Marathon Petroleum expansion aids Ohio

Marathon Petroleum expansion aids Ohio

FINDLAY, OHIO

Marathon Petroleum Corp. says nearly all of the work and materials going into its $80 million headquarters expansion are coming from Northwest Ohio.

The company is adding two new office buildings and two parking garages at its headquarters in Findlay.

A Marathon official says 90 percent of the work and materials are being bought from contractors within 60 miles of its Northwest Ohio home.

Breached pipeline exposed on riverbed

GLENDIVE, Mont.

Sonar indicates part of an underground pipeline that spilled almost 40,000 gallons of oil into Montana’s Yellowstone River and fouled a local water supply is exposed on the riverbed.

The pipeline is exposed for about 50 feet near where the breach occurred Jan. 17, according to a news release from public agencies involved with the response.

The pipeline had been buried at least 8 feet under the riverbed, and the depth was last confirmed in September 2011. The cause of the spill is under investigation.

Kerry condemns Boko Haram violence

LAGOS, Nigeria

In a rare high-level visit to Africa’s most-populous country, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday urged Nigeria’s leading presidential candidates to refrain from fomenting violence after next month’s vote, and he condemned savage attacks by Boko Haram, an al-Qaida-linked insurgency.

On a day when Nigerian troops battled extremists who attacked Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast, Kerry played down reports that the U.S. had grown frustrated with Nigeria’s military commitment to fighting the radical Islamist movement. Kerry said the U.S. was sharing intelligence with Nigeria and stood ready to do more if the Feb. 14 election proceeded in a nonviolent, democratic fashion.

Cuba digs in heels over concessions

HAVANA

The start of talks on repairing 50 years of broken relations appears to have left President Raul Castro’s government focused on winning additional concessions without giving in to U.S. demands for greater freedoms, despite the seeming benefits that warmer ties could have for the country’s struggling economy.

After the highest-level open talks in three decades between the two nations, Cuban officials remained firm in rejecting significant reforms pushed by the United States as part of President Barack Obama’s surprise move to re-establish ties and rebuild economic relations with the Communist-led country.

It’s not clear if Cuba’s tough stance is part of normal negotiation tactics or a hardened position that could prevent the talks from moving forward.

Doctors: Medical pot OK in some kid cases

chicago

With virtually no hard proof that medical marijuana benefits sick children, and evidence that it may harm developing brains, the drug should only be used for severely ill kids who have no other treatment option, the nation’s most influential pediatricians group says in a new policy.

Some parents insist that medical marijuana has cured their kids’ troublesome seizures or led to other improvements, but the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new policy says rigorous research is needed to verify those claims.

To make it easier to study and develop marijuana-based treatments, the group recommends removing marijuana from the government’s most-restrictive drug category and switching it to the category which includes methadone and oxycodone.

Associated Press