Free Republic

Workers on the second shift at Cummins Filtration were gathered together Monday, told the news, and sent home with a letter directing them to be back in the morning. Tuesday morning, with a team of security guards surrounding company officials, workers at the company's two Lake Mills plants got the word and were then sent home for the day to be with their families. Starting in November, about 400 jobs will be moved to Cummins manufacturing plants in San Luis Polosi, Mexico. The job shift will take four months, completed by March, 2010. The cost-cutting move will help the company...

BAIKAL, August 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made a dive to the bottom of the world's deepest lake, Baikal, in the Mir-1 mini-submarine. Putin, clad in overalls for a 4-hour plunge, spoke to journalists on a radio linkup from the deepest point of the lake's southern part 1,395 meters below the surface, saying he was surprised that the water was not transparent and calling it "a plankton soup." In his Saturday's dive, the premier, who on Friday set up a satellite transmitter on a white whale during a visit to Russia's Far East Khabarovsk Territory,...

Note: The following post is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ____________________________________________________ For Immediate Release June 12, 2009 MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: NATIONAL POLICY FOR THE OCEANS, OUR COASTS, AND THE GREAT LAKES The oceans, our coasts, and the Great Lakes provide jobs, food, energy resources, ecological services, recreation, and tourism opportunities, and play critical roles in our Nation's transportation, economy, and trade, as well as the global mobility of our Armed Forces and the maintenance of international peace and security. We have a stewardship responsibility to...

I was looking at an image of New Zealand from space, and I noticed a bright blue lake on the South Island. I was pretty sure why it was blue (suspended glacial flour, like Lake Louise in Banff), but I checked to make sure. Turns out, as are many bright blue scenic mountain lakes around the world, this is a scenic spot. If I ever take a trip to New Zealand, I'm pretty sure I'd run out of time before I ran out of places to see! So here's a variety of views of that lake, New Zealand's Lake Pukaki....

Two off-duty Atlanta Police Department officers were arrested early Monday morning in Cherokee County, charged with reckless conduct for shooting dozens of bullets into Lake Allatoona. At around 1 a.m. Cherokee 911 received several calls complaining about the gunfire. Deputies were dispatched to the Allatoona shoreline, and one reported a bullet landed just 15 feet away from where he stood, said Cherokee Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jay Baker. “There were people fishing in the area at the time,” he said. The shots were traced to the Cedar Drive home of Atlanta police officer Dan Rasmussen, 43. Fellow cop Chad Armstrong, 31,...

Maria Sanchez Lake was formed in the late 1800s when Henry Flagler had the upper reaches of Maria Sanchez Creek filled. A dam was built to regulate tidal flow. Over the decades the lake has become a beauty spot, habitat, and food provider for many water bird species. There are some erosion problems. The City of St. Augustine is now building a concrete seawall around a large section of the lake. There were better plans, less expensive plans, plans that would have enhanced the beauty, and benefitted wildlife. The big problem with urban engineers seems to be an addiction to...

WASHINGTON – A lawyer representing an Alaska gold mine urged the Supreme Court on Monday to uphold the mine owner's permit even though he acknowledged that the company's plan to dump metal waste into a nearby lake would kill all aquatic life. But mining company lawyer Theodore Olson told justices that the waste is more accurately defined as "fill." And, after a decade or more of mining, he said, the lake could be restocked with no permanent harm to the environment.

Mistake That is Fake by: Cliff Kincaid, June 24, 2008 If Barack Obama wanted to dispel doubts about his national security credentials, he hasn’t done so with the announcement of a new “Senior Working Group on National Security” that includes Dr. Tony Lake, a former national security adviser to Bill Clinton. Lake became a laughingstock for expressing doubts as to whether Alger Hiss, the founder of the United Nations and a top State Department official, was a communist spy. Lake’s doubts led to a controversy that caused him to withdraw his nomination as Clinton’s CIA director. Interestingly, Lake had expressed...

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. [Image: Standing stones beneath Lake Michigan? View larger]. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest. [Image: The stones beneath Lake Michigan; view larger]. In a PDF assembled by...

