BP cleanup a 'cover-up,' Louisiana says, pointing

[comokate]

The International corporate world working for you-

""State and Plaquemines Parish officials took reporters on a boat tour of Barataria Bay, pointing out an area where oil continues to eat away at marshes and protective boom is either absent or has been gobbled up by the oil. The heavily saturated area that reporters saw was 30 feet to 100 feet wide in sections. No cleanup workers were there when reporters toured the area. "

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40970247/ns/us_news-environment/

[comokate]

"In the night of December 2nd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal [1]. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 25,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site.

These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing and gynaecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer, brain-damage and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair foetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits [2].Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women [3]. In 2001, Michigan-based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims."

www.bhopal.org/

indiejourno.com/2010/06/08/bhopal-gas-leak-verdict-indias-moment-of-shame/

[comokate]

"Quietly, the population of Smith County is dying off.

"Kids go away to college and they never come back," said Smith County Commissioner Arthur Kuhlmann. "There is nothing to come back to."

Rural counties across the Midwest averaged a 5.1 percent population loss between 2000 and 2009, according to Liesl Eathington, an economist who studies Midwest population trends at Iowa State University. Kansas and Nebraska had the highest average losses at just over 11 percent.

The main reason is that family farms are being sold to bigger operations and people move away or get old and die. U.S. Census figures for 2010 are expected to show continued erosion of rural populations.

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110108/us_nm/us_midwest_population