The Times Picayune
Corps lists roster of East Jeff levee jobs
Hard-hit sections of Orleans get priority in the rush to do repairs
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
By Sheila Grissett
East Jefferson bureau
Most of the more than $120 million recently allocated to beef up undamaged sections of the Lake Pontchartrain-Lake Borgne hurricane protection system will be spent in Orleans Parish, but some of the money also will raise sinking levees, replace a rickety-looking section of floodwall, and improve protection around two big pumping stations in East Jefferson, the Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday.
There is no timeline yet for awarding the new contracts, but because the improvements are being made to parts of the system that weren't damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the work won't be done as quickly as those emergency repairs that the corps' Task Force Guardian is rushing to complete by June 1, the first day of the hurricane season.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1136962906109650.xml
4 MONTHS TO DECIDE
Nagin panel says hardest hit areas must prove viability city's footprint may shrink; full buyouts proposed for those forced to move. New housing to be developed in vast swaths of New Orleans' higher ground
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
By Frank Donze and Gordon Russell
Staff writers
Residents of New Orleans areas hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters would have four months to prove they can bring their neighborhoods back to life or face the prospect of having to sell out to a new and powerful redevelopment authority under a plan to be released today by a key panel of Mayor Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission.
In perhaps its boldest recommendation, the panel says Nagin should impose a moratorium on building permits in shattered areas covering most of the city, while residents there meet to craft plans to revive their neighborhoods. The proposals are spelled out in the final report of the land-use committee of Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back commission, which was obtained by The Times-Picayune.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1136962572109650.xml
Coastal proposal is a two-for-one idea
Hurricane defense, restoration combined
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
An independent group of scientists and engineers is working on a coastline strategy that could help planners in combining coastal restoration efforts with improved hurricane protection in a "multiple lines of defense" approach for New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana.
John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's coastal sustainability program, said the idea is to give federal and state planners a conceptual map that can be used as a template in coordinating restoration and levee projects.
The map would be drawn to identify areas where natural resources need to be protected, as well as noting geological structures that could be used to anchor the restoration and hurricane-protection projects. It also could help in determining what the future uses of the coast -- freshwater or saltwater fisheries, oil and gas production, residential development -- should be, Lopez said.
It may also become a starting point for the controversial decisions about which areas will be ringed with levees and open for development and which areas will be targeted for wetland restoration outside the levee system.
"It's not just a question of identifying what we're defending against, but determining how to get the most out of the restoration program," Lopez said. "If you don't understand the architecture of the coast in geologic or hydrologic terms, you're planning for marsh acreage here or levee heights there without really knowing how one will influence the other."
An expanded effort
Lopez, formerly of the Army Corps of Engineers, began the mapping process as part of the foundation's development of a basin sustainability plan, and expanded it to include a larger area of the coastline after Hurricane Katrina hit in August.
For the natural resource parts of the map in the New Orleans area, he looked at studies and maps outlining how the land, wetlands, forests and open water were used between 1900 and the 1930s, before the construction of major projects such as the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet dramatically changed the local environment.
The independent mapping effort surfaces as the state's new Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority staff is negotiating an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that will outline the state's role in the newly combined levee and coastal restoration planning effort recently approved by Congress, said Sidney Coffee, the authority's executive director.
Meanwhile, a separate committee of nationally recognized scientists and engineers led by University of Maryland Center For Environmental Science President Don Boesch is putting together its own advisory report for the corps' Washington headquarters staff. It seeks to integrate planning for coastal restoration, flood protection and navigation along Louisiana's coast.
"The corps at the national level was a little frustrated by the critical thinking they were not able to get from the district or division, and they wanted to move the process forward quickly," Boesch said.
His report, to be published within the next few weeks under the auspices of the corps' Institute for Water Resources, will identify problems the corps could face in designing projects, such as the potential for damming off wetlands necessary to maintain productive fisheries, Boesch said.
"We're not doing a map, but making suggestions on how to do a map," he said.
The lines of defense
The focus on using maps to help plan the future of Louisiana's coastline was a key recommendation of a 12-member panel of scientists and engineers sponsored by the National Research Council. That committee, whose November report critiqued the federal-state Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration plan, said the lack of the map represented a failure of state and federal officials to make key decisions about how the state's coastal resources would be used in the future.
Without those decisions, the report said, officials would continually run the risk of political defeats of individual projects by special interests in coastal communities.
Lopez's map identifies 11 separate lines of defense that stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of cities such as New Orleans:
-- The Gulf of Mexico's Outer Continental Shelf. Understanding how the geography of the shelf affects storm surge is important in hurricane protection planning, Lopez said.
-- Barrier islands. The slivers of sand, such as Grand Isle and the Chandeleur islands, are the first speed bumps with potential for reducing the effects of storm surge and waves, especially on nearby interior marshes. The last remnants of old river deltas, many of the islands along Louisiana's coast have disappeared or are disappearing through erosion and subsidence. Repairing eroded islands and building new ones are among projects being considered in federal and state restoration plans.
-- Sounds and bays. Their shallow water helps reduce currents found in deeper waters, although they allow waves to regenerate as a hurricane crosses them. They also provide sheltered areas for fisheries and other wildlife.
