$70.88: The price of a barrel of oil yesterday, a new intraday high, and “about 60 cents more than the (non-inflation-adjusted) record set just after Katrina.” In Los Angeles, “motorists had to fork over $3.35 a gallon on Monday” for self-serve regular.
The railroad to nowhere: Sens. Trent Lott (R-MS) and Thad Cochran (R-MS) “included $700 million in an emergency war spending bill to relocate a Gulf Coast rail line that has already been rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of at least $250 million.” Budget watchdogs “call it a gift to coastal developers and the casino industry that would be paid for with money carved out of tight Katrina relief funds.”
The ancient city of Babylon, once home to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, “has paid the price of war” in Iraq. “[Babylon] has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied,” and some officials want to convert the area into “an Iraqi theme park.”
Unlike the federal government, states are practicing fiscal constraint and “are borrowing less for the first time in four years, the result of soaring tax collections that have created budget surpluses in 42 states.”
The U.S. Geological Survey is planning to work with BP and Statoil to find oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean “under the auspices of a flagship scientific initiative intended to tackle global warming.”
U.S. officials yesterday “threatened to force a United Nations vote on sanctions against individuals for war crimes” committed in Darfur, “after Russia and China said they would block a British-drafted list to face a travel ban and assets freeze.”
In late March, then Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced that wetlands loss had finally come to an end, with 715,300-acre gains since 1997. It turns out she was counting artificial golf course water hazards and farm impoundments. The Fish and Wildlife Service reports a continued loss of 523,500 acres of natural wetlands during the same time period.
Afghanistan’s drug kingpins continue to flout the law. Only two major traffickers have been arrested in the Western-funded war on drugs; several dozen remain at large. The United Nations expects poppy cultivation to rise sharply this year.
On at least a dozen occasions, federal judges have violated ethics rules by presiding over lawsuits in which they had a financial conflict or by failing to disclose expense-paid trips to resorts.
And finally, the Guardian headline says it all: “Ignore bloggers at your peril, say researchers.” “Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a ‘disproportionately large influence’ on society, according to a report by a technology research company.”
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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