STEPHENSON – The sudden appearance of a 150-foot, 4-foot-deep crevice in Menominee Township remains a mystery and is causing a great deal of speculation.
The crevice appeared after landowners heard a loud boom between 8 and 9 a.m. Monday, followed by the ground shaking for a few seconds. The landowners later found a large crevice south of their Menominee Township home Tuesday.
Residents are speculating what could have caused the mysterious occurrence.
Eileen Heider, who owns the property where the crevice first appeared earlier this week, said Michigan State Police were attempting to locate an expert to come in and determine what caused the crevice.
“I have heard some people mention it appearing due to the amount of rain we received this year, but if that was the case, then there should be water in it, and the crevice is bone dry,’ said Heider.
She said there have been other theories offered, including a lightning bolt that may have struck the ground.
Other theories Heider has heard range from fissures, which with the high water table may have caused collapse, to a pocket of methane gas that exploded under pressure.
“It’s not a straight line; it’s crooked like it was made by someone who may have been drinking,” said Heider, referring to the crevice.
She added the crevice is not only in the wooded area where it was first discovered, but it also runs into a field near the Heider home.
“We don’t know if the crack started in the field and runs into the woods or if it started in the woods and runs into the field,” she said.
Heider said in some areas of the crevice, rocks can be seen, some of which have been split due to the earth’s pressure in those areas.
Whether or not the two are connected, I do not know. However, I find it extremely interesting that an event like this took place within a couple months of this executive order. The Great Lakes have been subject to many debates over the years within our government. These debates include, however are not limited to, drainage, pollution and even emptying the lakes.
WASHINGTON – If al-Qaida acquired nuclear weapons it “would have no compunction at using them,” President Barack Obama said Sunday on the eve of a summit aimed at finding ways to secure the world’s nuclear stockpile.
“The single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term, would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama said. “This is something that could change the security landscape in this country and around the world for years to come.” Read the full story
NEW YORK (Associated Press)– Officials say 13 people, including 10 firefighters, have been injured in a seven-alarm fire on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that burned for more than four hours before being declared under control.
Fire Chief Edward Kilduff said two elderly residents were hospitalized in critical condition with smoke inhalation and a third was being evaluated. He said 10 firefighters were hurt, including one whose hands were burned. Nine others suffered minor injuries. Read the full story
The Maryland Senate voted on Saturday to allow patients access to medical marijuana at state-licensed dispensaries. The bill now moves to the state’s lower chamber.
The bill was approved overwhelmingly, with bipartisan support and without objections or discussion, by a 35-12 margin.
Maryland would join 14 other states in legalizing medical marijuana. The neighboring District of Columbia legalized it in a 1998 referendum that was only recently allowed by Congress to go into effect. The District’s city council is writing rules to establish the city’s medical marijuana policy.
Current Maryland law allows defendants charged with pot possession to cite a medical necessity defense. If a judge deems the drug to be beneficial, a maximum hundred dollar civil fine is imposed. Read the full story
The current rate of extinction is 100 to 1000 times higher than the average, or background rate, making our current period the 6th major mass extinction in the planet’s history.
Although fossil reconstructions or pictorial representations can sometimes be difficult to connect with, it’s impossible to ignore the experience of seeing a photograph of an animal on the brink of extinction.
Thus, what follows is a list of 11 extinct animals that were photographed while still alive.
Tasmanian Tiger
The last Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, known to have existed died in the Hobart Zoo, in Tasmania, Australia, on September 7th, 1936. Read the full story
SEATTLE—A push to legalize marijuana on the West Coast is picking up steam as Washington lawmakers and pot proponents in California and Oregon propose separate measures.
The Washington state legislature will hold a preliminary vote Wednesday on whether to sell pot in state liquor stores, though even its authors say the bill is unlikely to pass. The same day in California, backers of a well-funded ballot measure to legalize marijuana are expected to file more than enough signatures to put the initiative before state voters in November. Read the full story
A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report. Read the full story
A senior Iranian anti-drug official has accused the US, Britain and Canada of playing a major role in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade.
