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.

"Tonight You're Mine," set at (and filmed during) Scotland's largest outdoor rock festival, T in the Park, is a "Once"-like attempt at mixing simple romance, off-the-cuff charm and music. When preening American frontman Adam (Luke Treadaway), one-half of a hipster electronic duo, is accidentally handcuffed to Morello, the cheeky lead singer of a punk-lite all-girl band (a frisky, appealing Natalia Tena), it's not hard to figure out what the refrain of this meet-cute two-hander is going to sound like.

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.

A group of 21st-century private space entrepreneurs is expected to unveil an ambitious new venture to mine the surface of near-Earth asteroids in search of precious metals and rare metallic elements. The plan may seem like it was torn from a science fiction novel, and critics say the idea may be far-fetched and difficult for a small company to accomplish. But the company, Planetary Resources Inc., has already drawn an A-list of investors and advisors. The backers include Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt, "Avatar" director James Cameron and Microsoft Corp.'s former chief software architect Charles Simonyi.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt are two of the high-profile backers of Planetary Resources Inc., a newly formed company that plans to spend millions of dollars on the distinctly sci-fi goal of mining the surface of near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and rare metallic elements. As projects go, this one is definitely ambitious and insane sounding. The plan involves sending "a swarm" of 20-pound satellites that cost as much as $5 million apiece 500 miles from Earth in search of potential platinum-rich asteroids, The Times reported . If an asteroid appears to be worth mining, the company will send in a fleet of even higher-powered satellites for a closer look, and if it still appears to be worth mining, they'll send in the drilling robots.

A new private space company is expected to be unveiled Tuesday at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Planetary Resources Inc. is a Seattle company that intends to mine near-Earth asteroids for raw materials ranging from water to precious metals. “There are precious metals in near-infinite quantities in space. When the availability of these metals increase, the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts; and with the abundance of these metals we'll be able to use them in mass production,” Peter H. Diamandis, co-founder and co-chairman, said in a statement.

David Treuer never planned on writing nonfiction. "I was happy working on my novels," the fiction writer and USC professor says over the phone from Ann Arbor, where he is visiting the University of Michigan to talk about his new book, "Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life" (Grove: 330 pp., $26). "But after the Red Lake shooting in 2005" - in which a 16-year-old named Jeffrey James Weise went on a shooting spree at a school on Minnesota's Red Lake Reservation - "I became upset and frustrated with the coverage.

When it comes to weight control, exercise doesn't matter. Non-exercise is what counts. That may sound like heresy, but, in fact, it's a theory based on years of highly respected research - and the science behind a little high-tech gizmo called the Gruve Solution. The Gruve is one of a gaggle of gadgets called personal activity monitors that you can carry in your pocket, hang on a keychain, wear like a watch. In this case, you "get your Gruve on" - as its maker, Gruve Technologies, likes to say - by attaching it to your waistband.

There's still gold in them thar rivers, and adventurers still cherish dreams of wealth. These days, though, sifting for gold is more a form of recreation than a business, and the tin pans have mostly been replaced by motorized machines called suction dredges. And the competing claims aren't over who has prospecting rights, but whether this form of mechanized gold hunting is causing irreparable harm to rivers in Northern California and the fish that swim in them. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that imposed a moratorium on the practice until 2016, by which time the state Department of Fish and Game was to adopt regulations that eliminated the potential for significant environmental damage and that set permit fees high enough to cover the state's costs.

A former mine official has pleaded guilty to conspiring to impede mine safety enforcement at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where 29 workers died in a 2010 explosion. Gary May, 43, of Bloomingrose, W. Va., admitted Thursday to concealing health and safety violations, using code phrases to give advance warning of inspections and ordering a mine examination book to be falsified. His actions, while he was superintendent of the mine, were intended to mask safety violations, including poor airflow and accumulation of explosive coal dust, two factors that have been deemed causes of the deadly explosion.

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.

A U.S. Navy demolition diving team is set to begin a sweep of underwater mines placed by Iran in the Persian Gulf channel that leads to Kuwait's main oil terminal, Pentagon sources said Wednesday. The operation, a key prerequisite to the start of U.S. escorts for Kuwaiti oil tankers, "could start as early as today," said one official. "It might be today or it might be Thursday, but they're ready to go," added the official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not identified.

The federal agency charged with ensuring mine safety failed to enforce laws that might have prevented the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 coal miners and seriously injured two others, according to an independent assessment of the 2010 incident. If the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration had enforced existing safety laws in a timely manner, “it would have lessened the chances of - and possibly could have prevented - the explosion,” a four-person panel of mine safety experts concluded.

"South Park," a cartoon that is and isn't about four little boys in a Rocky Mountain hamlet, begins its 16th season Wednesday on Comedy Central. Sixteen years of "South Park - it began so long ago that Patrick Duffy was the subject of a joke in its second episode - sounds even more amazing than 23 years of "The Simpsons," given the younger show's habitual profanity, vulgarity and violence. But that is also obviously part of its appeal and, indeed, often its very point. What's kept both these small-town allegorical comedies valuable and viable over their long runs are qualities they share: a disregard for empty authority, skepticism regarding beliefs not based in fact, an impatience with hypocrisy and cant, and the happy realization that the worst aspects of humans both as individuals and (especially)