By James A. Barnes, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Monday, March 31, 2008 If potential presidents can be judged by how they run their campaigns, then how they staff those efforts may provide important clues to the kinds of talent they would recruit for their administrations. Because Democratic front-runner Barack Obama is a relative newcomer to national politics, an examination of his inner circle of political and policy advisers offers new windows into his thinking, leadership style, and sources of expertise. The Democratic front-runner's team has a relatively shallow bench, but its political achievements thus far are quite...

OK, so I'm looking at the picture below (warning, it's fairly large, ~2 MB): Snake River Plain, Idaho, full-size image and I finally ask myself, "What is that pretty blue lake northeast of Salt Lake City?" It doesn't take long to find out that this is Bear Lake. Bear Lake is a pretty interesting place; let's go to Wikipedia for more: Bear Lake It's a basin lake, for one thing, and according to what I read, an outlet was created from the lake into the Bear River which allows the water to be used for irrigation as it flows to...

This is on my list entitled "places that would be amazing to see, but somebody is going to have to pay for my trip".

Sweden's own version of the Loch Ness monster, the Storsjoe or Great Lake monster, has been caught on film by surveillance videos, an association that installed the cameras said Friday. The legend of the Swedish beast has swirled for nearly four centuries, with some 200 sightings reported in the lake in central Sweden. "On Thursday at 12:21 pm, we filmed the movements of a live being. And it was not a pike, nor a perch, we're sure of that," Gunnar Nilsson, the head of a shopkeepers' association in Svenstavik, told AFP. The association, together with the Jaemtland province and local...

A LARGE great white shark has been sighted in a lake on the New South Wales Central Coast, prompting warnings for people to take caution in surrounding waterways. A commercial fisherman snagged the beast this morning while casting nets off Canton Beach, on the north side of Tuggerah Lake, which opens into the Pacific Ocean at The Entrance.

One of Barack Obama's senior foreign policy advisers has said the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is the biggest threat facing the world. In an interview with the Financial Times, Anthony Lake, a former US national security adviser now working with Obama, said: "I believe that the most dangerous crisis we are going to face in the next three to 10 years is if the Iranians get on the edge of developing a nuclear weapon." Obama and his advisers, such as Lake, have stressed the Democratic candidate's readiness to sit down with Iranian leaders without conditions. In the interview, Lake...

Global Warming Affects World's Largest Freshwater LakeThis well-known landmark, Shaman Rock on Lake Baikal in Russia, stands guard over an ancient lake whose pristine condition is changing quickly. (Credit: Nicholas Rodenhouse) ScienceDaily (May 1, 2008) — Russian and American scientists have discovered that the rising temperature of the world's largest lake, located in frigid Siberia, shows that this region is responding strongly to global warming. Consensus of scientists regarding global warming Drawing on 60 years of long-term studies of Russia's Lake Baikal, Stephanie Hampton, an ecologist and deputy director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in...

CHICAGO — A gust of wind blew a 2-year-old in a stroller into Lake Michigan, where the boy remained submerged for at least 15 minutes before being pulled out unconscious but alive. The child's grandfather, who had been pushing the stroller on the lakeside Friday afternoon, jumped into the harbor to try to save the boy, the Chicago Fire Department said. Witnesses said the frantic grandfather struggled in the frigid water, just off a 70-foot long pier, pointing a few feet away and shouting, "Child! Child!" "He was just moaning in the breakwater, crying," said

Remote Ontario Lake Reveals Mysterious Ancient StructureWhile divers were conducting a unique submarine project in MacDonald Lake at the Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve, they encountered an ancient stone structure revealing proof of life from Central Ontario ancestors. Haliburton, Ontario (PRWEB) March 5, 2008 -- While divers were conducting a unique submarine project in MacDonald Lake at the Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve, they encountered an ancient stone structure revealing proof of life from Central Ontario ancestors. The history of Eastern Canada is generally viewed in two stages: 1st - recent history, measured in decades and centuries, involving...

Drained lake holds record of ancient Alaska By Ned RozellFebruary 27, 2008 Not too long ago, a lake sprung a leak in the high country of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. The lake drained away, as glacier-dammed lakes often do, but this lake was a bit different, and seems to be telling a story about a warmer Alaska. The lake, known as Iceberg Lake to people in McCarthy, about 50 airmails to the north, had been part of the landscape for as long as people could remember. Pinched by glacial ice, the three-mile-long, one-mile-wide lake on the northern boundary of the...

