A new type of bus service is starting up to offer travelers a new way to get between two of California's largest cities. It's called the SleepBus, but the company doesn't actually use a bus; it's a Volvo truck hitched to a long trailer with individual sleep pods on board.

Each pod has an electric socket (so you can power and charge your devices while under way) and there's on-board wifi, desks should you prefer to sit up and work, coffee and tea, and room for three bags and even a bicycle in the luggage compartment. The whole trim takes about seven hours, which is a bit longer than the typical hour-and-twenty-minute flight between LAX and SFO, even once you take into account extra time for check-in, clearing security, and transit. But the SleepBus travels overnight, so you leave one city at 11 pm and arrive at the other end by 6 am – plus they'll even let you stay on board until 7:30 if you want to sleep in a little.

To get the word out, the company is offering one-way trips for $48. That's expected to go up to $65 once things are fully up and running, but that's still cheaper than the cheapest nonpromotional airfare you're going to find, even on a budget carrier like Southwest. Add in the convenience of its pickup and drop-off locations at the Caltrain station in San Francisco and the Santa Monica Pier in LA and the SleepBus strikes us as a viable alternative to air travel, and a far better option than the Greyhound – at least until the high-speed train is complete.

No more at link: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/05/09/sleepbus-la-sf-overnight-official/#slide-3887572

LANSING, MI -- Leaving Fido in the car with unsafe conditions would be illegal under a pair of Senate bills introduced this week, and someone who causes an animal death that way could face five years in prison.

Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-Lansing, said sixteen states already have similar laws surrounding dogs being left in cars.

"We just think in situations where there is obvious potential harm that we shouldn't be allowing that in Michigan," Hertel said.

So what would the rules be?

The bill language states that a person cannot "Leave or confine an animal in an unattended motor vehicle under conditions that endanger the health or well-being of the animal, including, but not limited to, heat, cold, lack of adequate ventilation, lack of food or water, or other circumstances that could reasonably be expected to cause suffering, disability, or death of the animal."

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/05/leaving_dogs_in_cars_could_esc.html#incart_river_home_pop


MLive photographer Yffy Yossifor's dog in the car Wednesday, July 2. Pets left in cars in the summer are subject to various health risks and have prompted new legislation in the Senate. (Yfat Yossifor | The Bay City Times) (Yfat Yossifor)

LANSING, MI -- Leaving Fido in the car with unsafe conditions would be illegal under a pair of Senate bills introduced this week, and someone who causes an animal death that way could face five years in prison.

Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-Lansing, said sixteen states already have similar laws surrounding dogs being left in cars.

"We just think in situations where there is obvious potential harm that we shouldn't be allowing that in Michigan," Hertel said.

So what would the rules be?

The bill language states that a person cannot "Leave or confine an animal in an unattended motor vehicle under conditions that endanger the health or well-being of the animal, including, but not limited to, heat, cold, lack of adequate ventilation, lack of food or water, or other circumstances that could reasonably be expected to cause suffering, disability, or death of the animal."

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/05/leaving_dogs_in_cars_could_esc.html#incart_river_home_pop


MLive photographer Yffy Yossifor's dog in the car Wednesday, July 2. Pets left in cars in the summer are subject to various health risks and have prompted new legislation in the Senate. (Yfat Yossifor | The Bay City Times) (Yfat Yossifor)

Source: CBC News

Now covering 156,000 hectares, continues to grow to the northeast

Firefighters are once again preparing to battle with what Darby Allen, the Regional Fire Chief of Wood Buffalo, has been calling "the beast," Fort McMurray's out-of-control wildfire.

Officials worry the "the beast" — a fire that has destroyed more than 1,600 homes and buildings and burned more than 101,000 hectares of forest — will grow to over double its size by the time the sun sets.

"I do expect that there is a high potential that this fire could double in size by tomorrow," said Chad Morrison, senior wildfire manager for the province, on Friday.

"We have substantially extreme fire conditions in front of us still for the next two days."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-saturday-1.3571678

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A badly damaged swing set sits in a residential neighborhood destroyed by the fire in Fort McMurray, which is still burning out of control. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Scientists say they have made a startling discovery about the link between domestic oil and gas development and the world’s levels of atmospheric ethane — a carbon compound that can both damage air quality and contribute to climate change. A new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters has revealed that the Bakken Shale formation, a region of intensely increasing recent oil production centered in North Dakota and Montana, accounts for about 2 percent of the entire world’s ethane output — and, in fact, may be partly responsible for reversing a decades-long decline in global ethane emissions.

The findings are important for several reasons. First, ethane output can play a big role in local air quality — when it is released into the atmosphere, it interacts with hydrogen and carbon and can cause ozone to form close to the Earth, where it is considered a pollutant that can irritate or damage the lungs.

