Crude oil leaks in Arkansas suburb after ExxonMobil pipeline ruptures

Isolde Raftery , NBC News ? ? ? 6 hrs.

An ExxonMobil pipeline rupture near Little Rock, Ark., Friday evening has resulted in a ?major oil spill,? according to the Environmental Protection Agency -- and ignited further debate over the transportation of crude oil in the U.S.

Up to 10,000 barrels sprang from the pipeline, according to an incident report filed to the National Response Center by ExxonMobil early Saturday morning. Twenty-two residents were evacuated from their homes, according to a statement on the ExxonMobil website.

Mayflower, Ark., Chief of Police Bob Satkowski told Channel 7 News in Little Rock that those residents had to leave their homes because of health risks from the crude oil fumes and possible fires.

In a statement on the company website, ExxonMobil downplayed the environmental concerns, saying that the air quality doesn?t likely present a human health risk, ?with the exception of high-pooling areas.?

KARK, an NBC affiliate station in Little Rock, reported that part of the pipeline runs through a water source that provides drinking water to nearly 400,000 residents in central Arkansas. The 20-inch wide pipeline goes through Lake Maumelle.

The pipeline, officially known as the Pegasus pipeline, transports heavy Canadian crude oil from Patoka, Ill. down to the Sunoco Logistics Nederland terminal in Texas, which feeds into Houston area refiners, according to the Exxon website. The pipeline, which can carry more than 90,000 barrels a day, was stopped Friday. ExxonMobil did not say when it would reopen.

EPA officials said the cleanup would be long and expensive, according to KARK. It was not reported who would pay for the cleanup.

The leak was first reported at 5 p.m. Friday, when someone called the National Response Center to report a drop in pipeline pressure.

Two hours later, a caller reported that there was a ?significant amount of material release.? The caller said the oil leak lasted about three hours.

An updated report early Saturday said up to 10,000 barrels were discharged and that the product had been released ?into flume pipes and into a pond, a tributary of Lake Conway.?

Friday?s spill prompted immediate response from critics of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport about 800,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude oil to the Gulf Coast for refining.

Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey took to Facebook to lash out against Canadian crude oil.

?This latest pipeline incident is a troubling reminder that oil companies still have not proven that they can safely transport Canadian tar sands oil across the United States without creating risks to our citizens and our environment,? Markey said. He is the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee.

?Tar sands oil is already the dirtiest, riskiest oil around, and should not be getting a free ride across America,? he continued. ?It?s time that we recognize the real effects producing and burning this oil will have on our climate, and the real world damage it can cause when it is spilled in our neighborhoods.?

This has been a bad week for crude oil public relations. On Wednesday, according to Reuters, a train carrying crude oil derailed in Minnesota and spilled up to 30,000 gallons.

Last week, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration recommended fining ExxonMobil Pipeline Company $1.7 million for how the company responded to a crude oil pipeline failure in the Yellowstone River in Montana.

The Mayflower spill may be 10 times more significant than the Montana spill, which leaked 1,509 barrels.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill poured 260,000 to 750,000 gallons into Alaskan waters.

These spills pale in comparison, however,to the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill, the most significant oil spill in the U.S., which leaked 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf Coast.

Reuters contributed reporting.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a30ca54/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Ccrude0Eoil0Eleaks0Earkansas0Esuburb0Eafter0Eexxonmobil0Epipeline0Eruptures0E1C91550A11/story01.htm

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Virtual reality, goggles and all, attempts return

FILE - In this March 25, 2009 file photo, Video game enthusiasts attend the Game Developers Conference, in San Francisco. The schedule for the 2013 GDC held March 25-29, illustrates the dramatic changes that have reshaped the gaming industry in recent years, an evolution that's as much about business models as it is about pixels. GDC organizers have added a summit on free-to-play games, planned talks on topics like crowd funding and micro-transactions and coordinated panels with such titles as "Making Money with Mobile Gaming" and "Why Won't FarmVille Go Away?" (AP Photo/Ben Margo, Filet)

