Free Republic

When you get in the zone, your focus is on your run: With all that thought going to your pace, your exertion level, and the calculations of how many more minutes you have left in your tempo, you are left susceptible to some embarrassing midrun situations. We’ve all stumbled on a crowded trail, then looked around furtively to make sure no one noticed. Or had to pause our workouts to sneak into the nearest bathroom when long runs made our stomachs rumble. But we wondered: Are there any midrun situations that really get you blushing, even well after the fact?...

The federal government’s failure to study risks of oil spills in the powerful Gulf Stream is “stunning” and “beyond foolish” given the stakes and current’s force, drilling opponents said this week. Packing more power than all of the world’s freshwater rivers combined, the Gulf Stream flows about 55 miles off the South Carolina coast. Yet federal regulators haven’t done computer simulations of how oil spills would interact with this mighty river in the sea, The Post and Courier reported earlier this year in its investigative project “Into the Gulf Stream.” Critics said this omission is particularly glaring in the wake...

The Environmental Protection is admitting to a spill from a treatment plant it set up after it dumped 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into a Colorado river last year. The EPA said Thursday night that the spill happened on Tuesday, and officials are still attempting to determine how much and what metals were contained in the sludgy discharge, ... The Navajo Nation sued the agency over the spill last week after the EPA inspector general and the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the incident a few days before the Aug. 5 anniversary of the 2015 spill. The...

"Whatever people think about this issue, we know it's controversial, there's no denying when a president speaks out for the first time like that, it is history," co-host of ABC's "Good Morning America" George Stephanopoulos said to Robin Roberts. And let me tell you, George, I'm getting chills again," "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts said about her interview with Obama.

BOULDER, Colo. - President Obama's unscheduled stop tonight at The Sink Restaurant and Bar, a local watering hole on the University of Colorado campus, turned into a messy affair as he mingled with students and took photos outside. A young woman spilled yogurt on the president just as he was wrapping up and about to get back inside his armored black Chevy Suburban. The milky substance appeared to hit his pants, prompting the president to begin wiping himself off with a towel handed to him. "Getting yogurt on the president, you've got a story to tell," Obama told the lady,...

Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill tragedy is bad and getting worse by the hour. For several days the well was thought to be spewing 1,000 barrels a day from the seafloor. On Thursday morning that estimate was ramped up to 5,000 barrels a day. Louisiana is bracing for an oily sheen to coat coastal swamps as early as Friday night. If the well continues to flow unabated at 5,000 bpd for two months until BP can cap it, the Deepwater Horizon spill could surpass the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill of 270,000 barrels as the biggest in U.S. history. But to...

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) - April 24, 2010 -- Presidents have had their indulgences - Ronald Reagan loved jellybeans and Bill Clinton binged at McDonald's. What's President Barack Obama's weak spot? Pie.

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2009) — Twenty years ago, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was exiting Alaska's Prince William Sound when it struck a reef in the middle of the night. What happened next is considered one of the nation's worst environmental disasters: 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the pristine Alaskan waters, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean. Now, imagine 8 to 80 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident. According to new research by scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), that's how much oil has made...

Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States. U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta. Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the U.S., in...

National Academy of Sciences completed “Oil in the Sea III”, its third examination of petroleum inputs into marinewaters worldwide. Although direct comparisons betweenthe 1975, 1985, and 2002 reports are difficult due to use ofdiffering computational techniques, it is clear that petroleum inputs from other than natural sources have decreasedsignificantly over three decades. Total petroleum input estimates decreased from 43 million barrels per year (MMbbl/yr) to 23 MMbbl/yr between the 1975 and 1985 reports, a 47-percent decrease. In the 2002 report, total petroleum inputs continued to decrease to 9 MMbbl/yr, a 61-percent decrease from the 1985 report estimate (Fig. 1.) In...

SEVRAN, France — By dusk Friday, the streets of Sevran were deserted. Inside high-rise apartments and stone cottages here on the outskirts of Paris, residents waited for the explosions and sirens to begin. "Last night I thought I was in Baghdad, not somewhere in France," said Nabila Chaibi, a 22-year-old sales clerk, her angular face swathed in a white head scarf. Her eyes displayed the fatigue of a sleepless night.