Free Republic

The company that operates the trans-Alaska pipeline has called in backup crews to contend with massive amounts of snow piled on top of its oil storage tanks in Valdez, which has damaged infrastructure and vented petroleum vapors to the environment in what state regulators say are violations of the Clean Air Act. The incident has forced the Valdez Marine Terminal’s operator, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., to take multiple tanks out of service, though it says there have been no impacts to oil shipments so far. To try to prevent further damage, Alyeska is now sending up dozens of respirator-equipped contractors...

Washington (CNN)Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez won her runoff and became the Democratic nominee for Texas governor Tuesday night, making her the first openly lesbian and Latina nominee to win a major party gubernatorial nomination in the state. Valdez won 53.1% of the vote while her competitor, Andrew White, obtained 46.9%, according to unofficial election results. Valdez, a former US Army captain, accepted the nomination in a speech Tuesday evening, during which she advocated for equal opportunities for Texans. "Tonight is a victory for all of us who are fighting for a stronger and fairer Texas. A tolerant and...

A teen has confessed to killing his aunt's boyfriend with a hammer, then dismembering the body and placing the head on his aunt's bed, according to prosecutors. "He wanted to leave his aunt a present," Assistant State's Attorney Kingsley Sawyers said during a court hearing where Alexis Valdez, 18, was ordered held without bond.

The legend of the Alaskan bush pilot is infused with feats accomplished in aircraft that are rarely seen anywhere else. We have all seen the videos of pilots landing on sand bars and in tight tree-lined mountainous areas. Each year at the Valdez Fly-In and Air Show they celebrate the tradition and skill of the bush pilot with the Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) competition.

The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, hung upside down by their feet from a bridge near a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a leafy city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes. The victims' genitals, index fingers and heads had been cut off, according to a statement from the attorney general's office in Morelos state, which includes Cuernavaca. Their heads and genitals were found nearby, along with a handmade sign, the statement said. "This will happen to everyone that helps the traitor Edgar Valdes," the placard read, referring...

Several have sent word that a YouTube video of recently assassinated lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg has sent Guatemala into a tailspin. The video of Rosenberg claims that if you are watching, he has been murdered by President Alvaro Colom with help from presidential secretary Gustavo Alejos. "The video spread across the Internet after family members handed it out during Rosenberg's funeral on Monday. In the 18-minute tape, a seemingly calm Rosenberg, sitting behind a desk and microphone, alleges that Colom, the First Lady and two associates were involved in murder, corruption and money laundering. The group, he says, filtered public funds...

COVINGTON, La. – An untested procedure to plug the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico seemed to be working, officials said Thursday, but new estimates showed the spill has already surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst in U.S. history. A team of scientists trying to determine how much oil has been flowing since the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and sank two days later found the rate was more than twice and possibly up to five times as high as previously thought. The fallout from the spill has stretched all the way to Washington, where...

The disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill pushed into the Mississippi River Delta yesterday with high winds and rough seas complicating efforts to slow the toxic sludge's spread, as the first oil-slicked animals were found amid fears of an environmental nightmare. Experts prepared for the worst as choppy seas threatened to force the goop deep into the marshlands along Louisiana's southern coast over the weekend and push oily water over the booms put in place to contain it. "It's of grave concern," said David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "I am frightened. This is a very, very...

Go ahead, grumble about the snowstorm that socked the Anchorage area this week. Depending on your side of town, and not counting the Hillside, the official tally is between 5.5 and 20 inches. Now, put your ear to your freshly shoveled driveway, and you'll hear Valdez residents laughing. "My God, our people don't even get out of bed for that, and I'm not kiddin' ya," said longtime resident Tom McAlister. Snow started falling in Valdez early Monday morning and continued to fall like crazy. At one point on Tuesday, 4.8 inches fell in an hour. By Wednesday, 68.2 inches had...

