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Wednesday, June 18, 2008 

Buffalo, New York — Residents in Buffalo, New York fear that demolishing a nearly 200-year-old livery and stable which partially collapsed on Wednesday June 11, could cause an environmental hazard.

Wikinews has learned that according property records with the city, the stable was converted into a gasoline station and auto repair shop in 1950, and is designated as a body shop. During that time at least four fuel storage tanks were installed on the property. Two are listed as 550 square feet while the other two are 2,000 square feet. All of the tanks are designated as a TK4, which New York State says is used for “below ground horizontal bulk fuel storage.” The cost of installing a tank of that nature according to the state, at that time, included the tank itself, “excavation and backfill,” but did not include “the piping, ballast, or hold-down slab orring.”

Property reports give the tanks a ‘construction code’ of a “C – Average”, meaning the tanks were not designed to last for a significant period of time. That rating has residents concerned that the tanks could pose an environmental hazard if they are not properly taken care of.

Wikinews has not been able to determine if the tanks have been removed or if they were emptied when the gas station closed sometime in the 1980′s. Wikinews has also contacted the city of Buffalo for a comment regarding the tanks, but has yet to receive a response.

The building was scheduled for emergency demolition on Thursday June 12, but was stopped by police after residents raised concerns for the safety of those living around the building. According to New York law, since the city ordered the demolition, they are required to perform an ‘Environmental Impact Assessment’ or SEQR when a project or demolition has the possibility of posing an environmental hazard.

According to New York law, a SEQR should be performed “to incorporate the consideration of environmental factors into the existing planning, review and decision-making processes of state, regional and local government agencies at the earliest possible time. To accomplish this goal, SEQR requires that all agencies determine whether the actions they directly undertake, fund or approve may have a significant impact on the environment, and, if it is determined that the action may have a significant adverse impact, prepare or request an environmental impact statement.”

The law states, “SEQR requires the sponsoring or approving governmental body to identify and mitigate the significant environmental impacts of the activity it is proposing or permitting.” It also states that it is the duty of the governmental body in charge of a project to enforce the laws of the SEQR. It also states that agencies must give “appropriate weight with social and economic considerations” when undergoing major projects.

The law also allows citizens to enforce the regulation stating, “citizens or groups who can demonstrate that they may be harmed by this failure [SEQR], may take legal action against the agency” or governmental body behind such a project. The court system in New York has been known to “consistently” rule in favor of plaintiffs who file lawsuits against agencies who do not perform a SEQR.

Residents won a restraining order to stop demolition after State Supreme Court Justice Judge John. F. O’Donnell signed a temporary injunction. Residents are concerned demolition crews moved too fast, and are not doing enough to protect them and their surrounding properties. They are also concerned that the city did not consider all the options or risks before ordering the building to be demolished.

On June 15, Judge Jerome C. Gorski ruled that the city can resume demolition, but “on a limited basis” only to remove fallen rubble that landed on properties, and to remove any loose bricks or material from the building, but not below its truss line. Because of the risk of further collapse, the workers are ordered “to use only hand tools.” to remove the loose material and debris. Residents are attempting to save portions of the building’s side walls and its facade. The demolition crew began to remove some materials, as ordered by the court on Tuesday, June 17.

Judge Gorski also ordered that the plaintiffs present their case in front the State’s Supreme Court in Rochester. The hearing took place on Monday morning on June 16 at 10:00 a.m. (eastern time), and the case is currently “being discussed,” said an anonymous source close to the lawsuit to Wikinews.

Bob Freudenheim is the building’s owner who has housing violations against him for neglecting the building. Residents state that Freudenheim should be “100% responsible” for his actions, and many are afraid that once the building is demolished, Freudenheim’s charges of neglect will be abolished. According to WGRZ Channel 2 News, in the past three months, Freudenheim has received at least five housing code violations from the city. WGRZ states that the orders, which they obtained, were to fix the building “to a safe condition.”