Ancient Town 'Sevtopolis', Submerged on a Lake Bottom to be Reconstructed Updated on: 18.02.2008, 18:33 Published on: 18.02.2008, 14:52 Author: Kristalina Ilieva Association ‘Preserve the Bulgarian' starts action for the realizing of ‘Sevtopolis' project. At first the organizators will collect subscription list throughout the whole country, the projects author and major architect Jeko Tilev announced. Sevtopolis or the City of Tracian King Sevt III is capital of the Odyisian state in the end of IV - beginning of III century before Christ. It was found and observed in 1948 - 1954 by the construction works of Koprinka dam like and...

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. -- A sheriff's dive team discovered what is believed to be a late-1800s era steamboat at the bottom of a Central Florida lake during a training exercise last month. The Lake County sheriff's dive team found the boat at the bottom of Lake Minneola in the lake's southwest corner in Clermont while training with side-scan sonar, which they recently acquired. The sonar is a piece of equipment that is dragged by a boat and projects images of the underwater environment. After seeing an image of the boat, which appeared to be about 18 feet long, dive team...

PHOENIX -- A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain. Aaron Evans died Sept. 17 of Naegleria fowleri, an organism doctors said he probably picked up a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu. According to the Centers For Disease Control, Naegleria infected 23 people from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials said they've noticed a spike in cases, with six Naegleria-related cases so far -- all of them...

Expedition to drill ancient mega-lake gathers pace 12:41 21 September 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic An expedition to seek out a huge underground pocket of ancient water in Darfur, Sudan, is being prepared by geologists. About 100 metres beneath the arid sands in the north-west of the region there just might be the makings of an oasis – in the form of a hidden mega-lake, discovered in April 2007 using satellite imagery. The lake could provide much-needed relief to the war-torn African region, believe several UN agencies, the government of Sudan, and non- governmental organisations, which are backing the...

September 10, 2007 - 12:35 PMPrehistoric find located beneath the waves Archaeologists have discovered traces of Switzerland’s oldest known building, but it will never draw tourists: it lies underwater in the middle of a lake. Since it was made of wood scientists used dendrochronology – the technique of dating by tree rings – to give a precise figure of 3863 BC. The find in Lake Biel, northwest of the Swiss capital, Bern, was described as “sensational” by Albert Hafner, who is in charge of underwater archaeology in the region. Divers working for the cantonal archaeological service came upon the site...

The link above goes to the Webcam on the rim of Kilauea's Pu'u O'o crater. After a brief eruption hiatus last week, lava has returned to the crater, and the crater is hosting an active lava pond/lake. According the web site, nighttime views are spectacular. Close examination of the images when they change every five minutes indicates that the pond is active. Eruption Update Page

SANTIAGO, Chile - Scientists on Tuesday blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile that faded away in just two months, leaving just a crater behind. The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot deep crater where a large lake had been. After flying over the lake Monday scientists said they were able to draw preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit for the lake's disappearance. They suggested the melting of nearby glaciers...

A very well-known scenic spot on the coast of Lake Superior, on the road to Grand Portage. Click the last one for full-size.

<p>SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- A five-acre glacial lake in Chile's southern Andes has disappeared -- and scientists want to know why. An undated photo shows a lake in the Chilean Andes as it was before May.</p>

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A lake in southern Chile has mysteriously disappeared, prompting speculation the ground has simply opened up and swallowed it whole.

Lake Okeechobee approaching historic low WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., April 10 (UPI) -- Lake Okeechobee, the source of water for the Florida Everglades, is at its lowest April level since measurements have been made. If the drought in South Florida continues, water managers expect the lake level to drop below 8.97 feet, the all-time low recorded in May 2001, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. On Monday, the lake was at 10.09 feet, the Army Corps of Engineers said. Okeechobee gathers the waters from the Kissimmee River Basin in central Florida and spills them into the River of Grass, the wide,...