-- Marsh and land bridges. Located in strategic areas along Louisiana's southeastern coast, such as the area in eastern New Orleans bordering Lake Catherine, they can brake storm surge. Many are threatened by erosion, and some have been proposed as routes for new or raised levees.
-- Natural ridges. Often the remains of ancient courses of the Mississippi River or its distributaries, the ridges have acted as another speed bump to storm surge and a separation between different water bodies. Some, such as the shoreline of Bayou Lafourche, are where linear communities have located. Others have been cut by navigation channels and have exacerbated erosion. Bayou la Loutre in St. Bernard Parish, for example, was cut by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.
-- Man-made soil foundations. As roads and railroads were built across south Louisiana, compacted materials were used as foundations for roads and railroad beds. Those structures, such as the roadbed of U.S. 90 along the West Bank leading to Houma, continue to provide some protection from surge or floodwaters, or at least a usable escape route.
-- Flood gates. Some gates, such as on Bayou Bienvenue and Bayou Dupre in the New Orleans area or on Bayou Lafourche at Golden Meadow, already are used to reduce the effects of storm surge. Others have been proposed at the Chef Menteur and Rigolets passes into Lake Pontchartrain as ways to reduce the effects of larger hurricanes.
-- Levees. Designed as the barrier of last resort, they also have the consequence of increasing the water levels on their interior side during wetter storms and if they are topped by surge.
-- Pumps. Often used to reduce flood risk within leveed areas during nonhurricane events, the stations' effectiveness is reduced because of lack of power or staff during hurricanes.
-- Elevated homes and businesses. Often used along the coast in areas unprotected by levees, elevating homes above the level of storm surge is a last line of defense for individual property owners.
-- Evacuation routes. Lopez said the area's evacuation routes and plans need to be part of the planning process to assure that the lowest spots subject to flooding well in advance of a storm are raised and that other projects don't impede evacuees.
Limited mandate
Gregory Miller, a coastal restoration project manager for the Corps of Engineers, said such outside assistance will be considered, but that the congressional authorization the corps is working under only calls for integrating storm protection, coastal restoration and flood control, and not the development of a map.
Robert Twilley, a Louisiana State University scientist whose computer modeling has been used to help determine what projects to include in the proposed federal-state coastal restoration plan, said the difficulty with drawing the map will be determining what areas to protect.
"These walls of levees are great for urban areas like New Orleans, but what do you do about Houma and smaller communities, or the chenier plain on the western side of the state," he said. "Do you wall off the entire state?"
Twilley, who is a member of Boesch's group, said ongoing studies of storm surge and waves emanating from observations made during Hurricane Katrina also could change some of the assumptions used in drawing the Lopez map or future maps.
"We're now getting some validation and verification of certain models, and it may be that the actual reduction in storm surge by wetlands and the conveyance of storm surge by canals may differ from past assumptions," he said. "There's some overestimates of what wetlands can do to reduce the magnitude of storm surge."
That could mean more wetlands will be needed, not just to buffer levees, but to protect evacuation routes such as U.S. 90.
"We have to have a natural landscape, not just an apron around the bottom of levees," he said.
Forward to the past
And in areas like the highly eroded marshes adjacent to the MR-GO, it could also require the re-establishment of the large cypress-forest wetland of the past, he said.
Lopez's use of a 1900-1930 period as a target for restoration also could be a matter of debate, said Denise Reed, a University of New Orleans biologist.
"We're dealing with today's natural resources and what they mean to people's livelihoods now, and then what people want their livelihoods to be in the future," Reed said. Going back to a landscape 75 years in the past is "like pickling the coast and putting it in a jar and expecting it to stay the same all the time."
Instead, she said, the Lopez map could be one of a number of maps that sketch out "different strategies for restoration, different strategies for lines of defense and different natural resource productivity, and the different costs associated with them."
"That would inform a discussion about the future of the coast," she said.
Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1136875706296350.xml
Coastal proposal is a two-for-one idea
Hurricane defense, restoration combined
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
An independent group of scientists and engineers is working on a coastline strategy that could help planners in combining coastal restoration efforts with improved hurricane protection in a "multiple lines of defense" approach for New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana.
John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's coastal sustainability program, said the idea is to give federal and state planners a conceptual map that can be used as a template in coordinating restoration and levee projects.
The map would be drawn to identify areas where natural resources need to be protected, as well as noting geological structures that could be used to anchor the restoration and hurricane-protection projects. It also could help in determining what the future uses of the coast -- freshwater or saltwater fisheries, oil and gas production, residential development -- should be, Lopez said.
It may also become a starting point for the controversial decisions about which areas will be ringed with levees and open for development and which areas will be targeted for wetland restoration outside the levee system.
"It's not just a question of identifying what we're defending against, but determining how to get the most out of the restoration program," Lopez said. "If you don't understand the architecture of the coast in geologic or hydrologic terms, you're planning for marsh acreage here or levee heights there without really knowing how one will influence the other."
An expanded effort
Lopez, formerly of the Army Corps of Engineers, began the mapping process as part of the foundation's development of a basin sustainability plan, and expanded it to include a larger area of the coastline after Hurricane Katrina hit in August.
