A-2 THE NEW MEXICAN Monday, October 11, 2010
NATION&WORLD
In brief
Factory will pay
sludge damages
KOLONTAR, Hungary — The
owners of the metals plant whose
reservoir burst, flooding several
towns in western Hungary with caus-
tic red sludge, expressed their con-
dolences Sunday to the families of
the seven people killed, as well as to
those injured — and said they were
sorry for not having done so sooner.
MAL Rt., which owns the alumina
plant in Ajka, also said it was willing
to pay compensation “in proportion
to its responsibility” for the damage
caused by the deluge.
‘King of Rock and
Soul’ dies at 70
AMSTERDAM — Solomon Burke
was born to the sound of music in
an upstairs room of a Philadelphia
church and went on to become one
of the greatest soul singers of the
1960s, renowned among music’s pre-
mier vocalists.
Yet his popularity never matched
that of those he influenced, contem-
poraries including James Brown and
Marvin Gaye, a reality he accepted
with grace and some frustration, col-
leagues said.
Burke, 70, died early Sunday of nat-
ural causes at Amsterdam’s Schiphol
Airport, his family said in a statement
on the singer’s website.
“This is a time of great sorrow for
our entire family. We truly appreci-
ate all of the support and well wishes
from his friends and fans,” the state-
ment said.
The family did not elaborate on the
cause of death.
Marrying couples
seek perfect 10
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Churches,
banquet halls and other wedding ven-
ues across the country were extra busy
Sunday as couples seeking a perfect 10
rushed to tie the knot on a once-in-a-
century milestone: Oct. 10, 2010.
In Las Vegas, Nev. — long a desti-
nation for weddings — one marriage
license bureau extended its Sunday
hours from 6 p.m. to midnight to
accommodate the rush. Hotels and
churches in New Hampshire’s Sea-
coast area were booked long before
Oct. 10.
Wedding-related businesses
said the day was perhaps the most
sought-after wedding date since
July 7, 2007, when the lucky 07-07-07
marked the calendar. Some 10-10-
10 couples even chose to take their
vows at 10 a.m.
One pastor in Nevada took the
rush airborne by planning to join
30 couples at various venues Sunday
and aboard a helicopter through the
buzz of a headset.
“This is kind of a neat way to spend
my retirement years. It keeps me
in good health and keeps my mind
alert,” the Rev. Jim Hamilton of Hen-
derson’s Sunrise Community Church
told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Associated Press
Contact us
The Santa Fe
New Mexican
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New Mexico for 161 years
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Lizet Gallardo, granddaughter of trapped miner Mario Gomez, plays at the San Jose mine Sunday near
Copiapo, Chile. Drillers have completed an escape shaft and the 33 trapped miners are close to being
rescued. NATACHA PISARENKO/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Preparing to escape
Tense final hours
ahead for Chile miners
The Associated Press
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile — A
smooth-walled path to daylight
awaited 33 trapped miners Sunday
as they entered the tense final hours
of a two-month odyssey christened
in the terror of collapsing rock deep
under a Chilean mountain.
With the eyes of the world on
Chile’s no-expense-spared effort
to ensure all the men emerge
unharmed, the miners’ physical and
mental health was being fastidiously
monitored. Precautions were taken
against complications — aspirin to
prevent blood clots, a special drink
to settle the stomach, video moni-
tors to watch for panic attacks.
And officials said the men were
so giddy with confidence they were
squabbling on Saturday, the day
drills broke through to them, over
who would get to be the last to take
a twisting, 20-minute ride the half-
mile up to a rock-strewn desert
moonscape and into the embrace
of those they love.
A tentative but secret list was
drafted of which miners should
come out first when the extraction
begins, probably on Wednesday.
But Health Minister Jaime Manalich
said the otherwise cooperative min-
ers were so sure of the exit plan that
they were arguing about sequence.
“They were fighting with us yes-
terday because everyone wanted
to be at the end of the line, not the
beginning,” he told reporters.
Manalich told The Associated
Press that a few had volunteered in
conversations among themselves
to go up first. But none had volun-
teered publicly, he said.
“I think they’re more excited than
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scared or nervous,” Brandon Fisher,
president of Center Rock Inc., the
Pennsylvania company that made
the hammer-style drill heads that
created the opening for the rescue,
told AP. “That first guy up might be
a little nervous, though.”
The final order will probably be
determined by two paramedics,
one from the Navy and one from
the Codelco state mining company,
who will be lowered into the mine
to prepare the men for their jour-
ney in a rescue capsule built by
Chilean naval engineers.
Over the past week, all the min-
ers underwent tests to assess their
health. Manalich said officials were
concerned about acute hypertension
in some of the miners as well as the
opposite — sudden drops in blood
pressure — in others because of the
speed of the ascent to the surface.