500,000 Years of Climate History Stored Year by Year3-14-2007 The bottom of Turkey’s Lake Van is covered by a layer of mud several hundreds of metres deep. For climatologists this unprepossessing slime is worth its weight in gold: summer by summer pollen has been deposited from times long past. From it they can detect right down to a specific year what climatic conditions prevailed at the time of the Neanderthals, for example. These archives may go back as much as half a million years. An international team of researchers headed by the University of Bonn now wants to tap this...

c By MICHELLE FAUL The Associated Press Tuesday, May 31, 2005; 9:20 PM SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- They fed them well. The Pakistani tribesmen slaughtered a sheep in honor of their guests, Arabs and Chinese Muslims famished from fleeing U.S. bombing in the Afghan mountains. But their hosts had ulterior motives: to sell them to the Americans, said the men who are now prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit. A former...

If so, officials are baffled by how they could have gotten there. SEMINOLE -- Cue the theme song from Flipper. A reported sighting of three dolphins in Lake Seminole has city, county and state officials scratching their heads over what appears to be an impossibility for a landlocked, freshwater lake. The lake does have a weir for outflow, but even then "there's just no possible way for a dolphin to fit in there," said Kelli Levy, a Pinellas County environmental program coordinator. "They would have to swim through a few feet of water under Park Boulevard, then jump like 12...

Volcanic crater lake primed to spill 12:41 11 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Emma Young Ruapehu is one of the world's most active volcanoes. The deep crater lies between its peaks and fills with a lake between big eruptions The crater lake of New Zealand’s Mount Ruapehu is brimming and could burst at any time, releasing at least one million cubic metres of water and sending a mudflow – or lahar – gushing down the volcano. The last Mt Ruapehu lahar, in 1953, was on a similar scale. It swept away a railway bridge, killing 151 people travelling across it....

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21, 2006 – A veteran Utah Army National Guardsman from Salt Lake City is coordinating efforts to hold the municipality’s first Freedom Walk. Salt Lake City’s Freedom Walk is slated for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Chief Warrant Officer Paul Holton, an Army interrogator, said. “It’s important for people to remember how we felt that day,” Holton said. It’s also important to honor military veterans, especially those who’ve given their lives safeguarding freedom, he added. Holton is working to get sponsors and publicity for his city’s Freedom Walk....

LAKELAND - Buzzards congregated around dead fish on the exposed mud flats of Scott Lake on Wednesday, while alligators and snapping turtles fought for their lives in the black ooze of a massive sinkhole. Sinkholes occasionally open under lakes, but most of the sightseers who came to witness firsthand this disappearing water body south of Lakeland said they'd never seen anything like it. Water in the 291-acre lake started to drain into two sinkholes early last week. The sinking ground cracked the wall in at least one house near the shore and damaged several docks. The largest of the two...

Malfunctioning distillery turns lake into vodka. According to specialist analysis, the Bracholinskie lake in Wielkopolska is filled with alcohol. The concentration of alcohol in the water amounts to 30% in some places. The phenomenon is a result of a technical problem in the nearby vodka production plant. "Our alcohol measuring equipment is not wrong. It recorded a level of 30%. There is vodka in this lake," stated chemist Robert Wilczynski. The news about the free vodka in the lake spread fast and attracted a number of farmers from nearby villages who arrived at the lake to take as much vodka...

Salt Lake City police were asking Friday for help in identifying a man who sexually assaulted another man in a Sugar House Park bathroom this week. About 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, a 41-year-old man was washing his hands when he was grabbed from behind, according to Salt Lake City police. The man who grabbed him was last seen eastbound on foot. He was described as an 18- to 21-year-old light-skinned Latino who is 5 feet 8 inches tall with a medium build, short black hair, a mustache and bad acne. He was wearing baggy gray shorts and a baggy blue or...

Much as I might like to do something OTHER than volcanoes eventually, they keep doing interesting things! Two pictures from this site: New eruption on Aoba volcano, Vanuatu In November 2005, a mild eruption built a cinder cone lake in Lake Voui, a lake inside crater of Ambae volcano on Vanuatu. Below is what it looked like on January 9. The picture below was taken on May 28. I say there's some interestin' chemistry going on in that thar lake.

WASHINGTON, May 25, 2006 – A U.S. Navy ship shot down a long-range ballistic missile in its final seconds of flight during a test yesterday. It was the first successful ship-launched intercept of a ballistic missile in its terminal phase, U.S. military officials said. During the Navy and Missile Defense Agency test, Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie, equipped with technology to detect and track intercontinental ballistic missiles, launched a Standard Missile 2 to intercept a missile fired from the Pacific Missile Range facility on Kauai, Hawaii. "The test yesterday was an opportunity to see if a modified configuration of the...