For the natural resource parts of the map in the New Orleans area, he looked at studies and maps outlining how the land, wetlands, forests and open water were used between 1900 and the 1930s, before the construction of major projects such as the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet dramatically changed the local environment.
The independent mapping effort surfaces as the state's new Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority staff is negotiating an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that will outline the state's role in the newly combined levee and coastal restoration planning effort recently approved by Congress, said Sidney Coffee, the authority's executive director.
Meanwhile, a separate committee of nationally recognized scientists and engineers led by University of Maryland Center For Environmental Science President Don Boesch is putting together its own advisory report for the corps' Washington headquarters staff. It seeks to integrate planning for coastal restoration, flood protection and navigation along Louisiana's coast.
"The corps at the national level was a little frustrated by the critical thinking they were not able to get from the district or division, and they wanted to move the process forward quickly," Boesch said.
His report, to be published within the next few weeks under the auspices of the corps' Institute for Water Resources, will identify problems the corps could face in designing projects, such as the potential for damming off wetlands necessary to maintain productive fisheries, Boesch said.
"We're not doing a map, but making suggestions on how to do a map," he said.
The lines of defense
The focus on using maps to help plan the future of Louisiana's coastline was a key recommendation of a 12-member panel of scientists and engineers sponsored by the National Research Council. That committee, whose November report critiqued the federal-state Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration plan, said the lack of the map represented a failure of state and federal officials to make key decisions about how the state's coastal resources would be used in the future.
Without those decisions, the report said, officials would continually run the risk of political defeats of individual projects by special interests in coastal communities.
Lopez's map identifies 11 separate lines of defense that stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of cities such as New Orleans:
-- The Gulf of Mexico's Outer Continental Shelf. Understanding how the geography of the shelf affects storm surge is important in hurricane protection planning, Lopez said.
-- Barrier islands. The slivers of sand, such as Grand Isle and the Chandeleur islands, are the first speed bumps with potential for reducing the effects of storm surge and waves, especially on nearby interior marshes. The last remnants of old river deltas, many of the islands along Louisiana's coast have disappeared or are disappearing through erosion and subsidence. Repairing eroded islands and building new ones are among projects being considered in federal and state restoration plans.
-- Sounds and bays. Their shallow water helps reduce currents found in deeper waters, although they allow waves to regenerate as a hurricane crosses them. They also provide sheltered areas for fisheries and other wildlife.
-- Marsh and land bridges. Located in strategic areas along Louisiana's southeastern coast, such as the area in eastern New Orleans bordering Lake Catherine, they can brake storm surge. Many are threatened by erosion, and some have been proposed as routes for new or raised levees.
-- Natural ridges. Often the remains of ancient courses of the Mississippi River or its distributaries, the ridges have acted as another speed bump to storm surge and a separation between different water bodies. Some, such as the shoreline of Bayou Lafourche, are where linear communities have located. Others have been cut by navigation channels and have exacerbated erosion. Bayou la Loutre in St. Bernard Parish, for example, was cut by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.
-- Man-made soil foundations. As roads and railroads were built across south Louisiana, compacted materials were used as foundations for roads and railroad beds. Those structures, such as the roadbed of U.S. 90 along the West Bank leading to Houma, continue to provide some protection from surge or floodwaters, or at least a usable escape route.
-- Flood gates. Some gates, such as on Bayou Bienvenue and Bayou Dupre in the New Orleans area or on Bayou Lafourche at Golden Meadow, already are used to reduce the effects of storm surge. Others have been proposed at the Chef Menteur and Rigolets passes into Lake Pontchartrain as ways to reduce the effects of larger hurricanes.
-- Levees. Designed as the barrier of last resort, they also have the consequence of increasing the water levels on their interior side during wetter storms and if they are topped by surge.
-- Pumps. Often used to reduce flood risk within leveed areas during nonhurricane events, the stations' effectiveness is reduced because of lack of power or staff during hurricanes.
-- Elevated homes and businesses. Often used along the coast in areas unprotected by levees, elevating homes above the level of storm surge is a last line of defense for individual property owners.
-- Evacuation routes. Lopez said the area's evacuation routes and plans need to be part of the planning process to assure that the lowest spots subject to flooding well in advance of a storm are raised and that other projects don't impede evacuees.
Limited mandate
Gregory Miller, a coastal restoration project manager for the Corps of Engineers, said such outside assistance will be considered, but that the congressional authorization the corps is working under only calls for integrating storm protection, coastal restoration and flood control, and not the development of a map.
Robert Twilley, a Louisiana State University scientist whose computer modeling has been used to help determine what projects to include in the proposed federal-state coastal restoration plan, said the difficulty with drawing the map will be determining what areas to protect.
"These walls of levees are great for urban areas like New Orleans, but what do you do about Houma and smaller communities, or the chenier plain on the western side of the state," he said. "Do you wall off the entire state?"
Twilley, who is a member of Boesch's group, said ongoing studies of storm surge and waves emanating from observations made during Hurricane Katrina also could change some of the assumptions used in drawing the Lopez map or future maps.
