NewsTrust - Hurricane Katrina - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Stricter Regulation of Formaldehyde Remains Uncertain Despite Carcinogen Ruling

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By by Joaquin Sapien - Jun. 14 (Investigative Report) - by Joaquin Sapien Late last week, the Department of Health and Human Services classified formaldehyde as "a known carcinogen," adding its verdict to two similar reports released by key agencies since 2009. But despite the growing scientific consensus about how formaldehyde can affect human health, it remains to be seen if the studies will lead to tighter U.S. formaldehyde regulations. As we've previously reported, the Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to update its chemical risk assessment for formaldehyde since 1998, but has been stalled repeatedly by the chemical manufacturing industry. EPA assessments are the country's gold standard for how dangerous a chemical is. The formaldehyde assessment would undoubtedly influence the stringency of a rule the EPA is developing on how much of the chemical can safely be released from construction materials that contain it In 2009, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., maneuvered successfully to delay the assessment by putting a hold on the nomination of a key EPA appointee and forcing the agency to send its draft to the National Academy of Sciences for review. Vitter has received substantial campaign contributions from the nation's largest formaldehyde manufacturers and users. After the EPA agreed to send its assessment to the NAS, a top industry lobbyist, Charles Grizzle, threw Vitter a fundraising party, requesting donations of $1,000 a plate. The NAS finished reviewing the EPA assessment in April, sending back a long list of questions and advising the EPA not to finalize the document until it could show exactly how formaldehyde causes cancer, a biological mechanism known as the "mode of action." Dr. Peter Infante, a former director of the Office of Carcinogen Identification and Classification at the Occupational Trailers supplied by FEMA to Katrina survivors were found to have harmful levels of formaldehyde in them. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services classified the chemical as 'a known carcinogen

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"Sacrificial Steel": Is the Corps Dooming Eastern New Orleans Again?

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Harry Shearer - Sep. 20 (News) - Corps higher-ups have authorized the refusal to rust-coat the steel "sheet piling" being driven to anchor floodwalls in the eastern half of the city. This is where your $14 billion is going, America. Into "sacrificial steel."

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No Port After the Storm

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Zoe Sullivan - Aug. 31 (Special Report) - Road Home was supposed to get people back into the homes they owned after the storm. According to ICF International, the firm that initially ran it, Road Home was the largest disaster recovery program of its kind in U.S. history. In spite of the program’s $9.4 billion price tag, however, its impact has been uneven and discriminatory. As the Gulf region reels again from the U.S.’s largest environmental disaster in its history, the Road Home debacle provides important lessons about managing recovery strategies.

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After Katrina, New Orleans Cops Were Told to shoot looters

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sabrina Shankman, Tom Jennings, Brendan McCarthy, Laura Maggi - Aug. 24 (Investigative Report) - In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the department.

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"Neither the Destruction of the 9th Ward Nor the South Bronx Was Inevitable"

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Majora Carter, Amy Goodman - Jul. 22 (Special Report) - We broadcast from Las Vegas, which is hosting the 2010 Netroots Nation. Thousands of people are attending, including Democrats in Congress, policy speakers, progressive bloggers and more. Among them is urban environmentalist Majora Carter. Newsweek has named her one of “25 to Watch” and one of the “century’s most important environmentalists.” She is currently president of the green-collar economic consulting firm the Majora Carter Group. In 2006, Majora Carter gave a rousing address at TED Talks about her life and her work.

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Prosecutors Charge White Man for Racially Motivated Shooting in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By A.C. Thompson - Jul. 20 (News Report) - Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina, federal prosecutors have charged a white man with federal hate crimes for his role in the racially motivated shooting of three black men in the aftermath of the storm. The five-count indictment accuses Roland Bourgeois of plotting to defend his Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans from "outsiders" including African Americans and shooting and seriously wounding three men who were walking toward a temporary evacuation center.

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The education renaissance of Katrina, ed. Dark Ages of DC

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Hot Air - By Ed Morrissey - Jul. 08 (News Analysis) - If we could start over from scratch in building our public education system, how would we do it? In New Orleans, that question was far from academic in 2005 after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. ... Sixty percent of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.

