Mines

President Obama begins a two-day swing through California on Wednesday that underscores the conflicting roles the state plays in presidential politics: Its strong Democratic bent means it will once again be written off by both sides during the 2012 general election, but the trove of supporters here will once again be mined to bolster Obama's efforts elsewhere. "He doesn't have to campaign here to win," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont-McKenna College. "He does need to tap the deep resources of Democratic political money, and he needs to inspire volunteers.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles E. Schumer, awakened from a nap in his office, bounded to the Senate floor, staff in tow. It was approaching 2 a.m. The New Yorker joined fellow Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, who was presiding wearily over an almost empty chamber. The two senators and six others, Republicans and Democrats, had finished writing the most comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws in a generation. Now the bill was ready to be introduced. "I would like to thank everybody ... who worked so hard on this great legislation whose voyage begins now," Schumer said.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Payday loans A federal court has ordered a Redwood City, Calif., company to pay more than $4.8 million after the Federal Trade Commission accused the company of deceiving hundreds of thousands of payday loan applicants into paying for unwanted debit cards. Swish Marketing Inc. operated websites that offered to connect loan applicants with lenders. Applicants who applied for short-term loans, or payday loans, often ended up unknowingly ordering debit cards for which they were charged $54.95, unless they checked a box saying they didn't want them, the FTC said.

Re "Save Bristol Bay," Opinion, May 24 Common sense dictates that when it comes to massive open-pit mining in Alaska's Bristol Bay, regulators should take the long view. If we get this wrong today, we won't be able to fix it tomorrow - not for the area's wild salmon, the native peoples, Alaska's wilderness tourism business and this country's vanishing wild places. Once we seriously degrade or destroy nature, it is virtually impossible to repair the damage. Basically, when a wilderness is destroyed, it is gone forever.

The backstage comedy has long been a favorite milieu for playwrights expressing their abiding love and keen irritation for all things theatrical. Playwright John Morogiello takes the genre in a novel direction with “Blame it on Beckett,” now in its West Coast premiere at the Colony, exploring a dusty cranny of the theater that seldom sees the light of day. The action transpires in the literary department of a struggling nonprofit, wittily evoked...

No, the U.S. hasn't cooled toward the phaseout of land mines (Aug. 3). Perhaps the administration has. However, it's a good bet that the rest of us want the world rid of this terrible scourge. Let the world know that those in the U.S. who are "cool" to eliminating these ghastly weapons are few in number. Julie Ford-Maloney Huntington Beach

Authorities have ordered the evacuation of an area near the Mediterranean coastal town of Matruh where 300 live mines left over from World War II were discovered, the official Middle East News Agency reported. Police decided to clear the area and detonate the mines after investigators determined they were too rusty to be moved, the agency said. The mines were found near a school and had apparently been stored there during the war, the agency said without giving further details.

A Canoga Park investment firm agreed Thursday to stop selling overvalued shares in gold and silver ore mines in the Sierra foothills that Internal Revenue Service agents said cost the federal Treasury more than $29 million in lost tax revenues. Justice Department officials said the firm, International Recovery Inc., and its president, Donald C. Como, agreed to terms of a permanent injunction formulated in Los Angeles federal court at the behest of IRS agents.

Tom Gorman's wonderful July 7 article on Goldfield, Nev., "Now-Busted City Awaits Next Strike," prompts me to point out an interesting historical tidbit that might help stimulate new interest and growth in that Western town. Wyatt Earp's older brother, Virgil, arrived in Goldfield in the summer of 1904 to seek his share of the gold being mined around there. No luck. So, to quote from the Tonapah Sun (Feb. 5, 1905): "Virgil Earp, a brother of Wyatt and one of the famous family of gunologists, is acting as deputy sheriff (bouncer)

A small fishing boat hit a mine and exploded in the Gulf of Oman, killing one of its Indian crew members and injuring two others, the official Emirates News Agency reported. It quoted an Interior Ministry statement as saying the incident occurred about 20 miles south of the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. The waters are just north of a major anchorage that is used by tankers and other commercial vessels going to and from the Persian Gulf, including U.S.