On the sidelines of an anti-drug conference in Tehran, deputy head of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters Taha Taheri said that Western powers are aiding the drug trade in Afghanistan.
“According to our indisputable information, the presence of the United States, Britain and Canada has not reduced the drug trade and the three countries have had major roles in the distribution of drugs,” IRIB quoted Taheri as saying on Thursday. Read the full story
Haiti has a longstanding history of US military intervention and occupation going back to the beginning of the 20th Century. US interventionism has contributed to the destruction of Haiti’s national economy and the impoverishment of its population.
The devastating earthquake is presented to World public opinion as the sole cause of the country’s predicament.
A country has been destroyed, its infrastructure demolished. Its people precipitated into abysmal poverty and despair.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A bill seeking to legalize marijuana in California won initial approval from a legislative committee Tuesday in what may be a purely symbolic vote because a second committee likely won’t take it up in time.
The state Assembly’s public safety committee voted 4-3 on the measure that would tax and regulate marijuana in the same way alcohol is controlled.
But the health committee also must approve the measure by Friday before the full Assembly can consider it, an unlikely scenario. Read the full story
TRENTON — The bill legalizing medical marijuana, which was passed by the New Jersey Legislature today, will go into effect six months after Gov. Jon Corzine signs it, as he promised to do before he leaves office Tuesday. New Jersey will become the 14th state to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, and each state’s laws have their own idiosyncrasies.
Until medical marijuana becomes legal here, the state Department of Health and Senior Services will face intense lobbying from advocacy groups as it outlines a wide range of rules, such as where marijuana can be grown in the state, how much it will cost and who gets to distribute the drug. Read the full story
PORT-AU-PRINCE — The United States, France, Canada and governments across Latin America were gearing up to help Haiti, after a massive 7.0 earthquake leveled buildings and caused an unknown number of casualties.
US President Barack Obama said his government stood “ready to assist the people of Haiti,” as the State Department, USAID and United States Southern Command mobilized, the White House said, “to coordinate an assessment and any such assistance.”
In Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France “expresses its complete solidarity” with Haiti, adding that his ministry’s crisis center had begun working “to mobilize and dispatch without delay urgent aid to Port-au-Prince.” Read the full story
With a lanky legspan of up to nearly a half foot, a newly discovered spider species is the largest among its family of arachnids in the Middle East.
The spider, now dubbed Cerbalus aravensis, was discovered in the dunes of the Sands of Samar in the southern Arava region in Israel by a team of biologists from the University of Haifa-Oranim. The scientists say C. aravensis is nocturnal and mostly active during the hottest months of the year. Read the full story
China and Russia try to control rain clouds and the Dutch use technology to keep low-lying inland areas from flooding, so why shouldn’t the United States be able to manipulate lightning? In an attempt to better understand one of nature’s most powerful processes, DARPA issued abroad agency announcement yesterday asking for ideas on how to best protect American personnel and resources from dangers and costs associated with lightning strikes. To wit:
Lightning causes more than $1B/year in direct damages to property in addition to the loss of lives, disruption of activities (for example, postponement of satellite launches) and their corresponding costs. A better understanding of the physics underlying lightning discharge, associated emissions, and related processes (for example, tribocharging in the clouds) may lead to revolutionary advances in the state of the art of lightning protection. Read the full story
About 80 percent of Americans approve of medical marijuana laws, but some conservatives are incensed that state legislatures keep passing them. In a recent column, George F. Will, the Washington Post’s bow-tied curmudgeon, decried the reefer madness he sees taking over California, sweeping across Colorado and perhaps even coming to a normal state near you. Read the full story
CUERNAVACA, Mexico – Two hundred Mexican Navy marines stormed an upscale apartment complex and killed a reputed drug cartel chief in a two-hour gunbattle, one of the biggest victories yet in President Felipe Calderon’s drug war.
Arturo Beltran Leyva, the “boss of bosses,” and six members of his cartel died in the shootout Wednesday in Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City, according to a navy statement Thursday. Read the full story
WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) - EXCLUSIVE - Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization. Guarding the location’s coordinates carefully, the project’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza. Read the full story
Recent Comments