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Contractor faulted over degradation
The Meru Central District environment committee said the contractor of the Sh939 million Ruiri-Isiolo road project had excavated construction stones near a water catchment in Buuri Division. This, it said, would expose hundreds of residents to severe shortage of water if the Kisima springs dry up due to stone mining. Committee chairman, Mr Isaiah Gicheru, said his committee was not consulted before the exercise. However, a senior official at the construction company told The Standard yesterday that they had obtained a licence from the Department of Defence to blast stones. Gicheru said the company harvested the stones before an environmental impact assessment was conducted. .
Services set for man who died working in Iraq
A Sheridan man working as a contractor for Halliburton has been killed in Iraq, his family said. Craig Johnson, 40, spent nearly three years in Iraq, said Colleen Martin, his twin sister. She said family members are seeking details of when, where and how her only brother died. His ashes were being flown to Oregon on Friday with a co-worker. Johnson drove oil tankers and was a supervisor in Iraq. A Portland native, Johnson graduated from Madison High School in 1984 and joined the Navy. He was based in San Diego from 1986-90, Martin said. In December 2003, Martin said, her brother went to Iraq to work for KBR with Halliburton, taking a leave of absence from Columbia Distributing, where he had worked for nearly three years. A Mass will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday in St.
26 lose jobs at Oxford Homes
OXFORD - A softening of the manufactured housing market has pushed Oxford Homes to lay off employees for the first time in three years, the company's president said Tuesday.
Twenty-six workers were let go but will be rehired if the market picks up again, said President Peter Connell. Another 124 workers remain employed at the Route 26 plant that builds modular houses.
"This is a measure to be proactive in what seems to be going on in the marketplace right now," Connell said.
Demand for new homes has eased in the past two months, Connell said. To adjust to the slowdown and to keep work for the company's remaining workers throughout the winter, Connell said he had to reduce his workforce.
"This isn't unusual," he said. "It's unusual for the last two, three years, but seasonal layoffs in the housing business are not unusual."
The manufactured housing industry is vital to the economic health of the Oxford Hills.
No love lost here
PASADENA - At Brookside Park, one of the sports world's most polite pastimes has seen some unpleasant exchanges in recent weeks. The resurgent popularity of tennis has pitted longtime players against the private contractor operating the city's paid tennis program, with both competing for the five courts there. "We have more demand than we ever have," said Patsy Lane, director of Pasadena's Human Services and Recreation Department. "Even six or seven years ago, there was nobody playing down there. That's what is really fueling all of this." Disputes at the Brookside courts have prompted police involvement, and both the Brookside players and staff at the city-contracted iTennis accuse the other of disrespectful behavior and unfair use of court time. What's more, the city's plan to pay $45,000 to resurface the dilapidated courts at John Muir High School has some worried about what strings might be attached.
Ikea takes a poke at high-end cousin
The 2007 Ikea catalog dropped with a global 80,000-ton thud a few weeks ago. Though its arrival hardly rates on the American cultural calendar, it's something of a phenomenon in Europe, where shelter catalogs aren't so plentiful.
Still, publishing 160 million catalogs a year worldwide (20 million in the United States) is a retail achievement nonpareil. By way of comparison, three years after its release, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has about 60 million copies in print.
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