Author: Serkadis

Tyler James Johnson, a Caltech graduate student who fled the U.S. after authorities identified him as an alleged conspirator in a case involving arson attacks at several San Gabriel Valley car dealerships six years ago, has died.

He was 30. According to an obituary posted on the website of the Michigan-based Staffan-Mitchell Funeral Home, Johnson was “killed from a fall due to an avalanche” on Dec. 26 during a solo expedition in the Corsican mountains of France.

Johnson became a fugitive after being named as a co-conspirator in the August 2003 firebombing of eight sport-utility vehicles at a West Covina auto dealership and another SUV parked on a residential street in Monrovia.

William Jensen Cottrell, then 24 and a doctoral candidate in physics, implicated Johnson in the bombing rampage, alleging that Johnson and another conspirator threw the Molotov cocktails that damaged or destroyed the cars.

During his trial, Cottrell told the court that he and Johnson painted messages on SUVs, including “Killer,” “Terrorist” and ELF, the initials of the Earth Liberation Front, a militant environmental group.

Cottrell was convicted of conspiracy and arson in November 2004 for his part in vandalizing about 125 SUVs in the San Gabriel Valley. He was sentenced in April 2005 to eight years in federal prison. But his arson convictions were overturned last year and his sentence vacated by a federal appeals court.

According to Johnson’s online obituary, he spent the last six years in Corsica, where he “befriended dozens of people, hiked nearly all 214 summits greater than 2,000 meters and co-founded Solaria, a nonprofit association that designs solar technology.”

Described as a mathematician, physicist, photographer and mountaineer, Johnson was born in Ingham County, Mich. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Caltech in Pasadena, spoke fluent Chinese and French, and traveled extensively throughout the U.S., China and Australia.

“Tyler will be remembered for his kind and friendly nature, leadership, creative passion, independence, optimism, and idealistic vision of how things should, and could, be,” the obituary read.

He is survived by his parents, James and Patrice Johnson of Dansville, Mich., sister Kelsey Johnson,  grandmother Winnifred Johnson and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins, according to the funeral home website.

— Ann M. Simmons

More breaking news in L.A. Now:

Other homes in Charlie Sheen’s gated community also burglarized, police say

Ferrari owner’s dream garage grinds neighbors’ gears

Rain expected to continue through Saturday

Car owned by actor Charlie Sheen plunges over cliff on Mulholland Drive

Environmental News Network: Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of CHemicals (REACH) is a European Union Regulation. REACH addresses the production and use of chemical substances, and their potential impacts on both human health and the environment. REACH started in June 2007, with a phased implementation over the next decade. The rules were created for the better protection of human health and protection of the environment by ultimately regulating the use and limits of toxic substances.

Apart from the potential costs to industry and the complexity of the new law, REACH has also attracted concern because of the potential for a very significant increase in animal testing under the proposal. Animal tests on vertebrates are allowed only once per one substance, and where suitable alternatives can not be used. If a company pays for these tests, it must sell the rights to the results for a reasonable price. There are additional concerns that access to the necessary information may prove very costly for potential registrants needing to purchase this.

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a United States law, passed by the United States Congress in 1976, that regulates the introduction of new or already existing chemicals. It grandfathered most existing chemicals, in contrast to the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals legislation of the European Union. However, TSCA is the equivalent to REACH in the US.

The European Chemicals Agency has recently added 14 substances to the list of very high concern chemicals to undergo special health and safety scrutiny under the bloc’s chemical regulation REACH.  The total is now 29.

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Environment & Energy Daily: A reformed federal chemicals law should rely heavily on biomonitoring in order to have data about chemicals that are ending up in humans, a panel of experts told a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee yesterday.

There are currently tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce today, and U.S. EPA lacks important data on many of those substances. As Congress moves forward with reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act, several federal scientists and public health experts said lawmakers should give EPA the authority and resources to begin prioritizing by understanding which chemicals are found in people.

Biomonitoring, which tests blood and urine samples for chemicals, is one of the most effective ways of understanding which chemicals are actually ending up in people, said Henry Falk, acting director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has the largest national biomonitoring program.

“Biomonitoring thereby serves as one important tool in identifying and reducing or preventing exposures and potential health problems,” Falk said.

CDC uses biomonitoring for a variety of public health purposes, Falk said, including identifying sub-populations with higher exposure levels than average and tracking trends over time.

