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Power loss leads to water problems, and grumbles, in New Orleans

Matt Pearce
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 03:08 UTC
Image
© Michael DeMocker / New Orleans Times-Picayune
New Orleans residents were grumbling after another loss in water pressure led to contamination fears across the city, March 3, 2013.
New Orleans: Come for the food, but don't drink the water. (Not right now, anyway.)

New Orleans' East Bank was under a boil order Sunday after a small fire at the parish's Sewerage and Water Board Power Plant caused a power loss that resulted in low water pressure, officials said.

No one was reported hurt in the fire.

The contamination fears brought grumbles from residents (see below) about the city's long-maligned infrastructure, which saw similar contamination fears in October after a mechanical failure at a power plant resulted in a loss of water pressure.

The boil order was expected to last at least 24 hours as officials tested the water to determine whether it had been contaminated. Water pressure was reported to be back to normal.
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Pistol

Police officer killed in Quebec standoff

Rheal Seguin
The Globe and Mail
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 08:58 UTC
Image
© ca.movember.com
Police officer Steve Dery, shown here in a picture from Movember Canada, was fatally wounded in a domestic dispute in Kuujjuaq, Que. on Saturday, March 2, 2013.
Canada, Quebec - A police officer was killed and another seriously injured after being shot Saturday night while investigating a domestic dispute in the northern Quebec town of town of Kuujjuaq, where a suspect later took his life after barricading himself for several hours inside a house.

Steve Dery, a 27-year-old Kativik Regional Police Force officer originally from Ottawa died in hospital. Another officer, whose identity has yet to be released, was being treated for a gunshot wound and was reported in stable condition.

"Mr. Dery has worked with our police force for about 4 1/2 years. He was appreciated by his fellow officers and the entire community," said Pierre Bettez, an inspector with the force. "He will be greatly missed."

Mr. Dery is the first Kativik Regional Police Force officer to be killed while on duty since the law-enforcement agency was created in 1996. The force is made up of 64 police officers spread across a vast territory that includes more than a dozen Inuit villages. About 15 officers are stationed in the town of Kuujjuaq.
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Card - VISA

Note to self: Cancel credit cards prior to death

Ron
The Cultural Economist
Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:12 UTC
No to Credit Cards
© Intellectual Philanthropy Org
As far as Russia goes, not exactly.
Note to self: Cancel credit cards prior to death I know I have responsibilities. I have to follow the rules. I must remember to cancel my credit cards before I die.

Here is why.....

A lady died this past January, and WESTPAC bank billed her for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance had been $0.00, now is about $70.00.

A family member placed a call to the WESTPAC Bank:

Family Member: 'I am calling to tell you that she died in January.'

WESTPAC: 'The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member: 'Maybe, you should turn it over to collections.'

WESTPAC: 'Since it is two months past due, it already has been turned over to the collections agency.'

Family Member: So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?'

WESTPAC: 'Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!'

Family Member: 'Do you think God will be mad at her?'

WESTPAC: 'Excuse me?'

Family Member: 'Did you just get what I was telling you . . . The part about her being dead?'

WESTPAC: 'Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor.'
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Nuke

Temporary cover to be built over collapsed Chernobyl roof


RIA Novosti
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:44 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti. Sergey Starostenko
Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl NPP
A temporary cover will be built above the collapsed section of Chernobyl's nuclear power plant, the chief engineer said late on Friday.

Wall panels and parts of the roof caved in on February 12 in the turbine hall at the plant's Reactor Number Four, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. The damaged area covered about 600 square meters (6,456 square feet).

Chernobyl NPP technical director and chief engineer Andrei Bilyk said the temporary cover was recommended by experts who visited the plant last week, and that the station's management saw it as "the first thing that has to be done."

"Our specialists, including the technical service, are currently studying technical options of how to close this hole with a temporary cover. We have the technology, have the equipment, we are able to do it," Bilyk said.
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Ambulance

Queen Elizabeth II hospitalized


CNN
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:45 UTC
Image
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II was hospitalized Sunday after experiencing symptoms of gastroenteritis, a palace spokesman said.

The queen was taken to the hospital "as a precautionary measure," the spokesman said, and is expected to stay at London's King Edward VII's Hospital for two days.

Gastroenteritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach and intestines. It is commonly known as "stomach flu," but is not caused by the influenza virus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Eye 2

Three sisters raped and murdered: the tragedy that engulfed an Indian village

Gethin Chamberlain
Guardian
Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:06 UTC
Image
© Gethin Chamberlain for the Observer
Tanuja, 11, Priya, 5, and Prachi, 9, the three sisters found in a well, raped and murdered.
As the nation still struggles to come to terms with the attack on a Delhi student, another disturbing sex abuse case has shaken a rural community. It has raised awkward questions about police efficiency, disputed evidence and local gossip

Priya was the vivacious one, a bright five- year-old who loved music and wanted to be a teacher. Prachi was quiet, nine years old and painfully shy; Tanuja more headstrong, an independent 11-year-old.

