The pace of the $6 billion second phase of levee work in New Orleans has slowed significantly. To “save money,” the Army Corps plans to focus on longer-term plans that critics say “will leave the city at risk until 2010 at least.” The corps “has also scaled back plans to armor the levees against being scoured away when water flows over the top.”
“The Pentagon is invoking emergency authority to fast-track funding of a comprehensive war-crimes court compound at Guant¡namo Bay, Cuba,” the Miami Herald reports. Pentagon spokesmen “would not say when — if ever — the Pentagon had last invoked similar authority.”
Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, “yesterday rejected suggestions that an international conference be held to address the violence wracking his country, echoing sentiments expressed” by other leading Iraqi politicians.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the incoming Senate Rules and Administration Chairwoman, will push for “legislation to require that there be an independent paper record of every ballot.” See a summary of the Ballot Integrity Act here.
Every schoolchild in Scotland will be offered the chance to see An Inconvenient Truth under a plan presented by energy company ScottishPower. “ScottishPower, which has also given copies of Mr. Gore’s book…to hundreds of its staff, plans to pay for cinema screenings for older children in primary schools and all secondary pupils.”
At least 70 trade unionists were assassinated in Colombia last year, the highest number of any country in the world, a new report finds. The Bush administration signed a trade deal with Colombia in November that “ignores fundamental workers’ rights.”
The Iraq situation is ‘much worse’ than civil war, according to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “We had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war,” Annan said, “this is much worse.”
“At least 21 people were killed at school during the 2004-05 academic year, a slight increase from the year before,” according to the Justice Department.
And finally: On Friday, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) was seen wearing “tartan” or “buffalo plaid” pajama bottoms. But Domenici insisted they were actually “hunting pants.” He explained that he often wears them around the house and when he leaves for work, he doesn’t “necessarily take them off.” “People stop me to talk about them. They’re Christmasy, they’re black and white.”
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.