Coast Guard fires
on ghost ship
OVER THE GULF OF ALASKA (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard unleashed cannon fire Thursday at a Japanese vessel set adrift by last year’s tsunami, stopping the ship’s long, lonely voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
A Coast Guard cutter fired on the abandoned 164-foot Ryou-Un Maru in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska and more than 150 miles from land, spokesman Paul Webb said. He said it could take at least an hour to sink it.
Soon after they started firing, the ship burst into flames, began to take on water and list, Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow said. He said the vessel poses a significant hazard and that the Coast Guard has been warning mariners to stay away. Aviation authorities are also advising pilots to steer clear of the area.
Officials decided to sink the ship, rather than risk the chance of it running aground or endangering other vessels. The ship has no lights or communications system and has a tank that could carry more than 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
They don’t know how much fuel, if any, is aboard.
Russian sentenced in terrorism case
NEW YORK (AP) — A defiant Russian arms dealer dubbed the Merchant of Death for his history of arming violent dictators and regimes was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison, far short of the life term prosecutors sought for his conviction on terrorism charges that grew from a U.S. sting operation.
Viktor Bout’s sentence was the mandatory minimum he faced.
U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan said it was sufficient and appropriate because Bout’s crimes originated only because of an elaborate sting operation created by the Drug Enforcement Administration to catch one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers.
She said there was no evidence the 45-year-old Bout, a vegetarian and classical music fan who speaks six languages, had ever planned to harm Americans or commit a crime punishable in U.S. courts until the sting was created.
Gingrich’s group faces bankruptcy
ATLANTA (AP) — The health care think tank created by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is going out of business.
The Gingrich Group, also known as the Center for Health Transformation, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in federal court in Atlanta on Wednesday. The bankruptcy filing marks an abrupt turn for a group that raised millions of dollars just a few years ago to support and promote Gingrich’s health care ideas.
The center’s filings indicate it has liabilities between $1 million and $10 million and between 50 and 99 creditors. The group had assets of only up to $100,000, the filing said.
Deadly W. Va. mine to be sealed
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia coal mine where an explosion killed 29 men two years ago Thursday will be permanently sealed with concrete, the mine’s new owner said.
Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources, which acquired the mine when it bought Massey Energy last summer, said Wednesday it will seal the portals — large tunnels miners use to get underground — at the Upper Big Branch mine.
Boreholes will be plugged and shafts that house the huge industrial fans meant to sweep bad air out of the mine will be capped to prevent any access. The job should be finished by summer, the company said.
“Everyone still has vivid memories of the tragedy and the suffering the miners’ families endured,” Chief Executive Officer Kevin Crutchfield said Wednesday. “For all of us in the mining industry, it is a solemn reminder of why we must always put safety first in everything we do.”
Meanwhile, the mother and siblings of one of those killed sued former Massey Energy chief Don Blankenship on Wednesday, along with eight other individuals they hold responsible in their lawsuit for the worst U.S. coal mining disaster in four decades.
An explosion fueled by methane and coal dust ripped through the seven miles of underground corridors at the former Massey Energy mine on April 5, 2010. Starting at 3:01 p.m. Thursday, West Virginians led by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin planned to observe a moment of silence to mark the second anniversary of the deadly blast.
Pittsburgh attorney Bruce Stanley filed the suit against the former Massey executives and mine managers in Raleigh County Circuit Court for the family of fallen miner Edward Dean Jones, just before the two-year statute of limitations expired. The complaint claims deliberate infliction of emotional distress and demands compensatory and punitive damages.
Blankenship, who has retired and virtually dropped from public view, did not immediately respond to efforts to get his comment on the lawsuit. His codefendants have moved on to other jobs.
The lawsuit does not target Massey or Alpha. Rather, it goes after individuals the Jones family says should have put their workers’ lives ahead of profits. Those named include Massey’s former general counsel Shane Harvey and former vice president for safety Elizabeth Chamberlin, both of whom reported directly to Blankenship.
Harvey declined comment and Chamberlin could not immediately be reached late Wednesday.
Chamberlin was among Massey employees who have invoked their right to avoid self-incrimination and refused to testify in four investigations.
“Our hope is that they will be criminally prosecuted for their unconscionable deeds,” said Jones’ sister, Judy Jones Peterson, “but I also believe they should be held accountable individually to each and every family member that they irreparably damaged on that fateful day when our loved one was taken from us.”
“We will never be able to come to terms with this loss knowing it was completely preventable,” she said in a statement. “We want them to be held responsible. We need to make sure that a message is sent to this industry that we will not tolerate such flagrant acts.”
So far, only two Massey employees have faced criminal charges over the explosion.
Former superintendent Gary May, a codefendant in Wednesday’s lawsuit, is the highest-ranking mine official charged so far. He has pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government and is cooperating with prosecutors while awaiting sentencing in August.
Former security chief Hughie Elbert Stover, meanwhile, is appealing his recent conviction and a three-year sentence for lying to investigators and ordering subordinates to destroy documents.
Jones’ twin brother, Gene Jones, said the lawsuit seeks to hold others accountable for their actions.
