The woman was identified on Friday as Lyn Hiner, 43, when she appeared on ABC program “Good Morning America” from her hospital bed at a burn center. She is from San Clemente, which is midway between Los Angeles and San Diego.
It is also near Camp Pendleton, the biggest U.S. Marine Corps base on the West Coast and a major training area where various types of munitions are used.
“All of a sudden something hot on my leg just sort of started to bug me and so I started to think it was a bug bite, and I started slapping it, and next thing I know my shorts are on fire,” Hiner said on the show.
Orange County Fire Authority Captain Marc Stone, whose agency responded to the incident, said it was “not a hoax.”
“The victim is undergoing skin grafts for third degree burns from these rocks which appear to contain phosphorus,” he said.
The woman went with her family on Thursday morning to a spot at San Onofre State]]>
Ken Bennett, who is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign co-chairman in Arizona, said he made the request on behalf of a constituent.
Earlier this year, hardline Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio announced that an investigation by his office had found that Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery.
Most Republican critics of Obama have given up pushing widely discredited long-running allegations that he was not born in the United States.
Bennett said he is attempting to confirm that Obama’s name can appear on Arizona’s presidential ballot, the Arizona Republic newspaper said.
While confirming on Friday that he had made the request, Bennett said he did not buy into the “birther” belief.
“First, I have been on the record since 2009 that I believe the president was born in Hawaii. I am not a ‘birther,’” he said in a statement.
“At the request of a constituent, I asked the state of Hawaii for a for a verification in lieu of certified copy. We’re merely asking them to officially confirm they have the president’s birth certificate in their possession and are awaiting their response,” he said.
The White House has denied repeated claims that Obama was not born in the United States.
In April 2011, Obama released a longer version of his birth certificate to try to put to rest speculation that he was not born in the country as required by the U.S. Constitution to become president.
The Arizona Republic said Bennett made the request about eight weeks ago and communicated with Hawaii officials as early as four weeks ago.
Bennett’s office did
]]>The report, while not directly addressing it, is a potential blow to the massive Pebble copper and gold mine operation proposed by an international alliance of mining interests, and opposed by environmentalists and local native groups.
Risks from building and operating such a big mine, or series of mines, range from the near-certain loss of wetlands and streams and chronic water pollution to a remote possibility of a catastrophic breach in a tailings dam planned to be taller than the Washington Monument, the report said.
The report uses elements of the Pebble plan and other information about modern mining practices to project a future scenario, an EPA manager said Friday, but the agency made it clear it is not pre-judging the Pebble mine issue.
“EPA’s draft study does not provide an in-depth assessment of any specific mining project, but instead assesses the potential environmental impacts associated with mining activities,” the EPA wrote in a statement on its website. “The draft study in no way prejudges future consideration of proposed mining activities.”
The Bristol Bay watershed assessment, now subject to public comment and scientific
]]>More than 1,000 firefighters in Arizona and Colorado were battling five major blazes that have consumed more than 55 square miles (142 square km) of ponderosa forest, brush and grass, and a new blaze erupted in Utah on Thursday.
The blazes were the first major wildfires in Arizona this year, after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 blazes together swallowed more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square km), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The Gladiator Fire in central Arizona, which has already destroyed four structures and forced the evacuation of about 350 residents of the old mining town of Crown King earlier in the week, was threatening two more tiny communities.
U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Debbie Maneely said residents of Battle Flat and Pine Flat, which have fewer than 50 homes combined, have been alerted to evacuate within 24 hours.
Maneely said the situation was “really critical,” with predictions of winds blowing 40 to 50 miles per hour (64 to 80 km per hour), and that more crews and equipment were being called in to fight the blaze, which has burned about 15 square miles in the Prescott]]>
Republican Governor Robert Bentley had publicly urged lawmakers to modify sections of the law that took effect last year and which sparked lawsuits by the Obama administration and immigrant rights groups that argued it is unconstitutional.
But legislators made only minor changes to the law, which has also been criticized by businesses and farmers in the Southern state, who say it has led to widespread departures of Hispanic workers and created a labor shortage.
