WWH/CJE Friday News Briefs
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In South Africa, ANC struggle now a deadly scramble for spoils(Reuters) – Mthembeni Shezi, an ANC local councilor in the run-down suburb of Welbedacht on South Africa’s east coast, was wrapping up a routine meeting last month when two men barged in, sprayed the room with gunfire and shot him five times in the chest.
“It was like a movie. The men just shot indiscriminately. It was scary. Everyone panicked. We hit the floor. I didn’t think I would come out of there alive,” said one woman present, who remains too frightened to reveal her name.
“The gunmen seemed to know who they wanted.”
Far from being a movie, the hit represents the bloody reality of local politics for some in the African National Congress, and shows how far Nelson Mandela’s 100-year-old liberation movement has strayed from the moral high ground it occupied when it came to power 18 years ago.
More…
Kellogg’s cereal recalled due to possible metal fragments
Check the pantry! A popular Kellogg’s cereal is under a massive recall.
Earlier this week, Kellogg Company recalled 2.8 million packages of Frosted Mini-Wheats Bite-Size Original and Mini-Wheats Unfrosted Bite Size for possible contamination of metal mesh.
Today more boxes were being pulled from retailers’ shelves around the country, including Huntsville. Target Superstores are among those jreportedly yanking the cereal product. Sam’s and Wal-Mart are among the other retailers to have received the recalled cereal. More…
Man bulldozes home ahead of foreclosure
MOSCOW, Ohio, Feb. 23 (UPI) — An Ohio man said he made good on his threat to tear down his home before allowing his bank to foreclose on the property.
Terry Hoskins of Moscow said RiverHills Bank refused a $170,000 offer to pay off the money owed on the $350,000 loan, with officials saying they could make more money from a foreclosure sale, so he gave the bank an ultimatum for the final fate of his house: “I’ll tear it down before I let you take it,” he said.
“When I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000, and someone decides they want to take it — no, I wasn’t going to stand for that, so I took it down,” Hoskins said. More…
SOLDIERS CLAIM ILLNESS AFTER GUARDING KBR IN IRAQ
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A war contractor knew a critical southern Iraq oilfield plant was riddled with a well-known toxin but ignored the risk to soldiers while hurrying the project along, firing a whistleblower and covering up the presence of the chemical when faced with exposure, the soldiers’ attorney said in opening arguments Wednesday in a federal civil suit.
See Dick (Cheney, KBR-Halliburton) Loot Iraq
An attorney for the contractor, Kellogg, Brown and Root, fired back in his opening salvo of a trial expected to last weeks that the soldiers’ injuries weren’t a result of their exposure to the toxin, called sodium dichromate. Geoffrey L. Harrison argued that the company had no knowledge of the chemical’s presence at the plant and when they found it, they promptly and repeatedly warned the military of the danger. More…
So Close, So Far Away
Cath Turner examines the consequences of ‘Operation Babylift’ at the end of the Vietnam war.
‘Operation Babylift’ was one of the defining events of the Vietnam War and its legacy will continue for many years. The world is unlikely to ever see anything like it again.
It was at the end of the war in 1975, when under ‘Operation Babylift’ thousands of Vietnamese children were removed from the country and put up for adoption across the Western world.
Al Jazeera’s Cath Turner was one of those children – an Asian child growing up in white Australia.
In this episode of Al Jazeera Correspondent, Cath returns to her native and adopted homeland to explore the psychological effects of transnational adoption on these Vietnamese babies.
Taken from their homeland they became a very small minority in their adopted countries in a very obvious way. More…
Fire started by squirrel cooker
HOLLAND, Mich., Oct. 11 (UPI) — Authorities in Michigan said an apartment complex fire was started by a resident who was attempting to use a propane torch to prepare a squirrel for eating.
Holland Township Fire Chief Jim Kohsel said a resident was on a third floor deck at Clearview apartments using a propane torch to remove the fur from a dead squirrel the resident intended to eat when the deck caught fire around 12:29 p.m. Wednesday, MLive.com reported Thursday. More…
