BP bets on Kevin Costner's oil cleaning machine

It was treated as an oddball twist in the otherwise wrenching saga of the BP oil spill when Kevin Costner stepped forward to promote a device he said could work wonders in containing the spill's damage. But as Henry Fountain explains in the New York Times, the gadget in question - an oil-separating centrifuge - marks a major breakthrough in spill cleanup technology. And BP, after trial runs with the device, is ordering 32 more of the Costner-endorsed centrifuges to aid the Gulf cleanup.

The "Waterworld" actor has invested some $20 million and spent the past 15 years in developing the centrifuges. He helped found a manufacturing company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, to advance his brother's research in spill cleanup technology. In testimony before Congress this month, Costner walked through the device's operation - explaining how it spins oil-contaminated water at a rapid speed, so as to separate out the oil and capture it in a containment tank:

The device can purportedly take in thousands of gallons of oil-tainted water and remove up to 99% of the oil from it. On Thursday, BP posted to its YouTube page a video of the news conference featuring Costner and BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announcing the news. You can watch the video here:

"Doug Suttles was the first guy to step up in the oil industry," Costner said at the presser, "and I'm really happy to say when he ordered 32 machines, it's a signal to the world, to the industry, where we need to be."

Suttles said the additional machines will be used to build four new deep-water systems: on two barges and two 280-foot supply boats.

"We tested it in some of the toughest environments we could find, and actually what it's done - it's quite robust," Suttles said. "This is real technology with real science behind it, and it's passed all of those tests." He added that Costner's device has proved effective at processing 128,000 barrels of water a day, which "can make a real difference to our spill response efforts."

In his congressional testimony, Costner recounted his struggle to effectively market the centrifuge. He explained that although the machines are quite effective, they can still leave trace amounts of oil in the treated water that exceeds current environmental regulations. Because of that regulatory hurdle, he said, he had great difficulty getting oil industry giants interested without first having the approval of the federal government.

It's true, as Fountain notes in the Times, that innovation on spill technology has been hobbled in part by the reach of federal regulation - though Fountain also notes that oil companies have elected to devote comparatively little money for researching cleanup devices in the intensely competitive industry.

Costner said that after the device was patented in 1993, he sought to overcome oil-company jitters by offering to allow U.S. oil concerns to use it on a trial basis. He'd extended the same offer to the Japanese government in 1997, he said, but got no takers there either.

Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

AGADIR, Morocco - Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.

"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.

Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.

Payne called his group's $5 million project the most comprehensive report ever done on ocean pollutants.

U.S. Whaling Commissioner Monica Medina informed the 88 member nations of the whaling commission of the report and urged the commission to conduct further research.

The report "is right on target" for raising issues critical to humans as well as whales, Medina told The Associated Press. "We need to know much more about these problems."

Payne, 75, is best known for his 1968 discovery and recordings of songs by humpback whales, and for finding that some whale species can communicate with each other over thousands of miles.

The 93-foot Odyssey, a sail-and-motor ketch, set out in March 2000 from San Diego to document the oceans' health, collecting pencil-eraser-sized samples using a dart gun that barely made the whales flinch.

After more than five years and 87,000 miles, samples had been taken from 955 whales. The samples were sent for analysis to marine toxicologist John Wise at the University of Southern Maine. DNA was compared to ensure the animals were not tested more than once.

Payne said the original objective of the voyage was to measure chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, and the study of metals was an afterthought.

The researchers were stunned with the results. "That's where the shocking, sort of jaw-dropping concentrations exist," Payne said.

Though it was impossible to know where the whales had been, Payne said the contamination was embedded in the blubber of males formed in the frigid polar regions, indicating that the animals had ingested the metals far from where they were emitted.

"When you're working with a synthetic chemical which never existed in nature before and you find it in a whale which came from the Arctic or Antarctic, it tells you that was made by people and it got into the whale," he said.

How that happened is unclear, but the contaminants likely were carried by wind or ocean currents, or were eaten by the sperm whales' prey.

Sperm whales are toothed whales that eat all kinds of fish, even sharks. Dozens have been taken by whaling ships in the past decade. Most of the whales hunted by the whaling countries of Japan, Norway and Iceland are minke whales, which are baleen whales that feed largely on tiny krill.

Chromium, an industrial pollutant that causes cancer in humans, was found in all but two of the 361 sperm whale samples that were tested for it. Those findings were published last year in the scientific journal Chemosphere.

"The biggest surprise was chromium," Payne said. "That's an absolute shocker. Nobody was even looking for it."

