitary look," with portable toilets, emergency lighting and voting machines running off a generator.

As of Sunday morning, the county had 266,000 homes and business without power — more than anyplace else in the state. Some 30 to 40 polling locations, out of 375 in the county, were expected to be changed because of storm problems.

But Biamonte said he didn't expect that the problems would keep large numbers of people from casting ballots.

"I think people will be voting in less-than-optimal situations, but they will not be voting in a way that disenfranchises them," Biamonte said.

Yet for some residents of the hardest-hit areas, the hassle of having to travel even a few miles to find an open polling place was likely to be one burden too many.

William Agosto, who lost everything he owned when his basement apartment in the Far Rockaway area of Queens flooded, said he hoped to vote but couldn't guarantee he would have the energy or the time.

"I'm going to try," he said, clutching a garbage bag filled with donated clothing. "I have so much on my mind. What I'm going through, it's too much."

On Staten Island, where two polling locations were being relocated due to storm problems, bus driver Jim Holden said the election should be postponed.

"People can't get out to vote. Half these cars are under water," he said.

New Jersey residents driven from their homes by the storm were being given extra voting options. Registered voters will be able to apply for an absentee ballot by fax or email right through 5 p.m. on Election Day, and cast it via fax or email until 8 p.m. Displaced voters can also cast provisional ballots at any polling place in the state.

Monmouth County spokeswoman Laura Kirkpatrick said elections officials there had consolidated some polling locations and moved others, but expected to have working polls for all 53 municipalities come Election Day. She said the county was confident enough that it was encouraging people to vote in person, rather than scramble to file an absentee ballot by email.

"We are looking very good," she said.

Kirkpatrick said officials were somewhat concerned that residents might misunderstand the email voting option and try casting write-in ballots by sending messages to election officials, rather than go through the formal process of obtaining, signing and scanning an official ballot.

John Conklin, a spokesman for the New York Board of Elections, said some counties were training additional poll workers. The companies that make the state's electronic voting machines had sent scores of generators from other parts of the country to ensure enough power. And each polling location will be able to switch to paper ballots, if there is an unexpected loss of power on Election Day.

Utility companies in Connecticut promised that all polling places in that state would have power Tuesday.

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