“They blew a hole in our world when they killed our family, and I’ve got news for them. We’re not going away without a fight,” he said.
The other plaintiffs are their mother, Ruby Nell Lafferty Jones, and sister Cheryl Sue Jones. Dean’s widow has reached a separate settlement.
In December, Alpha reached a $210 million non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that spared the corporation liability but left individuals open to prosecution. The deal guaranteed that the families of the dead miners and two co-workers who survived the explosion each receive $1.5 million.
Those who accept the payout can still pursue lawsuits, but the $1.5 million will be deducted from any settlement or jury award. At least eight families of dead miners previously settled with Massey.
The Jones family didn’t learn Dean’s fate until four days after the blast, when state mine safety officials informed them he had been found.
The lawsuit claims the family was led to believe he may have reached an underground safety chamber. Instead, he was actually killed instantly by powerful forces that knocked him down, then doubled back and struck him a second time.
Stanley, who represented two widows after a deadly January 2006 fire at another Massey mine, cited a memo that became the focal point of that wrongful death trial in his latest lawsuit. On Oct. 29, 2005, Blankenship issued a memo to all Massey underground mine superintendents, telling them to focus solely on production.
“If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal … you need to ignore them and run coal,” it said. “This memo is only necessary because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills.”
The lawsuit says Upper Big Branch got the memo, and the message was received.
“Instead of cleaning up their act” after the deaths at the Alma No. 1 mine, “defendants redoubled their efforts at squeezing profits from safety-challenged UBB,” the lawsuit says.
It says Jones briefly stopped production because of ventilation problems in the mine, and was immediately threatened with being fired, along with every miner working with him. The lawsuit also charges that one miner was fired for causing a 55-minute delay while he tried to ensure the crews had enough fresh air to prevent explosions.
Investigators said they found the mine explosion was sparked by worn cutting equipment, and clogged and broken water sprayers failed to contain what should have been a minor methane flare-up.
Wyoming town with 1 resident sold for $900,000
BUFORD, Wyo. (AP) — Buford is a small place for sure, but so is the world.
A remote, unincorporated area along busy Interstate 80 that advertised itself as the smallest town in the United States, Buford was sold at auction for $900,000 on Thursday to an unidentified man from Vietnam.
It’s owner for the last 20 years, Don Sammons, served with the U.S. Army as a radio operator in 1968-69.
After meeting the buyer, an emotional Sammons said it was hard for him to grasp the irony of the situation.
“I think it’s funny how things come full circle,” he said.
The buyer attended the auction in person but declined to meet with the media or to be identified. Sammons and others involved in the auction would not discuss the buyer’s plans for Buford.
It will take about 30 days for all the paperwork to be completed before ownership of the place located almost equidistant between Cheyenne and Laramie in southeast Wyoming changes hands, Sammons said.
The new owner will get a gas station and convenience store, a schoolhouse from 1905, a cabin, a garage, 10 acres, and a three-bedroom home at 8,000 feet altitude — overlooking the trucks and cars on the nearby interstate on one side and the distant snowcapped mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado on the other.
The town traces its origins to the 1860s and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Buford had as many as 2,000 residents before the railroad was rerouted.
Sammons, who moved to the Buford area in the late 1970s from Los Angeles to get away from the busy city life, bought the trading post on Jan. 31, 1992. He plans to retire from his unofficial title as “mayor” and write a book about his experiences in Buford, he said.
“I felt my time here has been very happy for me, and hopefully the new owner will be able to enjoy what I’ve enjoyed over the years — conversations with people, the uniqueness of the area and so on — and keep the history alive,” Sammons said.
As workers boarded up the windows of the convenience store behind her, Rozetta Weston, a broker with a Cheyenne real estate auction company that represented the buyer, said the buyer was excited to own a “piece of the United States.” But she declined to discuss the buyer’s future plans for Buford.
Weston said the buyer and a companion arrived in Wyoming — their first trip to the United States — on Monday, touring Cheyenne and the University of Wyoming at Laramie before the auction.
Williams & Williams Co. of Tulsa, Okla., conducted the auction on a sunny, windy day outside the trading post, which has been closed since Dec. 31. The number of bidders was not released.
Dozens of people, including some of the 125 residents who live in remote areas and get their mail at the outdoor post office boxes on the property, showed up for the event. Officials with Williams & Williams stood out in their business suits among the locals dressed in jeans and western attire.
Inside the convenience store, most of the candy, snacks, pop, beer and all the Marlboro cigarettes had been sold off already. Bags of charcoal, whistles made from animal antlers and dozens of T-shirts proclaiming Buford as the smallest town in the United States remained unsold.
Wearing a weather beaten cowboy hat, Gary Crawford, who lives about 4.5 miles northeast of the trading post — “Post Office Box 7” — said the trading post is important to the surrounding residents who mostly live on widely scattered ranches.
“At different times, this has been a community gathering place where you caught up with your neighbors and shoot the breeze, learn what’s going on, who is around,” Crawford said.
He looked forward to meeting the new owner.
“I think we may have very nice, new neighbors,” he said.
