Ancient meteorite standing between one Iowa town and its water supply

posted by nwibizreview on Feb 17th, 2012 at 6:52 pm

Ancient meteorite standing between one Iowa town and its water supply

By Eric Pfeiffer

The remains of a 1.5 mile-wide, 10 billion-ton meteorite are causing problems for a small Iowa town, 74 million years after it crashed onto the Earth's surface at 45,000 miles per hour.

The Des Moines Register reports that the 1,600 residents of Manson, Iowa are struggling to locate a site for the town's well due to the geological impact of the meteorite. The crash created the underground Manson Crater—which has a diameter of 24 miles and reaches into four neighboring counties.

"It's hard to predict exactly what you are going to hit," state geologist Robert Libra told the Register. "It's a jumbled mess."

For a little context, the asteroid blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs and most life on Earth 65 million years ago is estimated to have been about 9 miles in diameter. According to a 2010 article in the journal Science, that impact was the equivalent of 1,000,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs, creating tsunamis and earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale.

An explainer on the Iowa Geological & Water Survey site explains that while the Manson Crater meteorite wasn't enough to wipe out the dinosaurs (it hit Earth nearly 10 million years prior), it nonetheless had a comparable effect on prehistoric Iowa. The impact is said to equal 10 trillion tons of TNT, resulting in an electromagnetic blast that incinerated anything within 130 miles and wiped out all life within 650 miles of the blast.

In fact, the Manson Crater meteorite was long-thought to have been the cause of the dinosaurs extinction, until scientists determined that it was too old. Still, it remains one of the largest outer space collision sites in North America.

And now, after years of struggling to find a sustainable water source, engineers at Iowa's Department of Natural Resources say they may have come up with a solution: Drilling for water near the crater's center. They speculate that the crater's center is home to Iowa's softest water source.

"Water that comes out of the central part is naturally soft," Anderson said. "It's the only naturally soft groundwater in the state of Iowa," Anderson said.

Of course, fans of Stephen King's "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" will tell you that getting too close to any meteorite should raise a red flag.

0 Comment(s)

.

Italian police seize $6 trillion of fake U.S. bonds

posted by nwibizreview on Feb 17th, 2012 at 2:22 pm

by Elisa Forte and Gavin Jones

POTENZA, Italy (Reuters) - Italian police said on Friday they had seized about $6 trillion worth of fake U.S. Treasury bonds and other securities in Switzerland, and arrested eight Italians accused of international fraud and other financial crimes.

The operation, co-ordinated by prosecutors from the southern Italian city of Potenza, was carried out by Italian, Swiss and U.S. authorities after a year-long investigation, an Italian police source said.

It began as a investigation into mafia loan-sharking, but gradually expanded as prosecutors used telephone and computer intercepts to unearth evidence of illegal activity surrounding Treasury bonds.

The fake securities, worth more than a third of U.S. national debt, were seized in January from a Swiss trust company where they were held in three large trunks.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome thanked the Italian authorities and said the forgeries were "an attempt to defraud several Swiss banks." It said U.S. experts had helped to identify the bonds as fakes.

Potenza's prosecutor Giovanni Colangelo said an international network "in many countries" was behind the forgeries.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera said on its website that the criminal network was believed to be interested in acquiring plutonium, citing sources at the prosecutors' office.

VERSAILLES

Police videos showed images of the trunks, with "Federal Reserve System, Treaty of Versailles" stamped on the side in large, golden letters.

Bond certificates marked "Chicago, Illinois, Federal Reserve Bank" and other securities, some for one billion dollars, were also shown.

U.S. bond traders took a light-hearted view of the news.

"If there's that much less supply now, Treasuries should be rallying," joked Kevin Flanagan, fixed-income strategist at Morgan Stanley.

A trader at Citigroup said he had swapped jokes with colleagues about the seizure, which would not move markets.

"It's kind of like fake inflation I guess, if you take it to the max, but I don't think it means that much."

Prosecutors said the forgers had hoped to use the fake bonds as collateral to secure loans.