"We're now getting some validation and verification of certain models, and it may be that the actual reduction in storm surge by wetlands and the conveyance of storm surge by canals may differ from past assumptions," he said. "There's some overestimates of what wetlands can do to reduce the magnitude of storm surge."
That could mean more wetlands will be needed, not just to buffer levees, but to protect evacuation routes such as U.S. 90.
"We have to have a natural landscape, not just an apron around the bottom of levees," he said.
Forward to the past
And in areas like the highly eroded marshes adjacent to the MR-GO, it could also require the re-establishment of the large cypress-forest wetland of the past, he said.
Lopez's use of a 1900-1930 period as a target for restoration also could be a matter of debate, said Denise Reed, a University of New Orleans biologist.
"We're dealing with today's natural resources and what they mean to people's livelihoods now, and then what people want their livelihoods to be in the future," Reed said. Going back to a landscape 75 years in the past is "like pickling the coast and putting it in a jar and expecting it to stay the same all the time."
Instead, she said, the Lopez map could be one of a number of maps that sketch out "different strategies for restoration, different strategies for lines of defense and different natural resource productivity, and the different costs associated with them."
"That would inform a discussion about the future of the coast," she said.
Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1136875706296350.xml
N.O. Guard force might be reduced
It's up to governor, commander says
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Ed Anderson
Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- The approximately 2,000 Louisiana National Guard troops on Hurricane Katrina relief duty in New Orleans should be reduced to 1,000 by Feb. 1 unless Gov. Kathleen Blanco says otherwise, the commander in charge of the forces said Monday.
Brig. Gen. John Basilica, commander of the 256th "Tiger Brigade" based in Lafayette, said that the Guard's mission is "to work our way out of a job. . . . We are coming to the point where our aid is coming to an end in February" in New Orleans.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1136874967296350.xml
Ater wants to ease mail-voting rules
La. special session may take up issue
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Ed Anderson
Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Secretary of State Al Ater has asked Gov. Kathleen Blanco to include in a possible special session legislation that would allow hurricane-displaced New Orleans voters who registered by mail a one-time exemption from a law that requires them to cast their first vote in person.
In a letter written Friday to Blanco; Senate President Donald Hines, D-Bunkie; and House Speaker Joe Salter, D-Florien, Ater asks the governor to consider including the item on her agenda for a two-week special session she has said she will call in late January or early February.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/113687665025370.xml
FEMA worker charged with looting
He was at home to install trailer
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
By Paul Rioux
St. Tammany bureau
Having waited more than three months for two FEMA trailers to arrive for his extended family, Darin LeBlanc was elated when he heard the first one had been delivered to the driveway outside his ruined Slidell home.
"I couldn't believe that after all those phone calls it was finally here," said LeBlanc, who has been living in the office at his Kenner glass shop. "I had to stop by to see it for myself."
But LeBlanc could scarcely believe his eyes Friday afternoon when he arrived at his home in the Bayou Bonfouca Estates subdivision.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-12/113687643025370.xml
U.S. politicians visit Netherlands to study flood defenses
1/10/2006, 5:40 a.m. CT
The Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A delegation of 50 U.S. government officials, academics and business representatives began a three-day tour of the Netherlands Tuesday to study flood prevention techniques in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
A similar flood in the Netherlands in 1953 left around 1,800 people dead and spurred a 50-year project that constructed dikes, giant sea walls and flood gates that keep the low-lying country dry. Katrina, overwhelmed levies and flooded large parts of New Orleans. The storm killed 1,326 people in five U.S. states, including 1,077 in Louisiana.
U.S. lawmakers Mary Landrieu, David Vitter and Bill Jefferson, and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco are leading officials on the visit.
Adam Sharp, the spokesman for the U.S. delegation, said the Netherlands and Louisiana share a love-hate relationship with water. "We are both threatened by water, but both rely on it for our livelihoods," he said. "That balance is one that the Dutch have achieved over 50 years in a remarkable way."
Among the Dutch hosts are Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, construction industry executives and a team from the Ministry of Traffic and Water Management.
The American visitors are focusing their attention on the so-called Delta Project, which was built to protect the south of the country from any storm, save one so severe that statistically it is predicted to happen only once in 10,000 years.
The levees in New Orleans had lower standards than those mandated by Dutch law and were built to withstand the kind of storm that could be expected once every 100 years, officials have said.
U.S. officials will be researching how to build a system that could withstand a storm as large or larger than Hurricane Katrina.
Possible Dutch involvement in rebuilding Louisiana's coastal protection and estimates of how much it would cost to build a system on the Dutch model were expected to be key issues.
Hendrik Dek, a spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Water Management, said the Dutch — who allocate more than a billion euros (dollars) a year to water management — were shocked by the extent of the damage caused by Katrina.
"When Rita and Katrina hit our thoughts went out to the people, but they also went to our history. ... We have so much experience, so much to offer. We can show them what they can learn from our experiences and our mistakes."
Dek said the Dutch hoped to show Louisiana that building an effective defense against the sea was not an impossible task. "We will make it clear that it can be done. We did it, so they can do it."