FILE - In this March 25, 2009 file photo, Video game enthusiasts attend the Game Developers Conference, in San Francisco. The schedule for the 2013 GDC held March 25-29, illustrates the dramatic changes that have reshaped the gaming industry in recent years, an evolution that's as much about business models as it is about pixels. GDC organizers have added a summit on free-to-play games, planned talks on topics like crowd funding and micro-transactions and coordinated panels with such titles as "Making Money with Mobile Gaming" and "Why Won't FarmVille Go Away?" (AP Photo/Ben Margo, Filet)

FILE - In this March 25, 2009 file photo, Video game enthusiasts attend the Game Developers Conference, in San Francisco. The schedule for the 2013 GDC held March 25-29, illustrates the dramatic changes that have reshaped the gaming industry in recent years, an evolution that's as much about business models as it is about pixels. GDC organizers have added a summit on free-to-play games, planned talks on topics like crowd funding and micro-transactions and coordinated panels with such titles as "Making Money with Mobile Gaming" and "Why Won't FarmVille Go Away?" (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? It's back.

The virtual reality headset, the gizmo that was supposed to seamlessly transport wearers to three-dimensional virtual worlds, has made a remarkable return at this year's Game Developers Conference, an annual gathering of video game makers in San Francisco.

After drumming up hype over the past year and banking $2.4 million from crowdfunding, the Irvine, Calif.-based company Oculus VR captured the conference's attention this week with the Oculus Rift, its VR headset that's more like a pair of ski goggles than those bulky gaming helmets of the 1990s that usually left users with headaches.

"Developers who start working on VR games now are going to be able to do cool things," said Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey. "This is the first time when the technology, software, community and rendering power is all really there."

While VR technology has successfully been employed in recent years for military and medical training purposes, it's been too expensive, clunky or just plain bad for most at-home gamers. Oculus VR's headset is armed with stereoscopic 3-D, low-latency head tracking and a 110-degree field of view, and the company expects it to cost just a few hundred bucks.

A line at the conference snaked around the expo floor with attendees waiting for a chance to plop the glasses on their head and play a few minutes of "Hawken," an upcoming first-person shooter that puts players inside levitating war machines.

Attendance was also at capacity for a Thursday talk called "Virtual Reality: The Holy Grail of Gaming" led by Luckey. When he asked the crowd who'd ordered development prototypes of the technology, dozens of hands shot into the air.

"There's been a lot of promise over several decades with the VR helmet idea, but I think a lot of us feel like Oculus and other devices like it are starting to get it right," said Simon Carless, executive vice president at UBM Tech Game Network, which organizes the Game Developers Conference. "We may have a competitive and interesting-to-use device, which you could strap to your head and have really immersive gaming as a result."

Sony and Microsoft are reportedly working on similar peripherals, as are other companies. Luckey contends that the innovations Nintendo made with its Wii U, Sony is planning with its upcoming PlayStation 4 and Microsoft is likely tinkering with for its successor to the Xbox 360 don't seem like enough.

"We're seeing better graphics and social networks, but those aren't things that are going to fundamentally change the kind of experiences that gamers can have," said Luckey.

A growing list of high-profile game makers have sung the device's praises, including Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, "Minecraft" mastermind Markus Peterson, id Software's John Carmack, "Gears of War" chief Cliff Bleszinski and Valve boss Gabe Newell.

Valve is planning to release a VR version of its first-person shooter "Team Fortress 2" for the Rift, but Luckey is hoping that designers in attendance at this week's conference begin creating games especially for the doodad.

"The doors are already open," noted Luckey. "People are already telling us things they want to do with the Rift that they can't do with traditional games."

Luckey said prototype versions of the technology are being distributed to developers now, and he anticipates releasing a version for consumers by next year.

___

Online:

http://www.oculusvr.com

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-03-29-Games-Virtual%20Reality-Oculus/id-a74d4edea71b4a3abda0ca6c1d7055fe

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Children with sleep apnea have higher risk of behavioral, adaptive and learning problems

Mar. 29, 2013 ? A new study found that obstructive sleep apnea, a common form of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), is associated with increased rates of ADHD-like behavioral problems in children as well as other adaptive and learning problems.

