Steel church buildings, which offer a low-priced, energy sufficient structure, are becoming the most popular choice among religious organizations.
Texas-based Standard Steel Buildings have decided to help meet the need for more steel buildings with a new web program that will help new church building products.
The program helps to educate consumer on the entire process, illustrating a way buyers can save up to 50 percent off of conventional construction costs and providing a timetable to have the church built in a fraction of the time.
The majority church buildings require large open spaces and functional floor plans. Maintaining a clear span of up to 300 feet wide is one of the major advantages of having steel church buildings.
Erie Steel involved in bribe scandal
The Rick Mariano case continues, with more allegations that the Philadelphia City Councilman accepted bribes from local businesses, including Erie Steel.
Witnesses allege that in exchange for help with his credit cards and gym membership, Mr. Mariano interfered with city inspections of the steel plant, delaying the company's compliance with regulations for more than three years.
However, Mariano's lawyer said the prosecution's witnesses have serious credibility problems, including the former office manager for Erie Steel, who had faced 98 charges in an embezzlement operation at Erie Steel, including 62 felonies, but pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor and got probation for one year.
Mariano says the payments to Erie Steel were loans. If convicted of all counts of bribery, fraud and conspiracy, he faces a likely prison sentence of five to 10 years.
AK union members undeterred by bad weather
It's going to take more than rain to dampen the spirits of the locked out AK Steel workers in Middletown, Ohio.
The Armco Employees Independent Federation members continue to picket in the rain with their ponchos and umbrellas, with plentiful donations of brownies, donuts, pizza, and encouraging honks from the cars that drive by.
“You do what you have to do,” said Rose Stogsdill, a 10-year employee from Middletown. “We still have high hopes —we don't give up."
"We all feel like we're a family, and they put us out on the street," said another Middletown worker.
Although the union has provided tents and portable toilets today, picketers still face more bad weather and thunderstorms throughout the next couple of days.
The EPA knows what's hidden in your trunk
The US EPA Wednesday announced an agreement with the steel and auto industries to encourage the collection of tiny trunk light and anti-lock brake switches before cars are shredded or crushed.
That's right, the little switch that turns on your trunk light As was only recently discovered in the past few years, one of the largest sources of toxic mercury in the US is in tiny switches in cars and trucks.
Mercury was used as recently as 2002 in devices that control anti-lock brakes and in convenience lights inside trunks.
The problem is that when the vehicles are melted for scrap metal, the mercury is released into the air. Switches in older cars account for as much as 11 tons of mercury waste each year, according to US EPA estimates.
The deal comes less than a week after Illinois lawmakers approved a measure that would require the auto industry to pay a bounty to auto recyclers unless at least 70 percent of the mercury-laden switches junked in the state each year are safely removed.