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Today the President attended the New U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab swearing in ceromony, signed S. 2803, the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act, spoke at the Initiative for Global Development's 2006 National Summit, signed the Senate bill 193 for Broadcast Decency, attended a signing ceremony for the Establishment of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument and accompanied by the First Lady attended the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met with Norway's Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Store Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke at the...

With the sole survivor of the Sago mine disaster looking on, President Bush signed into law the first major overhaul of mine safety laws in three decades. "Only one man came out, and he's with us today," Bush said Thursday of Randal McCloy Jr., who is still recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning from the January accident that killed a dozen miners in West Virginia. McCloy received a standing ovation from those attending the White House ceremony. The new law, the first of its kind since 1977, requires miners to have two hours' worth of oxygen on hand while they work,...

Letter from McCloy to the families of the Lost Sago miners. Some details of their ordeal.

Doctors marvel at miner By Allison M. Heinrichs TRIBUNE-REVIEW Friday, March 31, 2006 MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- The sole survivor of the Sago Mine explosion left a West Virginia rehabilitation center on Thursday as a medical miracle, and doctors vowed to learn from his rapid and unexpected recovery. "It's basically almost like he's resurrected," said Dr. Russell Biundo

Sago Mine Blast Survivor Leaves Hospital POSTED: 10:11 am EST March 30, 2006 UPDATED: 10:49 am EST March 30, 2006 MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Sago Mine survivor Randal McCloy Jr., looking thin and stiff but walking on his own, offered his gratitude Thursday as he was released from a hospital Thursday after almost three months. "I'd just like to thank everybody for their thoughts and prayers" McCloy said softly, wearing a ball cap and a racing-team jacket at a morning news conference. He paused, then added with a weak smile, "I believe that's it." His wife, Anna, who held his hand...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- The sole survivor of the Sago Mine disaster visited his home for the first time since the Jan. 2 explosion Tuesday, eating a home-cooked lunch and visiting with his family during a three-hour visit. Afterward, Randal McCloy Jr., 26, returned to the HealthSouth Mountainview Regional Rehabilitation Hospital, where he is going through months of therapy to recover from brain damage and other injuries. The coal miner's wife, Anna, had refused to return to the family home in Simpson until her husband could go with her. On Tuesday, he made the 45-minute drive with Anna, their two children...

Randal McCloy, the sole survivor of the Sago Mine explosion, can now make conversation and joke around, and his doctors are predicting a complete recovery in a year. He knows he is a miracle. "I guess he's just heard us discussing about him being a miracle and one day he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face and said, 'I'm a miracle?'" said Anna McCloy, Randal's wife. Randal, who spent more than 40 hours trapped underground after the Jan. 2 explosion, emerged from a coma on Jan. 26. The extent of the brain damage he suffered is...

GRAFTON, W.Va. — The wife of Sago Mine survivor Randal McCloy Jr. is suing her brother-in-law for taking pictures of her comatose husband and selling them to the National Enquirer. Anna McCloy's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Matthew McCloy, the supermarket tabloid and its parent, American Media Inc. The family has said Matthew McCloy was paid $800 for a photograph that appeared in the National Enquirer last month of Randal McCloy on life-support at a West Virginia hospital. McCloy was one of 13 miners caught in a Jan. 2 explosion at the Sago Mine. One miner was killed by the...

With a little help, the sole survivor of the Sago Mine disaster stood for the first time since the accident, and puckered his lips when his wife asked for a kiss, doctors said Friday. Randal McCloy Jr., 26, came out of a coma earlier this week. "In this business of taking care of severe head injuries, little things make us happy," Dr. Julian Bailes said. McCloy can make noises when doctors cover his breathing tube. Whether he will be able to speak when the tube is removed depends on the extent of the brain damage he suffered from carbon monoxide...

The sole survivor of a mine explosion that killed 12 fellow miners emerged from a light coma Wednesday but still cannot speak, his doctor said. Randal McCloy Jr., who had been in a coma since his Jan. 4 rescue, is able to respond to simple commands and follow movements with his eyes, Dr. Larry Roberts said. He is now able to chew and swallow soft foods, but the extent of any brain damage remains unknown. Meanwhile, plans to begin gathering evidence inside the Sago Mine fell apart Wednesday when International Coal Group Inc. refused to let members of the United...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- The sole survivor of an explosion that killed 12 men at a West Virginia coal mine is responding to simple commands as he continues to emerge from a light coma, doctors said Tuesday. Randal L. McCloy Jr., 26, can now follow movements with his eyes, but he remains unable to speak, Dr. Larry Roberts said. McCloy, who survived the Jan. 2 blast and more than 41 hours of exposure to carbon monoxide, is also receiving physical therapy. He began opening his eyes last week. One of the 12 miners may have died in the explosion, and...

NEWS ALERT Sago Mine disaster survivor Randal McCloy Jr. "awakening from coma," doctor says

(KDKA/AP) MORGANTOWN Doctors today delivered some discouraging news about the sole survivor from the tragic accident at the sago mine in West Virginia. They say Randal McCloy Jr. did suffer some brain damage from his 42 hours being trapped in the Sago Mine. From brain scans, the carbon monoxide seems to have injured the cable system deep in the brain, called the white matter. KDKA’s Medical Correspondent Dr. Maria Simbra says this area connects brain cells together. The coating of these nerves has been damaged. Dr. Simbra says the nerve coating are like the outside of an electric cord. If...

"Notes left by some of the miners suggested they may have succumbed to carbon-monoxide poisoning - and died peacefully in their sleep. The father of sole survivor Randal McCloy, 26, told the Associated Press that though he has no evidence, he believes his son survived because the other miners shared the last of their oxygen with him. He believes they did so because McCloy was the youngest and has two small children."

PITTSBURGH — The critically injured sole survivor of the West Virginia coal mine explosion showed dramatic improvement Saturday and was stable enough that he was flown back to a hospital closer to his home, doctors said. Randal McCloy Jr. has been in a medically induced coma to allow his brain time to heal, but when the medication is eased, his eyes flicker and he bites down on his breathing tube, showing he is "awake underneath our coma," said Dr. Richard Shannon of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. "We think that he is clinically stable," Shannon said Saturday afternoon. "He is...

BUCKHANNON, W. Va., Jan 5 (Reuters) - The sole survivor of a mine disaster that killed 12 men lay in a coma on Thursday as residents of the tight-knit West Virginia community struggled to understand the latest tragedy in the history of this dangerous profession. But doctors feared that Randal McCloy, the only survivor among 13 miners trapped underground for 42 hours after an explosion on Monday morning at the Sago mine in Tallmansville, could suffer some brain damage as a result of his ordeal. Though mining disasters are nothing new, this one was made more poignant by the fact...

Paul H. Nitze, an expert on military power and strategic arms whose roles as negotiator, diplomat and Washington insider spanned the era from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and helped shape America's cold war relationship with the Soviet Union, died Tuesday night at his home in Washington. He was 97. The cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Elisabeth Scott Porter. From the beginning of the nuclear age, whether in government or out, Mr. Nitze urged successive American presidents to take measures against what he saw as the Soviet drive to overwhelm the United States through the force of arms....