The corrosion-resistant metal is used in stainless steel, paints, dyes and the tanning of leather. It can cause lung cancer in people who work in industries where it is commonly used, and was the focus of the California environmental lawsuit that gained fame in the movie "Erin Brockovich."

It was impossible to say from the samples whether any of the whales suffered diseases, but Wise found that the concentration of chromium found in whales was several times higher than the level required to kill healthy cells in a Petri dish, Payne said.

He said another surprise was the high concentrations of aluminum, which is used in packaging, cooking pots and water treatment. Its effects are unknown.

The consequences of the metals could be horrific for both whale and man, he said.

"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction," Payne said. "This is not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I think it should be."

Group claims responsibility for Forces blast

TROIS-RIVIERES, Que. - An anti-military group opposed to the "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan claimed responsibility for an explosion that thundered through a Canadian Forces recruitment centre Friday.

The early-morning blast in Trois-Rivieres, Que., blew out windows on the building, showered a road with debris and rattled a downtown neighbourhood.

There were no injuries — primarily because the recruitment centre was closed at the time of the 3 a.m. explosion.

Later in the day, a group calling itself Resistance internationaliste issued a statement in which it also railed against multinationals, imperialism, the "repressive orgy" at the G20 and pipelines in Afghanistan.

"This operation against recruitment centres is our resistance to the brainwashing and the intensive soliciting by the army of youths confronted with the emptiness of a degrading society," the organization said in the communique sent to various media.

"As for the soldiers of the Canadian army, let's be clear — in no way are they 'ours.' They belong to the person they stupidly swear allegiance to: Her Majesty Elizabeth."

The group says it used to be known as Initiative de resistance internationaliste, a group that took credit in 2006 for the explosion of a car that belonged to Carol Montreuil, an executive with the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute.

It also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a Hydro-Quebec tower in December 2004 in the Eastern Townships, near the U.S. border.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Eloise Cossette said the municipal force in Trois-Rivieres received a bomb threat by telephone "a few minutes" before the blowout. She would not say exactly how much time elapsed between the call and the explosion.

Cossette also declined to release details on the bomb or elaborate on what police know about the organization.

"Yes, a group did claim responsibility but we are still looking at other possibilities," she said.

The recruitment centre is on the ground floor of a high-rise hotel, but the building did not have to be evacuated, Cossette added.

Still, the overnight rumble shook residents in their beds more than two blocks away from the blast site.

A man who lives across the street from the recruitment centre had just turned on his computer to play a video game when he heard the explosion.

"I went outside right away," David Leblanc told The Canadian Press. "I thought my brick wall had fallen down."

Leblanc says shards of broken glass were scattered on the street and on the stairs leading into the building. He smelled smoke in the air, but didn't see any flames.

"I was sure it was (natural) gas," said Leblanc, who didn't want to approach the centre because he thought there could be another eruption.

Around 20 people, who had spilled out of a nearby bar after hearing the explosion, had already gathered in front of the building when he arrived.

The gawkers, most of them inebriated after a long night of partying, thought the incident was pretty cool and were cracking jokes, he added.

"Everybody was saying, 'It's a bombing!' and they were laughing," he said.

Their amusement didn't last long because police arrived at the scene very quickly, Leblanc said.

"They got everyone out of there," he said.

A team of police investigators, the bomb squad and a canine unit searched the scene Friday for clues.

"We have explosives technicians, crime specialists, dogs," Cossette said.

"Our goal is to arrest (someone) and to solve this case rapidly."

A large security perimeter was set up around the building and an adjacent bus station in the heart of the city, which is about 130 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Cossette said it could have been worse.

"It happened during the night, the building was unoccupied and that's why there were no injuries or deaths," she said. "That's the good news."

The Canadian Forces have no immediate plans to tighten security at its recruiting centres, spokeswoman Maj. Paule Poulin said.

"Although the incident is unfortunate, it seemed to be isolated," she said from Ottawa.

But she says the military will take more care inspecting buildings when offices are closed down each day.

Poulin would not comment when asked if the Forces had any previous knowledge of Resistance internationaliste.

Opposition to the Canadian Forces' mission in Afghanistan has been stronger in Quebec than any other province in the country.

A Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll last year found that 54 per cent of Canadians surveyed opposed the government's commitment to have troops in Afghanistan, while 39 per cent supported it. Opposition to Canada's presence in Afghanistan was highest in Quebec, at 73 per cent.

Longtime Trois-Rivieres resident Andre Provost couldn't believe someone set off a bomb in the city of about 140,000.

