Rubbish

It can be hard to find what you're looking for in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But scientists on an August research cruise had no problem tracking down their subject. "We did observe a lot of plastic out there in the ocean about 1,000 miles from anything," said Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition. "It's pretty shocking." A group of doctoral students and research volunteers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Project Kaisei spent nearly three weeks on the research vessel New Horizon taking samples and exploring the plastic garbage patch floating in the North Pacific.

A cargo boat laden with 500 tons of garbage from Naples docked at the island of Sardinia as the Italian government worked to undo a trash emergency that left heaps of waste piled on streets. Prime Minister Romano Prodi had invited Italian regions to accept some of the trash from Naples and its surrounding Campania region. Officials on Sardinia, whose northeastern Emerald Coast is a favorite of the European jet set, agreed.

A homeless man's discovery of documents purported to be blueprints for the Freedom Tower is a serious security breach and has prompted an internal investigation, a spokesman for the New York Port Authority said Friday.

Fourteen tons. That's roughly how much illegal litter is cleared each day off the streets of downtown Los Angeles' industrial and warehouse districts. Fourteen tons, every day, seven days a week. Thousands of coat hangers. Banks of flattened cardboard boxes. Sheets of billowy cellophane. Left not by pedestrians or the homeless, but by shopkeepers and tradespeople. It's not really their fault.

Police clashed with demonstrators in a poor quarter of Naples after a night of riots over the Italian government's attempt to end the chronic garbage problem by opening new dumps against locals' wishes. Witnesses said two officers and two protesters were hurt when police tried to remove a bus used as a barricade to block access to a landfill site at a quarry in the Chiaiano neighborhood. Police said protesters had thrown a gasoline bomb.

Only days after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he would leave town in June for a trip to Israel, a city councilman from the San Fernando Valley announced Thursday that he would spend an entire month looking at trash conversion facilities around the globe. Councilman Greig Smith said he and other city officials would travel to Canada, Japan, Israel, France, Germany and Spain as part of a fact-finding mission waged by the city's Bureau of Sanitation. They will also visit Bakersfield.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered a comprehensive report Monday to find out why illegally dumped refuse has been allowed to sit for weeks in alleys in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. "The mayor's view is that people should not have to wait for weeks to have trash picked up," said Gil Duran, a spokesman for Villaraigosa, who was traveling in Israel.

In the wake of a Times report that illegal trash dumping is plaguing some of Los Angeles' poorest neighborhoods, state officials announced Tuesday that they would give the city a $500,000 grant to help crack down on violators in the hardest-hit areas. The grant, from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, will help fund a special enforcement zone in South Los Angeles, where about half of the illegally dumped refuse in the city is discarded.

Honolulu will pay nearly $10 million per year to ship some of its trash to the mainland and extend the life of the state's largest dump. Hawaiian Waste Systems' bid was the lowest of three companies competing for the job. The three-year contract requires the firm to ship 2,050 tons of trash per week and up to 100,000 tons per year to a mainland landfill. The amount that would be shipped is less than 6% of the 1.76 million tons of solid waste produced on Oahu each year.

A Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief vowed Monday to crack down on those who illegally dump refuse on public streets and alleys in South Los Angeles. Deputy Chief Kenneth O. Garner, who oversees the department's South Bureau, said that his officers would be launching a task force later this month with investigators from the city's Public Works Department.