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-22/1136893744249830.xml&storylist=louisiana
15 Cubans who got to Fla. bridge sent home
1/10/2006, 5:28 a.m. CT
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
The Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) — Cuban-American community activists and politicians lambasted the U.S. government's decision to repatriate 15 Cubans picked up from the base of an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys.
An attorney for the families of the migrants said he planned to file a suit Tuesday asking a federal judge to allow the group to return.
The migrants were sent back to Cuba Monday after U.S. officials concluded that the section of the partially collapsed bridge where they landed did not count as dry land under the government's policy because it was no longer connected to any of the Keys.
Under the U.S. government's "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, Cubans who reach dry land in the United States are usually allowed to remain in this country, while those caught at sea are sent back.
"Through a legal review, the migrants were determined to be feet-wet and processed in accordance with standard procedure," Coast Guard spokesman, Petty Officer Dana Warr, said in a statement.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/topstories/index.ssf?/base/national-57/1136855372123640.xml&storylist=topstories
The Detroit Free Press
Detroit Catholic bishop says he was molested by priest
Gumbleton says incidents occurred when he was a naive teen at Sacred Heart Seminary high school
Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton revealed
Wednesday that he had been sexually molested by a priest when he was a teenager
attending Detroit Sacred Heart Seminary's onetime high school for boys.
With his revelation, Gumbleton, 75, became the first Catholic
bishop in the United States to acknowledge such abuse. He also broke
ranks with the nation's Catholic leadership by calling for new laws
that would allow victims' lawyers and investigators to dig into past
cases, now largely left off limits because too many years have passed.
Gumbleton said he was a high school freshman or sophomore at
Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary High School in the mid-1940s when a priest
took him and another teenager away to a cottage.
"I would start wrestling with him, and he would put his hand in my
pants," Gumbleton told the Free Press Wednesday morning, as he prepared
to leave a Grand Rapids hotel to travel to Columbus, Ohio. "It was
very minor, but it was also something that was very inappropriate."
This afternoon, Gumbleton
is scheduled to speak at a demonstration planned by victims of sexual
abuse in Columbus in favor of an Ohio legislative proposal to
remove the statute of limitations on such abuse cases.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060111/NEWS11/60111001
GM told: Cut every salary
Kerkorian's message: Fix must start at top, aide says
With GM burning through $24 million of cash a day, the company will run out of money in 1,000 days or sooner unless executives make tough decisions now, Kerkorian aide Jerome York said in a speech delivered on GM territory at the Renaissance Center.
"This situation calls for the company's going into crisis mode, adopting a degree of urgency that recognizes if things don't break right, the unthinkable could happen, that time is of the essence," York told the Society of Automotive Analysts. The society represents those who advise stockholders on automotive investments.
GM Chief Financial Officer Fritz Henderson, the fast-rising executive who took over his current role Jan. 1, exchanged friendly remarks with York before the speech and applauded his remarks afterward.
"I am in crisis mode," Henderson said. "Frankly, there was a lot he had to say today that I agree with."
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005601110463
FUEL ECONOMY: Revised testing unveiled by EPA
The fuel economy estimates of many U.S. cars and trucks could fall by as much as 20% under new testing procedures unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday.
Gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, some of which have been criticized for failing to meet their estimates, will suffer the largest reductions, with up to a 30% cut in their city driving average, according to EPA officials.
The changes, first reported by the Free Press on Monday, are designed to make the miles per gallon estimates on window stickers more accurately reflect what drivers on high-speed freeways and clogged city streets can actually expect from their vehicles.
Automakers and consumer advocates have been calling on the EPA to revamp its lab tests for city and highway estimated mileage, first developed in the 1970s. Last year, Congress required the EPA to revisit its methods.
While buyers may be surprised by the declines, "accurate fuel ratings will cause people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, particularly in light of high gasoline prices," said Susan Pikrallidas, AAA's vice president of public affairs.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson told reporters Tuesday that when the EPA's tests were last updated in 1985, he was driving a Pontiac Catalina to work.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005601110330
SPECULATION: Toyota boss says U.S. may assist GM
Toyota Motor Corp. Chairman Hiroshi Okuda said Tuesday that he believes General Motors Corp. will likely receive support from the U.S. government if it faces further trouble.
"I have the feeling that GM is in a difficult situation," Okuda was quoted as saying by Hisako Komai, a spokeswoman for the Nippon Keidanren, Japan's most influential business lobby. Okuda heads the lobby. "But the auto industry is a symbol of the United States, and if GM faces further difficulty, I don't think the U.S. government will leave it."
GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner dismissed the suggestion in an interview at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. "I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever of that," Wagoner said Tuesday. "If somebody wants to help, great. I haven't seen the check come in yet."
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060111/BUSINESS03/601110446
New Zealand Herald
2005 a year of extreme weather, says NIWA report
10.01.06 4.00pm
A destructive tornado in Greymouth, catastrophic floods in the North Island, an unseasonably late snowstorm in Canterbury and warmer than average temperatures nationwide provided a year of extreme weather around the country in 2005.
NIWA's National Climate Centre today released details of the country's climate in 2005, revealing a mixed bag of weather.
The year was marked by too little rain in some places, and too much in others, NIWA's principal scientist Dr Jim Salinger said.