"This study provides some helpful information for medical professionals consulting with parents about treatment options for children with SDB that, although it may remit, there are considerable behavioral risks associated with continued SDB," said Michelle Perfect, PhD, the study's lead author and assistant professor in the school psychology program in the department of disability and psychoeducational studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "School personnel should also consider the possibility that SDB contributes to difficulties with hyperactivity, learning and behavioral and emotional dysregulation in the classroom."

The five-year study, which appears in the April issue of the journal SLEEP, utilized data from a longitudinal cohort, the Tucson Children's Assessment of Sleep Apnea Study (TuCASA). The TuCASA study prospectively examined Hispanic and Caucasian children between 6 and 11 years of age to determine the prevalence and incidence of SDB and its effects on neurobehavioral functioning. The study involved 263 children who completed an overnight sleep study and a neurobehavioral battery of assessments that included parent and youth reported rating scales.

Results show that 23 children had incident sleep apnea that developed during the study period, and 21 children had persistent sleep apnea throughout the entire study. Another 41 children who initially had sleep apnea no longer had breathing problems during sleep at the five-year follow-up.

The odds of having behavioral problems were four to five times higher in children with incident sleep apnea and six times higher in children who had persistent sleep apnea. Compared to youth who never had SDB, children with sleep apnea were more likely to have parent-reported problems in the areas of hyperactivity, attention, disruptive behaviors, communication, social competency and self-care. Children with persistent sleep apnea also were seven times more likely to have parent-reported learning problems and three times more likely to have school grades of C or lower.

The authors report that this is the first sleep-related study to use a standardized questionnaire to assess adaptive functioning in typically developing youth with and without SDB.

"Even though SDB appears to decline into adolescence, taking a wait and see approach is risky and families and clinicians alike should identify potential treatments," said Perfect.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Michelle M. Perfect, Kristen Archbold, James L. Goodwin, Deborah Levine-Donnerstein, Stuart F. Quan. Risk of Behavioral and Adaptive Functioning Difficulties in Youth with Previous and Current Sleep Disordered Breathing. SLEEP, 2013; DOI: 10.5665/sleep.2536

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/child_development/~3/ixobQhrv17k/130329161243.htm

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S&P 500 moves above its record high, keeps going

NEW YORK (AP) ? There goes another stock market record.

The Standard & Poor's 500 crossed into record territory Thursday morning, beating the closing high it set in pre-financial crisis days. Three weeks earlier, the Dow Jones industrial average beat its own 2007 record.

The S&P 500, a barometer that investors use to gauge how the market is performing, edged above the Oct. 9, 2007, record close of 1,565 about an hour into trading. At midday it was still holding on to the record, trading at 1,567. That was up four points from the day before, a small increase but notable for the milestone it obliterated.

Investors will be waiting until the end of trading, at 4 p.m. EDT, to see if the index can hold on to the record. Their reactions were more guarded than celebratory. Even as the S&P touched new milestones, investors noted that the U.S. economy's footing is still uncertain, and the European debt crisis still far from resolved. Some also are concerned that the gains are being artificially fueled by the Federal Reserve's easy money policy.

"Getting back to where we were is an important step," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. But, he cautioned in a note to investors: "Markets are volatile, and if you are a long-term investor you should expect declines."

For most of this year, the stock market has zoomed ahead. A mixed performance over the last two weeks, thanks to the bailout of cash-strapped Cyprus, has been more the exception than the rule. Thursday marks the end of first-quarter trading, as markets will be closed for the Good Friday holiday. The Dow is up 11 percent for the three-month period, the best performance in more than a year. Last year, it lost ground in two quarters and was up 4 percent and 8 percent in the other two.

On Thursday, though, news about the U.S. economy and the European debt crisis was far from decisive. For every sign that things were improving, another said it wasn't.

The government reported that the U.S. economy grew faster than first estimated in the fourth quarter. But the growth, an annual rate of 0.4 percent, was still anemic. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped for the second straight week. On a longer time frame, though, jobless claims have been declining since November.

Investors are also uncertain of what to make of the continuing debt crisis in Europe. Portugal reported that its budget deficit widened. In Cyprus, banks reopened for the first time in nearly two weeks, after closing because the government was worried that depositors would make panicked withdrawals. The country reached a deal late Sunday for bailout loans from other European countries.