"Trois-Rivieres is a very quiet town," Provost said as he watched police officers scour the area.

"I don't think the crime rate is very high."

With files from Peter Rakobowchuk in Montreal

Pot Versus Alcohol: Experts Say Booze Is the Bigger Danger

Speaking privately with Richard Nixon in 1971, the late Art Linkletter offered this view on the use of marijuana versus alcohol. "When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable."

"That's right, that's right," Nixon agreed. "A person does not drink to get drunk A person drinks to have fun."

The following year Linkletter announced that he had reversed his position on pot, concluding instead that the drug's social harms were not significant enough to warrant its criminal prohibition. Nixon however stayed the course -- launching the so-called "war" on drugs, a social policy that now results in the arrest of more than 800,000 Americans each year for violating marijuana laws.

Decades later, the social debate regarding the use of marijuana versus alcohol rages on. Yet among objective experts who have studied the issue there remains little debate at all. Despite pot's long-standing criminalization, scientists agree that the drug possesses far less harm than its legal and celebrated companion, alcohol.

For example, in the mid-1990s, the World Health Organization commissioned a team of experts to compare the health and societal consequences of marijuana use compared to other drugs, including alcohol, nicotine, and opiates. After quantifying the harms associated with both drugs, the researchers concluded: "Overall, most of these risks (associated with marijuana) are small to moderate in size. In aggregate they are unlikely to produce public health problems comparable in scale to those currently produced by alcohol and tobacco On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies."

French scientists at the state medical research institute INSERM published a similar review in 1998. Researchers categorized legal and illegal drugs into three distinct categories: Those that pose the greatest threat to public health, those that pose moderate harms to the public, and those substances that pose little-to-no danger. Alcohol, heroin, and cocaine were placed in the most dangerous category, while investigators determined that cannabis posed the least danger to public health.

In 2002, a special Canadian Senate Committee completed an exhaustive review of marijuana and health, concluding, "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue."

In 2007, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare hired a team of scientists to assess the impact of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs on public health. Researcher reported that the consumption of alcohol was significant contributors to death and disease. "Alcohol harm was responsible for 3.2 percent of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia," they concluded. By comparison, cannabis use was responsible for zero deaths and only 0.2 percent of the estimated total burden of disease and injury in Australia.

Hackers target Microsoft Windows XP support system

Hi-tech criminals are "escalating" attacks on an unpatched bug in the Windows XP help and support system.

Microsoft said it had seen more than 10,000 machines hit by the attack that, so far, it has not found a fix for.

Windows PCs falling victim will have control of that machine handed over to attackers.

Microsoft said the attacks had gone from theoretical to real very quickly and urged users to take steps to protect themselves.

'Nightmare' attack

Microsoft revealed the upturn in attacks in a blog post saying that it had been monitoring activity around the loophole since it was first revealed on 10 June.

Found by Google engineer Travis Ormandy, the loophole revolves around the Help and Support system built into XP. Mr Ormandy found that it was possible to exploit its ability to give remote aid and apply fixes to ailing machines.

Initially, said Microsoft, it only saw "innocuous" attacks by researchers attempting to replicate what Mr Ormandy had found.

Real exploits turned up on 15 June and these have been enthusiastically adopted by hi-tech criminals.

Writing on the Microsoft Security Centre blog, Holly Stewart said it had started seeing "seemingly-automated, randomly-generated" web pages that host the exploit.

A variety of trojans, spam tools and viruses are being downloaded to compromised machines, she said.

Rik Ferguson, senior security researcher at Trend Micro, said: "It's certainly very serious and is now being actively exploited by what appears to be several different groups as you can see from the multiple payloads being delivered."

Carole Thierault, senior security consultant at Sophos, said attacks like this were a "nightmare" to defend against if people did not regularly update or use anti-virus.

Statistics gathered by Microsoft suggest Portugal was taking the brunt of the attacks but users in Russia and Croatia were also being hit. More than 10,000 machines had been hit at least once by the attack, it found.

To avoid falling victim, Microsoft advised users to turn off the part of the Help and Support system that is vulnerable. It has produced an automated tool that can do this for users.

Mr Ferguson from Trend Micro said there were other steps users could take to stay safe.

"It is important to ensure that your security software is capable of identifying and blocking malicious websites," he said, "as you can be sure that the criminals behind this will be constantly updating their malicious files to try and avoid traditional security."

Microsoft said it was working on a lasting fix for the loophole.

GM China Sales Surpass U.S.; Google to Buy ITA Software: Video

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Time runs out for 1.2 million on unemployment

(CNN) -- With her unemployment benefits coming to a halt, Miriam Cintron is forced to make a difficult choice between health insurance and daily expenses.

