Tuesday News Bucket

10 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on June 20, 2006 at 8:27 am

   crime problems are growing?  NYT

   In a blunt admission that the city could no longer control its growing crime problem, Mayor C. Ray Nagin asked the state on Monday to send National Guard troops to help patrol the streets of New Orleans.

   Hours later, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 100 troops, joined by 60 state police, would be in place as early as Tuesday morning. More are likely to arrive later in the week.

   The mayor’s plea for help came after five teenagers were shot to death with semiautomatic weapons in the Central City neighborhood while sitting in a sport-utility vehicle Saturday morning. It was the deadliest single shooting attack in the city in 11 years, raising to 53 the number of homicides this year.

   And where does Nagin think these National Guard troops are going to come from?  Well, I guess they could send some home from Iraq again…but you’ve got to wonder:  just how good an idea is it to re-deploy NG from Iraq to fight crime in a major metropolitan city?

   • 

     CabinGirl on June 20, 2006 at 8:35 am

     New Orleans didn’t even make the list in this article in the Philly Inquirer

     Philadelphia suffered one of the worst increases in homicides among major cities last year, the FBI reported yesterday.

     Of the nation’s largest cities, only Houston saw a bigger increase, while many other cities, such as New York, saw decreases.

     And the violence in Philadelphia continues to escalate.

     As of last week, there were 803 shooting victims in Philadelphia this year, compared with 697 for the same period last year – a 15.2 percent increase, according to Police Department statistics.  As of yesterday, there were 166 homicides, compared with 164 for the same period in 2005. The total for last year was 380 killings, the most in eight years.

     Hmmm.  Triple the number from the NYT article about New Orleans.  

     • 

       glitterscale on June 20, 2006 at 10:46 pm

       n/t

   • 

     Kidspeak on June 20, 2006 at 12:53 pm

     One of my students this past term is a laid-off Detroit cop who has been working in the toughest precinct here in motor city. She went to N.O. for a 3 week stint as a fill-in cop. (This use of “temps” is apparently one way N.O. has dealt with its shortage of police.) When she returned, she told me she’d had her gun out and had to fire it more during her 3 weeks in N.O. than in her 4 years working here in Detroit.

2. 

   Knoxville Progressive on June 20, 2006 at 8:45 am

   Several important science-related headlines today…

   The Supreme Court on Monday came close to rolling back one of the country’s fundamental environmental laws, issuing a fractured decision that, while likely to preserve vigorous federal enforcement of the Clean Water Act, is also likely to lead to new regulatory battles, increased litigation by property owners and a push for new legislation.

   The “apple” body shape that increases the risk of diabetes and heart disease may be accelerated by eating trans fat such as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, according to new animal research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and lead to weight gain even on the same total number of calories.

   Ottawa is moving on two fronts to ban or place strict limits on a family of chemicals widely used to manufacture non-stick coatings that poses a risk to human health and the environment.

   A “doomsday vault” carved into the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain will next year house samples of the world’s most important seeds, with the goal of providing mankind with a Noah’s Ark of food in the event of global catastrophe. The top-security repository in Svalbard archipelago near the North Pole, where construction by the Norwegian government began on Monday, will preserve some three million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet’s crops.  More here.

   Remember bird flu?  The first North American case MAY have been found in Prince Edward Island, Canada, but confirmatory testing is not yet complete.  And China Monday announced a new bird flu outbreak, at poultry farms in its northern province of Shanxi. Samples taken after the chickens died in Changzi county tested positive for the H5N1 strain, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the agriculture ministry as saying.  Meanwhile, work on a vaccine continues to progress.

   China plans a manned lunar mission by 2024 that will include a walk on the moon’s surface, a top Chinese scientist was quoted as saying in a Hong Kong newspaper.  The announcement by lunar program vice-director Long Lehao shows long-term preparations are moving ahead for the country’s ambition space exploration program.  The program went into overdrive following China’s first successful manned space mission in 2003 and may include a space walk by an additional manned mission next year.

   And to close on a happy note, this one’s for Chris:  Giant pandas may not be in as much danger of extinction as feared with a new British-Chinese study finding there could be twice as many living in the wild as previously thought, scientists said on Monday.

   • 

     CabinGirl on June 20, 2006 at 8:53 am

     Look at that Supreme Court decision:  Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito voted to roll back the environmental protections.  Surprise, surprise.  

     And yay for the pandas.

3. 

   CabinGirl on June 20, 2006 at 9:22 am

   stands up for homosexuals: Reuters/Yahoo

   Newly elected leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender.

   Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, was elected on Sunday as the first woman leader of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. She will formally take office later this year.

   Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.

   “I don’t believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us,” she said.

   Now if only more people had her attitude.

   • 

     mainefem on June 20, 2006 at 3:46 pm

     Firstly:  i’m an Atheist.

     However, I don’t understand by any stretch of the imagination why anyone (esp. women) would support either the patriarchal Catholic church; or such an entity as the Episcopal church (which refuses to ordain women).

     Both of which are overtly and covertly misogynistic & homophobic (systemically speaking).

     Cut off the attendance, volunteering, tithing, and the $$$$$$.

     That tends to speak volumes/brings ’em around.

4. 

   Shalimar on June 20, 2006 at 1:24 pm

   I can’t remember which show, I only switched over for a minute, but there was a graphic of the nothern hemisphere with 4 missile flightpaths drawn between North Korea and the United States.  The lines went to Alaska, Washington state, Chicago and Kansas City.

   A threatened Midwest does not follow from any of the range estimates for their new missile I have seen elsewhere, but I might have missed something.

5. 

   mainefem on June 20, 2006 at 3:42 pm

   Pls. vote for Gov. John Elias Baldacci (D-ME) in Feingold’s Progressive Patriot Fund PAC.

   Baldacci is indeed prochoice (we are one of six states with EC), not homophobic (we have domestic partnership registries, & GLBTQ folks’ rights are now included in ME’s constitution), and we’d like to keep DirigoChoice around for a bit.

   I have no idear how Jennifer Granholm made the list…I don’t perceive her as one iota “progressive.”

   <sigh>

   Thanks!