Tag Archive: Headlines

An oil rig with a litany of regulatory speeding tickets explodes in the Gulf of Mexico.  British Petroleum and their experts dig deep into their brain trust and lessons learned to come up with a plan to put out the fire by blowing the rig up all over again.  Alas, here was one case where two negatives did not make a positive and,  had they let the thing burn it might have saved a whole lot of spilled milk.   British Petroleum pulls out all stops over the next 4 ½ months to stop the mother of all oil spills.

Related Statistic:  An estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil was unleashed on the surrounding ecosystems.  At 160 litres per barrel and a 46% yield once refined to produce gasoline for our cars, that translates into 360.6 million litres of gasoline at the pumps (or roughly 3 times the average (112million litre) daily gasoline consumption of Canadian drivers).

Bucking all odds, 33 Chilean miners survive a cave in (and the mining industry’s not so rapid response protocols) and climb out of the depths of Mother Earth 69 days after the roof collapsed.

Meanwhile, in Hungary, a reservoir bursts and releases one million cubic meters of toxic waste into the neighboring towns and waterways. Once again the experts are galvanized into action.  They roll out all of their manuals, disaster recovery tools and procedures en route to determining that they cannot do anything because nothing needs to be done.  Their solution?  Broadcast assurances that, “the toxic sludge will dilute enough so that by the time it arrives into the Danube on the weekend, it won’t be harmful anymore.”

Speaking of spin, green scientists spent the better part of the year digging out of allegations (and headlines everywhere) that they were guilty of cooking the books on man’s contribution to, and imminent demise from Global Warming.  Allegations of their fraud, fear mongering and sensationalism were later proved to be without grounds but alas you would have to dig deep into the back pages of your national or local (sensational fear mongering) voice of people (who have the money to manufacture the stories you need to hear).

(Hurting) Headitor’s note:  Its late, its New Years Eve, and I’SATIREd, sauced please accept that some (or all) of my ^wrec_kollections of the year gone by might be a bit scotchy.  You should double-check my fracts with some more staid and reputable news sources before using any of the stories that I have dismembered from last year in a serious conversation.

Nadya Suleman, an unemployed 33 year old mother of six children that had been living with her children and mother in a small three-bedroom house that was in mortgage default and scheduled to be sold at auction elects to undergo an in vitro fertilization treatment which leads to … octuplets.  A beaming mother claims she will get by with the help of family, friends, and her church. She plans to return to school in the fall.  Meanwhile her 69 year-old mom who is taking care of the other six children ages two through seven (all of them also conceived through in vitro fertilization) indicated that she is already overwhelmed looking after them.  She said she warned her daughter: “I’m going to be gone” [when you get home].  Her 67 year-old father says he is leaving the country to return to his native Iraq as a translator and driver in order to financially support his daughter and her children.

Shortly after George W. Bush was finally shooed out of office, the Iraqi reporter who jumped the gun a little and tried to shoe him out with a penny loafer was convicted of assaulting a visiting head of state and sentenced to 3 years in an Iraqi prison.  Like all good Texans, “W” may die with his boots on but it could well be the shoe that he is most remembered for.  See ya later alligator.  Shoe now. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

In a related story, Two weeks earlier, across the pond in New York City, a technology firm executive, George Anderson was sentenced to fifteen days in jail, 200 hours of community service and a $500 fine when he plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident.  The previous year, he struck and killed Florence Cioffi with his $100,000 Mercedes SUV. It was apparently the opinion of the court that Cioffi was also guilty of walking while drunk.  Sounds to me like the scales of justice might have themselves been guilty of being a little bent out of shape.

Nortel Networks Corp., a company in bankruptcy protection and already under fire for handing out executive bonuses earlier this year, approved a plan this fall to give another round of raises to its top managers.  Sources say 72 Nortel executives will have a total of $7.5 million US added on top of their current salaries in 2009.  Of those 72 executives, 14 will be getting compensation of $500,000 or more. The biggest earner under the new compensation plan is former treasurer John Doolittle, who took over as head of the company’s corporate group in August after the departure of chief executive Mike Zafirovski. Doolittle’s total compensation has been bumped to $1.68 million this year, an increase of 1.12 million over 2008.  Before departing, his predecessor told a House of Commons finance committee looking into the situation that the company’s constrained cash resources and competing creditor claims meant it wasn’t possible to pay severance to laid-off employees. He also said the company decided to trim the value paid out for pension benefits to reflect their pension plan’s current funding levels.  He further enraged retired Nortel employees when he made a filing in October with a U.S. bankruptcy court naming himself as a creditor and claiming more than $12 million US from the company, about half of which was for his own pension benefits. That claim is still under review.

After years of fighting in an attempt to nurture a stable democratic regime in Afghanistan the allied forces are shocked to find one of their good guys cheating at the poles.  You can lead a horse to water, but perhaps it would have been better to nurture a local horse that can find the water himself as opposed to a westernized breed that knows (and prefers) what we do, as opposed to what we say about democracy.

With the installation of its final set of Solar Arrays the international space station usurped Venus as the second brightest heavenly body visible in our night sky.