"Rainfall during the year was less than 75 per cent of normal over much of the South Island whereas severe flooding in the Bay of Plenty in May caused widespread damage," he said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10363091
Mozambique rains kill 22, cyclone alert declared
11.01.06 11.20am
JOHANNESBURG - At least 22 people have been swept to their death in Mozambique and thousands more have fled heavy rains there and in neighbouring South Africa and Malawi, emergency officials said today.
Government officials in Mozambique said the death toll had risen sharply from the initial eight reported a week ago, and heavy rains were expected to continue, forcing the government to put the country on a cyclone alert.
Rains had fuelled the spread of disease, with 114 cases of cholera reported in the central Sofala region. But Mozambique had contained the crisis well and there were no deaths from cholera, state administration minister Lucas Chomera said.
"The death toll stands at 22. Heavy rains continue but there is no cause for alarm yet," said a senior emergency official.
Officials said Mozambique's major rivers remained near the 7-metre flood alarm level but were not a concern at the moment.
In 2000, devastating floods in Mozambique killed an estimated 700 people and made up to 500,000 homeless.
Drought in southern Africa left several million people in need of urgent food handouts last year. Now governments and relief agencies fear that heavy rains will prevent supplies reaching the needy or will damage crops that have been planted.
Mozambique weather services predicted rain would continue to fall over the entire week. Meteorologists have forecast normal to above-normal levels of rainfall in central and northern Mozambique to the end of the rainy season in March.
Rains damaged roads and other infrastructure, officials said, making it difficult for relief workers to distribute food to some 800,000 people cut off in the Sofala and Gaza regions where stocks were declining fast.
The Limpopo railway, linking neighbouring Zimbabwe to Maputo port, had also been closed after rain-induced damage and weather prevented planned repairs.
In South Africa, police reported floods killed at least two people in a settlement in Johannesburg and said several shacks in one squatter village had been swept away.
One of the main border posts between South Africa and Botswana was closed due to flooding, a Home Affairs spokesman said. Traffic was being diverted to alternative crossings.
Near the town of Standerton in rural Mpumalanga province, police planned to evacuate thousands of people marooned there by rain. Standerton's two dams were between 114 per cent and 150 per cent full, weather officials said.
Near the Malawi town of Chikwakwa, south of the commercial capital Blantyre, rains have killed one person and displaced at least 1,000 people in the past week, Malawi officials said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10363229
Greenpeace says that despite the damage, the Arctic Sunrise is seaworthy and its navigational ability has not been affected. Picture / Greenpeace
Whaler could be sued over ramming
10.01.06
Greenpeace is considering legal action after a "terrifying" collision between a Japanese whaling boat and a protest vessel in the Southern Ocean, which was caught on film.
The Greenpeace protesters - including two New Zealanders - have been tailing the Japanese "scientific whaling" fleet across the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary since December 21.
Each side blames the other for the potentially life-threatening incident around 8am on Sunday (2pm NZT), which left the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise with a huge dent in its hull and a bent mast.
Greenpeace said it was looking at taking legal action.
Greenpeace expedition leader Shane Rattenbury said protesters in inflatable dinghies had been using rollers on poles to paint the words "whale meat" on the side of a supply vessel that was tied alongside the whaling fleet's mother ship, the Nisshin Maru.
Mr Rattenbury, who was on the bridge of the Arctic Sunrise at the time, said the Nisshin Maru suddenly detached itself from the supply vessel and started heading straight for the Greenpeace vessel.
"There was absolutely no need for it to make that move ... It did that full circle and came for the Sunrise."
At 129m long, the Nisshin Maru is more than twice as long as the Arctic Sunrise and about six times heavier, he said. "So to see it bearing down on us was a terrifying experience ...
"Everyone very shaken after the incident."
But Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) says the Greenpeace vessel deliberately rammed the Nisshin Maru as it was refuelling.
Director-general Hiroshi Hatanaka said the Arctic Sunrise's bow hit the side of the Nisshin Maru twice.
"The captain of the Nisshin Maru confirmed to ICR today that Greenpeace had rammed our vessel, which has sustained some damage. Luckily, no crew members were injured," he said yesterday.
Dr Hatanaka said another group, Sea Shepherd, also had a boat, the Farley Mowat, in the area during the incident.
He said the Nisshin Maru's crew did not know what the people in inflatables were doing and were concerned they might be attaching a bomb.
"Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are working together, and this concerns us greatly. In the vastness of the Antarctic Ocean, it is just impossible to find a ship unless they are co-operating," Dr Hatanaka said.
However, Mr Rattenbury said video footage of the incident showed clearly that the Nisshin Maru was the aggressor.
The ramming was "a clear attempt to intimidate Greenpeace and have us cease our protests and our actions to stop the whaling".
He said it was not true that Greenpeace was co-operating with Sea Shepherd, which has been linked to attacks on whaling vessels in Norway and elsewhere.
"Frankly we don't know how they found us either; we've had very little radio contact with them ...
"We have made it very clear all along that we are working independently. The ICR can say what they like, but those are the facts."
Mr Rattenbury said it was "outlandish" for the whalers to claim they had feared the protesters were planting a bomb on their ship.
