THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2002
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 9A
Mine reopens after tainting stream
The Associated Press
LOGAN, W.Va. — A coal treatment plant reopened yesterday, a day after a ruptured waste pipe spilled 100,000 gallons of coal slurry into two nearby streams, killing fish and raising concerns about the water supply.
State environmental inspectors said Bandmill Coal Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy Co., could open as long as workers continued cleanup efforts.
By yesterday afternoon, the
spill had discolored the Guyandotte River. The slurry — concentrated and grayish-black on Tuesday — had broken up considerably, officials said.
"The cleanup is proceeding very well, and the operations of the plant itself were not going to impair the work," state inspection Supervisor Joe Hager said.
Massey said its investigators have determined that human error caused the spill of slurry, which is a mixture of water, fine coal particles and other waste from washing
coal to prepare it for market.
A mistakenly opened valve allowed slurry to enter a smaller water line, Massey said. That raised pressure inside the pipe, causing it to rupture.
Bandmill faces up to $15,000 in daily fines related to the spill and has been ordered to restore the smaller of the two creeks to its pre-spill environment. The slurry had mostly diluted by the time it reached the larger creek.
Massey is West Virginia's largest coal producer and the seventh largest in the nation. The company, which owns 18 mining complexes in central Appalachia, employs about 5,000 people in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia.
In July, a sediment pond overflowed at a Bandmill site near Lyburn and damaged or destroyed 10 homes. The state also ordered Massey to close a Mingo County mine after 20,000 gallons of polluted mine water was discharged into a nearby creek and lake.
Clues emerge in sniper investigation
The Associated Press
BALTIMORE — A tarot card with the taunting words "Dear policeman, I am God" and a shell casing emerged Wednesday as potential clues in the hunt for the sniper terrorizing Washington's suburbs.
The card and casing were found near a middle school in Bowie, where a 13-year-old boy was critically wounded by the gunman Monday, a source familiar with the investigation said on condition of anonymity.
Authorities said the shell was .223-caliber, the same kind of bullet used to kill six people and wound another in Washington and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs in the last week. The casing is believed to be the first one recovered since the slayings began.
Michael Bouchard, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, would not say whether authorities had linked the casing to the attacks.
Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose also wouldn't comment when asked about the tarot card, and angrily suggested unapproved information had been leaked.
"I need to make sure I don't do anything to hinder our ability to bring this person or these people into custody." Moose said.
The message left on the tarot card called the Death card was first reported by WUSA-TV and then by The Washington Post. Police sources told the newspaper the items were found 150 yards from the school in a wooded area on matted grass, suggesting the gunman had lain in wait.
Tarot cards, used mainly for fortunetelling, are believed to have been introduced into western Europe by Gypsies in the 15th century. Many tarot enthusiasts say the Death card usually does not connote physical death, but instead portrays a symbolic change or transformation.
Crime experts, while noting that the link between the card and the sniper remained unconfirmed, recalled other serial killers who left "calling cards."
One of the most notorious was
David Berkowitz, who killed six people in New York in 1976-77. He wrote a letter to newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin and left a note addressed to a police detective that said: "I am a monster. I am the 'Son of Sam.'"
Robert K. Ressler, a former FBI proffiler, interviewed Berkowitz after his arrest.
"He said this was a stimulating thing for him to see the letters in the paper." Ressler said. "Even though he's the only one who knows, notoriety becomes very satisfying to an inadequate loser. It's a way of imposing power and control over society."
Ressler recalled one previous case, in 1970, where a multiple murderer left a tarot card — the slayings of a wealthy ophthalmologist and his family near Santa Cruz, Calif. The killer was captured and sentenced to life in prison.
James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said most serial killers don't care about notoriety and get their satisfaction from seeing their victims suffer.
The Washington-area sniper appears to fit a different pattern, enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with police, Fox said.
"He's turned the whole region into his personal shooting gallery." Fox said. "He enjoys the sport of hunting for humans, he enjoys his notoriety ... He wants us to know, 'That's me.'
Fox was struck by the language on the tarot card.
"He's probably a person who feels he doesn't get respect in ordinary life that he deserves," Fox said. "He's enjoying the fact that he's the lead story."
The motive for the seemingly random attacks remains unknown. Nearly 200 investigators are working their way through some 8,000 tips. One tip sent them on a fruitless search of woods behind a school in Prince George's County, but nothing was found.
A Prince George's County school spokeswoman said students were being kept inside as county schools remained locked down.
Genetics may cause heart failure in blacks
The Associated Press
A genetic double-whammy rarely found in whites dramatically increases the risk of congestive heart failure in blacks and may help explain why they are more likely than whites to get the disease, researchers say.
The genetic combination plays a role in one-quarter of the cases of congestive heart failure diagnosed each year among blacks, said Dr. Stephen B. Liggett, a leader of the study.
The study found that a pair of genes that does nothing bad by itself can double the risk created by a second pair, generating a tenfold risk for heart failure in black people who have both.
About 5 percent of U.S. blacks have that combination, Liggett said. But it is far rarer among whites.
The study was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Doctors have long known that blacks are more likely than whites to suffer from heart diseases and certain other illnesses, and are more likely to die from them. Some researchers have suggested that blacks receive inferior care, perhaps because of unconscious prejudice among doctors.
In fact, an analysis of 81 studies, released Wednesday as part of a campaign by major health foundations to close the racial health gap, found that the evidence that minorities get inferior cardiac care is compelling.
Liggett's study, however, is
part of a growing body of research indicating that at least part of the racial gap can be explained by genetics.
Nearly 4.8 million Americans have congestive heart failure. It affects about 3.5 percent of all black men, 3.1 percent of black women, 2.3 percent of white men and 1.5 percent of white women, according to the American Heart Association.
That would mean about 733,500 blacks have the disease. It shows up earlier and is more likely to have serious complications in blacks than in whites. Also, blacks do not get as much benefit from ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers, two common groups of medicines for heart disease.
There is no one explanation for those differences.What you do and where you live also can increase the risk. High blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking and obesity all make it more likely.
That means people who have both gene pairs should do everything they can to eliminate the risks they can control, Liggett said.
One of the gene pairs in question increases production of a chemical that increases blood pressure, heart rate, and the heart's contraction and relaxation. The other gene pair makes heart cells which take up the chemical, norepinephrine, more sensitive to it.
Since the pair producing excess norepinephrine is 10 times as common among blacks as among whites, the combination is also far more common among blacks.
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