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Florida police on Friday arrested a man suspected of administering dangerous and illegal butt-boosting shots – injecting at least one woman with a cocktail of substances including cement, glue and tire sealant. And, believe it or not, that man is the person pictured above.

SANTA CRUZ -- The Los Gatos startup that pledged to turn greenhouse gas into cement has landed its first job: a sidewalk in the city of Santa Cruz. While a relatively small project, the 400-foot walkway off Morrissey Boulevard will serve as a big test for plans by the environmentally minded Calera Corp. to capture carbon dioxide exhaust from the Moss Landing Power Plant and fashion it into commercially viable construction materials, like cement. "We're at the point where we want to start using our materials in the built-in environment," said Martin Devenney, vice president of materials development at Calera....

NEW ORLEANS — The federal official in charge of the Gulf oil spill says he has approved BP's plan to pump cement down the throat of the blown-out Gulf of Mexico well in hopes of sealing it for good. The company plans to shove cement down from pipes attached to ships a mile above the sea. Earlier, crews were able to force down the oil with mud. National Incident Commander Thad Allen said Wednesday night that he has approved the cement plan. But he ordered that it should not delay the ultimate solution of drilling a relief well that will...

BP sets stage for Disaster" No oil and gas well ever drilled has gone exactly to plan, or without mistakes being made. The Upstream Industry has learned the hard way. The path to todays drilling (well construction) approach is littered with terible loss events, and awash with lessons. But the fact is that todays drilling approach allows for mistakes to be made, simply because wells do not always behave as planned, and the execution of each step of the well construction plan relies on people. Contingency measure after contingency measure is layered over the average well construction plan such that...

WASHINGTON – A government report says Mexican criminal organizations have more than doubled heroin production in a year and have cemented their grip as the predominant wholesale suppliers of illicit drugs in the United States. The National Drug Threat Assessment concluded Thursday that Mexican groups were the only drug trafficking enterprises operating in every region of the United States.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://treas.gov/press/releases/tg46.htm March 3, 2009 TG-46 Treasury Designates Companies Tied to Iran’s Bank Melli as Proliferators Washington, DC -- The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated 11 companies under Executive Order 13382 for their ties to Iran's Bank Melli. E.O 13382 is an authority aimed at freezing the assets of Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferators and those who support them. Bank Melli has been designated as a proliferator by the United States, the European Union, and Australia for its role in Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Additionally, United Nations Security Council Resolution...

On July 28, debt-laden Mexican cement maker CEMEX, S.A. de C.V. (NYSE: CX - News) posted weak results for the second quarter of 2009. Net debt at the end of the second quarter was US$18,272 million, representing an increase of US$238 million during the quarter. Consolidated net sales decreased to US$4,188 million, representing a decrease of 34%, compared to the second quarter of 2008 due to lower volumes from U.S. and Spanish operations, which was partially mitigated by price inelasticity. EBITDA decreased 41% year over year to US$812 million and EBITDA margin decreased by 220 basis points from 21.6% in...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, July 28, 2009 – Accompanied by members of Task Force Warrior and Task Force Gladius, a U.S. government business and stability operations team visited the Jabal Saraj Cement Plant in Afghanistan’s Parwan province July 25 as part of a fact-finding mission. Islamuddin Ahmadi, general manager of a cement plant in the Jabal Saraj district of Afghanistan’s Parwan province, points out deposits of limestone, clay and gypsum, the key raw materials needed to produce cement, to visiting U.S. development experts, July 25, 2009. U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Lory Stevens  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Deputy...

Cement plants being asked to sacrifice for clean airWeb Posted: 07/12/2009 12:00 CDT By Colin McDonald - Express-News Burning at a minimum of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit, the fire inside the kiln at Capitol Cement is hot enough to melt steel. Flashing orange and white as they soar through a rotating tunnel the size of two semi-trucks, the flames change the chemical structure of the crushed limestone inside and vaporize almost everything else. Fueled by a mix of coal, petroleum coke and sometimes tires, the operation never stops unless something goes wrong. “If that’s running, then we have a chance at...

Published: 03.23.09, 11:54 / Israel News Egyptian police seized a flock of 560 sheep set to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip through underground tunnels. SNIPPET: "A security official says the flock was discovered on Sunday night, along with the entrances to six tunnels in the Salah el-Din district north of the Rafah border crossing. Police seized five tons of cement and found a half ton cache of TNT hidden in near the border."

