In WTF News: Roundup July 15, 2010

Alexaner Kosolapov, “McDonalds Commercial”

RUSSIAN CURATORS ANGER CHURCH, BUT ESCAPE JAIL

Two Russian curators were found guilty Monday of inciting religious hatred in a case that has highlighted the growing influence of the church and its links to the Russian government.

Yuri Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev were showered with roses by supporters as a Moscow court cleared them of a maximum jail sentence of three years for their 2007 Forbidden Art exhibit, which mixed religious icons with sexual and pop-culture images.

They must instead pay fines of 200,000 roubles ($6,477) and 150,000 roubles, respectively, to the state. Leading cultural figures had appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev to drop the charges, saying it heralded a new era of censorship.

“I am certain that this decision comes directly from Prime Minister (Vladimir Putin) and President (Medvedev),” Yerofeyev told Reuters when leaving the courtroom to chants and prayers from elderly women…

Russia’s Orthodox Church is undergoing a major revival after the fall of Communism almost 20 years ago and Russia’s leaders have endorsed it as the country’s main faith…

Among the art on display in the 2007 exhibit were works depicting an Orthodox icon adorned with Mickey Mouse, a Russian general raping a soldier, and a Soviet-era Order of Lenin medal over Christ’s head…(Check out some of the artwork here)

The works from the exhibit were placed behind a peep-holed veil so only those who wanted to could view them, and photography was banned to prevent the imagery from being broadly distributed.

Read the full article via Yahoo! News (published July 12, 2010)

Our two cents: What would Russia be without some censorship? Freedom of expression is a beautiful thing, I’m glad we have it here.

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CHEMO THERAPY DRUGS MAY BE GIVING HEALTH CARE WORKERS CANCER

Sue Crump braced as the chemo drugs dripped into her body. She knew treatment would be rough. She had seen its signature countless times in the ravaged bodies and hopeful faces of cancer patients in hospitals where she had spent 23 years mixing chemo as a pharmacist.

At the same time, though, she wondered whether those same drugs — experienced as a form of “secondhand chemo” while she mixed the drugs as a pharmacist at Swedish Medical Center and elsewhere — may have caused her cancer to begin with.

Chemo is poison, by design. It’s descended from deadly mustard gas first used against soldiers in World War I…

Crump, who died of pancreatic cancer in September at age 55, was one of thousands of health-care workers who on the job was chronically exposed to chemotherapy agents for years before there were even voluntary safety guidelines in place. Now some of those workers are being diagnosed with cancers that occupational-health specialists say could be linked to exposure to those same powerful drugs that have saved hundreds of thousands of patient lives.

Studies as far back as the 1970s have linked increased rates of certain cancers to nurses and physicians. Occupational-health experts believe that’s because when nurses, pharmacists, technicians and, increasingly, even veterinarians mix and deliver the drugs, accidental spills, sprays and punctures put them in close, frequent contact with hazardous drugs.

A just-completed study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) — 10 years in the making and the largest to date — confirms that chemo continues to contaminate the work spaces where it’s used and in some cases is still being found in the urine of those who handle it, despite knowledge of safety precautions…

Read the full article via The Seattle Times (published July 10, 2010)

Our two cents: Plain and simple, this is just sad.

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THE GULF OF MEXICO IS AWASH IN 27,000 ABANDONED OIL WELLS

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as “temporarily abandoned.”

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — eveb though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

Read the full article via AP News on Google (published July 6, 2010)

Our two cents: Nuke them all! Just kidding…our planet is fucked anyway.

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WORKERS CLEAR 1,000 TONS OF FAT FROM LONDON SEWER

Sewer workers have cleared out 1,000 tons of compressed fat and trash from beneath London’s Leicester Square, a tourist hot spot and venue for glitzy movie premieres.

Workers clad in overalls with masks and gloves shoveled out enough gunk to fill nine of London’s iconic double-decker buses, utility Thames Water said in a statement.

“We’re used to getting our hands dirty, but nothing on this scale,” said Danny Brackley, a sewer flusher with Thames Water. “We couldn’t even access the sewer as it was blocked by a 4-foot wall of solid fat.”

The fat is the product of Londoners’ “sewer abuse” — using the water system as general garbage disposal. Particularly troublesome is Londoners’ habit of pouring used cooking oil down the sink. Once in the sewer, the oil cools, congeals and then traps other garbage.

Getting at the goo was not easy. Teams of workers, replete with breathing apparatus to protect them from the rancid smell, had to attack the fat with shovels. They then used water cannons to break down the “fatbergs” inside the sewer…

Read the full article via AOL News (published July 14, 2010)

Our two cents: I just threw up in my own mouth a little

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US DENIES VISA TO AWARD WINNING COLOMBIAN JOURNALIST BECAUSE OF “TERRORIST ACTIVITIES”

The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.

Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news program called “Contravia,” has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America.

The curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which has offered the mid-career fellowships since 1938, said Thursday that a consular official at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota told him Morris was ruled permanently ineligible for a visa under the “Terrorist activities” section of the USA Patriot Act.

“We were very surprised. This has never happened before,” said the Nieman curator, Bob Giles. “And Hollman has traveled previously in the United States to give speeches and receive awards.” He said he had written the State Department to ask it to reconsider the decision.

He said the committee had discussed its concerns with State Department officials but was not provided with an explanation…

The 41-year-old Morris, one of 12 foreign journalists admitted to the Nieman program for the 2010-2011 academic year, is among the most controversial chroniclers of Colombia’s long-running leftist insurgency. Among international awards he has received is one from Human Rights Watch in 2007 in which he was praise by Executive Director Kenneth Roth for “courage, an unswerving commitment to justice and genuine concern for the rights of all victims.”

On Feb. 3, 2009, President Uribe called Morris “an accomplice of terrorism” posing as a journalist after Morris showed up with FARC rebels to cover the insurgents’ liberation of four Colombian security force members. Morris was also among journalists, judges and opposition politicians whose phones were illegally tapped by Colombia’s DAS state security agency…

Read the full article via AP News on Google (published July 9, 2010)

Our two cents: Keeping a journalist out of our country because he interviews leftist paramilitary groups while criticizing one of America’s crooked allies is Neo-McCarthyism at its worst.

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