United States and Mexico border wall a costly failure film says

Washington’s plan to build a fence on the border with Mexico has cost $3 billion and has not deterred illegal immigrants or drug traffickers from entering the country, according to a new U.S. documentary.”The Fence” hopes to show Americans, who were divided when construction of the wall was approved in 2006, that the venture is a failure as conceived and a blemish upon the United States internationally.It argues that illegals and smugglers can easily climb over, dig under and even drive over the wall, which is only a few feet (meters) high in parts, has no razor wire, and abruptly ends in the desert.

“One of the most confounding and little-known realities of the fence is that it only covers about one third of the 2,000-mile (3,218-km) border,” said Rory Kennedy, the director and narrator.Kennedy, who is a daughter of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, spent weeks traveling along the border from California to Texas as the fence was being built in 2009. It is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Up to 500 people die every year crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, according to U.S. immigration experts and the Mexican government, a sharp jump from a decade ago. Tougher border security and the fence’s construction have forced migrants to take more dangerous, remote routes into the United States.Some 650 miles of the 670-mile wall called for under the Secure Fence Act and signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush in October 2006 have been built. It contains 120,000 tons of metal and materials, ranging from railroad ties to concrete and chain link fencing.

“COMPLETE THE DANGED FENCE”

Lined in parts with stadium-style lights, cameras and roads to allow U.S. agents to patrol, the fence was partly a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. It also aims to stop terrorists from crossing over from Mexico.”This was put up to illustrate to Joe whoever up in Dubuque (Iowa) or someplace that they see a picture of this and … they think ‘oh yeah, that’ll stop them’,” Arizona ranch owner Bill Odle said in the film. “Well of course it doesn’t.”

But it remains a magnet for Republicans keen to show their get-tough credentials in the run-up to the November U.S. elections. Arizona Republican John McCain, facing his toughest re-election battle in years for the Senate, demanded that the government in May to “complete the danged fence.”Despite calls for a fence along the entire U.S.-Mexican border, the terrain, which ranges from swamps to deserts, makes that idea almost impossible and financially prohibitive.

U.S. law enforcement uses helicopters, unmanned planes and agents in watchtowers and in vehicles to monitor the area stretching from the Tijuana-San Diego crossing in California to the Matamoros-Brownsville crossing in Texas around the clock.U.S. Border Patrol agents say the wall and virtual fencing cut the number of people caught trying to cross into the United States by a quarter in the fiscal year 2009.

Immigration experts counter that the deep U.S. recession in 2008-2009 and the resulting lack of jobs in the world’s biggest economy was a bigger factor behind the drop.Even with a sluggish economy, 300,000 illegal immigrants entered the United States every year between 2007 and 2009, according to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.But critics, both in the United States and Mexico, where there was an outcry when the plan was approved, also are questioning the wisdom of spending billions on the fence during hard economic times.

Future U.S. administrations are likely to spend $6.5 billion on maintenance of the fence over the next 20 years, the United States Government Accountability Office says, although researchers at the U.S. Congress say it could be more.The documentary airs on Thursday on U.S. cable television channel HBO.(Reuters)

Rep. Raúl Grijalva doesn't back down,Az

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona has been characterized as passionate, outspoken and just plain stubborn.After he called for a boycott on his own state because of its new immigration law, his office received death threats.But he didn’t back down. Instead, Grijalva continued to denounce the law, calling it “racially motivated.”Such is the style of Grijalva, 62, who has become the face and voice of SB 1070 opposition in interview after interview in newspapers and on television.Unlike some politicians, Grijalva is consistent, said Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who calls the Democrat his political “diametric” opposite. “I haven’t seen him change his perspective hardly ever.”

Phoenix officials have estimated that the city could lose more than $90 million over the next five years in canceled hotel and convention center business because of the boycott. As a result, Grijalva has been called irresponsible and a grandstander.”How does that help his working-poor constituents, some of whom earn their living in the hospitality and restaurant industry in Arizona?” said Mike Hellon, the former GOP state chairman.

Grijalva, one of the most liberal representatives in Congress, places the blame with the GOP-controlled state Legislature and Republican Gov. Jan Brewer. “The irresponsibility occurred when the governor put her signature on that law,” he said.

For Grijalva, who prefers western bolos over neckties, immigration issues strike a personal chord.Grijalva’s father, “a cowboy,” migrated to the U.S. in 1945 during the bracero program, which brought in guest workers from Mexico to offset the loss of farmworkers serving in World War II. His father became a citizen, sponsored by a construction employer.
Grijalva is a Tucson native who became the first of three children to attend college. At the University of Arizona he became involved with the Chicano Liberation Committee, an organization that pushed for the recruitment of Latinos at the school and advocated for a Mexican American studies program.Grijalva said he was motivated by his parents, who pushed him to become educated.”It’s very much the immigrant tradition,” he said.

