Density of Urban Village Proposal Raises Concern
The site, at the northwestern end of Metro’s Red Line, includes a sprawling transportation complex with more than 5,000 parking spaces and stops for two dozen bus lines. It also features a cluster of warehouses and nondescript government offices and is home to enough vacant lots to attract builders who find few opportunities like it elsewhere in the county. Nearby is old Derwood, where both aging and remodeled houses sit next to a vehicle emissions station.
Now, the County Council wants to change that vision dramatically. The council is scheduled to vote next month on a master plan to turn the area into an urban village, with housing, office buildings and shops amid tree-lined streets and parks. “It’s like total change,” said Pat Labuda, who lives a mile from the Metro station. “It’s hard to envision it all.”
If approved, the Shady Grove plan would convert the mostly industrial area — part of a broader 2,000-acre community — into a housing center that could draw as many as 12,000 new residents.
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Halliburton’s engineering and construction unit, Kellogg, Brown and Root, pays $80,000 a year and more to U.S. truck drivers, construction workers, office workers and other laborers that it recruits from the United States.
But for workers recruited from other countries, it’s quite a different story.
These “third country nationals”–TCNs–in contractor’s parlance, come from countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, and Turkey. Tens of thousands of them have been hired to help rebuild Iraq. So many that the Government Accountability Office can’t even count them all. Haliburton’s own numbers indicate that these foreign contractors comprise 35,000 of its 48,000 workers in Iraq.
Third country nationals work for $600 to $1200 a month for a twelve hour day, seven days a week. They work under extremely dangerous conditions, many have been killed or taken hostage. In one particular gruesome incident, 12 Nepalese cooks and cleaners were kidnaped and beheaded for working for the U.S., a videotape of their execution posted on the internet.
Working conditions are bad. Workers complain of abusive managers, food that is unfit to eat, restrictions on calling home, and other deprivations. Former administrator Sharon Reynolds from Texas remembered, “One time they didn’t get paid for months. … They didn’t get sick pay and if PPI [subcontractor Prime Projects International] had insurance, tehy sure didn’t talk about it much. TCNs had a lot of problems with overtime and things … I had to go to bat for them to get shoes and proper clothing.” Reynolds also claimed they had to eat outside in 140 degree heat. “TCNs had to stand in line with plates and were served something like curry and fish heads from bog old pots.” To Reynolds, “It looked like a concentration camp.”
Although workers can be fired for staging strikes or sickouts, several major strikes have occurred. This May 300 Filipinos went on strike at Camp Cook and were soon joined by 500 others from India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, protesting working conditions and pay. The dispute was settled with the intervention of the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs.
The question that no one has answered is; why aren’t unemployed Iraqis being given these jobs–with decent working conditions–to reduce some of the conditions causing the unrest. But it seems as if everyting about Iraq is measured in profits.
Janklow Asks Court to Restore Law License
Janklow’s second-degree manslaughter conviction will be erased if he complies with the terms of his three-year probation. [emphasis added by me] He also served 100 days in jail.
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Ex-FDA Chief Would Not Aid Plan B Inquiry
The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration declined to cooperate with an inquiry by the Government Accountability Office into the agency’s controversial decision to reject nonprescription sales of an emergency contraceptive.
According to congressional staffers who have read the draft GAO report but were not allowed to copy it, the document has several footnotes indicating Lester M. Crawford did not respond to requests for an interview.
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The draft report, which is being reviewed by the FDA and members of Congress, describes the agency’s decision-making process on Plan B as highly unusual because officials in the commissioner’s office were directly involved and the FDA office directors who normally rule on applications refused to sign the rejection letter. [emphasis added by me] An FDA advisory panel earlier voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposal.
In addition, the GAO report indicates that the decision to reject the application was made months before it was announced in May 2004 by Steven Galson, then acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. [emphasis added by me] The report says the rejection was discussed at a January 2004 staff meeting when Mark B. McClellan, now head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was FDA commissioner. It was unclear yesterday whether McClellan spoke with the GAO.
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GAO spokesman Paul Anderson said the office can demand documents from federal agencies but cannot compel an official to speak with investigators. He declined to comment on whether Crawford had cooperated or on the contents of the draft report.
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Galson and other FDA officials have said they rejected the application because of concerns that the “morning-after pill,” called Plan B, could lead young girls to become more sexually active. The GAO report says that FDA scientific staff provided studies that indicated the concern was unwarranted but that Galson was not convinced.
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Congress requested the investigation in the summer of 2004, and many have waited impatiently for it. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said yesterday that she was “very disturbed” by the draft report and by Crawford’s refusal to answer GAO’s questions.
“We need an FDA commissioner who is willing to go before the public and explain how agency decisions are made,” she said. “Refusing to explain his role in this decision is not acceptable.”
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EPA Issues Draft Rules On Plants’ Emissions
The Environmental Protection Agency issued draft regulations yesterday that would ease long-standing pollution controls on older, dirtier power plants by judging these plants by the hourly rate of emissions rather than the total annual output.
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…[E]nvironmentalists and some of EPA’s own lawyers said the move will undermine one of the agency’s most effective means of forcing aging utilities to install new anti-pollution technology when they expand or modernize. Under the current law, a plant must put in new controls if a modification increases its annual emissions; the new rules would require such controls only if the hourly emissions increase. Under the new scenario, a plant could legally emit more pollution if it operated for longer hours.
“Whatever shell of New Source Review remained, it’s now being completely eviscerated,” said John Stanton, a senior attorney at the advocacy group Clear the Air.
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