Supporters of the bill say it will help create jobs for legal residents by driving out undocumented workers and their families.
“I don’t want to lose the progress we have made,” Bentley said in a statement after signing the revisions to the bill.
The measure sent to Bentley included two provisions he had initially questioned.
One involves a requirement that the names of illegal immigrants be published if they appear in court on charges of violating state law whether they have been convicted or not.
The revised
]]>The move is believed to be one of the nation’s most sweeping prohibitions of its kind in favor of native Americans who say their culture is stereotyped by a number of sports teams.
It follows years of controversy surrounding a range of teams, from the Cleveland Indians in Major League Baseball to the Washington Redskins of the National Football League.
The Oregon Board of Education voted 5-1 on Thursday to prohibit public schools from using names, symbols or mascots such as Redskins, Savages, Indians, Chiefs or Braves, although Warriors can still be used. The decision does not apply to colleges in the state.
Board member Duncan Wyse said the panel received passionate testimony from both sides in the debate.
“These are traditions; the names and mascots have deep meaning to local communities,” said Wyse, who was one of the members who voted in favor or the ban.
In the end, “the evidence was overwhelming against the stereotyping and reducing people to caricature,” he added.
A statement from the
]]>Following a hearing in San Jose on the fate of a long-forgotten cemetery for indigent patients like Cardenas, who died in 1915, Judge Thomas Cain granted Santa Clara County permission to exhume 100 pine coffins buried at the site.
Construction crews discovered the potter’s field with an estimated 1,445 caskets in February, and the county asked Cain for permission to remove 100 of the deteriorating wooden boxes, which are in the way of a Santa Clara Valley Medical Center expansion.
Although authorities are unlikely to be able to identify the remains, Cain ordered county officials to do what they can to locate descendants of those buried there. If no heirs are discovered after 30 days, though, the judge said the county could cremate the remains.
Cardenas’ granddaughter, Gloria Jabaut, 79, described the discovery of the cemetery as “bittersweet” because she doubts the coffins will yield clues that will identify her Catholic grandmother, who would not have wanted to be cremated.
“I really just want to be able to find the remains and rebury them at the Catholic cemetery,” Jabaut told Reuters
]]>Brett Dieter, 52, of Barbersville, Virginia, arrived at the upstate New York airport Friday to pilot a flight to New York City‘s LaGuardia International Airport for Piedmont Airlines, a passenger airline that subcontracts under U.S. Airways.
While at a security checkpoint, a scan of Dieter‘s bag revealed a .357 magnum revolver loaded with five rounds. It was not immediately clear if the pistol was in his carry-on luggage.
Federal prosecutors in Buffalo allege he began traveling with the weapon when he reported for work on May 16 on a flight from Charlottesville, Virginia, to LaGuardia, but skipped a security screening of his baggage.
“The defendant did not submit this bag to X-ray screening at the Charlottesville airport,” the federal indictment states.
Deiter, and the gun, traveled on “several other flights” over a two-day period, prosecutors allege.
He is charged with unlawfully possessing a concealed firearm, a charge punishable by 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
U.S. Attorney William Hochul, whose office in Buffalo is handling the case, said Dieter shouldn’t
]]>Arnoldo Jimenez, 30, has been on the run since a relative found his wife, Estrella Carrera, stabbed to death in a bathtub on Sunday, two days after the wedding, police in Burbank, Illinois, said in a statement.
The relative found Carrera, 25, after she failed to pick up her two young children, ages 2 and 8, on Saturday. A Cook County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, saying Carrera died of multiple stab wounds, Burbank police said.
Police tracked Jimenez’s cell phone through southern Illinois, to Tennessee and Arkansas, and then eventually to Houston, said an affidavit filed on Thursday by the FBI in U.S. District Court in Chicago. The phone was last tracked on Sunday night to Hidalgo, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Family members told investigators Jimenez told his sister by phone that he had a “bad fight and he left her bleeding,” the affidavit said. Jimenez also told an associate that if the associate were to be questioned by law enforcement, that person should say Jimenez had fled to Mexico, it said.
Jimenez was last known
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