Another concern is blood clot-
ting. To counteract it, the miners
began taking 100 milligrams each
of aspirin on Sunday, he said. They
will also put on compression socks
and a special girdle and will be on a
special high-calorie liquid prepared
and donated by NASA for the final
six hours before being removed,
Manalich said.
The liquid-only diet is to prevent
them from becoming nauseated.
The rescue capsule is expected
to rotate 350 degrees some 10 to
12 times through curves in the 28-
inch-diameter escape hole on its
way up, he added.
Officials’ biggest worry was panic
attacks, the health minister said.
“They are very nervous. But on
the other hand they’re so busy with
what’s happening,” he said.
In large part, that’s by design.
The psychologists and engineers
managing the miners’ days have
kept them busy. On Saturday, sev-
eral blasted open a wider chamber
Calendar
UNIQUE THIS WEEK
TODAY: At 12:15 p.m. at the Kingston Resi-
dence, 2400 Legacy Court, the National
Active and Retired Federal Employees
Association will host its monthly meeting
and lunch. Loretta Fernandez from Adel-
ante will discuss homeless children in the
Santa Fe public schools and the efforts to
help them. Retirees and current employ-
ees are welcome to attend. Call 471-9351
for more information.
TUESDAY: From 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. at Body
of Santa Fe, 333 Cordova Road, and from
5:45 to 7 p.m. at 1013 Calle Vianson, Luna
Jordan offers yoga classes in the Krish-
namarcharya Healing and Yoga Foundation
tradition. For more information, send an
e-mail to luna@santafeyogatherapy.com
or call 474-6418.
WEDNESDAY: From 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the
Georgia O’Keeffe Education Annex,
123 Grant Ave., Santa Fe Science Café for
Young Thinkers, ages 13 to 19, will be held.
Ed Fenimore of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory will lead an open student dis-
cussion on “The Birth of Black Holes in the
Universe.” Admission is free. Light refresh-
ments will be served.
WEDNESDAY: At 5:30 p.m. in the Pick
Room of Santa Fe Main Library, 145 Wash-
ington Ave., Jungian scholar, Fabio Mac-
chioni of the Dream Institute of Santa Fe,
presents the possibility for people learn to
understand the language of their dreams.
Reservations are required. Call 982-3214.
WEDNESDAY: From 6 to 11 p.m. at DeVar-
gas Center, a “Maul of Horrors” Haunted
House will be open, sponsored by “For
Kids Sake.” Tickets are $3 per person or a
family pack of four tickets for $10.
THURSDAY: From 2 to 4 p.m. at St. John’s
at the base of the escape hole with
12 pounds of dynamite.
A small video camera in the
escape capsule will be trained
on each miner’s face so it can be
watched as he ascends. Each will
also have a mask attached to an
oxygen tank affixed to their face
and two-way voice communication.
The miners will also wear sweat-
ers because they’ll experience
a shift in climate from about 90
degrees Fahrenheit underground to
temperatures hovering near freez-
ing if they emerge at night. And
those coming out during daylight
hours will wear sunglasses.
After a quick on-site medical
check, they will be helicoptered to
a hospital 15 minutes away where
they will be put under observation
in a ward dark as a movie theater.
Officials began detailed monitor-
ing Sunday of their health, sweating
every detail of the ascent that is
expected to last about 20 minutes
for each man. “Today we sent down
special equipment to measure their
heart rate, their respiration rate and
skin temperature,” Manalich said.
A video inspection Saturday
showed the hole’s walls firm and
smooth, without any fissures or
rupture of walls of the mine.
“I don’t think there’s any risk of
collapse,” said Mario Medina Mejia,
a geologist in Copiapo, the nearby
town where some of the miners live.
“It’s a hole made into virgin rock.”
Such assurances hardly calm the
nerves of Rosa Gomez, the second
of four daughters of Mario Gomez,
who at 63 is the oldest miner
trapped below.
“I’m afraid that at the moment the
capsule comes up he’ll panic,” she
said. Gomez, 28, said her nerves were
shot and she was physically spent.
“These two months have felt like
two years.”
United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos
Trail, Renesan hosts John Handwerk, who
will discuss “An Introduction to Chinese
Medicine.” Admission is $7 for Renesan
members, $10 for nonmembers. For more
information, call 982-9274.
THURSDAY: From 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. at
Body of Santa Fe, 333 Cordova Road, and
from 5:45 to 7 p.m. at 1013 Calle Vianson,
Luna Jordan offers yoga classes in the
Krishnamarcharya Healing and Yoga Foun-
dation tradition. For more information,
send an e-mail to luna@santafeyoga
therapy.com or call 474-6418.
THURSDAY: From 7:30 to 9 a.m. in the
second floor community room at the
Rosemont, 2961 Galisteo St., the BNI
chapter of Business at Sunrise holds a
breakfast meeting. RSVP to Kelley Koehler,
660-3202 or Baikal Harris, 577-3944.
THURSDAY: From 6 to 11 p.m. at DeVar-
gas Center, a “Maul of Horrors” Haunted
House will be open, sponsored by “For
Kids Sake.” Tickets are $3 per person or a
family pack of four tickets for $10.
TODAY
SKI SANTA FE’S FALL SCENIC CHAIR-
LIFT: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. daily through mid-
November, $10 round trip, $7 one way,
seniors and folks under 46 inches no
charge, 982-4429, skisantafe.com.
TONIGHT
NIGHT-BEAT POETRY SLAM: 8 p.m.
weekly, El Farol, 808 Canyon Road,
983-9912, musical accompaniment wel-
come, no charge.
CORAZÓN: Dovekins, Western swing and
folk, 9 p.m., $5 cover. 401 S. Guadalupe
Google
testing
robotic
vehicles
Cars use cameras,
sensors to detect traffic
By Daniel Wagner
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Google Inc. is
road-testing cars that steer, stop and
start without a human driver, the
company says.
The goal is to “help prevent traffic
accidents, free up people’s time and
reduce carbon emissions” through
ride sharing and “the new ‘highway
trains of tomorrow,’ ” project leader
Sebastian Thrun wrote Saturday on
Google’s corporate blog.
The cars are never unmanned,
Thrun wrote. He said a backup
driver is always behind the wheel to
monitor the software.
It’s not the first signal that Google
wants to change how people get
from place to place. In a speech Sept.
29 at the TechCrunch “Disrupt” con-
ference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt
said “your car should drive itself. It
just makes sense.
“It’s a bug that cars were invented
before computers,” Schmidt said.
The cars have traveled a total of
140,000 miles on major California
roads without much human interven-
tion, according to Google’s corporate
blog.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based
technology giant has sent seven test
cars a total of 1,000 miles without a
human touching the controls at all,
The New York Times reported. The
newspaper published a report on the
cars earlier Sunday.
The cars know speed limits, traf-
fic patterns and road maps, Thrun’s
posting says. They use video cam-
eras, radar sensors and lasers to
detect other cars.
Driving between Northern Cali-
fornia and Southern California, the
cars have navigated San Francisco’s
curvy Lombard Street, Los Angeles’
Hollywood Boulevard and the cliff-
hugging Pacific Coast Highway, the
blog says.
Engineers consider the cars safer
because they react more quickly than
humans, The New York Times said.
It said Google has not revealed
how it hopes to profit from the
research.
The company is flush with cash,
though, and pushing numerous proj-
ects such as the cars that are unre-
lated to its core business, said Rob
Enderle, principal analyst with the
Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif.
“The word ‘focus’ is a word Google
has never learned,” Enderle said,
pointing to projects involving elec-
tricity distribution, vehicle design
and artificial intelligence.
St., 983-4559.
COWGIRL BBQ: Cowgirl karaoke with
Michele Leidig, 9 p.m., no cover.
319 S. Guadalupe St., 982-2565.
LA FIESTA LOUNGE AT LA FONDA: Bert
Dalton Trio, jazz, 7:30-11 p.m., no cover.
100 E. San Francisco St., 982-5511.
GOLF COURSES
QUAIL RUN GOLF COURSE: 3101 Old
Pecos Trail. Website is www.quailrun
santafe.com or call 986-2200.
TOWA GOLF COURSE AT BUFFALO
THUNDER RESORT & CASINO: 17746 U.S.
84/285. Website is www.buffalothunder
resort.com or call 455-9000.
MARTY SANCHEZ LINKS DE SANTA FE:
205 Caja del Rio Road. Website is www.
linksdesantafe.com or call 955-4470.
SANTA FE COUNTRY CLUB: 4360 Coun-
try Club Road, No. A. Website is www.
santafecountryclub.com or call 471-0601.
To get an item on the calendar, deliver
your listing to The New Mexican news-
room at 202 E. Marcy St. Or mail it to P.O.
Box 2048, Santa Fe, 87504. You can send
an e-mail to service@sfnewmexican.com
or send a fax to 986-9147. The deadline
for listings is 5 p.m. Tuesday. Because of
space limitations, listings cannot be guar-
anteed.
Corrections
The New Mexican will correct fac-
tual errors in its news stories. Errors
should be brought to the attention of
the city editor at 986-3035.