“Defendant had a strong suspicion that the aforementioned crimes were being committed,” reads the complaint. “Defendant had a desire that these posters accomplished their nefarious illegal prostitution activities so that the posters would return to the website and pay for more posting.”
"We don't want the money," his daughter, Michelle McKinney, said. "We would like to have our daddy back alive."
McKinney said she, her mother and her two brothers met with Massey officials April 21. She wouldn't disclose the amount of the settlement offer but said the family was not given a deadline for a response and was not asked to keep the offer confidential.
"Once we agree," McKinney said, "the case is closed. We can't sue."
The families will also receive death benefits not connected with any settlement and in addition to a cash payout. The death benefits include health insurance coverage, life insurance (five times the annual salary of the mineworker), college tuition and ongoing weekly paychecks (until widows remarry).
"Some of the miners hadn't been in the ground four or five days," McKinney said, referring to the timing of the offer.
A preliminary U.S. Geological Survey assessment has found that the sequence of aftershocks following the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 is likely to continue for months, possibly years.
Though the frequency of aftershocks will decrease over time, there is still potential for quakes large enough to cause more damage in the coming months, and a small possibility of an event larger than the main shock, according to a team of USGS scientists.
Their initial probability estimates for the next 30 days are that there is a 3 percent chance of a magnitude 7 or greater quake, a 25 percent chance of a magnitude 6 or greater quake and a 90 percent chance of a magnitude 5 or greater quake.
“Any aftershock above magnitude 5.0 will be widely felt and has the potential to cause additional damage, particularly to vulnerable, already damaged structures,” according to the USGS statement released Thursday evening.
The scientists are also concerned because it’s unclear how much of the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, which bounds the North American and Caribbean plates, ruptured in the earthquake. Analysis of ground deformation at the surface using satellite and aerial photos and preliminary radar data suggests that the segment of the fault directly east of the rupture and directly under Port-au-Prince did not slip. This means it could rupture in the future.
A 90-year-old Akron, Ohio, woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis Friday.
"There's a lot of people like Miss Polk right now. That's the sad thing about it," said Akron City Council President Marco Sommerville, who had met Polk before and rushed to the scene when contacted by police. "They might not be as old as her, some could be as old as her. This is just a major problem."
In 2004, Polk took out a 30-year, 6.375 percent mortgage for $45,620 with a Countrywide Home Loan office in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The same day, she also took out an $11,380 line of credit.
Over the next couple of years Polk missed payments on the 101-year-old home, which she and her late husband purchased in 1970. In 2007, Fannie Mae assumed the mortgage and later filed for foreclosure.
Deputies had tried to serve Polk's eviction notice more than 30 times before Wednesday's incident, Sommerville said. She never came to the door, but the notes the deputies left would always disappear, so they knew she was inside and ambulatory, he said.
The 70-year-old Hamburg resident told police he had felled 56 trees with a chainsaw and left only the bottom four yards of 66 others, mainly copper beech, oak, ash and wild cherry trees.
"He told us he wanted to enjoy an unobstructed view of the Baltic," about 50 yards from his cottage, said Jan-Hendrik Wulff, a police spokesman in the northern city of Luebeck.
The man, whose tree-felling caused an estimated 15,000 euros ($22,000) of damage, is likely to be charged with damaging property and breaking conservation laws, officials said.
New Delhi was not built to accommodate its current population of about 16 million. With hundreds of thousands pouring in from rural areas annually, its sewers—about 3,700 miles of them—are a mess, and the workers tasked with keeping the waste flowing unobstructed (half of it empties into the nearby Yamuna River) regularly put their lives on the line. "The whole system is going to collapse in the next two years if it continues as it is now," says Mahendra Kumar, a junior engineer for Delhi Jal.
"I won't deny it—no safety equipment is used," says a junior engineer, Mahendra Kumar. "The attitude is strongly caste-biased, and there is tremendous insecurity in this job. Lower-caste people are looked upon as tools."
Gap said it first learned of the child labor allegations last week and discovered the sweatshop was being run by a subcontractor that a vendor had hired in violation of Gap's policies. The product made there will be destroyed so it cannot be sold in Gap stores, company spokesman Bill Chandler said.
The pirates mine the ore then extract gold using dangerous mercury, often while still underground or in illegal processing plants hidden in sprawling hostels.
While the number of illegal miners underground at any one time is hard to verify, anecdotal accounts put it as high as 1,000.
The municipality-owned G Hostel, a wasteland of bungalows and sewage on the outskirts of Welkom, is notorious. It is from there that it is believed miners are recruited for illegal operations.
A day after police raided the hostel, reporters were shown the remnants of the crude processes taking place there — blackened zinc sheets and tin containers in which mercury is burned.
A collection of plastic buckets stood out amid the filth, some with freshly washed silt coating the bottom — in them a glitter of gold dust.
