Overcoming energy dependence

May 19, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

While strategically useful, fracking is controversial.

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Floodwaters triggered more than 3,000 landslides across the Balkans on Sunday, laying waste to entire towns and villages and disturbing land mines leftover from the region’s 1990s war, along with warning signs that marked the unexploded weapons. The Balkans’ worst flooding since record keeping began forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and threatened to inundate Serbia’s main power plant, which supplies electricity to a third of the country and most of the capital, Belgrade.

Three people were arrested on charges of negligence in the Turkish mining disaster that killed 301 people, a prosecutor said Sunday. The suspects are among 19 people still in custody. Prosecutor Bekir Sahiner said the three were also accused of the crime of causing the death of more than one person, a charge that doesn’t imply intent. In a news conference in Soma, where the disaster took place, he said that one of those arrested was the company’s operations manager. The manager is Akin Celik, though Sahiner didn’t name him. A total of 25 people were initially detained and six of them have been released, Sahiner said.

The SpaceX Dragon is back on Earth. The commercial cargo ship splashed into the Pacific on Sunday, just five hours after leaving the International Space Station. It brought back 3,500 pounds of science samples and old equipment for NASA. SpaceX said the Dragon capsule came down off Mexico’s Baja California coast. The company is based in Southern California. The Dragon spent a month at the orbiting lab, delivering a full shipment on Easter Sunday. Astronaut Steven Swanson, the station commander, used the big robot arm to set the Dragon free.

Forces loyal to a rogue Libyan general attacked the country’s parliament Sunday, expanding his eastern offensive against Islamists into the heart of the country’s capital. Gunmen detained some 20 lawmakers and officials, authorities said, as black smoke rose over the parliament. The violence, three years after the 2011 civil war that toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi, threatens to further splinter a country dominated by militias.

California Chrome might abandon his Triple Crown bid if New York officials do not allow the colt to wear a nasal strip in the Belmont Stakes. Trainer Art Sherman made no threats about the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner passing on a chance to become horse racing’s 12th Triple Crown winner, but he suggested it was a possibility. “I’d have to leave it up to the owners,” he said Sunday. “I know they’ll be upset.”

The devastating wildfires scorching Southern California offer a glimpse of a warmer and more fiery future, according to scientists and federal and international reports. In the past three months, at least three different studies and reports have warned that wildfires are getting bigger, that man-made climate change is to blame, and it’s only going to get worse with more fires starting earlier in the year.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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