Ethane is also technically a greenhouse gas, although its lifetime is so short that it is not considered a primary threat to the climate. That said, its presence can help extend the lifespan of methane — a more potent greenhouse gas — in the atmosphere. This, coupled with ethane’s role in the formation of ozone, makes it a significant environmental concern.

From 1987 until about 2009, scientists observed a decreasing trend in global ethane emissions, from 14.3 million metric tons per year to 11.3 million metric tons. But starting in 2009 or 2010, ethane emissions starting rising again — and scientists began to suspect that an increase in shale oil and gas production in the United States was at least partly to blame. The new study’s findings suggest that this may be the case.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/28/the-u-s-oil-and-gas-boom-is-having-global-atmospheric-consequences-scientists-suggest/



Advances in hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have unlocked huge amounts of petroleum in the Badlands of Montana. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Bill Whitaker reports on the high incidence of earthquakes in Oklahoma, where oil and gas production is injecting vast amounts of waste water into the earth.

Oklahomans are getting tired of the ground shaking under their feet. Last year, the state set a record for earthquakes with 907 registering a magnitude of 3 or more. It's causing anxiety, damage and residents to rethink one of the state's biggest industries -- oil and gas production -- which scientists say is causing nearly all the quakes. Bill Whitaker goes to Oklahoma, now the capital of earthquake activity in the continental U.S., to report the story for the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, May 8 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"I woke up scared to death, praying that the house wouldn't fall down. I couldn't believe that the windows didn't shatter," says Melinda Olbert of a 4.3 quake in Edmund, Oklahoma, in December. She and Kathy Matthews, a friend and Edmund resident, are using smartphone apps to monitor the size and location of quakes around the state. "Cherokee, Enid, Fairview, Medford, Stillwater. All in one 24-hour period; one hour ago, one hour ago, two," Matthews tells Whitaker, who asks whether she is nervous. "It's no way to live. It's no way to live," she says.

Most of the quakes occurring on a daily basis are not as large as the one Olbert felt, but they can cause minor damage. The U.S. Geological Survey says earthquakes in Oklahoma have been rising steadily since 2009 with more than 2,000 of a magnitude of 3 or greater.

Mark Zoback, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University, says the seismic activity is a consequence of oil and gas industry production -- Oklahoma's biggest economic engine. "What we've learned in Oklahoma is that the earthquakes that are occurring in enormous numbers are the result of waste water injection," he says. Wells drilled for the commodities bring up waste water along with the oil and gas that must be disposed of. Well operators send it back down into the earth, deep below freshwater aquifers to a zone that sits on top of the granite basement that is rife with earthquake faults.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/earthquake-capital-of-continental-u-s-oklahoma/

Mike Lawn worked for seven presidents and met nine. That number could be up to 10 by November if Hillary Clinton wins the White House. He just happens to be selling her car, which sits in his driveway adorned with an Arkansas license plate and a 1990 "Clinton for Governor" sticker on the back windshield.

Lawn, who lives in Gettysburg, worked at the White House for 29 years, from the Carter administration through the most recent Bush. He was head gardener through the National Parks Service in 2000, when the Clintons offered up the first lady’s 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass in a bidding process. As the car has sat in his garage for 16 years rarely used, Lawn decided now, given the timing of Clinton’s campaign, would be the best time to say goodbye to the presidential candidate’s car.

“I’m ready to have it go down the road,” Lawn’s wife, Joyce, said. “It’s time. We’ve had it too long.”

When he purchased the car from the Clintons, he intended to give it to his daughter when she turned 16 and needed to drive to school. He took her to see it after cementing the deal with Clinton, only to find she was not impressed.

“She said it looked like an old lady’s car,” Lawn said. “She didn’t know why it had cranks in the windows.”

Read more: http://www.ydr.com/story/life/2016/04/10/gettysburg-man-selling-hillary-clintons-car/82664038/



Gettysburg resident Mike Lawn stands next to the car formerly owned by Hillary Clinton on April 6, 2016.
(Photo: Clare Becker, The Evening Sun)

Meet Felix! This is the little guy I found in the grocery store parking lot, can't imagine what would have happened to him if I hadn't stopped at that store that night, or hadn't spotted him on the way to my car. They were doing construction at that particular store and a couple of the construction guys had attempted to catch him, but got bitten for their trouble. The vet thought he was only about seven weeks, 2.6 lbs., had no idea what he even looked like in the dark, but I think I'm the lucky one, since, at a year old, he really is beautiful, IMO, and rarely bites these days, LOL, and getting better all the time!

Felix, then and now: