Monday, June 21, 2010

McClatchy Washington report 6/21

  • For many in the weathered fishing villages and tiny towns along the Gulf of Mexico, the unrelenting eight-week siege of oil is taking a toll on the psyche. A drive along the coast from Louisiana to Florida finds towns still littered with hurricane debris, families struggling to recover and a mounting worry that oil will finish off what Katrina did not.
  • When newly elected Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos takes office Aug. 7, there will be no welcome wagon from his neighbors. To the west is Ecuador, where Santos is facing murder charges. To the east is Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez has shut down trade, called Santos a regional threat and accused him of turning the country into a base camp for the U.S. military.
  • U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, helped dole out nearly $24 million in "earmarks" this year to private companies, school districts and universities in Kansas. A new study has found that individuals and political committees tied to those special-interest groups made more than $46,000 in campaign donations to Tiahrt.
  • The recent arrests of noncriminal undocumented immigrants across the country have raised questions about whether the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is misleading the public about enforcement. Federal immigration agents are allowed to demand documents from any foreign national at any time.
  • The day when Americans massively embrace the most global sport has yet to come. But there are signs that, at long last, soccer is catching on in America. As the World Cup started in South Africa, FIFA — the tournament's organizers — said that 130,000 U.S. residents had flown to Johannesburg to watch the games, more than had come from any other country. ABC, ESPN and Univision have together spent $425 million for the games' U.S. broadcast rights, more than 10 times what U.S. networks paid for the last World Cup in 2002 and more than was paid by networks from any other single country.
  • The U.S. Department of the Navy says that more research is needed to connect ailments suffered by Marines such as Peter Devereaux who served at Camp Lejeune and their families who lived there to decades of water contamination at the 156,000-acre base in eastern North Carolina. Meanwhile, however, the Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly begun awarding benefits to a few Marines who were based at Lejeune.
  • For many in the weathered fishing villages and tiny towns along the Gulf of Mexico, the unrelenting eight-week siege of oil is taking a toll on the psyche. A drive along the coast from Louisiana to Florida finds towns still littered with hurricane debris, families struggling to recover and a mounting worry that oil will finish off what Katrina did not.
  • Afghanistan's controversial new commission formed to release suspected Taliban prisoners has set free 14 detainees already, primarily from U.S. custody, and over two dozen more releases are imminent, Afghan officials told McClatchy on Sunday. The commission was a concession to get the Taliban to join peace talks.
  • Disease-carrying honeybees imported from Australia may be responsible for a mysterious disorder that's decimated bee hives around the country, and federal regulators say they'd consider import restrictions if necessary.
  • Working under one of the most generous state leave policies in the nation - and the country's harshest furlough program - California government employees have built up the equivalent of $2.75 billion of paid time off.
  • Three environmental waivers granted by federal regulators this month were for modifying existing oil projects in the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

No comments:

Post a Comment


What do you think it symbolizes?