Determined Foes Mount Challenge To Iran's Mullahs BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun May 25, 2006 CAIRO - While foreign ministers met in London to finalize measures to persuade the Iranian regime to suspend uranium enrichment, the country's ruling clerics will be facing the most determined opposition they have seen in three years. In Tehran, university students staged a second day of strikes over the firing of eight professors and the new policies enacted by Tehran University's president. In Tabriz, the regime tried to quell riots earlier this week over a cartoon depicting members of the Azeri...

This started as a question to myself: "I wonder if there are sand dunes in northern climates?" Googling on "sand dunes" + Canada revealed another heretofore unknown (at least to me) geological location -- Athabasca Sand Dunes in Saskatchewan. I've heard of Athabasca before in association with tar sands, but this is a the first time I'd heard of a provincial Athabasca Sand Dunes Park. The Web site says that is only accessible by air. So I'm guessing not a lot of people have been there or visit there. Since this is very new to me and perhaps others, first...

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Two pictures of Poas. Basically, though Poas hasn't (to my knowledge) erupted magmatically, it has a crater lake that comes and goes depending on the level of hydrothermal activity and the season (i.e., rainy season or dry season). A "phreatic" eruption is a gas/steam eruption, and Poas has them quite a bit. Apparently it had settled down for awhile, and now it's gearing up again. When it's dry and active, the lake turns into a big fumarole: When it's less active and there's more rain, it's quite pretty: Go here for actual pictures of the most recent activity: Fotografías del...

Several members of President Bill Clinton’s national security team are hosting a Washington fund-raiser tonight for retired Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr., the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon in November. Officials at Sestak’s campaign headquarters in Media will not comment on the event, though an invitation sent out to potential donors and obtained by the Daily Times lists Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger as a host. "As a general rule, campaigns don’t comment on fund-raisers or people who hold them," said Sestak’s campaign chairman, Myles Duffy. Berger, who served as Clinton’s second-term national security adviser, pleaded guilty last year...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (March 14, 2006) -- Families, friends and fellow Marines gathered to see a Lake Hopatcong, N.J. native awarded the Bronze Star Medal March 13 for his actions during combat operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Capt. Frank Diorio, a 1996 Notre Dame graduate, received the award in a ceremony here for his tour of duty as the company commander of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment in Husaybah, Iraq from February to September 2005. The 33-year-old Marine led his company in over 275 engagements at Camp Gannon firm base. On April 11,...

Today's two images are inspired by the "learn something new every day" phenomenon. In this case, the something that was learned was about the Northwest Angle in Minnesota, pictured here (click to go to article, with larger image link). I wanted to find other images of the Northwest Angle, but couldn't find much. However, I did find the interesting site below, with a virtual tour and smallish excerpts from a Landsat poster of Lake of the Woods. The image below was interesting, especially the circularity of the features in the lower part of the image. A Virtual Tour of Lake...

Stromboli OnLine is one of my favorite sites, with suberb volcano photography. They recently posted a new "Nyiragongo Expedition" feature. Below are three pictures sampled from the site. Go there for more. Nyiragongo at night from Goma View from the crater rim at twilight Active Nyiragongo lava lake

Uganda 'draining Lake Victoria' Lake Victoria is an economic lifeline for many East Africans Uganda has been taking more water than agreed from Lake Victoria to generate power, accounting for half of the drop in the lake's levels, a report says. Uganda and Tanzania have blamed drought for recent power cuts because of lower hydro-electric output. But water engineer Daniel Kull says the drought has caused only half of the drop in Lake Victoria's water levels - which are the lowest in 80 years. Analysts have warned of conflict, as East African nations compete for water. 'Pulling the plug' Mr...

Cold and Deep: Antarctica's Lake Vostok has two big neighbors Sid Perkins GREAT LAKES. Lake Vostok and the newly described 90°E and Sovetskaya Lakes lie beneath a kilometers-thick blanket of ice. The black square in the inset shows the outline of this satellite image on a map of Antarctica; the cross indicates the South Pole. R.E. Bell, et al. Trapped beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet are two bodies of water that rival North America's Great Lakes, new analyses suggest. The geological setting of these huge, unfrozen lakes hints that they may harbor ecosystems that have been isolated for millions of...