| |
 |
Friday, September 16, 2005 |
DailyStar: "Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago."
2:49:11 PM 
|
|
Indybay: "More than two weeks have passed since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and hundreds of dehydrated and starving animals reportedly wait on rooftops, in attics, on the streets and in hiding - alone and abandoned.
Many people have been separated from their companion animals, and others have refused to leave their homes because they are not ensured security for the animals."
USAToday: "More than 100 tractor-trailers packed with water, ice and other critical hurricane-relief supplies have been sitting at an Air Force base in Montgomery, Ala., for nearly a week while the federal government pays $600 a day for each truck."
It seems the relief effort is still being misdirected. Instead of using the offered help of thousands of volunteers, the stress is on contracts and official 'control' (read 'chaos'). If the Bush administration continues in this vein, they are going to wreck America even more.
StarTribune: "Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Bush's chief political adviser, is in charge of the reconstruction effort.
The president will call on Washington to resist spending money unwisely, but some in his own party are already starting to recoil at a price tag expected to exceed $200 billion - about the cost of the Iraq war and reconstruction efforts. As emergency expenditures soar - with new commitments as high as $2 billion a day - some budget analysts and conservative groups are warning that the Katrina spending has combined with earlier fiscal decisions in ways that will wreak havoc on the government's finances for years to come."
Observer: "Concerns in the US are mounting that Katrina could prompt a round of 'pork barrel' contracts - rewarding companies with strong links in the area such as Louisiana engineer Shaw Group - which last week won a federal rebuilding deal. Meanwhile firms known for their close links with the White House are winning work. California-based contractor Bechtel won work from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide short-term housing, in the form of 'trailer' accommodation, to the homeless."
1:10:53 PM
|
|
LawyersCommittee: "A lawsuit filed today alleges that Tyson Foods, Inc. is responsible for maintaining a segregated bathroom and break room, reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, in its Ashland, Alabama chicken processing plant."
CounterPunch: "The 40-year-old black woman, executed by the death-obsessed state of Texas last night following a rejection by the US Supreme Court of her attorneys' last-ditch appeal, and after the state's craven and bloodthirsty 'pardons and parole' board refused to recommend a stay to Gov. Rick Perry, hardly merited mention in the nation's media, which is now awash in stories about Bush's disaster in New Orleans."
ArizonaDailyStar: "Merlene Maten undoubtedly stood out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The church deaconess, 73, never before in trouble with the law, spent two weeks among hardened criminals. Her bail was a stiff $50,000.
Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.
Family and witnesses insisted Maten was an innocent woman who was mistakenly arrested by tired, frustrated white officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store.
Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private attorney, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.
Neither Maten's diabetes, her age nor even her lifelong record of community service could get the system moving. Even the store owner didn't want her charged.
Maten must still face the looting charge at a hearing in October."
12:42:29 PM
|
|
Independent: "A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years."
12:34:41 PM
|
|
Wired: "The Dutch government will begin tracking every citizen from cradle to grave in a single database, opening a personal electronic dossier for every child at birth with health and family data, and eventually adding school and police records."
As if 'keeping track' is a solution to anything, it is more part of the problem. In so many instances it is the authorities that go wrong. Recently a man was wrongly jailed for four years because the public prosecutor did not disclose information that would have acquitted that person. The Minister of Justice is still in office.
During World War II a well kept database of all Jewish people was the reason that so many Jews were deported from the Netherlands to find a horrible death in concentration camps.
12:29:38 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2008.
|
|
|
|
|