The three sisters were Madhuri Borkar's only children. On 14 February they left home for schools in the village of Murmadi as usual. When they failed to return on time the family went to the police to report the girls missing.

"Go away," the police told them. "Come back tomorrow if they don't turn up." No one knows if the girls were still alive at that point. But it was two more days before a farmer found their bodies floating in the dark water at the bottom of a deep well in a corner of a paddyfield one mile from their home.

Even then, police initially treated the deaths as an accident. It was not until villagers started blocking the highway in protest that they started to pay attention. Two days later, the results of the postmortem examination came through and the story exploded. The girls had been raped and murdered, the report said. In the febrile atmosphere that has gripped India since the gang rape of a 23-year-old Delhi medical student last December, the case was taken up as another indictment of the plight of India's females.
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Bizarro Earth

Couple arrested for attacking each other with chips and dip

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Sat, 02 Mar 2013 10:36 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
A Canadian couple was arrested on Friday for allegedly getting into a food fight in an argument over the last beer.

The Canadian Press reported on Friday that when police arrived at the unidentified couple's home in Lindsay, Ontario shortly after 1 a.m., they found the residents, a 39-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman, covered in chips and dip.
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Ambulance

Expectant parents die in New York car crash; infant survives


SFGate
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:33 UTC
Image
© VosIzNeias.com, Eli Wohl
In this photo provided by VosIzNeias.com, first responders work at the scene shortly after a car accident in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood took the lives of an expectant couple Sunday, March 3, 2013, in New York.
A young couple who had taken a car service to a hospital for the birth of their first child were killed en route in a hit and run early Sunday, but their baby boy survived, born prematurely, authorities and a neighbor said.

The driver of a BMW slammed into the car carrying Nathan and Raizy Glauber, both 21, at an intersection in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, said Isaac Abraham, a neighbor of Raizy Glauber's parents who lives two blocks from the scene of the crash. Both of the Glaubers were pronounced dead at hospitals, police said.

Their infant son was in serious condition at a hospital, said Abraham, and the driver of their car was in stable condition, police said.
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Fireball 5

Exploding meteor changed perception of life for 26% of Chelyabinsk residents, biggest impact on religious people: Russian poll


U-T San Diego
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 07:38 UTC
Image
The meteor explosion above Chelyabinsk this month changed the "perceptions of life" for 26 percent of the Russian city's residents, a poll showed.

Forty percent of those who heard the explosion on Feb. 15 thought they witnessed a plane crash and 8 percent believed a missile had gone off, according to a Feb. 23-24 poll by the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation, or FOM. Ten percent said they correctly guessed that a meteorite had hit, while 1 percent each believed that it was a nuclear blast or the end of the world, the survey showed.

The meteor that exploded above Russia's Ural Mountains sent shock waves that broke thousands of windows and injured about 1,150 people in the Chelyabinsk region. The event had a bigger impact on religious people, according to Grigory Kertman, senior analyst at FOM.

They "reported some significant changes to their attitude toward life twice more often than non-believers," Kertman said by phone yesterday.

FOM polled 500 Chelyabinsk citizens by phone. The results have a margin of error of 5.5 percentage points.

Source: Bloomberg News
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Family

Russian demonstrators rally in support of U.S. adoption ban

Sonia Elks and Steve Gutterman
Yahoo! Canada News
Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Maxim Shemetov
People march during a rally in support of a ban on U.S. adoptions in Moscow, March 2, 2013.
Moscow - Thousands of people marched through Moscow on Saturday in an orderly show of support for a ban on adoptions of Russian children by Americans, echoing President Vladimir Putin's demands for better care for Russian orphans in their homeland.

Carrying signs with slogans including "Children are our future" and "America - hands off our children", activists mixed bitter criticism of the United States with calls for improvements in Russia's own care system.

"These children are ours. We shouldn't give them away," said Natalya Bakhinova, 56, walking in one of two columns led by marching bands that converged in Moscow's Pushkin Square.

Police said 12,000 people joined the rally, and organizers denied allegations some were coerced or paid to attend.

Moscow has seized on the death of Russian-born three-year-old Max Shatto - who died in January in Texas, where his adoptive parents live - as justification for the ban that has increased tensions with the United States.

After improvements under a "reset" President Barack Obama initiated in 2009, ties have been strained by Syria and issues including Putin's charges of U.S. meddling and his treatment of opponents since he returned to Russia's presidency last May.

Activists on Saturday called for Max Shatto's younger brother Kris to be taken from the family and returned to Russia.
      Read More...
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