Money Woes Undercut Hopes for Clean Water
From the algae blooms in Lake Erie to the invading zebra mussels in Lake Michigan, threats to the Great Lakes ecology stretch from A to Z. That would include B for bacteria, M for mercury and T for toxic spills.
Chicago beaches close routinely because of E. coli contamination. Advisories are in place about eating fish contaminated with dangerous chemicals. Environmental advocates warn about sewage overflows, water diversion and the increasing demands of a thirsty population.
After many years of haphazard government stewardship, a broad study effort convened by the administration discovered much agreement on the vast water system’s troubles. The problem is the cost. A draft report released in July suggested spending $20 billion in the coming years — several times more than current expenditures, and more than influential members of the Bush administration consider affordable.
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A few weeks ago, Neil French, a well-known advertising executive, told 300 people that women “don’t make it to the top because they don’t deserve to.” He elaborated, saying that women are apt to “wimp out and go suckle something.”
Just about the same time, a new survey announced that gender stereotypes still exist in the workplace.
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Americans should drink three cups of milk a day, the government says. Kiesha Diggs ignores that advice. Diggs, who is black, is lactose-intolerant, meaning she can’t easily digest dairy products. Three cups of milk would wreak havoc on her intestines.
“Bloating, gas, diarrhea. The whole thing,” said Diggs, 36, of Atlanta.
Her sons Denzell and Armonni have the same problem. So do as many as 75 percent of African-Americans and 90 percent of Asian-Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Government dietary guidelines include advice for people with lactose intolerance that note other calcium-containing foods like fish, broccoli and fortified orange juice. But critics say information on milk alternatives is sometimes buried.
The debate was raised a notch this past month when a vegetarian advocacy group filed a lawsuit aimed at getting milk producers to label their products with a warning that milk may cause digestive problems in lactose-intolerant people.
Milk industry officials called the lawsuit frivolous, and said scaring people away from milk is not good health policy.
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People on both sides agree that it’s a public health problem, because many people who cut milk out of their diet don’t replace it with other sources of calcium and nutrients.
However, they don’t agree on how to deal with it.
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“There is no real understanding that there’s a substitute (for milk),” said [Joyce] Guinyard.
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“Since nutritionists are not ready to give up recommending milk as a nourishing food, I guess the message is to help people who see themselves as lactose-intolerant to take a cup of milk,” said David Schardt, nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
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A young bride lived long enough to tell authorities that her husband and in-laws had set her on fire for not meeting their dowry demands.
Notwithstanding the gold jewelry, color television set and other finery that served as the price of admission to her husband’s middle-class Sikh household, Charanpreet’s new relations were not satisfied with the bounty and kept demanding more, according to Charanpreet’s relatives and the statement she gave investigators before she died.
“Even before this incident my father-in-law used to put pressure on me to get more money,” said the statement by the young woman, who was three months pregnant.
Unusual only because Charanpreet lived long enough to point a finger at her alleged attackers, who claimed the fire was accidental, the case underscores the deeply entrenched nature of dowry — and its grim corollary, the murder of young brides whose families fail to ante up — even in the face of rising levels of income and education linked to India’s fast-growing economy.
In particular, the death of the young newlywed — a shy, deeply religious schoolteacher’s daughter whose husband had a college degree and worked in computer graphics — shows that the age-old practice endures even, and perhaps especially, among the educated urban middle-class.
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The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released an analysis on Friday that showed that 38.2 million Americans live in “food insecure” households, meaning that they have to cut back on food requirements because of lack of money. This represents an increase of 7 million since 1999. The number of people suffering from hunger increased by 43% since 1999, from 7.7 million to 10.6 million.
The number of people suffering from hunger and food insecurity has grown for five straight years, after declining in the 1990s.
Dr. J. Larry Brown, a leading scholarly authority on domestic hunger commented that;
This is an unexpected and even stunning outcome. This chronic level of hunger so long after the recession ended means that it is a man-made problem. Congress and the White House urgently need to address growing income inequality and the weakening of the safety net in order to get this epidemic under control.” According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty, food insecurity increased by nearly a million households from 2003 to 2004. Rates of hunger increased in almost every single category of household during the same time, with single mothers and those living in or near poverty continuing to suffer from severely high rates of both food insecurity and hunger.
Meanwhile Congress gets ready to consider cutting the fod stamp program to help pay for the war in Iraq, tax cuts, hurricane relief, and the ballooning budget deficits that have resulted.
Where are the champions of the poor?