West Virginians are going to remember WVCHS8's iconic photo of Gary Southern swigging ice-cold bottled water as he walked away from reporters in Charleston, citing a "very long day" that he had after depriving hundreds of thousands of West Virginians of usable water. The "Freedom Industries" CEO is not all that different from British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, who famously " wanted his life back " after questions from reporters put him out, just because BP had dumped over a 100,000,000 gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. These men don't understand our lack of sympathy for their plights, when they are "unfortunately" caught red-handed doing the things they do every day. These lamentations from the multi-millionaire or even billionaire class are becoming more and more common. West Virginia's own Don Blankenship famously complained of the " indignity " he felt subjected to as his mines violated state and federal laws and safety standards, ultimately resulting in numerous unnecessary deaths of coal miners . Former Bloomberg CEO and billionaire mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg recently took time out from his busy schedule to tell us that homeless people are homeless because " that's how God works ."

My daughter is a freshman at St. Clairsville High School, and she recently brought home an order form for the yearbook. I noticed on the order form that you could donate a yearbook. Now this may not be a new thing, considering I haven't ordered a yearbook for 25 years (hard to believe I've been out of school that long!), but it was news to me. I didn't know you could donate a yearbook to someone else. This definitely sounded like something I wanted to do, but I needed more information. How would I know that the money I sent in to the yearbook company would actually be used to donate a yearbook to a student at St. Clairsville High School?

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WATER IN WEST VIRGINIA? A company called Freedom Industries spilled a large amount of a chemical called 4-methylcyclohexane into the Elk River in South Central West Virginia. Kanawha county and the counties surrounding it, as far north as Jackson and Roane conties, as far south as Boone county and as far west as Cabell county are directly affected. WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THE WATER IN WEST VIRGINIA? The water is unsuitable for anything except flushing toilets. Do not drink, cook, bathe, brush teeth or do anything else to come into contact with this water if at all possible. Do not give it to pets or other living things. A state of emergency has been declared by the President and supplies of usable water are being brought into these counties.

Don't miss the first episode of the Bordas & Bordas Legal Review for 2014 that deals with the political mess created for Chris Christie when it was recently learned that emails and text messages from his staff had were obtained by the New Jersey press. The emails and texts tended to show that the Governor's administration had deliberately tied up the George Washington Bridge creating traffic back-ups that were hours long, in both New York and New Jersey. Chris Regan and Jamie Bordas will dissect the scandal and the potential effect on Christie's 2016 presidential hopes.

Our modern world has seen goods and commodities transport on the once mighty and ubiquitous railroad system give way to transport by the private trucking industry, putting more than 11 million trucks on U.S. highways logging over 288 billion (with a "B") miles a year. The interstate these days seems like a trucking industry world that we're all just living (or more pointedly trying to survive) in. Road haulage is one of the most dangerous industries in America, and the danger is ever increasing. In 2009, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, reported that tractor-trailers and large trucks were involved in 286,000 crashes, which led to over 3,000 deaths and 74,000 injuries. By 2010, the number of tractor trailer collisions had doubled. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation recorded 500,000 collisions in 2010 that resulted in more than 5,000 fatalities. Not surprisingly, a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that 76 percent of these fatalities from tractor-trailer collisions were the occupants of the passenger vehicle.

When you move into a house, you generally inspect the plumbing, check the roof and look for termites, but, in most cases you have no idea who your neighbors are. You might be lucky and get the kind who bring over a home cooked meal your first night there, want to be surrogate grandparents to your kids and are the "live and let live" type of people. Then there's the other side of the coin: the neighbors from hell. They come in many varieties. They call the police when you play your music too loud, call the dog warden the first time your dog sets foot (or paw) on their property and think no one can park in front of their house but them. On the other hand, maybe you are the neighbors from hell. You complain when their tree grows a foot over the property line, think they shouldn't mow the lawn on your day off and think children should be seen and not heard. Like it or not, you may be neighbors for years to come. They're like family....you might not like them, but they're not going away, so it may be best to call a truce and make life more peaceful for all of you.

The Ohio Valley (and the rest of West Virginia and Ohio) is predicted to experience record low temperatures today, and the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh has issued a Wind Chill Warning for our area to remain in effect until 10:00 am Wednesday morning. The attorneys and staff at Bordas & Bordas have braved the weather to come into the office today, and would like to share the following cold weather tips for you and your family. We hope you all stay warm and safe as this "polar vortex" holds us all in its grips!

January 26 th is quickly approaching, and you know what that means: The 56 th Annual Grammy Awards are almost upon us! Daft Punk. Pink. Kendrick Lamar. They are all set to perform! Justin Timberlake. Jay-Z. Willie Nelson. They will all be in attendance! Sadly, most of us will only be able to view this star-studded event from our television screens. It doesn't have to be this way though. The opportunity of a lifetime is within reach! Bordas & Bordas and WTRF 7 are sending one lucky Ohio Valley resident and a guest to the Grammys! We have prepared everything for you: two tickets to the live 56 th Annual Grammy Awards, two paid round-trip plane tickets to Los Angeles, first class hotel accommodations at The Standard , shuttle transportation, two tickets to the official Grammy After-Party, admission to the Grammy Museum and $300 in spending money! All you have to do is relax, plan out your outfit and think about what conversations you could have with Beyoncé.

The death of a loved one is devastating for the families left behind, often bringing a seemingly overwhelming flood of grief and emptiness that makes it very difficult to concentrate on anything else. When a loved one dies in a hospital or nursing home setting, hardly anyone thinks about the possibility that their death was preventable in the immediate aftermath of their passing. It is typically only after a loved one has been laid to rest that a family's thinking turns towards the medical treatment that preceded the death. Unfortunately, medical errors have been determined to be the third leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for up to 440,000 deaths in this country every year , and oftentimes an autopsy is the only way to know whether a medical error was involved.

Pope John Paul II called Christmas that - "our peace and our joy" - in his Christmas message twenty years ago. John Paul II, to be declared a saint this coming April, delivered a message of peace at Christmas in every year of his papacy and the message never grew tired, as every year it was preached in a world at war. One of his predecessors, John XXIII, had spoken, decades earlier, of the causes of war - what he called an "international sickness": These causes are: "the violation of the rights and dignity of the human person and the overruling of the rights of the family and of labor; the overthrow of the juridical order and of the healthy idea of the state in keeping with the Christian spirit; impairment of the liberty, integrity and security of other nations to whatever extent; the systematic oppression of the cultural and language characteristics of national minorities; the egotistical calculations of all who strive to seize control of the economic sources of the materials of common use to the detriment of other peoples; and in particular, the persecution of religion and of the Church."