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French families shelter young migrants By Colin Randall in Lyons (Filed: 03/07/2006) Twelve-year-old Edi is Ecuadorian but speaks good French. He enjoys geometry, history and art and regards 11-year-old Valentin as his closest friend. The two boys - "like two brothers", according to Valentin's mother - will be seeing even more of each other in the coming weeks. Valentin Riot-Sarcay [right] and his parents have taken in Edi to prevent his family being deported As one of the symbols of an emotive campaign to save the children of illegal immigrants from being deported from France, Edi has moved in with...

Crumbling Chernobyl Shelter Poses DangerBy MARA D. BELLABY, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 22, 6:37 PM ET An aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant shortly after the explosion of its still smoking fourth reactor is seen in this 1986 file picture. Ukraine marks the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the world's worst civil nuclear disaster, on April 26 this year. The concrete was used for the building of a sarcophagus around the shattered reactor, designed to contain emanating radiation. BLACK AND WHITE ONLY REUTERS/Vladimir Repik/Files CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Ukraine - Chernobyl's coffin is cracking. Birds...

REGULAR meals of mammoth meat helped some early human tribes to expand more quickly than their largely vegetarian contemporaries, according to a genetic study. Human populations in east Asia about 30,000 years ago developed at dramatically different rates, following a pattern that appears to reflect the availability of mammoths and other large game. In the part of the region covering what is now northern China, Mongolia and southern Siberia, vast plains teemed with mammals such as mammoths, mastodons and woolly rhinoceroses and the number of early human beings grew between 34,000 and 20,000 years ago. Further south, where the terrain...

LAKE CHARLES, La. -- The city of Lake Charles will open the Civic Center as an emergency shelter if the Federal Emergency Management Agency puts out hundreds of Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims from area hotels and motels by a Feb. 13 deadline. FEMA extended the deadline for evacuees to be out of their rooms by six days, from Feb. 7 to Feb. 13. Those who wanted to remain after Feb. 7 had to call FEMA by Jan. 30 to receive an authorization code that would extend their stay. FEMA has said it won't pay for rooms after Feb. 13....

This past weekend the Millions More Movement march took place. Well, was anyone there calling for an end to subsistence-welfare? This has done more damage to black families than any sinister plot that some evil racists might have come up with. In the black inner cities of America’s big cities, over 85% of children are born out-of-wedlock. Why? The best evidence points to the anti-poverty welfare state enabling women to support children without husbands, and this welfare state makes it easy for men to shirk their responsibilities. These perverse incentives have resulted in a cultural breakdown in poor black communities...

Command: Category 4 Lt Col Randy Coats, 333d Training Squadron/CC Command. There's no better job in the world. After seven years in jobs with “command authority” and two squadron commands, I figured I had a good idea what command was all about. I was wrong. What changed my mind? Four words--"Shelter Commander" and "Hurricane Katrina." From 28 Aug - 2 Sep, I lived with 730 of my "closest friends" in 50-year old Bryan Hall at Keesler AFB, MS. It was my third stint as a shelter commander, but it was unlike anything I had experienced before. As life slowly...

FORT POLK, La. (Army News Service, Sept. 16, 2005) -- Not since the end of the Civil War have U.S. Soldiers returned home from war to such devastation and massive rebuilding. After a one-year combat tour in Iraq, Soldiers from the 256th Brigade Combat Team, Louisiana Army National Guard, started arriving at the England Industrial Airpark in Alexandria Sept. 9. Among the first wave of returning Soldiers was Staff Sgt. Scott Andras, assigned to the 141st Field Artillery. Andras and his wife of 18 months Heather, own a home in New Orleans. “We live two blocks off of St. Charles...

Why Omni-sphere Domes? It is our understanding that current concepts for long term housing for the victims of Katrina, who are financially unable to relocate on their own, is mobile homes converted into barracks. Our plan is not only less expensive, safer, and reusable, it offers these victims some semblance of privacy. The omni-sphere dome. More...Those victims that do not have the financial stability to set up residence in another city will need a place to live and restructure in order to relocate to a permanent residence. It is our recommendation that Dome Villages, of approximately 20-40 people each, be...

But we are a federal republic, so the President and national agencies work to support state and local officials—not to usurp them or "take over." We expect our local and state governments to govern and manage their polities, their policies and programs; to plan and prepare for crises and to continue governing... Consequently Presidential declarations of emergency provide legal authority for the national government to spend money and release national resources, such as the armed forces, and provide “all necessary support” to support, rather than to supplant, state and local civil authorities. It’s the state and local government that bear...

One lesson I thought we had learned from Hurricane Andrew is that after a major disaster, the local and even state governmental system can become rapidly overwhelmed and paralyzed. It is a near certainty that local government and police will be in a “not mission capable” status. Therefore the early entry of military forces with other state and local police forces marshaled into the destroyed zones is imperative...We fell short of this standard in New Orleans...Emergency management plans that work and have been tested [not just paper-drilled] must be in place...New Orleans is not the only city that is sited...