MUMBAI: Police and security agencies here have got a specific alert — from the police of a north Indian state — about RDX having been smuggled into the country as part of a cement consignment from Pakistan and the target being an oil refinery. Officials said the high alert sounded at vital installations like railway stations and hotels in Mumbai last December was not a reaction to the 26/11 carnage but had its basis in this specific intelligence input. Officials also told TOI that more RDX could be coming in as part of cement or other consignments. But the alert...

Venezuela has seized control of plants and offices belonging to Mexican cement giant Cemex, as it proceeds with nationalising its cement industry. Government officials backed by the National Guard took over the factories after talks ended without a deal. It comes a day after France's Lafarge and Swiss group Holcim agreed to hand over local subsidiaries to Caracas. Venezuela has begun nationalising several industries as part of a drive toward "21st-Century socialism". At a political rally on Monday President Hugo Chavez said Cemex would move into state hands - after 60 days of failed negotiations - adding: "These are all...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will take control of cement plants and offices belonging to Mexico's Cemex as of midnight on Monday after failing to reach an agreement in nationalization talks, the government said. < > The government said it paid $552 million for an 85 percent stake in Switzerland's Holcim's local unit and $267 million for 89 percent of the shares in France's Lafarge's local unit. "Lafarge is working to protect as best as it can the interests of its shareholders and of its staff on the ground," a spokeswoman for Lafarge said earlier in the day, declining any further...

Venezuela, Iran to loan Bolivia 225 mln dlrs for cement firm: official LA PAZ (AFP) - Venezuela and Iran are to loan Bolivia 225 million dollars to create a state cement company for the construction of roads and houses, the deputy minister for small and medium business, Eduardo Peinado, said Saturday. The deal was made between Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan ambassador Julio Montes Prado and an Iranian business official Hojjatollah Soltani, he said. Bolivia, South America's poorest nation, has formed strong ties with Venezuela under Morales. The Bolivian leader has modelled socialist reforms in his country's after those of...

In Russia, sometimes it rains cement Tue Jun 17, 11:17 AM ET Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg (55-lb) sack of cement on a suburban Moscow home last week while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday, Russian media said on Tuesday. "A pack of cement used in creating ... good weather in the capital region ... failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft)," police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti. Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches...

PARIS (AP) - French customs officers are inspecting a North Korean ship at an Indian Ocean island off the coast of Africa as part of U.N. sanctions prompted by the communist nation's nuclear test, but they found nothing illegal so far, officials said Thursday. It was the first time a country was known to have stopped a North Korean vessel under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 authorizing searches as part of the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear test. Since the resolution was passed Oct. 14, at least four other North Korean vessels have been stopped, but the countries...

N Korean ship 'linked to Israel's strike on Syria' By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Last Updated: 4:52pm BST 17/09/2007 A suspicious North Korean freighter that re-flagged itself as South Korean before off-loading an unknown cargo at the Syrian port of Tartous is at the centre of efforts today to investigate Israel's recent airstrike on Syria. Israel has not given any details on the operation in Syria An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as "cement" on Sept 3....

<p>On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they're not saying.</p> <p>We do know that Israel carried out an airstrike. How then do we know it was important? Because in Israel, where leaking is an art form, even the best-informed don't have a clue. They tell me they have never seen a better-kept secret. Which suggests that whatever happened near Dayr az Zawr was no accidental intrusion into Syrian airspace, no dry run for an attack on Iran, no strike on some conventional target such as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base or a weapons shipment on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2007 – Security in Iraq has made tremendous gains, and now is the time to cement that security in place with economic gains, coalition officials said in Baghdad today. The U.S. Defense Department is spending money in Iraq to get basic services working and to prime the pump for private businesses, said Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation. Brinkley was joined at the news conference by Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl Scott, commander of Joint Contracting Command Iraq, and Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, chief of Multinational Force Iraq Communications Division. Coalition...

GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger has staked his administration upon two signature issues: his international leadership to reduce greenhouse gases and his promise to construct new highways, dams, levees, aqueducts and other public works. In April "the green governor" toured the globe to tout his greenhouse-gas bill (AB 32) that requires a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide by 2020, making it the most restrictive emissions law in the country. More recently, the governor toured California to tout his public-works renaissance that requires $40 billion in taxpayer-financed bonds, making it the biggest borrowing binge in the country. Individually, these two media events,...