Like the Dow record three weeks ago, the S&P record reminded investors of a headier time. The last time the S&P closed above 1,565, in the fall of 2007, was back before the financial crisis imploded. October 2007 was pre-bailouts, pre-Great Recession, back when jobs were much easier to come by. Bear Stearns still existed. So did Lehman Brothers, Wachovia and Washington Mutual.

But by March 2009, long after the subprime mortgage market had been revealed as an unsustainable bubble and rumors were buzzing that the government might nationalize U.S. banks, the S&P had cratered from its lofty heights. It fell to its Great Recession low, 676.53, on March 9, 2009 ? down 57 percent from its October 2007 pinnacle. Now, with Thursday's gains, it has more than doubled since reaching that bottom. Including dividends, it is up 152 percent.

With the quarter ending, investors noted the records it had brought for the Dow. The Dow climbed for the first 10 trading days of March, a record not matched in more than 16 years. Its record since then hasn't been as impressive. The index fell on five of the last nine trading days.

Like other major market indicators, the S&P darted between small gains and losses shortly after trading opened Thursday. By midday the indexes were all slightly higher. The Dow was up 30 points, or 0.2 percent, at 14,557. The Nasdaq composite rose a point, 0.03 percent, to 3,257.

Among stocks making big moves:

?Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry phones, rose after surprising analysts with a profitable quarter and better-than-expected sales of its new touch-screen BlackBerry 10s. The company hopes to take back some of the market share it has lost to Apple's iPhone and other competitors. The stock rose 36 cents, more than 2 percent, to $14.93.

?Repros Therapeutics, a drug developer, shot higher on news that its potential treatment for low testosterone moved closer to regulatory approval. The stock rose $6.27, or 69 percent, to $15.40.

?Signet Jewelers, which runs Kay and Jared stores, and Mosaic, the fertilizer maker, were both up after reporting higher quarterly profits and revenue. Signet rose more than 6 percent, $3.97, to $67.24. Mosaic was up nearly 2 percent, rising $1.03 to $59.71.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/p-500-moves-above-record-high-keeps-going-152842263--finance.html

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Czech court throws out treason charges against ex-president Klaus

By Jan Lopatka

PRAGUE (Reuters) - A Czech court threw out treason charges against former President Vaclav Klaus on Wednesday, clearing the euroskeptic politician of accusations that marred his final days in office and underlined the deep divisions he left in society.

Klaus was impeached by the upper house of parliament, the Senate, on March 4, in a dramatic but mostly symbolic vote. It accused him of violating the constitution by refusing to sign European treaties and by granting an amnesty that freed thousands of prisoners and halted dozens of fraud prosecutions.

The biggest punishment he faced was losing office. But given that his second consecutive five-year term expired on March 7, he was threatened only by a milder punishment of losing a pension and not being able to run for the presidency again.

The Constitutional Court rejected the charges on procedural grounds, namely that the 71-year-old could not be tried because he was no longer in office.

"The Constitutional Court did not find room to continue the proceedings after the end of the president's term, and therefore halted the case," the court said on its website.

A 'guilty' verdict would have been a blow to the legacy of the right-wing economist who has proved self-conscious about his image, especially compared with the reverence enjoyed by his late predecessor Vaclav Havel.

Even some opponents of Klaus, who polarized opinion with his euroskeptic views and his siding with Russia in international diplomacy, said a treason charge was going too far.

A spokesman for the conservative ex-president welcomed the court decision. "This case was a warning example of how low the level and means of politics can drop in our country," he said.

Klaus was credited for successful macroeconomic reforms in the early 1990s, and for the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992 at a time when the break-up of Yugoslavia led to a series of bloody wars.

But his refusal to privatize banks and regulate the capital market led to widespread asset-stripping and an economic crisis in 1997, which brought him down as prime minister.

A year later he struck a power-sharing deal with the biggest leftist party, which critics say brought a period of corruption in the public sphere.

The amnesty Klaus granted in January this year angered most in the nation of 10.5 million and knocked his approval ratings to all-time lows below 30 percent. More than 6,000 prisoners jailed for minor offences were released.

