Coal Mining Our Future and the Coal Operators and Associates will hold a "Stop the War on Coal" Rally at the Knott County Sportsplex in Leburn, Kentucky October 22 at 11 am. Entertainment will include Halfway to Hazard, Dean Osbourne and Bobby Osbourne as well as appearances by several former UK basketball players. There will be free food and soft drinks along with many other free activities that include: door prizes, helicopter rides, inflatables and other fun activities for children. Contests will include a coal truck contest, a mud bogging contest, a corn hole tournament, coal shoveling contest, senior citizens coal float contest and parade, and lots more. For more information please contact: Coal Mining Our Future, Haven King, 606-438-8395.

The 13th annual October Sky Festival in Coalwood will be October 1.  Thousands are expected to attend the annual festival in McDowell County, which celebrates the story of Homer Hickam and the other “Rocket Boys” of Coalwood, made famous in the Universal movie based on it, “October Sky.”

Hickam will be returning to his home town and will appear with some of the coal miners who appeared in Spike’s “Coal” series earlier this year.

The 2011 Pennsylvania Bituminous Coal Queen Victoria Buchtan, from Carmichael, Pennylvania has West Virginia ties. Her mom, Vanessa, was the 1983 Pennsylvania Coal Queen. Vanessa works in the West Virginia University Neurosciences Clinic. Victoria comes from a long line of coal miners. Her great grandfather, grandfather were miners and her other grandfather made longwall equipment. Victoria is a senior at Carmichael High School in Carmichael, PA.

By Ben Geman - 09/27/11 01:44 PM ET

GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry is asking President Obama to scuttle new air pollution rules that require cuts in power plant emissions that blow across state lines and worsen smog and particulate pollution.
The Texas governor, in a letter to Obama on Monday, takes aim at the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

The letter says the rule “will have an immediate and devastating effect on Texas jobs, our economy, and our ability to supply the electricity our citizens, schools and employers need.”

The letter, which was first obtained by The Associated Press, alleges the rules have an “impossible” timeline and lessen the reliability of the state’s power grid.
“I urge you to use your executive authority to stop or delay the implementation of this and all other destructive rules, and to work with Congress to pass legislation that will prevent EPA from unilaterally establishing rules that kill jobs and increase electricity prices,” it states.

By Nick Brockman
Register-Herald Reporter

— New digital monitors and programming will bring the history of coal into the modern age at the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.

The mine and Friends of Coal Ladies’ Auxiliary celebrated the completion of the Friends of Coal Depot during a dedication ceremony Monday afternoon. The additions aim to teach the site’s 50,000 annual visitors about the modern methods of coal mining.

“They will show a program with modern mining, how they mine coal today with the big machinery like the long-wall,” said Renda Morris, director of the mine.