For example, CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is released every two years, has been measuring lead exposure since 1976. The agency was able to track that human blood lead levels declined in parallel with declining levels of lead in gasoline, which offered support for EPA’s regulations to reduce lead levels in gasoline.

“There’s no question that chemicals are essential to our modern lives … but when we use these products, the chemicals in them can end up in our bodies,” said Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health Subcommittee Chairman Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). “And when the chemicals used in flame retardants, plastics or rocket fuel show up in our children’s bodies, we have a potentially dangerous situation.”

Lautenberg is expected to introduce a TSCA reform bill soon. Several sources say the Senate and the House are trying to introduce similar versions of the bill around the same time. Across the Hill, the House Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), is meeting next week to discuss persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals.

EPW Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) cautioned that while biomonitoring is useful for tracking exposure levels, the data must be interpreted in context.

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A Maple Park man admitted guilt Friday in the drug-related death of an Elburn teen who was left to die in a Chicago alley.

Nathan Green, 23, pleaded guilty to charges he supplied heroin to the victim, 17-year-old Michael York, in December 2007.

He was sentenced to three years in prison on the drug charge and an additional year for an unrelated assault charge stemming from an incident in the Kane County jail while awaiting trial.

Green’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Tom McCulloch, said his client could be released in six to eight months with credit for good behavior and time served.

“I don’t think that was justice,” York’s mother, Cathy Reinert, said outside of court. “My son lost his life.”

Green was one of three people accused of leaving York’s body on a Chicago street after his apparent heroin overdose at a party in St. Charles. He had faced up to seven years in prison. The other cases are pending.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

In case you hadn’t heard, Richard Shelby (R-AL) has shut down the government because he wants fat, greasy pork projects for Alabama — including his own personal $45 million earmark.

Odd. I thought earmarks and pork were the root of all our problems.

John McCain.

“The president needs to come out and say that he’ll veto any appropriations bill that has an earmark or pork-barrel project tacked onto it. We need to be very focused on eliminating the deficit.”

John Boehner:

“I think the president missed a golden opportunity to really fulfill his campaign commitment to not sign bills that have a lot of wasteful spending and are overburdened with earmarks,” Boehner said.

Jim DeMint:

Earmarks have created a culture of corruption in Congress that wastes billions of tax dollars on special interest projects–like pork in the stimulus bill, the “Cornhusker Kickback,” and the Wall Street bailout–and allows party leaders to bribe politicians for their votes.

Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter:

Candidate Obama promised us that his economic stimulus package would be targeted and pork-free, but President Obama signed a stimulus bill loaded with pork and goodies for corporate cronies.

Eric Cantor:

“There is no question that we’ve got to change this entire process [on earmarks]. It is a system gone bad.”

George LeMieux:

Washington is addicted to spending and earmarks are the gateway drug to enormous debt. We need to stop earmarks and require a balanced budget.

Tom Coburn:

Earmarxism is an appropriate term because earmarks are a tool career politicians use to reinforce the belief that the average citizen needs the federal government, and their individual member of Congress, to provide for their basic needs.

But in response to Shelby’s Pork Putsch?

Crickets.

2010Feb5: Arctic melting this year may warm the Earth an amount equivalent to adding three billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, according to Pew Environment Group’s Oceans North “An Initial Estimate of the Cost of Lost Climate Services Due to Changes in the Arctic Cryosphere” report. “That’s equal to forty percent of all U.S. industrial emissions this year or bringing on line more than 500 large coal-burning power plants,” said Dr. Eugenie Euskirchen, co-author of the report and a scientist from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks’ Institute of Arctic Biology (Pew Charitable Trusts).

Reference: Pew Environment Group http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=57159

Read the Report http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=57161

Image Description: Small bergy bits the size of houses being released from Tracy Arm in Alaska Southeast. Photo taken August 1991 by Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps. Image Location: NOAA Photo Library http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/corp1893.htm Image Permission: This image is a work of a United States federal employee, taken or made during the course of an employee’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

Numbers don’t lie, do they?

In the last year of the Bush administration, the monthly job loss numbers built steadily to a peak which then began to reverse itself during Obama’s first year.

It’s a perfect mirror image, as this chart from Nancy Pelosi’s office demonstrates.

Now, whether this was the result of Obama’s and Bush’s policies… or whether it’s just a matter of timing, is obviously open for debate.

We know what Speaker Pelosi would have you believe.

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ROCKFORD, Ill. — Authorities in northern Illinois say a Rockton woman charged with murder in the death of a newborn girl is the probable mother of two other infants found dead in the trunk of an impounded vehicle registered to her.

Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia (fih-DOO’-shuh) also said Thursday that the babies are thought to be female and are not twins.

She says a cause of death hasn’t yet been determined and it’s unclear if the babies were born alive.

The infants’ remains were found Aug. 12 at a South Beloit impound yard where the vehicle had been sitting for about a year.

The woman, 28-year-old Katie Stockton, is charged in the death of a newborn girl called Baby Crystal, who was found frozen in December 2004. Stockton has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges.

Rockford Register Star contributed to this report, visit them at rrstar.com.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

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Via CoolSmartphones, we finally have some real pictures of the HTC HD2 extended battery, and the news is not good.

While the device retains all the features of the render, in real life it appears much bulkier than the render suggests, and appears rather less stylish also, lacking the yellow flash which the render sported under the kickstand.

The good news is that the capacity, at 2300 mAh, is pretty good, and should see the device through at least a few day’s use.

See more detail at EasyDevices.co.uk, where the accessory is selling for £34.99 without VAT.

The antics of ASCAP get sadder and sadder with each month. In just the last year alone, the group has claimed that embedding videos from YouTube requires a performance license despite the fact that YouTube already pays them. It’s also claimed that ringtones are a public performance as are the 30 second preview clips you hear on iTunes (yes, seriously, they want to be paid for those too). And, of course, every time we post about ASCAP we get people saying that we shouldn’t pick on them because they represent the actual songwriters, unlike the RIAA. But the truth is that ASCAP rarely has the best interests of songwriters in mind, especially smaller ones who often get hurt by the way ASCAP determines payouts.

And now it seems that even some of the big acts are getting quite pissed off at ASCAP. One of the key things that ASCAP has done for years, of course, is threaten venues for not paying a license to have music playing in the background. The end result actually harms many artists because venues stop playing music completely and shut down things like open mic nights, which are so critical for many up-and-coming musicians.

Every so often ASCAP goes to the point of suing, and in its latest lawsuit against Connolly’s Pub in midtown Manhattan (actually a pretty good place), it named Bruce Springsteen as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, suggesting Springsteen was ripped off. That resulted in headlines, like the one from The Daily News pointing out that Springsteen himself was suing the pub. Of course, it was actually ASCAP, but the whole mess has The Boss so pissed off that he put out a statement slamming ASCAP and saying he wants nothing to do with the lawsuit and ASCAP never should have filed it in the first place:

ASCAP was solely responsible for naming Bruce Springsteen as a plaintiff in
the lawsuit. Bruce Springsteen had no knowledge of this lawsuit, was not asked if he would participate as a named plaintiff, and would not have agreed to do so if he had been asked. Upon learning of this lawsuit this morning, Bruce Springsteen’s representatives demanded the immediate removal of his name from the lawsuit.

Yup, that ASCAP. All about helping the artists and creators, right? Except when they smear their name in lawsuits they want nothing to be a part of…

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A Northwest Side high school teacher was charged with sexually assaulting a female student at the North Center neighborhood school on the North Side last year, police said.

Wesley Cherniak, 32, of the 3800 block of North Bernard Street, was charged with criminal sexual assault, a felony, according to police who said Cherniak was arrested at 6 a.m. Wednesday at his home and the charge was approved at 1 p.m. Thursday.

Cherniak allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old student on Feb. 15, 2009 at St. Benedict High School, 3900 N. Leavitt St., where the victim was a student and Cherniak a teacher, according to police.

St. Benedict Principal Sante Iacovelli said Friday morning that Cherniak was not employed at the school. Iacovelli said he was uncomfortable releasing further information and referred further inquiries to the Archdiocese of Chicago.

A Facebook page of a person named Wesley Cherniak in Chicago whose office is listed at St. Benedict High School indicates that he teaches anatomy and health and he plays rugby for the “superleague club the chicago griffins.’’

A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese was not immediately available.

Grand Central Area detectives are investigating.

Read the original article from FOX Chicago News.

2010Feb5: The cost of the Arctic’s rapid ice melt will be $2.4 trillion by 2050 as the region loses its ability to cool the global climate, according to Pew Environment Group’s Oceans North “An Initial Estimate of the Cost of Lost Climate Services Due to Changes in the Arctic Cryosphere” report (Pew Charitable Trusts).