In 1972, after several years as a community organizer, he decided to vie for a seat on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board. He lost and said he learned that he couldn’t run for an elected position by appealing solely to Latino voters.He ran again, and ended up serving on the board from 1974 to 1986. Grijalva, who makes a point of putting the accent mark on the “u” in his first name, was the first Latino elected in more than 100 years. (His eldest daughter, Adelita Grijalva, who currently serves on the school board, remembers going to protests as a child, her younger sister in a stroller pushed by her pregnant mother, Ramona.)

He moved on to the Pima County Board of Supervisors. In 12 years, he successfully advocated for a paid Cesar Chavez holiday and worked on the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which seeks to protect open spaces of desert but allow for growth. He often fought with his four colleagues to secure funding for health clinics in the area.Grijalva was elected to Congress in 2002 with 59% of the vote. He’s developed a reputation for advancing environmental and labor causes, and in the last three elections, he hasn’t received less than 61% of the vote in the Latino-dominated 7th District, which includes a large portion of southwestern Arizona.

“My whole family, personal and political life sprung from that community,” he said recently of the area he represents.Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) alluded to the district’s location when slamming Grijalva’s call for the boycott.

“I’m wondering if we look at the map of Congressman Grijalva’s congressional district, if we haven’t already ceded that component of Arizona to Mexico judging by the voice that comes out of him,” he told Fox News. “He’s advocating for Mexico rather than the United States and against the rule of law, which is one of the central pillars of American exceptionalism.”But Grijalva’s stance resonates with his voter base, said John Garcia, a University of Arizona political science professor who has known Grijalva since 1972.”He’s sort of reflecting a lot of the sentiment and frustrations and anger not just among Latinos, but people who are dissatisfied with the whole battery of anti-Latino legislation,” Garcia said.

Paul Gray, the bassist for Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot, was found dead Monday in an Iowa hotel room

DES MOINES, Iowa Paul Gray, the bassist for Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot, was found dead Monday in an Iowa hotel room, police said.A hotel employee found Gray, 38, dead in a room at the Town Plaza Hotel in Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines, police said in a statement. Foul play isn’t suspected, and an autopsy is planned for Tuesday.

Amy Sciarretto, a publicist at the band’s record company, Roadrunner Records, confirmed Gray’s death but declined further comment. Most of the band’s members grew up in the Des Moines area.Slipknot’s self-titled debut in 1999 sold more than a million copies.

Known for its grotesque masks, trashing sound and aggressive lyrics, the band won a Grammy in 2006 for best metal performance for the song “Before I Forget.” Concert industry trade publication Pollstar ranked Slipknot 18th in its Top 20 Concert Tours list in 2009.

Andy Hall, music director of Des Moines rock station Lazer 103.3, said he’d known Gray for 10 years. He described him as a talented bass player who was also one of the friendliest, most caring people he knew.

“This is a big blow, not only to the community of Des Moines but fans of metal at large, worldwide,” Hall said. “It’s a devastating loss. Paul was a wonderful human being.”The station was planning to broadcast an hour-long tribute to Gray on Monday night.(AP)

Meteor shower caught on tape in MILWAUKEE,from 16/04/2010 till 26/04/2010 start from 1am night to 5am .

MILWAUKEE A large meteor streaked across the Midwestern sky momentarily turning night into day, rattling houses and causing trees and the ground to shake, authorities said Thursday. There were no immediate reports of injuries.Witnesses say the meteor lit up the sky Wednesday about 10:10 p.m. National Weather Service offices across the Midwest said it was visible from southwestern Wisconsin and northern Iowa to central Missouri.Radar information suggests the meteor landed in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, either Grant or Lafayette counties, said Ashley Sears, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Milwaukee office. Officials in both counties said no one reported seeing a meteorite or crater.

Lafayette County Sheriff Scott Pedley said his office received multiple reports of a very bright light in the sky followed by houses and the ground shaking.”There were reports of four to five minutes of explosions or rumbling,” he said. He couldn’t say what the sound was but speculated it may have been a sonic boom if the meteor broke the sound barrier.

A dashboard camera in the squad car of a Howard County sheriff’s deputy in Iowa caught a glimpse of the fireball. In the video, the object streaks toward the ground, then swells and brightens in an apparent explosion before disappearing behind a distant clump of trees.As large as the halo seems, history suggests the object might only be the size of a softball or basketball, said James Lattis, the director of the University of Wisconsin Space Place in Madison.