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Nearly 5 Years After Katrina, African-American Fishing Community in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish Faces New Struggle in Oil Spill Devastation and BP Obstruction

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Anjali Kamat - Jun. 04 (News Report) - Democracy Now!’s Anjali Kamat visits the town of Phoenix, Louisiana on the east bank of Plaquemines Parish, an area that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She speaks to Reverend Tyronne Edwards, a pastor and longtime community activist who spearheaded efforts to rebuild the largely African American fishing community after Katrina. In the aftermath of the BP oil spill disaster, Rev. Edwards is at the forefront of getting Washington, DC to pay attention to the needs of his community, whom he calls the "forgotten people" of Plaquemines Parish.

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US government 'abused rights' of Hurricane Katrina victims

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

thisislondon.co.uk - Apr. 09 (News Report) - Its report Un-Natural Disaster says housing, health and policing policies have stopped poor communities rebuilding and returning to their homes since the 2005 hurricane, in which about 1,800 people died.

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Federal Probe into Post-Katrina Shootings by Police Widens

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By A.C. Thompson, ANJALI KAMAT, Amy Goodman - Mar. 17 (News Report) - We get an update on the investigations into a spate of police shootings in New Orleans that took place in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In recent weeks, two former members of the New Orleans police have admitted to participating in a cover-up of the Danziger Bridge shootings of September 4, 2005, when police SWAT units opened fire on a group of unarmed civilians, killing two and wounding four. Meanwhile, federal investigators have widened their probe into the New Orleans Police Department and are now looking into the circumstances surrounding four other incidents that include three deaths and one non-fatal shooting.

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When the Media Is the Disaster

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Rebecca Solnit, forward by Tom Engelhardt - Jan. 21 (News Analysis) - I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti

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US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat Terminations" and to Confront "Worker Unrest" in Haiti

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Jeremy Scahill - Jan. 18 (News Report) - “All Protection and Security has made a commitment to the Haitian community and will provide professional security against any threat to prosperity in Haiti,” the site proclaims. “Job sites and supply convoys will be protected against looters and vandals. Workers will be protected against gang violence and intimidation. The people of Haiti will recover, with the help of the good people from the world over.”

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8 Things We Love That Climate Change Will Force Us to Kiss Good-Bye|

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Tara Lohan - Dec. 20 (Special Report) - The Natural Resources Defense Council reported that, "The first comprehensive assessment of the extinction risk from global warming found that more than 1 million species could be obliterated by 2050 if the current trajectory continues."

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Judge: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Was Caused By Army Corps Of Engineers' Negligence

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Cain Burdeau - Nov. 19 (News Report) - A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

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Slate Follows-up on Our Katrina Hospital Investigation —And We Follow-up Too

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sheri Fink - Sep. 04 (News) - Levin points many of those who died were patients of a separate long term acute care hospital, LifeCare Hospitals of New Orleans, that leased the 7th floor of Memorial. He argues that "this separation of authority and personnel caused chaos in the days

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Big Trouble in the Big Easy

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

flypmedia.com - May. 07 (Special Report) - Katrina left more than broken lives and broken homes in its wake. It left a race problem.

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The Grinning Skull: The Homicides You Didn't Hear About in Hurricane Katrina

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Rebecca Solnit - Dec. 21 (News Report) - What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river.

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Why CDC Responded With ‘Lack of Urgency’ to Formaldehyde Warnings

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Joaquin Sapien - Oct. 09 (Investigative Report) - Katrina survivors started complaining about the air in their trailers almost as soon as they began moving into them, in the fall of 2005. Formaldehyde was quickly pinpointed as a possible cause, because it's often in the glue used to make plywood and particleboard, which are found in most trailers.