Reference: Pew Environment Group http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=57159

Read the Report http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=57161

Image Description: Ice photo from NOAA ship. From Miller Freeman website. Image Location: NOAA Photo Library http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/images/noaa-ship-pics/ceaurex1.jpg Image Permission: This image is a work of a United States federal employee, taken or made during the course of an employee’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

CHICAGO — It’s the gift that just keeps giving, to the private company the city hired to operate city parking meters.CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman reports on a buried part of the billion-dollar contract that may require the city to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the company.

Here’s the reason: There are street repairs, art fairs and block parties –- all events that prevent you from parking in normally legal spots.

When those spots have parking meters along them, Chicago Parking Meter LLC, the company that got the billion-dollar deal with the city, can’t make money, right?

Actually, it’s a great deal for the parking meter company. They usually make money because you have to plug the meter to park legally. When you can’t park at a metered spot because of street construction or other projects, they still get paid.

“Nothing that the city has done with this parking deal has sounded right,” consumer David Smith said.

CBS 2 found the payback deal buried in the city’s contract with Chicago Parking Meters. Attorney Clinton Krislov has charged in a lawsuit that the deal is illegal for several reasons.

As for the lost income part, “the city has to pay compensation to the parking meter company for every meter that it pulls out of the system, even for a day,” Krislov said.

Records obtained by CBS 2 for the first quarter of 2009 of the contract lists street by street the lost income for February March and April of 2009 totaling more than $106,000.

That amount will surely go up for the spring and summer — the seasons for street closings.

“The city will be paying perhaps as much as $500,000 a year to protect the revenue stream for those guys,” Krislov said.

Those guys demanded more than $9,000 for lost income along North Franklin — a claim that surprised Will Leonhard. And a street resurfacing project along south Wabash cost the company more than $11,000 in lost revenue it wants the city to pay.

According to a document attached to the city contract, the most valuable spaces in the city are along Madison Street — 68 of them.

If they were out for a year, the company could expect to be reimbursed a small fortune. Krislov estimates it could cost $559,057 a year, or about $8,000 a space.

“Pretty valuable meter. You could condo that meter,” he said.

A city spokesman says that $84,000 was deducted from the company’s first claim, to pay the city back for its costs helping the company through its very troubled start up. In the future, similar negotiations will be done.

CBS 2 will be checking out those future claims when they’re submitted.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

It’s hard not to like Steve Wozniak, both for his contributions to modern computing and his jovial nature. In this recent interview, where he recounts the moment he solved bringing color to computing, you get a healthy dose of both.

His description of those moments between awake and asleep when inspiration strikes is a familiar one, although my epiphanies are generally more along the “hey, I bet I can deep fry that” line. The quote I like best, though, is this one:

“Sometimes you’re not sure if it’s going to work, because it didn’t follow all the methodology, all the science in the books, all those numbers. Yet it’s similar enough, it might work. And in this case it did.”

And that’s how innovation happens. Thanks, Woz! This makes me even sadder that you got robbed on Dancing With the Stars. [ForaTV via 9to5 Mac]

Filed under: Convertible, Coupe, Geneva Motor Show, Europe, Renault

For 2011, Renault is launching an all-new version of its Megane coupe-convertible. Like the last generation model and most of its European market competitors, the Megane gets a folding hardtop, but somewhat like its competitor the Volkswagen Eos, this one lets the sun shine in even when closed. The Megane gets an all-glass roof, which, while letting you see the world, will probably do nothing to help the car’s center of gravity. On the other hand, the black finish does help to visually hide the roof when it is raised, a stylistic windfall that partially alleviates the peculiar proportions of such hardtop convertibles. That said, this doesn’t really appear to be a high-performance proposition, so we’re guessing that more potential customers won’t care about the extra weight up top anyhow.

To its credit, Renault has managed to retain a surprisingly large trunk on the Megane with 14.7 cubic feet top up and even 7.45 cubic feet available with the top down. The Megane has seven powertrain configurations available with six gas and diesel engines combined with manual, dual clutch and continuously variable transmissions.

The new Megane coupe-convertible goes on sale in Europe this spring.

[Source: Renault]

Continue reading Officially Official: Renault drops the top on Megane at Geneva

Officially Official: Renault drops the top on Megane at Geneva originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smooth move there, Spirit Airlines. I doubt anyone’s gonna read too much into this one.

What’s next:

C U Next Tuesday in Tahiti?
Very Awesome Getaways In Nearby Areas?
Blow off your Job and fly the friendly skies?

WTF?