Attalea (plant) important economically. Products extracted from "A. speciosa" were reported to support over 300,000 households in the Brazilian state of Maranhão in 2005, and in 1985 it was estimated to support over 450,000 households throughout the Brazil. Piassava fibres, extracted from the leaf bases of "A. funifera", are commercially important, and generated about US$20 million in annual income to Brazilian farmers in 1996. Attalea (plant) Attalea is a large genus of palms native to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This pinnately leaved, nonspiny genus includes both small palms lacking an aboveground stem and large trees. The genus has
Sago Mine disaster Lauriski in his article, "MSHA and the Sago Mine Disaster: How Many Brownies are there in this Administration?" An August 9, 2004, story in the "New York Times" by Christopher Drew and Richard A. Oppel, Jr., "Friends in the White House Come to Coal's Aid", had summed up Lauriski's record. Other problems cited included the rejection of a proposed clarification of an existing standard, "Escapeways and Refuges," by Lauriski's administration, which requires that a mine "shall have two or more separate, properly maintained escapeways to the surface..." A January 5 editorial in "The New York Times" explicitly linked the safety