A major player in the investigation was Khalid Ibrahim El Fadli, director of the climate department at the Libyan National Meteorological Center, who found the original logs and determined that a new person took over the reading and recording of the temperature at Al Azizia two days before the legendary hottest day reading. Unfortunately, Gaddafi accused Libyans who shared climate information with foreigners to be traitors, and Western meteorologists lost contact with El Fadli in February 2011.   read more

What Nixon lacked in affinity for nature, he made up for in practical deal-making that put him in a position to compromise with Democrats. Under his watch, the government created the Environmental Protection Agency and adopted numerous landmark pieces of legislation, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Endangered Species Act.   read more

It is true that prisoners have used dental floss to escape, although it is rare. In 1994, Robert Dale Shepard made an 18-foot rope out of floss and then used it to scale the walls of a West Virginia prison. In 2002, Scott Brimble used dental floss and toothpaste to weaken wire mesh surrounding the exercise yard at Okanogan County Jail in Washington and then pried open enough of an opening to slip through.   read more

Among the other Ig Nobel prizes this year were awards for a joint Dutch-American study that discovered that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends; a French paper that advised doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode; and a Dutch study titled “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation.”   read more

Containing americium-241/beryllium (Am-241), the rod disappeared while company three employees were transporting it between sites near Odessa and Pecos. The rods are lowered into wells to identify the best spots to break apart rock in the process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking. A lock on the container holding the rod is also missing.   read more

Because of the archaic voting system used in the United States, voters do not actually vote for a candidate, but for a slate of state electors who are pledged to vote for that candidate if he or she wins the state. In most states, these electors are not legally required to vote for the candidate who won the state. In fact, there have been 87 instances in which an elector refused to vote for the presidential or vice-presidential candidate he or she was supposed to.   read more

About 100 people from El Alberto (out of a population of about 830) are employed by the Caminata Nocturna (Night Walk), which offers the four-hour, 7.5-mile journey that simulates the ordeal of unauthorized entry onto American soil, including physically demanding activities like running from the authorities, avoiding cactus plants and crawling under barbed wire fences.   read more

Stephanie Kirschner and Brad Kane claim Eden Memorial Park did not ask their permission to relocate the ashes of Jeannine Kane, who died in 1979. They say in their lawsuit the move was motivated entirely by money, believing the spot adjacent to the famous comedian Marx could be sold to the highest bidder.   read more

“Avoiding annoyance is never a proper basis on which to curtail protected speech,” wrote Judge Joel Flaum for the panel. “We cannot conceive of an annoying behavior, however annoying it may be, that could constitutionally draw as a remedy dispersing others engaged in protected speech.”   read more

Sever’s illegal voting was discovered during GOP Governor Rick Scott’s expensive effort to identify non-citizens on voting rolls by examining the state motor vehicle database. Out of 180,000 potential liars, the search turned up one name, Sever’s, who was referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). The FDLE is said to be investigating six more cases of suspected voter fraud.   read more

One of the towns whose residents fired the first shots in the American Revolution has now become the first to shoot down single-serve plastic water bottles as a menace to the environment. Concord, Massachusetts, which is governed by its Town Meeting, voted 403-364 in April to pass a bylaw banning the sale of the bottles, which is set to go into effect January 1, 2013. It was given a final seal of legality by state Attorney General Martha Coakley last week.   read more

The company in response says the tactic was done merely to save time while serving customers. It also claims bills were adjusted both up and down, resulting in the company not making a profit off the practice. However, it has offered to now only round down.   read more

She stands accused of coming up with a novel method of carrying out this task…having people—namely her three children—take FINRA exams 64 times so that they could memorize the questions. The Leahys managed to retake the tests over and over again thanks to an 81% failure rate.   read more

In a particularly bizarre twist of words, Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore told Blomquist that company managers “communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend.”   read more

Some banned items came as no surprise: guns, knives, explosives. But so were baseballs, fresh whole fruit, bottled water, flashlights and disposable coffee cups. Footballs, however, are fair game to be tossed around on the convention floor.   read more

Andrea, a former entertainment lawyer, then met physician Todd Katzman, whom she agreed to marry. The two registered for gifts at Bloomingdale’s and participated in a ceremony in Palm Springs on May 2, 2009, after which Andrea told her children she considered herself married to Katzman. She and Katzman even signed a Jewish marriage contract known as a ketubah.   read more