He has made clear he will retain public presence and has not ruled out running for a seat next year in his great enemy's lair - the European Parliament.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/czech-court-throws-treason-charges-against-ex-president-185758715.html

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Ky. lawmakers override religious freedom veto

Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ky-lawmakers-override-religious-freedom-131607876.html

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Genetic 'spelling mistakes' that increase risk of common cancers determined

Mar. 27, 2013 ? More than 80 genetic 'spelling mistakes' that can increase the risk of breast, prostate and ovarian cancer have been found in a large, international research study within the framework of the EU network COGS. For the first time, the researchers also have a relatively clear picture of the total number of genetic alterations that can be linked to these cancers. Ultimately the researchers hope to be able to calculate the individual risk of cancer, to better understand how these cancers develop and to be able to generate new treatments.

The main findings are published in five articles in a special issue on genetic risk factors for cancer in the scientific journal Nature Genetics. The articles originate from COGS (Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study), an EU-based consortium where more than 160 research groups from all over the world are included. In the five COGS studies 100,000 patients with breast, ovarian or prostate cancer and 100,000 healthy individuals from the general population were included.

The scientists performed genetic analyses on all study participants. The composition of the nitrogen bases A, G, C and T was studied on 200,000 selected sections of the DNA strand. When cancer patients had significantly different compositions compared to healthy control subjects, the differences were considered to be relevant to risk of disease. The alterations can be described as a genetic 'spelling mistake', where A, G, C or T have been replaced with another letter. This spelling mistake is called Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) -- pronounced 'snip'.

For breast cancer the researchers found 49 genetic typos or SNPs, which is more than double the number previously found. In the case of prostate cancer, researchers have discovered another 26 deviations, which means that a total number of 78 SNPs may be linked to the disease. For ovarian cancer 8 new relevant SNPs were found.

"An equally important finding is that we identified how many additional SNPs that could influence the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer, respectively. For breast cancer the number is 1,000 and for prostate cancer 2,000," says Per Hall, Professor at Karolinska Institutet and the coordinator of the COGS consortium. "We also have a picture of where in the genome we should look in future studies.

SNPs are part of our natural heritage, we all have them. How it affects the individual depends on where on the DNA strand the genetic deviation is found. The researchers now hope to be able to evaluate the importance of the identified deviations, so that it will be possible to more clearly predict which individuals are at high risk of developing one of these cancers.

"We're now on the verge of being able to use our knowledge to develop tests that could complement breast cancer screening and take us a step closer to having an effective prostate cancer screening programme," says Professor Doug Easton of the University of Cambridge, UK, who has led several of the presented studies.

At the same time as these five articles are published in Nature Genetics, the Nature Publishing Group publishes another two articles on studies emanating from the COGS collaboration in Nature Communications. An additional number of COGS articles will be published simultaneously in other journals. The studies are financed by partly different funders; however the COGS project is mainly funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Programme. Other financial contributors to the COGS project are the M?rit and Hans Rausing Initiative against Breast Cancer, the Swedish Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the Cancer Risk Prediction Center (CRisP).

"COGS is the largest genotyping project in the world targeting identification of genetic alterations that influence the risk of common cancers. The collaborative efforts have been tremendous and key to success," says COGS coordinator Per Hall.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Karolinska Institutet.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal References:

1. Rosalind A Eeles et al. Identification of 23 new prostate cancer susceptibility loci using the iCOGS custom genotyping array. Nature Genetics, 2013; 45 (4): 385 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2560
2. Paul D P Pharoah et al. GWAS meta-analysis and replication identifies three new susceptibility loci for ovarian cancer. Nature Genetics, 2013; 45 (4): 362 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2564
3. Stig E Bojesen et al. Multiple independent variants at the TERT locus are associated with telomere length and risks of breast and ovarian cancer. Nature Genetics, 2013; 45 (4): 371 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2566
4. Montserrat Garcia-Closas et al. Genome-wide association studies identify four ER negative?specific breast cancer risk loci. Nature Genetics, 2013; 45 (4): 392 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2561
5. Kyriaki Michailidou et al. Large-scale genotyping identifies 41 new loci associated with breast cancer risk. Nature Genetics, 2013; 45 (4): 353 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2563

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/SMKCHbFWyCs/130327132552.htm

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