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2009) — Twenty years ago, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was exiting Alaska's Prince William Sound when it struck a reef in the middle of the night. What happened next is considered one of the nation's worst environmental disasters: 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the pristine Alaskan waters, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean. Now, imagine 8 to 80 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident. According to new research by scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), that's how much oil has made...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. Supreme Court, in a fractured ruling, said punitive damages are allowed in a lawsuit over the 1989 Valdez oil spill but that lower courts should reduce the $2.5 billion award. Justice David Souter, in the court's majority opinion, said the punitive damages award should be brought into line with $287 million in compensatory damages awarded against Exxon in the lawsuit. "The award here should be limited to an amount equal to compensatory damages," Souter wrote. The high court otherwise split evenly 4-4 on an important maritime law question in the case but concluded that federal...

An Al-Qaeda suicide plot to hijack several passenger jets simultaneously — including a British Airways flight — and crash them into high-profile American targets has been uncovered by the security services. The American capital and nuclear power stations on the country’s East Coast are said to have been among the terrorists’ potential targets. The September 11-style plot explains the grounding of 10 US-bound flights across the world over the seasonal break. According to a senior intelligence source, an informant tipped off authorities the weekend before Christmas. He claimed that Islamic extremists intended to hijack flights operated by BA, Air France...

U.S. COURT CUTS EXXON VALDEZ PUNITIVE DAMAGES TO $2.5 BLN FROM $4.5 BLN

-snip- Robinson explains that before they left the area his team convinced Alaska state authorities to set up nine locations that were not cleaned up, so they could monitor whatever long-term improvements were observed. “For a period of years,” John says, “those locations [that were left alone] were in much better shape than the locations that had been aggressively cleaned up. “The very aggressive way we went about it - I have to fault myself on this, because I’m the one that directed it, turned out to be a much more serious problem than the oil was. We were killing...

Okay, Tony Valdez is on now. Tune in and make comments. He has on three viewers who made comments on his phone line. Hey, he didn't call me back.

ORIGINAL THREAD John and Ken have just read an email that was received by a KFI listener from KTTV. Apparently, KTTV has been bombarded with complaints about the racist comments made by newscaster Tony Valdez --- "You took this country. You killed people to take this country for yourselves." According to the email, Valdez will apologize on his Sunday television show. In Los Angeles, it is at 9am on channel 11 following FOX NEWS SUNDAY. After posting the number, I have a feeling that many FReepers made complaints. I left a message on Valdez's machine demanding an apology and...

LISTEN TO JOHN AND KEN ONLINE HERE IS YESTERDAY'S THREAD. KTTV NEWSMAN TONY VALDEZ ATTACKS JOHN AND KEN WITH AZTLAN DIATRIBE. Coming up at 3:30 pm, Pacific, John and Ken will play the entire segment with KTTV from yesterday's Illegal Alien Celebration Day. This has been all over the blogs. Valdez needs to publicly apologize and/or be fired.

Terrorists are threatening to blow up Alaska oil pipelines. Via Foxnews Alert. Fox said they were going to take guns and shoot them?

VALDEZ, Alaska (AP) - This is a busy commercial and sportfishing town, and it normally smells a little ripe in late summer as unharvested pink salmon spawn and then die. But this year, residents and tourists have been holding their noses a little tighter. Millions more pink salmon than expected, most of them born at the local Solomon Gulch hatchery, migrated in from the ocean this season, overwhelming commercial seiners and processing plants.

An ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) spokesman on Wednesday responded to comments made in Alaska's Senate race referencing a punitive damages case resulting from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The comments stem from criticism embattled Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has received for referring to the spill, which dumped 10.9 million gallons of crude oil into the waters of Prince Puget Sound, as "that little issue." Alaskans are still upset about the spill, and ExxonMobil's continuing efforts to appeal the $4.5 billion in punitive damages for Alaska natives, Cordova fishermen and other harmed Alaskans. A new radio campaign from Murkowski's opponent...