Signing into her unemployment benefits account last week, the New Yorker was horrified to see she hadn't received any money for three weeks, she says.

What would the four-year cancer survivor do if she couldn't afford to pay her $650 monthly COBRA payment? Her health insurance helped pay for life-saving treatment before, so giving it up is not an option, she says.

When Cintron was laid off from her job as a case worker at a homeless shelter in late 2008, she never imagined she'd go on unemployment. But even with 17 years experience, she's been unable to land a new job.

Cintron isn't alone. Unemployment benefits are set to run dry for 1.2 million people nationwide Friday after the U.S. Senate decided not to extend a deadline to file for these benefits last week, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Come Saturday, the number of people cut from unemployment benefits will surge to 1.63 million, according to U.S. Department of Labor estimates. By mid-July, about 2 million unemployed Americans could lose their benefits.

Before last month, out-of-work Americans were eligible for extensions once they maxed out at 26 weeks of state benefits. Depenging on the state, people could qualify for up to 73 weeks of federal benefits -- a total of 99 weeks. But, Senate Republicans blocked the extension with a 57-14 vote last week.

Senate Republicans filibustered the bill Wednesday night and the House could vote again as soon as Thursday.

"The reality is that we have the worst job market on record going back to the Great Recession," says Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director at National Employment Law Project.

"There's only one job available for every five unemployed workers."

For people who are apt to say, "Go find a job," Emsellem says the predicament of the unemployed isn't easy to escape.

"For anybody that has a thought in their head that unemployed workers are to blame for their situation, the reality is that workers are struggling hard to find work, but the jobs are just not there."

National Employment Law Project resources for the unemployed

While Cintron has been struggling to make ends meet for the last year-and-a-half, she worries about other people in the same predicament.

"My story is one story and it's unique," she says. "But, there are so many people with children, other issues, that are in dire situations."

Are you one of the 1.2 million? Share your unemployment story

"I'm just shocked that more attention isn't being paid to this story."

She's thankful she doesn't have any children relying on her for support right now. But, she does care for her mother. Part of Cintron's unemployment checks have been going toward her mother's expenses since she moved in with her a few months before Cintron lost her job.

Cintron's $425 unemployment check each week -- or $1,700 each month -- has to stretch a long way. She pitches in for appliances, groceries and whatever else her mother needs. Health insurance payments burn a hole in her wallet at a whopping $650 per month. And then there's the storage fee of $300 she pays for all her excess furniture from her old apartment.

If Congress fails to pass the bill granting the unemployment benefit extensions this week, Cintron says she will only be able to stay afloat for a month. She will have to dip into her 401(k) retirement plan to continue to pay for health care, she says.

As to what happens after that, Cintron says she just doesn't know.

"I will try to survive and see what I can do for paying the health insurance for at least another few months with my 401(k)."

"I don't qualify for Medicaid, I make too much money. I have to pay the $650 to a private health insurer."

Finding the income to support her expensive health insurance hasn't been an easy task. For the last year-and-a-half, Cintron has been applying to jobs at homeless shelters in New York. Even though she has landed several interviews, they haven't amounted to anything.

"The agencies where I'm applying to, they're all cutting back too," she says, citing city funding cutbacks.

Cintron is considering part-time or customer service work as a last resort, but she's worried she may be worse off.

"I certainly don't want to live on unemployment," she says. "The customer service jobs don't pay well, don't have health insurance. I really need insurance because I'm a cancer survivor."

For now, Cintron keeps logging into the unemployment benefits website, typing in her account number and trying to claim benefits.

Cintron says the New York State Department of Labor has instructed her to keep logging in as normal, even though she's not getting a dime. Cintron says the website is confusing and she's unsure of how many extensions she's had.

With all the stress and lack of income, Cintron's been relying on hobbies to try to keep her spirits up.

Ever since she lost her job, she's been an active iReporter, scouting events and stories in her native New York. Videography and photography have become her focus. In this digital age, it's free for her to upload her images, so it's a cheap hobby.

See Cintron's iReports over the years

Her other passion is music. She's sad she's had to nix going to concerts, but says she's lucky to live in a city where so many free shows are going on at any time.

Even though she's found ways to lead a semi-normal life, her time being unemployed is starting to wear her down.

"I'm a glass half-full kind of person. I'm a very positive person. It's very hard for me to get into this feeling sorry for myself, what-am-I-going-to-do mode," she says.

"But I am getting there."