SAN FRANCISCO

Burned refinery has lengthy record of pollution offenses

A massive refinery fire that sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals was just the latest pollution incident at a facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years.

The Chevron oil refinery is one of three such facilities in Contra Costa County that are among the state’s top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Chevron’s Richmond refinery — the scene of Monday’s fire that shrouded the area in black smoke — has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years.

NEW YORK

Cellphone texting champ retains title, pockets $50,000

The reigning 17-year-old champion of cellphone texting has retained the title of fastest texter in America.

Austin Wierschke of Rhinelander, Wis., won after eight rounds at the texting competition Wednesday in New York’s Times Square. He gets $50,000 in prize money, which he says he’ll put away for college.

Eleven contestants from around the U.S. competed, all using the same type of phone. The competition tested three skills: speed, accuracy and dexterity.

There were three rounds, including texting while blind-folded and texting with hands behind their backs.

The third round is called “text blitz.” Phrases were shown to the contestants for a length of time and they copied them as fast as they could.

The annual competition is sponsored by cellphone-maker LG Electronics. 

Site searched anew in probe of boy’s 1979 disappearance

New York City police returned Wednesday to the site of a former grocery store to look for evidence in the 1979 disappearance of a 6-year-old boy.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne confirmed investigators searched the retail space in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, where the alleged abductor of Etan Patz once worked.

Police returned to examine an area that wasn’t looked at on earlier visits, Browne said. The effort, he added, “wasn’t based on any new information.”

Browne declined to discuss what, if anything, was found.

Pedro Hernandez has been charged in the slaying of Patz, one of the first missing children whose picture ever appeared on a milk carton. Hernandez remains held without bail.

Hernandez was a teenage stock clerk at the convenience store — now an eyeglass shop — when Etan disappeared on his way to school on May 25, 1979, a date that would later be commemorated as National Missing Children’s Day.

COLUMBUS, Ohio

Astronaut Neil Armstrong recovering from surgery

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was recovering Wednesday from heart surgery, days after his 82nd birthday.

It wasn’t clear where the surgery occurred or where Armstrong was recuperating. A NASA spokesman who talked to Armstrong’s wife, Carol, said only that the former astronaut was recovering Wednesday. His birthday was Sunday.

A Facebook statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wished Armstrong a quick recovery from cardiac bypass surgery.

Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and he radioed back to Earth the historic news of “one giant leap for mankind.” He spent nearly three hours walking on the moon with fellow astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.

— From news service reports