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. (AFPN) -- Five days after Hurricane Katrina dramatically changed many lives in the Gulf Coast region, a couple here began a new chapter in their own lives. Tech. Sgt. Daniel McMullen of the 335th Training Squadron and his girlfriend of three years, LaVerne, exchanged wedding vows Sept. 3 outside one of the base's seven shelters used to house people here since the hurricane struck. Guests of the bride and groom, all who shared a shelter with the couple, dressed for the occasion in the most fashionable way. The groomsmen wore reflective safety belts while the...

Hello Fellow Freepers, I am posting this because forum is the biggest, most active place I can think of to help out a fellow Texan and the Katrina survivors at the same time. I posting this letter from fellow Texan Scott Chaffin, a gentleman who lives just up the way from on the rambling river known as "the Arms of God", El Brazos de Dios, who would like to utilize the resources he has at his "tiny bidness." He writes : Dear Sweet, Clean Texas Members of the TFG Blogroll, You might or might not know that I have a...

HOUSTON — Rescued with 13 relatives after being stranded for three days on a hurricane-ravaged New Orleans highway, Janetta Arnold enjoyed one of life's simple pleasures. "I was able to get a shower last night," the 36-year-old grocery store cashier said Friday outside the Houston Astrodome, her new home. "I am grateful for what the people here in Houston have given us." That also would be food, clothes and care. "I ain't going back to Louisiana," she said. "There ain't nothing there." Hundreds of miles from homes that no longer may exist, so many thousands of people like Arnold uprooted...

Houston Mayor Bill White has authorized opening Reliant Center to as many as 11,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. He said he also has authorized the opening of the George R. Brown Convention Center, if needed. The George R. Brown is not open this morning, however, and evacuees should not go there because it is not set up for occupation. ``The City of Houston and this region will use its capacity to care for tens of thousands of families," the mayor said. "We will be making assessments daily of our community capacity. We do need other cities to be accepting busloads...

KPMG to pay $456 mln in tax shelter case By Arindam Nag and Christine Kearney 2 hours, 39 minutes ago Accounting firm KPMG LLP (KPMG.UL) on Monday agreed to pay $456 million to settle a federal probe of its sales of fraudulent tax shelters, avoiding a criminal indictment that might have crippled the firm. While KPMG, the smallest of the major U.S. accounting houses, itself escaped an indictment of the kind that destroyed Arthur Andersen when it was convicted of destroying documents, eight former partners, including its former deputy chairman, and a KPMG lawyer, were indicted for selling the tax...

The Rolling Stones’ music has been downright awful since Tattoo You (1981) – but Mick Jagger’s big lips keep on yammering. Mick, the great arrogant hypocrite, with a net worth of $500,000,000.00, and 7 children he couldn’t give a damn about, is now lecturing American conservatives about morality: The Rolling Stones, not exactly a band at the forefront of rock 'n' roll activism, are taking aim at the American right with a new song on their upcoming album, according to Newsweek magazine. The track, "Sweet Neo Con," boasts the line, "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Sex offenders tracked by the state are banned from public hurricane shelters in Florida under a new policy that allows them to weather the storms in prison instead. The policy was created to keep sex offenders and predators away from children, said Robby Cunningham, spokesman for the Department of Corrections. Offenders who go to a prison will stay in areas such as visitor or meeting rooms, he said. "They are not incarcerated," Cunningham said Saturday. "We don't want them on the streets. We don't want them violating their probation either." The policy only affects sex...

TUCSON - The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hermosillo plans to open two shelters for migrants in the Mexican border communities of Naco and Nogales. The diocese intends to begin work on the migrant shelters on the Arizona-Mexico border within the next year, said the Rev. Cayetano Cabrera. Arizona is the busiest illegal crossing point on the porous U.S.-Mexico border and is also the site each year of scores of deaths among migrants who succumb to the elements while crossing the desert. The diocese has those deaths in mind as it makes plans for the shelters. "They need our help," Cabrera...

MEXICO CITY - Marilu has been working the streets of Mexico's capital for 45 years, and she's still at it — though at age 70 she'll settle for food instead of money. Women like her are the inspiration behind a new shelter for aging prostitutes in a dilapidated downtown mansion in Mexico City. Carmen Munoz, a sex worker in her 50s who organizes prostitutes trying to break free of their pimps, had the idea after seeing older women living in boxes on the streets of the Merced, one of Mexico City's main red-light zones. Munoz rallied support from women's groups...

A dialogue between two important members of the FARC (Colombian revolutionary Armed Forces), appears to be among the evidence submitted by the Colombian authorities to the Venezuelan Government according to Colombia’s Radio Caracol. Here is the translation of the only written report I have seen on the issue, which suggests that more than one hundred members of the FARC guerillas were in Caracas in early December for the II People’s Bolivarian Congress, financed and organized by the Chavez Government.. I had talked to two reporters who had mentioned this to me, but said they could not talk about it and...