Freudenheim gave the city permission to demolish the building on Thursday June 12 during an emergency Preservation Board meeting, because he would not be “rehabilitating the building anytime soon.” Freudenheim, along with his wife Nina, were part-owners of the Hotel Lenox at 140 North Street in Buffalo and were advocates to stop the Elmwood Village Hotel from being built on the corners of Forest and Elmwood Avenues in 2006 and 2007, which Wikinews extensively covered. They also financially supported a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the hotel from being built. Though it is not known exactly how long Freudenheim has owned the stable, Wikinews has learned that he was the owner while fighting to stop the hotel from being built.

Freudenheim has not released a statement, and Wikinews has not been able to contact him regarding the issue.

Sunday, November 7, 2010  Roush Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards won the NASCAR Nationwide Series 2010 O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge held yesterday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas.

Kyle Busch came in second for Joe Gibbs Racing, and Brad Keselowski finished third to win his title after leading through the season. Busch’s teammate Joey Logano started from 10th place on the starting grid, but finished 4th in front of Martin Truex, Jr. Jason Leffler (Braun Racing) and Reed Sorenson (Braun Racing) finished behind Truex, Jr. in 6th and 7th. Kevin Harvick, Paul Menard, and Steve Wallace rounded out the top ten finishers in the race. Pole position winner James Buescher finished 37th, after being involved in an accident on lap 44.

In the Drivers’ championship, Keselowski clinched the championship with 5,314 points, 465 ahead of Edwards, and 695 ahead of Busch in third. Justin Allgaier was scored fourth, Menard was sixth, and Harvick was seventh, after finishing eighth. Trevor Bayne and Leffler was ninth and tenth. Keselowski now cannot be beaten with only two races to go. “My whole family made so many sacrifices along the way and I’m surrounded by great people. I’m happy and blessed to have this whole team around me. Almost had a win here today and wanted it to work out,” he said after the race.

Afterward, Edwards commented, “I had to do everything I could. I got the best restart I could and it ended up giving us the race. I knew if I gave him an inch he would beat us.” Busch followed in the press conference and said “Carl Edwards jumped the restart by about three lengths before the restart mark.” He was then asked if he should have brought it up to NASCAR, but he answered, “Does it fucking matter? Race is over. Carl Edwards is in victory lane. Nothing you can do about it. Our car was fast in the beginning but didn’t have the speed it took at the end of the race. I don’t know if it was under the hood or through the corners. It was disappointing finishing second but whatever.”

Monday, January 8, 2007 

Major city roads across North America are suffering from an early surge in potholes due to the dramatic freezes and thaws this month, some several feet across and inches deep. The potholes are caused by water seeping into cracks during warm weather, and pushing concrete apart when it freezes. Traffic erodes chunks of concrete from the cracks to form holes that continuously grow larger.

While car repair shops are experiencing a boom in business, city budgets are being hit with the costs of patching potholes. Thierry Larivée, an infrastructure spokesman in Montréal, Canada, says about 20 pothole patrols are working throughout the city. They are expected to continue work until at least Friday.

Craig Bryson, spokesman for the Road Commission for Oakland County in Michigan, United States, reports problems on unpaved roads as well. “The warmer weather is also playing havoc with gravel roads; the top layer of dirt thaws, but remains frozen about 10 inches below the surface. Surface water has no place to go. This creates a rutted, soupy road, especially in low-lying areas.”

Environment Canada meteorologist René Héroux attributes the unseasonable thaw to warm winds from the southwest. Environment Canada predicts a new cold front on Thursday.

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Sunday, March 24, 2013 

A male driver has been hospitalised with serious head injuries after the car he was in crashed into the corner of a house in Suffolk in the east of the United Kingdom. Members of the fire service attended the incident scene, which occurred in the Carlton Colville district of the town of Lowestoft, approximately seven minutes after it was reported to emergency services at approximately 0145 UTC today.

Although three people were inside the house when the car impacted it, none of them were hurt. However, the driver sustained serious injuries to the head. The road where the crash happened was temporarily closed while emergency services freed the driver from the red Audi TT. He was initially hospitalised in the James Paget Hospital in Great Yarmouth. He was subsequently relocated to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Structural engineers have been asked to examine the house. The house has been vacated by its occupants as analysis continues, police reported. It is not clear if the collision has caused the building to leak gas.