“These things are surprisingly small,” Lattis said. He noted meteor showers can produce streaks visible from miles away even though the objects that are burning up might be the size of a grain of sand.Lattis said because Wednesday’s meteor apparently exploded, it’s possible it will never be recovered. Unless the fragments landed on a rooftop, car, yard or other prominent place, they could be virtually indistinguishable from other rocks and pebbles on the ground.

“In that case it will just be luck if anyone happens to recognize it,” he said.Lattis said there’s even a chance the sighting wasn’t a meteor, noting an object such as a broken satellite part could create a similar effect. A message seeking comment was left with NASA.Sean Thompson was watching television in his Iowa City, Iowa, apartment when a bright light caught his eye for about 10 seconds before it disappeared.”It was somewhat alarming to me,” Thompson said. “I’ve seen shooting stars, but I’ve never seen something jetting across the sky with flames shooting off it.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/TR2uNajroOM&rel=0&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/It4cBYN3eP8&rel=0&fs=1

Some initially speculated the object was part of a two-week-long meteor shower currently under way. But Lattis said it most likely wasn’t part of the Gamma Virginids shower because it came from the opposite direction.The Gamma Virginids shower began April 4 and is expected to last through April 21. Thursday is expected to be the second straight day of peak activity.Meteors are caused by bits of space debris, such as that left by a comet. Dust and debris burn up in the atmosphere and create streaks of light. Unlike other celestial sightings that require a telescope or binoculars, the best way to watch a meteor shower is with the naked eye.

The number of miners killed on the job in the United States fell for a second straight year to 34

mining machine breaks through a wall of coal

FRANKFORT, Ky. The number of miners killed on the job in the United States fell for a second straight year to 34, the fewest since officials began keeping records nearly a century ago.That was down from the previous low of 52 in 2008.U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration documents show 18 of the deaths occurred in coal mines, down from 29 in 2008; and 16 were in gold, copper and other types of mines, down from 22 in 2008. Most involved aboveground truck accidents on mine property, though some of the deaths resulted from rock falls and being struck by machinery.Obama administration mine safety czar Joe Main said the numbers are encouraging, but he won’t be satisfied until no miners are killed on the job.”I think that’s accomplishable, if you look at where we came from, and where we’ve come to,” Main said.The latest statistics are vastly improved, he said, from a century ago when hundreds, sometimes thousands of miners were killed each year.The deadliest year in recorded U.S. coal mining history was 1907, when 3,242 deaths were reported. That year, the nation’s most deadly mine explosion killed 358 people near Monongah, W.Va.Main credits the decrease in deaths over the past year to beefed-up enforcement and stricter regulations in the wake of a series of mining disasters over the past four years in Kentucky, Utah and West Virginia.

In 2006, 73 miners were killed, including 12 who died in a methane explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia and five who died in a similar explosion at the Darby Mine in Kentucky. In 2007, 67 miners died, including six who were killed in the collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah.Coal states reacted by revamping their mine safety laws, and Congress toughened federal rules that that brought a variety of advances. Among the improvements are caches of oxygen stashed in underground mines in case miners are trapped, refuge chambers to provide shelter in emergencies, and a communications system to allow underground miners to talk with colleagues on the surface.

Steve Earle, United Mine Workers of America international vice president for the Midwest, said while those were important improvements, getting inspectors into the field is the key.”I can say without reservation that the safest day coal miners have is when inspectors are in the mines,” he said. “The more we can put our inspectors in the mines, the safer those mines will become and the closer we will come to zero fatalities.”

Mine safety advocate Tony Oppegard, who has successfully lobbied to triple the number mine inspections conducted in Kentucky, said mining remains a dangerous occupation.”Everyone who’s involved in mine safety has to be extremely vigilant,” he said. “There’s very small margin for error in coal mining. The smallest mistake can cost a miner his life.”Kentucky led the nation in mining deaths last year with six in coal mines and one in a limestone quarry. That was followed by West Virginia and Alabama, each of which had three coal miners killed.

Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas each had two miners killed in coal, salt, alumina, zinc or sand and gravel operations. Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Puerto Rico had one miner killed in either clay, copper, gold, lime or sand and gravel operations.