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New Orleans: The City That Won't Be Ignored

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Naomi Klein - Sep. 07 (News Analysis) - In the combination of New Orleans and hurricanes, we have the most powerful argument possible for the necessity of "change." It's all there: gaping inequality, deep racism, crumbling public infrastructure, global warming, rampant corruption, the Blackwater-ization of the public sector. And none of it is in the past tense. In New Orleans whole neighborhoods have gone to seed, Charity Hospital remains shuttered, public housing has been deliberately destroyed--and the levee system is still far from repaired.

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V-Day Spotlights Katrina's Forgotten Misery

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Women's eNews - By Jeanine Plant - Apr. 06 (News Report) - Next month V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, marks its first decade with events in the New Orleans Superdome. Proceeds will benefit women working in the Katrina area, which founder Eve Ensler says is being forgotten. V-Day, the global organization that fights violence against women and girls, has raised $50 million since 1998 for more than 5,000 local anti-violence groups and safe houses in South Dakota, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Egypt and Iraq. For its 10th anniversary this year, V-Day is bringing its fundraising focus to the New Orleans Arena and Louisiana Superdome, where 24,000 evacuees--the sick, disabled and poor among them--were penned in after Hurricane Katrina for five days in 2005, an event that horrified a nation watching the crisis unfold on TV.

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Trent Lott's Brother-In-Law, Nephew, Indicted On Federal Bribery Charges

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:25:48 -0800

Huffington Post - By Max Follmer - Nov. 29 (News Report) - Prominent Mississippi trial attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, the brother-in-law of outgoing GOP Sen. Trent Lott, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges that he and four other men tried to bribe a Mississippi state court judge. According to the 13-page indictment, Scruggs and three other attorneys -- including Lott's nephew Zach -- attempted to bribe Mississippi Third Circuit Court Judge Henry L. Lackey with at least $40,000 in cash. Lackey was assigned to hear a lawsuit in which Scruggs' firm was named as a defendant in a dispute involving $26.5 million in attorneys' fees stemming from a court settlement with State Farm Insurance over Hurricane Katrina claims.

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The Corps, its whistleblower and Katrina

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:09:48 -0700

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Oct. 10 (Special Report) - The story of the pumps is especially troubling as they were supplied by Bush family business partner and political supporter J. David Eller of MWI, already under investigation since 1999 for supplying faulty pumps in Nigeria. The ACE had also awarded a contract to rebuild the levees to the former ACE officials who had designed the problematic levees in the first place.

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Compassionate conservatism - Katrina edition

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:30:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Steve Benen - Sep. 01 (News Report) - Apparently, on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina ravaging the Gulf Coast, conservatives have decided they've grown tired of the topic.

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Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:30:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Jean Casella, James Ridgeway - Aug. 31 (News Report) - But within just a few weeks of the hurricane, something had changed in the press coverage and the public response: As the floodwaters receded, so, too, did the powerful images--the portraits of racially segregated suffering, of death by poverty. America's--even liberal America's--focus appeared to be moving away from the experiences of Katrina victims and the deep, systemic problems they revealed. In the end, the leap from pathos to policy was never made. Instead, a narrower lens was focused on the foibles of the Bush administration--for instance, its hiring of a political crony, Michael Brown, to head FEMA (and, later, Brown's infamous emails about wardrobe choices and dinner plans as New Orleans residents were literally drowning in their homes). Democrats were quick to attack President Bush, but when it came to advancing meaningful policy changes, they came up short on momentum.

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Finding the Way Home: Two Years After Katrina

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:05:37 -0700

MediaStorm - By Brenda Ann Kenneally - Aug. 30 (Special Report) - Two years after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana on August 29, 2005, the story is no longer about leaving. It's about coming home. For many, that process has not been easy. Tens of thousands of houses still remain empty, a majority of them belonging to the poor. In New Orleans alone, most of the 77,000 rental units have not been rebuilt. As staggering as the numbers are, though, they cannot do justice to the emotional turmoil left in the hurricane's wake. Just what does it take for a family to start over? How does one survive not only the loss of a house, but the very real economic hardships of paltry insurance payments and lack of jobs, housing, and so many basic needs.

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