The eight men arrested are accused of counterfeiting bonds, credit card forgery, and loan-sharking in the Italian regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Lazio and Basilicata, police said.

The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's office said Zurich state prosecutors had worked on the investigation at the request of the Italian prosecutor. The Swiss handed over their findings in July last year.

In 2009, Italian financial police seized $742 billion of fake U.S. bearer bonds in the of Chiasso, on the Swiss-Italian border.

(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer and Emily Flitter; Editing by Andrew Roche)

0 Comment(s)

.

Electric Cigarette Explodes in FL Man's Mouth

posted by nwibizreview on Feb 17th, 2012 at 10:45 am

Editorial: When the Facts Are Straight

Should the industry expect a backlash over e-cigarettes?

By STEVE HOLTZ

CSP Daily News | February 16, 2012

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- You probably read the story or heard it on the radio this week: A Florida man, trying to quit smoking and innocently puffing away on an electronic cigarette suddenly has the implement--specifically, it's battery, according to reports--explode in his mouth. He's rushed to the hospital, suffering from shattered teeth, severe burns and a missing chunk of his tongue.

Local fire officials described the grisly scene: burned carpet, chair cushions, pictures and office equipment. One division chief compares the injuries caused by the e-cigarette--a fast-growing alternative to tobacco that holds promise for convenience stores--as being similar to "trying to hold a bottle rocket in your mouth when it went off."

An e-cigarette advocate told the Associated Press, "There have been billions and billions of puffs on the cigarettes, and we have not heard of this happening before."

The story is quickly picked up by network news and newspapers across the country, Canada, Australia and beyond.

CSP Daily News didn't pick up the story.

Why not?

Certainly a story told as widely as this one is going to lead to some questions at the checkout counter. Some serious: Are these really safe? Some sarcastic: Is this the type that explodes? Some offensive: How can you sell such dangerous devices?

The bottom line is: Today, there are more questions than answers. It's yet to be reported which brand of e-cigarette the unfortunate man was using. It's not known if he was using it as directed. It's not known if additional testing or even recalls will be required. Also, was it the e-cig that caused the explosion or something else the person may have been doing?

It's widely known that tobacco cigarettes can cause disease and lead to an early death. Yet the industry sells them by the millions. Will one freak accident with an e-cigarette likely cause a backlash? Perhaps, so be forewarned.

And when further investigation of just what happened when that Florida man sought to sooth a nicotine craving is revealed, or if regulatory action is taken in the wake of the incident, CSP Daily News will let you know.

If you're still curious, click here to read the complete AP story or watch the video above.

0 Comment(s)

.

"Regulators close llinois, Indiana bank"

posted by nwibizreview on Feb 11th, 2012 at 9:08 pm

By Drew FitzGerald

Regulators on Friday closed a bank in Illinois and another in Indiana, bringing the nationwide tally of bank failures up to nine for the year.

Illinois' Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday closed Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Charter National Bank and Trust. Barrington Bank & Trust Co. agreed to take over the failed bank and its two branches as part of a purchase-and-assumption deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Barrington Bank is a subsidiary of Wintrust Financial Corp. WTFC -2.26% .

Charter National Bank and Trust had about $93.9 million in assets and $89.5 million in deposits at the end of December. Barrington Bank & Trust agreed to assume all the failed bank's deposits and to buy essentially all of its assets.

Indiana regulators also closed Shelbyville, Ind.-based SCB Bank. First Merchants Bank NA, of Muncie, Ind., agreed to take over SCB and its four branches.

The acquiring bank is owned by First Merchants Corp. FRME -1.74% .

SCB Bank had about $182.6 million in assets and $171.6 million in deposits at the end of December. First Merchants Bank agreed to assumed SBC's deposits and essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC estimates that the cost of the bank failures to the Deposit Insurance Fund will reach $106 million.

The latest failures add to the hundreds of banks that have collapsed since the end of 2007 after the housing sector bust and the financial crisis. In 2011, there were 92 failures, down from the 157 banks that failed in 2010.

0 Comment(s)

.