The cause of the incident is unknown at this stage. “Collision investigators will be at the scene today as we try to ascertain exactly what has occurred”, said Sergeant Bob Patterson. The Suffolk Constabulary Sergeant added: “At this early stage we could not speculate as to what has caused the crash.”

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 

A Russian teenager has accomplished an unprecedented feat in the history of world aviation. He flew a distance of 1,300 kilometres in a wheel well of a Boeing 737 and lived. The fifteen year old Andrey Scherbakov spent two hours in the wheel well of the airplane at extreme temperature of ?50° centigrade. The rear wheels do not go all the way into the plane; the wheel merely retracts into an opening and remains exposed. The boy managed to bypass security at the Perm city airport to hide in the plane as it took off. Airport workers found the boy after the plane had landed at Moscow. He had collapsed on the tarmac.

The boy was delivered to the hospital by the airport staff and is said to be in a critical condition. His arms and legs were so severely frozen and swollen that the rescuers were not able to remove his coat and shoes. There is a probability that his hands may have to be amputated. However, according to the medical staff at the hospital, it is nothing short of a miracle that the boy survived the ordeal. The Boeing 737 has a cruising speed of 900 kilometres per hour and was flying constantly at an altitude of 10,000 metres for two hours. As a result, the boy suffered severe frostbite in both of his hands. Doctors in Ural city would have to remove his fingertips, which contracted gangrene after they had frozen, but they were committed to do everything within their power to stop it from spreading.

When Scherbakov finally came to his senses, he told the police that he had run away from his family so as to escape his alcoholic father. He said that he was wandering around the territory of the airport and noticed a hole in the fence. He fell asleep during his examination of the stowaway of the plane. He woke up when the plane was already flying. It is curious how the inspection staff and the technicians found nothing on their inspection of the aircraft just before the flight. The boy claims that he fainted soon after and came around only when the plane had landed in Moscow after traveling hundreds of kilometres from Perm.

The airport did not confirm the report. However, Moscow’s air and water transport control department said that the claim was true. A department spokesperson said that the incident happened on Friday, and the boy’s parents were immediately informed and flew into the capital on the same day.

Stowaways in wheel wells risk freezing to death after take-off or being crushed when the wheels retract. This year, a body was found in the wheel well of a jet in San Francisco after a flight from Shanghai and another body was found in Atlanta after a flight from Dakar, Senegal.

Saturday, September 19, 2009 

The United States (U.S.) and China this week initiated a trade dispute over tires, auto-parts, and poultry products just a week ahead of the 2009 G-20 trade summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The most recent trade policies enacted by the U.S. government includes a September 12 decision to impose a 35% trade tariff on Chinese tire imports as an anti-dumping measure. The trade policy came about as a result of a trade-complaint initiated by the United Steelworkers Union (USW) filed before the U.S. International Trade Commission. As reported by Steve Levine of BusinessWeek, “In [the USW's] trade complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission, the USW invoked a provision in China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that allows protection from surging imports from the country [China]. The union documented a tripling of Chinese tire imports from 2004 to 2008 [...]” The Trade Commission initially recommended a 55% tariff however, President Obama agreed to only 35%. The trade tariff will be diminished by 5% per year for the next three years to 25%. The deadline for President Obama’s decision was September 17. The trade tariff will take effect on September 26, pegging rates at the new level from the current 4%. The dispute will now move to the WTO where it can take up to 18 months for adjudication.

To quantify the impact of the tariff, in 2008 China supplied US$1.8 billion in tires to the U.S. or about one-third of the U.S. market, with two-thirds of U.S. companies producing their tires in China. It’s likely that the effects of the suit will exceed $1 billion in trade costs, as reported by several other news agencies.

On the 14th of September, the Chinese government via its Ministry of Commerce website, announced that they would institute an investigation into the dumping of U.S. auto parts and chicken products; they are also filing a complaint at the WTO regarding this matter. A formal announcement of trade tariffs against U.S. goods has not occurred.

The two countries’ executive and economic teams will meet in Pittsburgh for the G-20 meeting on September 24 and 25 to discuss these and other economic issues.