The Indiana Coal Council has requested, and been granted, the use of the Friends of Coal logo for the issuance of a state license plate.

Wednesday, February 29^th, is “crossover day”, when all bills must be passed by their house of origin if they are to remain active and leading to full legislative approval.

SB 579, the “Special Reclamation Tax” bill was approved by the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and will be on second reading in the Senate on Friday.   The House counterpart bill, HB 4519, was reported out of House Judiciary on Wednesday and is in House Finance as a second reference. 

SB 429, will expand the definition of Class A vehicles to include larger pickup type trucks registered at more than 8,000 pounds but no more than 10,000 pounds. This change would allow these vehicles to display special license plates, like the Friends of Coal plate,  and allow sheriffs to renew these registrations in their offices.  It has passed the Senate and is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall says he hopes the demand for coal will increase soon so out of work miners can start work again.

Several southern West Virginia mines have shut down recently due to a decrease in demand for coal. Hundreds of miners across the coalfields are without jobs and Rahall said last week in an exclusive interview with The Logan Banner that he believes the coal mines will see an increase in need for coal.

West Virginia legislators appear ready to give Appalachian Power, whose service area includes Ohio and Marshall counties, authority to sell bonds the company wants to use to hold electric rates down now - probably at the cost of higher ones in the future.

From the company's standpoint, the idea makes sense. It would allow Appalachian to avoid a sudden price jump of 30-40 percent, instead spreading the burden out over several years to come.

"Correlation is not causation" is a statistics mantra. It is drilled, military school-style, into every budding statistician. But what does it actually mean? Well, correlation is a measure of how closely related two things are. Think of it as a number describing the relative change in one thing when there is a change in the other, with 1 being a strong positive relationship between two sets of numbers, –1 being a strong negative relationship and 0 being no relationship whatsoever.

"Correlation is not causation" means that just because two things correlate does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. As a seasonal example, just because people in the UK tend to spend more in the shops when it's cold and less when it's hot doesn't mean cold weather causes frenzied high-street spending. A more plausible explanation would be that cold weather tends to coincide with Christmas and the new year sales.