"We have communicated very clearly with the ICR in Tokyo since we've been here and we have sent them letters saying we have no intention of harming any of their crew or damaging any of their ships ...
"For them to suggest that we'd be planting a bomb flies in the face of 35 years [of] Greenpeace history and reputation."
He said Greenpeace had carried out similar "branding-type protests" on other ships, such as those carrying illegal timber, over the years.
"It's a way of bearing witness to the crime we believe is going on.
"In this case, we branded the supply vessel because it was clearly implicated in the whaling operation: supplying fuel four or five days ago and now acting as courier for the whale meat operation."
Immediately after the incident, the Nisshin Maru turned around and started "steaming north", Mr Rattenbury said.
"We've followed them all through the day and all through the night - no whales killed since Saturday lunchtime, which is a good thing."
He said he had no idea where the Japanese vessel could be headed.
The catcher vessels - the ships that actually harpoon the whales - have disappeared.
"But they always come back to the mothership, which is why we stick with that one."
The Arctic Sunrise was sporting "a significant dent", but luckily it was above the deckline and the hull had not been pierced, he said.
"Our foremast is bent but we've managed to secure it so it doesn't actually collapse.
"Our vessel is seaworthy and our navigational ability has not been affected so we're quite fine at the moment."
He said the team was undaunted by the violent clash.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=1501010&objectid=10363031
Whales and whaling
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/index.cfm?c_id=1501010
Anti-whaling skipper calls NZ Government 'contemptible'
11.01.06 3.20pm
By Colin Marshall
The captain of a conservation ship clashing with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean has labelled the New Zealand Government "contemptible" for allowing Japan to continue killing whales.
Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat, was today criticised by Conservation Minister Chris Carter as irresponsible for using tactics such as running into whaling ships with a "can opener" device in a bid to stop them taking whales.
Capt Watson said such criticism was unfounded.
"If the Australian government and the New Zealand Government were acting responsibly then we wouldn't be down here," he said from aboard his vessel in the Southern Ocean.
"The fact is the Japanese whaling fleet is in blatant violation of international law and nobody is doing anything about it.
"We're not here to protest, we're down here to uphold international conservation law and to chase these guys out of here and it's working. They're afraid of us and we want them to be afraid of us. "
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10363255
Military may defend Japanese whalers
11.01.06
By Ainsley Thomson
Japan has warned it may send armed aircraft to defend its whaling ships in the Southern Ocean if clashes with protest boats escalate.
The whaling nation also says it may ask Australia to take action against protesters.
The increasingly tense conflict prompted a Green Party call last night for New Zealand to send a frigate to Antarctica in a monitoring role - an option the Government quickly ruled out.
The confrontation with the whalers intensified yesterday, with conservation group Sea Shepherd threatening to ram and disable the Japanese whaling fleet.
The group's ship, Farley Mowat, is equipped with a blade device - known as the "can opener" - mounted on its side and designed to rip open a ship's hull.
Sea Shepherd's threat came as Japan's Fisheries Agency said it was considering asking its Maritime Police Agency to send armed aircraft to defend the whaling ships.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10363188
New Orleans residents given 4 months to rebuild
12.01.06 1.00pm
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans officials today unveiled a controversial recovery plan giving residents four months to prove they will rebuild in the devastated city before their neighbourhoods could be declared off-limits to redevelopment.
The plan calls for a much smaller city, estimating that just half of the 500,000 people who lived there before Hurricane Katrina will resettle in the next two years.
It proposes residents and experts form planning teams for each neighbourhood and decide by late May on the fate of those most heavily damaged by the August 29 storm and the flooding that followed. It was designed by the urban-planning committee of the Bring Back New Orleans Commission, appointed in October by Mayor Ray Nagin.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10363400
Extra meningitis jab considered for babies
11.01.06 4.00pm
By Rebecca Quilliam
Ten people have become infected with the potentially deadly meningococcal B virus after they were fully vaccinated against it, prompting the Ministry of Health to consider a fourth vaccination jab for young children.
Medsafe is expected to announce in the next few days whether a fourth immunisation shot will be introduced for babies.
National meningococcal vaccine strategy director Dr Jane O'Hallahan said the extra vaccine was only being considered for infants because they were the most vulnerable to the disease.
"We know that infants generally respond to a lesser extent to immunisations in the first year of life than older children and therefore it was likely that a fourth dose may be required to boost their level of immunity and give them longer protection."
Of the nine other patients who contracted the virus, seven were over five-years-old and two were under five.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10363254
Sharp rise in hepatitis A cases in Canterbury
11.01.06 2.00pm
Canterbury health officials are becoming increasingly alarmed at the high number of hepatitis A infections in the region.
Twelve people have been infected with the highly contagious virus since Christmas, compared with a total of just two or three cases in an average year.
The source of the jaundice-causing illness in three of the patients recently diagnosed remains a mystery, The Press newspaper reported today.
Canterbury District Health Board medical officer of health Dr Mel Brieseman said the three new cases had some association with those already notified.
"Some are related. Some are boyfriend or girlfriend. All are part of family clusters," he said.
