Nation in brief: Crandall Canyon mine sealed up
The coal mine where six workers were entombed after a collapse has been sealed, leaving expensive machinery inside, federal regulators said Tuesday.
Richard Gates, the lead investigator for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, made the disclosure in a briefing for a state commission that is looking into whether Utah should return to the business of regulating coal mines after a 20-year hiatus.
Kevin Stricklin, MSHA’s administrator for coal mine safety, said Cleveland-based Murray Energy Corp. sealed the Crandall Canyon mine’s three main passageways with walls of concrete block in early October.
The miners were trapped in a cave-in Aug. 6. Ten days later, another collapse killed three people and injured six others trying to dig their way toward the trapped men.
WASHINGTON
McClellan says he was lied to
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and Lewis “Scooter” Libby were “not involved” in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.
“There was one problem. It was not true,” McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. “I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff and the president himself.”
White House press secretary Dana Perino said it wasn’t clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt. “The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information,” she said.
TRENTON, N.J.
Ashcroft law firm working for U.S.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s law firm could earn $52.2 million helping the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey monitor a leading maker of knee and hip replacements, according to recent public filings.
Ashcroft’s firm is among five legal teams U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie hand-picked to watch the manufacturers, who agreed in September to pay $311 million and hire monitors to settle allegations they paid surgeons to use and promote their devices.
Christie, who took office in January 2002 and worked under Ashcroft until Ashcroft stepped down in 2005, denied any conflict Tuesday.
Ashcroft spokesman Mark Corallo said the fees outlined in the SEC filing – “estimates based on our assessment of the current situation and (Zimmer’s) obligations under the agreement,” he said – are consistent with other large-scale monitoring arrangements.