Coursing through vast reaches of Alaskan tundra, glacial lakes and emerald forests, six major river systems converge along the rim of the Bering Sea to form the crystalline waters of Bristol Bay, the richest wild salmon grounds in the world. Yet if three global mining giants get their way, this region - one of the last truly wild places in our country - could be destroyed. Each year, up to 40 million sockeye salmon make the journey from deep ocean waters into Bristol Bay and, from there, upstream to spawn in the inland shallows of their birth.

Stanley A. Dashew, an inventor and entrepreneur who helped revolutionize the credit card industry, died of natural causes Thursday in Los Angeles, according to a family spokesman. He was 96. Dashew held 40 patents in fields as diverse as credit card processing, mining, mass transit, medical equipment and offshore oil transportation. He also was an avid sailor, writer and photographer who late in life wrote for the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post. At 94, he distilled his insights about life and business in a book, "You Can Do It: Inspiration and Lessons from an Inventor, Entrepreneur, and Sailor.

COLSTRIP, Mont. - Out in these windy stretches of cottonwood and prairie grass, not far from where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer ran into problems at Little Bighorn, a new battle is unfolding over what future energy development in the West will look like. Here, rancher Wallace McRae and his son, Clint, run cattle on 31,000 acres along Rosebud Creek, land their family has patrolled with horses and tamed with fences for 125 years. They could probably go on undisturbed for 100 years more if the earth under the pastures weren't laced with coal.

ALBUQUERQUE - Johnny Depp was the picture of breezy relaxation as he walked bare-chested across the "Lone Ranger" film set in the high desert of New Mexico last May - despite the punishing midday glare and the pelting sand from a brewing windstorm. "At the very least, I'm one of the lucky ones, since I don't have to wear a shirt," said Depp, who plays a reimagined version of Tonto that defies the standard sidekick expectations in the film that arrives in theaters on July 3 as the most expensive Hollywood western ever made.

Heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. reported a 45% drop in first-quarter profit and cut its full-year outlook amid a slowdown in its mining business. The Peoria, Ill., company said mining companies continue to reduce their spending and new equipment orders remain weak after a surge last year. But Caterpillar said its sales in China increased in the quarter ended March 31, and that it's becoming more optimistic about the U.S. housing sector. "What's happening in our business and in the economy overall is a mixed picture," said Doug Oberhelman, Caterpillar's chairman and chief executive.

After bombs ripped through the crowd gathered along the final stretch of the Boston Marathon on Monday, Los Angeles police officials did what they could to allay the fears of Angelenos. Standing before a bank of television cameras, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck on Tuesday reiterated that upcoming sporting and cultural events would be patrolled by a higher-than-normal number of officers and bomb-sniffing dogs. He talked cryptically about the secretive work being done by the department's counter-terrorism units.

Saudi Arabia has agreed to sweep the dangerous waters off Kuwait for mines that Iran may have begun to lay in response to the U.S. plan to escort Kuwaiti oil tankers through the Persian Gulf, diplomatic and congressional sources said Tuesday. The move was praised by a Reagan Administration official, who said it represented the sort of cooperation "we'd like to see" in the tense region.

An abandoned sulfur mine that for decades has spewed a toxic soup of acid and heavy metals in the scenic Sierra Nevada was proposed for Superfund status Thursday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Superfund listing is reserved for the worst of the worst of the nation's polluted areas. Leviathan Mine in remote Alpine County, Calif., near the Nevada line, will join about 1,400 sites on the list if the designation is approved.

LEAD, S.D. - The scientists don hard hats, jumpsuits and steel-toed boots to pile into a metal cage for a rumbling 11-minute descent into an abandoned South Dakota gold mine. They step over old mine-cart rails, through rough-walled tunnels and into a bright white room. There, they cast off their dusty garb and enter a lab hidden nearly a mile beneath the Earth. Inside, Patrick Phelps peers at valves connected to half a million dollars' worth of some of the purest xenon in the world.

TAGHAR, Afghanistan - In a rugged valley outside Kabul, where mud-walled villages blend into bare scrubland, a team of international mining experts and Afghan trainees set up camp over the winter to probe the region's mineral resources. Protected by armed guards, they spent three months drilling test holes into the snowcapped peaks, as curious goat- and sheepherders looked on. "We hit copper damn near everywhere," said Robert Miller, a Colorado-based mining executive recruited by the Pentagon to help advise Afghan authorities on how to develop the country's natural resources.