Free Republic

Correctional facilities in Rochester, Fishkill and Southport are among six New York prisons shuttering Thursday, amid diminishing prison populations and the implementation of key reforms aimed at curbing incarceration. At the close of business Thursday, Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill and the Rochester Correctional Facility will be two of six that will close, adding to the 18 prisons that the state has already closed since October 2011. The Department of Correction and Community Supervision operates 50 facilities as of March 1. People incarcerated at the prison have been moved to other facilities based on their security classification along with their...

The paper mill lnked to a substantial fish kill in the Pearl River system cautiously admitted responsibility Wednesday, as the trail of dead fish reached Lake Pontchartrain and a reservoir near Jackson, Miss., was opened in an attempt to flush the pollutants out.Officials from the Temple-Inland plant in Bogalusa acknowledged that a mixture of pulp from the paper-manufacturing process and unspecified chemicals poured into the Pearl River late last week at levels exceeding the plant’s environmental permits and might have depleted oxygen levels in the Pearl and its tributaries. Numerous species of fish and shellfish, in large numbers, have turned...

The recent mysterious deaths of birds and fish are causing alarm among naturalists around the world. Birds are literally falling dead out of the sky, and fish are washing up dead on shores and rivers across North America and around the world. The reaction from the mainstream media seems strangely subdued, as if they're all just blowing this off as some unexplained quirk about the natural world that should be largely ignored. NaturalNews readers think differently. We are concerned when thousands of dead birds fall out of the sky for no apparent reason. The sky itself may not be falling,...

As we approach the end of time amid a flurry of bloody feathers, fish carcasses, and plentiful crab cakes, Google has, as it always does, given us a means of approaching our imminent demise easily and with style. A new Google Map created yesterday – “Mass Animal Deaths” – shows areas of the world that have experienced a recent wave of animal deaths, complete with a link to an article explaining each instance, as well as the number of animals found dead in each case. From dead snapper in New Zealand to birds exploding over Arkansas, troubling animal deaths are...

The AP said more than 1000 birds fell from the sky, but CNN put the number at up to 5000.

laquemines Parish officials have asked state wildlife officials to investigate what they said is a massive fish kill at Bayou Chaland on the west side of the Mississippi River late Friday. Photographs the parish distributed of the area shows an enormous amount of dead fish floating atop the water. The fish kill was reported to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and the cause has not yet been determined, the parish said. The fish were found in an area that has been impacted by the oil from the BP oil spill, the parish said. The dead fish include Porgies,...

Thousands of dead fish floated up in a marsh on Plaquemines Parish west bank over the weekend. While experts work to determine the cause, there is a likely suspect. The BP oil spill may not have directly caused the fish kill, but WWL Outdoors expert Don Dubuc says all the extra fresh water diverted from the river to try and flush oil from the marsh is what did it. "You mix the nutrients in fresh water with hot water temperatures, poof! You get the algae bloom and it starts to deteriorate and deplete the oxygen," Dubuc said. Much of the...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes... According to New York state corrections records, alleged ringleader James Cromitie and David Williams gave...

What caused salmon deaths? The Klamath Basin issue on the California-Oregon border, where water was held back from more than 1,400 farmers and ranchers in 2001, made national news. The water had been shut off when a court ruling based on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) forced farmers and ranchers to do without their irrigation water to protect sucker fish and threatened coho salmon. The water was eventually restored in 2002 after it was determined that the shutoff was unnecessary due to "insufficient scientific data as determined by the National Academy of Science." This region was left in economic chaos...

<p>Something obviously went wrong on the Klamath River. An estimated 30,000 salmon are dead. And the many warring interests along the river are in full finger-pointing mode. Environmentalists and Indian tribes are blaming the Bush administration for depriving the river of water. The upstream farmers who want that water are defending their Washington friends.</p>

<p>Scott Faas holds a dead steelhead trout after taking coolers full of dead fish from the lower Klamath River to the state Capitol on Wednesday. CHP officers halted the Klamath RV park owner at the south entrance.</p> <p>Six months after it restored water to grateful farmers in the Klamath basin, the Bush administration is paying for that decision: 20,000 dead salmon in one of Northern California's worst fish kills ever.</p>