“It’s never positive when you have numbers like that, but it could have been worse,” said David Moss, spokesman for the Kentucky Coal Association. “We’re always striving for that goal of zero. That’s what we work toward every single day.”Main credited cooperation between regulatory agencies, coal companies and miners with making mines safer, which led the decrease in workplace deaths.”It is historic,” he said. “And it does tell us we can achieve a point in time when we have no fatalities.”(AP)

Winter storm plods through West, (MidwestDust Storm Accidents)

Winter storm plods through West/ Dust Storm Accidents

DENVER  A fast-moving winter storm is promising to bring a white Christmas to parts of the West and Midwest, but not without threatening to cause long delays and tough driving conditions for countless holiday travelers.The storm is expected to dump more than a foot of snow on parts of Colorado and Southern Utah by midday Wednesday, and blow east into the Plains states through Christmas Day. Blizzard warnings were likely on Christmas Eve in Kansas.”Pretty much the entire central and southern Rockies are going to get snow, and then it’s going east and will drop more snow,” Stan Rose, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pueblo, Colo.With the snowstorm looming, holiday travelers scrambled Tuesday to adjust their plans.

In Denver, Sarah McAnarney and her husband planned to leave town Wednesday to visit family in Ozark, Mo., with their springer spaniel, Olive. But forecasts prompted them to skip a day of skiing in the Rockies and start driving a day early.

McAnarney said she was caught in a blizzard two weeks ago in the Rockies and needed four hours to drive 100 miles from Vail to Denver. She said she didn’t want to repeat the experience.”I was driving through a whiteout,” she said Tuesday at a truck stop east of Topeka, Kan. “You couldn’t see over your headlights.”

On Tuesday, blustery weather was already snarling traffic in Arizona, with blizzard-like conditions shutting down roads and causing a pileup involving 20 vehicles. South of Phoenix, a dust storm set off a series of collisions that killed at least three people.A tropical jet stream pumping in moisture from the storm’s south was likely to cause plenty of snow as the storm heads into the Plains states.South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds declared a state of emergency Tuesday, giving his state more flexibility to prepare.

A winter storm watch was in effect for most of southeast Colorado, the panhandle of Oklahoma and north Texas through Thursday. By Tuesday afternoon, light snow was falling in Salt Lake City. No major airport delays were reported there or in Denver, but holiday travelers across the region were warned to check with their airlines before arriving for flights.In western Nebraska, a Colorado woman was killed Tuesday on Interstate 80 when her SUV apparently hit black ice and slid across a median.

In Nevada, multiple wrecks were reported in and around Reno as snow blanketed the area shortly before the Tuesday evening commute. No serious injuries were reported, the Reno Gazette-Journal newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, many holiday travelers in the region decided to adjust their plans. Craig Rueschhoff and his girlfriend, Brenna Larson, planned to leave Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday night to make the 210-mile drive to Columbus, Neb., to visit his parents.Rueschhoff, 35, said they also planned to visit Larson’s parents in western Iowa on their way back to Des Moines but thought about skipping the annual trip.

“We’ve had both my mom and her mom encourage us not to come if the weather is too bad,” he said. “They wouldn’t feel bad if we didn’t come. We’ve gotten their blessing.”

The winter conditions follow a weekend storm that dropped record snowfall and interrupted holiday shopping and travel on the East Coast. Delays from that storm sparked an unruly crowd that included passengers still on standby Tuesday at the Delta Air Lines terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Police were called to help with crowd control.

Rose said holiday revelers in the West and Midwest should worry about the cold as well as the snow. Temperatures across Colorado on Christmas were not expected to get out of the 20s, with single-digits expected in the mountains.“It’s going to be cold to begin with, and then it’s going to get even colder,” Rose said.

Democratic health care deals 'sleazy'

Barack Obama

WASHINGTON A Republican senator who has opposed President Barack Obama’s health overhaul effort said Tuesday that the deals Democratic leaders have cut to round up the votes they need to push the measure through the Senate have been “sleazy.“Speaking Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina cited concessions won by Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, whose support gave Democrats the 60th and final vote they need. Among other things, Nelson won an agreement that the federal government will pay to expand Medicaid services in Nebraska.

Said Graham: “That’s not change you can believe in. That’s sleazy.”Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa defended the concessions, saying: “The one that’s being talked about for Nebraska, it also benefits other states. It’s not just Nebraska.”

He also said he would vote for the package even if it didn’t contain concessions for Iowa. “The principle of this bill overrides everything,” Harkin told CBS’ “Early Show.”

Graham rejected criticism leveled by some Democrats that GOP opposition to Obama’s health care effort is being driven by extremists.”I’m not a member of a militia, I’m not a birther,” he said, referring to those who have questioned, inaccurately, whether Obama is an American citizen. “I’m a senator who wants to reform health care, but I’m not going to allow my country to become a socialized nation when it comes to health care.”

Harkin described the debate as “a demarcation line.He explained: “On one side is health care as a privilege. On the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we’ll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans.”The Senate had procedural votes Tuesday morning on the overhaul bill and Democrats are pushing for final passage before Christmas.