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> From: VeryPDF-Email-Service <noreply@verymailer.com>
> Subject: [VeryPDF RSS to Email] RSSMix.com Mix ID 8161944 - 20151224211841
> To: moganomics@yahoo.com
> Date: Friday, 25 December, 2015, 5:18 AM
> Generated by VeryPDF RSS to Email
> SubscriptionCalifornia governor pardons Robert Downey Jr. in
> drug case
> 24 December 2015, 8:22 pm
>          SACRAMENTO,
> Calif.        (AP) -- The governor of
> California pardoned Robert Downey Jr. on Thursday for a
> nearly 20-year-old felony drug conviction that led to the
> Oscar-nominated actor's imprisonment for roughly a year.
> Downey was among 91 people granted pardons for criminal
> convictions after demonstrating they had rehabilitated
> themselves and been out of custody for at least 10 years,
> Gov. Jerry Brown's office announced. The pardon does not
> erase records of a conviction, but it restores voting rights
> and is a public proclamation that the person has remained
> out of trouble and demonstrated exemplary behavior,
> according to material on Brown's website. Downey, once a
> courthouse mainstay for a series of drug-related arrests,
> has become one of Hollywood's greatest success stories for
> career and addiction rehabilitation. Since 2008, Downey has
> portrayed "Iron Man" in a series of Disney blockbuster
> films, including "The Avengers," based on the Marvel comic
> books. The 50-year-old actor is a two-time Oscar nominee for
> his roles in 1992's "Chaplin" and 2008's "Tropic Thunder."
> Downey's legal troubles began in June 1996 when he was
> stopped for speeding on Pacific Coast Highway and
> authorities found cocaine, heroin and a pistol in his
> vehicle. In 1999, he was sent to prison for roughly a year
> after he acknowledged violating his probation. Downey
> obtained the pardon after getting a judge to issue a
> certificate of rehabilitation, according to a proclamation
> released by Brown's office. It said Downey has "lived an
> honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character, and
> conducted himself as a law-abiding citizen." An email sent
> to Downey's agent Jim Toth and a call to his attorney Blair
> Berk were not immediately returned. The Democratic governor,
> a former Jesuit seminarian, has made it a practice to issue
> pardons around Christian holidays. The state's
> longest-serving governor has now issued 1,087 pardons,
> including 683 in the past five years and 404 during his
> first eight years in office from 1975-1983, according to his
> office. Most of those pardoned Thursday were convicted of
> drug and property crimes, though three were convicted of
> arson, one of kidnapping and one of vehicular manslaughter.
> Three were convicted of assaults using deadly weapons and
> one of carjacking with a BB gun. Many are now residents of
> other states. The hundreds of pardons Brown has issued in
> each of his four terms are typical - except for his three
> immediate predecessors. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger
> granted 15, Democrat Gray Davis granted none, and Republican
> Pete Wilson granted 13. Former Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan
> granted nearly 600, according to Brown's office. ---
> McCartney reported from Los Angeles.
>
> APNewsBreak: EPA wants toxic Nevada mine on Superfund list
> 24 December 2015, 8:01 pm
>          RENO, Nev. 
>       (AP) -- Fifteen years after U.S.
> regulators started assessing damage and health risks at an
> abandoned Nevada copper mine, the Environmental Protection
> Agency is moving to designate the contaminated land a
> Superfund site, a step the state could still oppose. Rural
> neighbors of the World War II-era mine that has leaked toxic
> chemicals for decades won a $19.5 million settlement in 2013
> from companies they accused of covering up the contamination
> to drinking water wells near Yerington, about 65 miles
> southeast of Reno. The EPA sent a letter to Gov. Brian
> Sandoval this week announcing its intention to place the
> mine on the list of the nation's most polluted sites to
> "mitigate exposures that are a substantial threat to the
> public health or welfare or the environment." "If we do not
> receive a written response from the state by Jan. 29, we
> will assume that Nevada is in agreement with EPA and will
> proceed with proposing the site for addition to the NPL,"
> Jared Blumenfeld, the agency's regional administrator in San
> Francisco, wrote in a Dec. 22 letter obtained by The
> Associated Press. NPL is the acronym for the Superfund's
> National Priority List. Aides to Sandoval had no immediate
> comment. Nevada has opposed past EPA proposals to list the
> site, fearing an effect on property values and any precedent
> that could be set by federal intervention in the
> mining-friendly state, the world's sixth-biggest producer of
> gold. But Nevada regulators estimated earlier this year that
> it would cost $30.4 million to address only what the EPA
> considers the most immediate health and safety concerns, and
> the state has been unsuccessful in obtaining financial
> assistance from those responsible for the damage. Under the
> Superfund listing, the EPA would cover 90 percent of the
> costs. "Without an identifiable private source of funding,
> the only mechanism to make federal funding available is to
> add the site to the NPL," Blumenfeld said. BP's subsidiary
> Atlantic Richfield has paid for other work on the site, said
> BP spokesman Jason Ryan. It comes after residents filed a
> class-action lawsuit in 2011 accusing Atlantic Richfield Co.
> and parent company BP America Inc. of "intentionally and
> negligently" concealing the extent of uranium, arsenic and
> other pollutants leaking into their drinking water wells
> from the mine. The mine covers 6 square miles of land owned
> partly by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Atlantic
> Richfield acquired the property in 1977 from Anaconda
> Copper, which built the mine in 1941. Previous owners left
> behind 90 million gallons of acidic solution that continues
> to threaten the groundwater, Blumenfeld said. That's
> equivalent to the amount of liquid it would take to cover
> about 80 football fields, 10 feet deep. In 2008, a U.S.
> Labor Department review panel upheld a whistleblower claim
> by ex-mine cleanup supervisor Earle Dixon who said the BLM
> illegally fired him for speaking out about the risks in
> defiance of local politicians. Peggy Pauly, a Yerington
> minister's wife, helped organize efforts to demand
> additional cleanup and filed the lawsuit, joined by about
> 700 past and present neighbors. Steven German, a New
> York-based attorney who represented the residents, called
> her "the real hero in all of this." "This is an important
> next step in getting this massive old mine cleaned up," he
> said Wednesday of the listing. "It is going to cost a
> fortune." Anaconda, the former owner, produced 1.7 billion
> pounds of copper from 1952 to 1978 at the mine in the Mason
> Valley, an irrigated agricultural oasis in the otherwise
> largely barren high desert. The EPA determined that the
> uranium was produced as a byproduct of processing the copper
> and that the radioactive waste was initially dumped into
> dirt-bottomed ponds that leaked into the groundwater.
> Federal studies showed 79 percent of the wells tested north
> of the mine had dangerous levels of uranium, arsenic or both
> that made the water unsafe to drink, including one a
> half-mile away with levels more than 10 times the legal
> drinking water standard. At the mine itself, wells tested as
> high as 100 times the standard. Although the health effects
> of specific levels are not well-understood, long-term
> exposure to high levels of uranium in drinking water may
> cause cancer and damage kidneys, the EPA said.
>
>
>
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