In the news: Monday, June 4, 2012

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SUN 03      INDEX      TUE 05 

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from Space.com (& CollectSpace)

The 10 Weirdest Facts About Venus

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from The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)

Colvilles dicker over settlement

Getting There: EWU students’ device to help investigate wrecks

Rapid breakthroughs being made in fight against cancer
‘Smart’ drugs target cancerous cells only

Queen Elizabeth leads record-setting flotilla

Parade on Thames draws huge crowds

Technology’s grim reality

Leonard Pitts Jr.

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Websites go dark to protest pipeline bill

Neela Banerjee      Tribune Washington bureau

WASHINGTON – Visit the Natural Resources Defense Council’s website today, and you can expect to find a black screen. More than 400 groups, including the National Wildlife Federation’s Action Fund and 350.org, a leader in the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, are doing the same thing.

Environmental and other groups say they are staging the one-day blackout to protest efforts by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his allies to crack down on opponents of the pipeline. Nearly all Canadian environmental organizations, all four opposition parties and others will shroud their websites in black, displaying the message, “While our websites may be dark, our voices together are louder than ever.”

Construction of pipelines that would carry petroleum from Alberta’s oil sands to the U.S. is a top priority for the Harper administration and his Conservative Party. The delay of the $7-billion Keystone XL project – a result of opposition by U.S. environmentalists and objections in Nebraska to part of the proposed route – has been an unexpectedly stubborn obstacle.

The Harper government and pro-pipeline lawmakers in Canada have written a new budget bill, set to pass this month, that they say would streamline environmental reviews, strengthen pipeline safety and ensure that nonprofits work only on charitable efforts, not politics. Opponents counter that the sweeping bill would gut the country’s environmental laws and sharply curtail nonprofits’ activism.

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Then and Now: Courthouse view
Monroe Street Bridge was once made of steel

Thousands of photographs are shot every day in Spokane with digital cameras, cellphones and webcams, but when Charles Libby opened his photo studio with his sister Addie in 1898, photographs were still a novelty. Charles Libby’s photos, taken over a 60-year career, are a fascinating chronicle of Spokane’s early boom era. He climbed the Spokane County Courthouse tower to make the photo above showing the steel Monroe Street Bridge, which was replaced with concrete in 1909. Born in Olympia in 1879, Libby moved to Spokane and worked menial jobs until he could afford a camera. He made portraits, shot real estate, photographed high society events and offered aerial photography. Charles Libby died in 1966, and most of his negatives reside with the Eastern Washington Historical Society at the Museum of Arts and Culture. –  Jesse Tinsley

1903: This photo by Charles Libby looks southeast from the
Spokane County Courthouse tower at the Monroe Street Bridge 

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