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A construction company has pleaded guilty to damaging an underground natural gas pipeline which led to a gas explosion in Toronto that killed seven people. Warren Bitulithic Limited was ordered to pay a fine of $225,000 with a 25 per cent victim surcharge of $56,250 under the Provincial Offences Act. The Technical Standards and Safety Authority says it's the largest fine in their history imposed by the courts. On Apr. 24, 2003, an explosion destroyed a two-storey commercial and residential building on Bloor Street West, killing and injuring several people. The west-end shopping plaza housed four businesses, including a pizza shop, a hair salon and a dry cleaners'. The gas line was damaged as the construction company was doing road repairs in the area.
It's been said that there are only two seasons in Michigan- construction and winter. This year, Jackson drivers will have to deal with both at the same time. A major road repair project has just been extended into the winter months. For nearly three months,. drivers traveling on I-94 through Jackson have had to endure a seemingly endless lineup of orange barrels and traffic delays. Crews began working on the east side of the bridge over West Avenue during Labor Day weekend, and ever since, traffic on the busy stretch has been reduced to just one lane in each direction. The good news is work on the east side of the bridge is now complete, even a little ahead of schedule, but here's the bad news- those orange barrels aren't going anywhere just yet. The original plan was to save the repairs on the other side of the bridge for next year's construction season, but now a spokesperson for MDOT says they've decided to go ahead and start work on the west side right away with a goal of wrapping up the entire project by December.
WHEN IT WAS built in 1890, this steep-roofed Victorian was but one of the 2,160 structures raised in Seattle during that first full boom year after the city's "Great Fire" of 1889. Far to the north of the burned business district, the Cascade Neighborhood home was "already somewhat retardataire for its time." That description is from Dennis Andersen, one of Seattle's more productive architectural historians. Andersen discovered this photograph in the 1970s when he was taking care of the University of Washington Library's collections of historical photography and architectural ephemera. It is one of several photographs held there that were recorded (ca.1911) along Eastlake Avenue by James P. Lee — for many years the Seattle Department of Public Works photographer of choice.
Hurricane Katrina sped along plans for a spate of new high-rise residential towers, but more than a quarter of the proposed housing units have already been killed or put on hold. Out-of-town investors "are circling like eagles" with capital ready to invest in downtown projects, said Kurt Weigle, executive director of the Downtown Development District. And inquiries from outside developers have increased five-fold, possibly because of special tax incentives being made available to building projects in hurricane-impacted areas. But not all of the residential projects will be built, experts say. The pricetags on most of the announced projects have risen 30 percent due to escalating prices on labor and building materials, developers say. That big of an increase is giving pause to both the developers behind the condo towers and the potential condo buyers who, in some cases, are backing out of sales contracts when presented with the higher prices.
YAROSLAVL, October 13 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's President Vladimir Putin has visited an exhibition of road machinery that will be used in the projects for improving the networks of Russian automobile roads. The display shows more than 30 types of vehicles -- asphalt spreaders, rolls, excavators, bulldozers - that are used in all the phases of road construction. Apart from these, put up for the show are road maintenance vehicles and mobile gauging laboratories. Exhibition stands show models of new non-routine bridges, the plans for modernizing the country's transport system, investment projects, the systems of telematics and navigation on automobile transport, as well as new road construction technologies. A report, the working group of the State Council drafted for the session, stresses the key role that automobile roads have for the implementation of priority national projects.
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