The youngest involved was a five-year-old and the oldest was aged 73, Dr Brieseman said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10363217
Organ donations plummet
11.01.06 9.25am
Patients may be dying on waiting lists because the number of people donating their organs after their death has dropped by over a quarter in the past year.
Organs from just 29 people went to others in New Zealand last year.
The figure is a marked drop from 40 in 2004 and the lowest in more than a decade of statistics collected by the Australia and New Zealand Organ Donation Registry - the previous lowest was 34 in 1993.
The decline is even more substantial than the experience in Australia, where just 204 dead people donated their organs last year - down from 218 in 2004.
Professor Graeme Russ of the donation registry, which is based in Adelaide's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, said the figures were worrying and meant New Zealand's rate of donation was now only about seven people per million.
That is down from about 10 per million last year and far behind world leaders Spain, where the figure was over 34 per million.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10363200
Turkish bird flu outbreak can be controlled, says WHO
11.01.06 1.00pm
GENEVA - The bird flu outbreak in Turkey, which local officials say has infected 15 people and killed two, can be "relatively easily" controlled, a senior World Health Organisation official said today.
And genetic tests of samples from birds and people infected in the Turkish outbreak, the first involving humans outside east Asia, show the virus is still not being passed from person to person, according to the United Nations' health agency.
Speaking by telephone from Ankara, the leader of a WHO investigation team, Dr. Guenael Rodier, told journalists the challenge facing health authorities was to remain vigilant for any further cases in either humans or poultry.
"I have a sense that what is going on in Turkey can be ... brought under control relatively easily," the official said.
But Rodier said it was not clear why so many people had been infected in Turkey so quickly.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10363230
Worried Turks head to hospital for bird flu tests
10.01.06 1.00pm
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey - Turkey reported a spike in suspected bird flu cases among people across the country today as fears grew that the deadly disease was sweeping westward towards mainland Europe.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said victims appear to have contracted the virus directly from infected birds, allaying fears it was now passing dangerously from person to person.
The Turkish authorities reported 14 people have tested positive for the deadly bird flu virus, including three children from the same family in an impoverished region of eastern Turkey who died last week.
Bird flu is known to have killed 76 people since the latest outbreak emerged in late 2003. Human cases had been confined to east Asia until the virus was identified in Turkey last week.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10363075
US returns Cubans who reached bridge
11.01.06
MIAMI - The US Coast Guard repatriated 15 Cubans on Monday who had tried to reach the United States but managed to get only as far as a pylon of an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys.
The repatriation of the Cubans cast a renewed spotlight on the US policy of generally allowing Cuban who reach US soil to stay in the country, and sending back those intercepted by the Coast Guard at sea, a "wet foot, dry foot" policy that non-Cuban immigrant groups consider unfair.
The Coast Guard said Washington had decided that the old Seven Mile Bridge, reached by the 15 Cubans, was not connected to land, placing them in the "wet foot" category. As a result, they were sent back to Cuba in a group of 67 migrants.
The bridge, which runs parallel to a newer Seven Mile Bridge roadway connecting parts of the Keys, an island chain off mainland Florida's southern tip, is broken in places and mainly used by fishermen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10363168
Blair steps up pressure on Iran
12.01.06 1.00pm
By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN - UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for the UN Security Council to consider action against Iran after it resumed nuclear fuel research, but Iran's hardline president said his country would pursue its course regardless.
Iran removed UN seals at uranium enrichment research facilities on Tuesday and announced it would resume "research and development" on producing uranium fuel, prompting angry reactions from Washington, the European Union and Russia.
Blair told parliament he aimed to secure international agreement to haul Iran before the Security Council, which can impose punitive measures.
"Then … we have to decide what measures to take and we obviously don't rule out any measures at all," he added.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10363393
Star Wars gets revenge at people's awards
12.01.06 1.00pm
By Bob Tourtellotte
LOS ANGELES - Epic space adventure "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" won best overall film and best drama honours yesterday at the People's Choice Awards, a widely watched measure of movie, television and star appeal.
In two other film categories, box office hit "Wedding Crashers" was named top comedy and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was chosen as the favourite family movie.
For Star Wars creator George Lucas, the People's Choice Awards held special significance because winners are voted on by fans who cast ballots online, unlike other Hollywood honours given by industry groups and the media.
Despite being a multibillion-dollar film franchise, the six "Star Wars" movies have had a mixed record with critics and Hollywood award groups.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/6/story.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10363371
Ukraine Govt in disarray as MPs vote to sack Cabinet
12.01.06
By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW - Ukraine was plunged into a fresh political crisis after the Government fell for the second time in six months when MPs voted to sack the Cabinet in response to an allegedly "traitorous" deal with Russia over gas prices.
A febrile atmosphere reigned as President Viktor Yushchenko, the hero of the Orange revolution of 2004, questioned the Parliament's right to dismiss his Government while ministers spoke of a bizarre legal vacuum opening up.
Yushchenko hinted he might disband the Parliament in response, as his supporters called on him to adopt direct presidential rule until new parliamentary elections could be held at the end of March. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that Yushchenko was en route to the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan when his Government was dismissed and said he had no intention of changing his schedule.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10363292
concluding …
