MONDAY, AUGUST 25

The final week of what has been a record-breakingly beautiful August got off to an excruciatingly fucked-up start today as news groups across the nation reported the deadly van crash that claimed the lives of eight Oregon firefighters. Part of a 19-member crew deployed by Roseburg, Oregon's First Strike Environmental, the eight crash victims--aged 19 to 28--were driving home last night after two weeks of fighting fires in Idaho when their van crossed a double-yellow line on Eastern Oregon's Highway 20 and ran head-on into a semitrailer; the resulting explosion was so severe that all eight casualties had to be identified by dental records. Last night's crash is the second such tragedy to strike Pacific Northwest fire crews within the past 15 months. In June 2002, five firefighters from La Grande, Oregon, died when their van rolled over in Colorado, and yesterday's crash raises the number of Northwest firefighters killed by highway accidents in the past 15 months to 13--a shocking figure made even more so when compared with the number of Northwest firefighters killed fighting fires in the past 15 months, specified by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as two.

-- In other existentially disquieting news: Today in England, the state-funded hospital in Oxford found itself awash in controversy after offering a black woman a white foot. Reuters reports that 46-year-old Ingrid Nicholls was awaiting amputation of her lower leg when hospital staff informed her she could either have a free white prosthetic foot (paid for by the National Health Service) or special-order a custom prosthetic foot matching her skin tone for $4,500. Lucky for her and us, Ingrid Nicholls alerted the press, whose flogging of the kooky-yet-culturally-instructive news tip prompted the hospital to retract its offer of an improperly hued foot and fit Ms. Nicholls with an appropriate limb courtesy of National Health.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26

Last week, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency released a quietly horrifying report revealing the White House's efforts to mislead the public after September 11--specifically, instructing the EPA to assure New Yorkers the city's air was safe to breathe before any reliable information on air quality was available. (A subsequent study reported in Salon found that New York businesses conducting their own environmental assessments discovered "alarming" levels of dangerous pollutants, from asbestos to dioxins [birth-defect-causing carcinogens that also damage the nervous system].) What should prove to be decades of moral outrage and legal backlash got off to a bracing start today in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, where writer Paul Krugman eloquently blasted the EPA for "systematically [misleading] New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health... under pressure from the White House." Krugman also denounces the Bush administration for failing to make good on promises of aid to terror-struck New York City, then issues what could be remembered as the words that led to the Republican Riot of 2004: "The people running Washington, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of whatever they feel like doing, have treated the city that bore the brunt of the actual attack very shabbily. In September 2004 the Republicans will hold their nominating convention in New York. Will New Yorkers take the occasion to remind them about how the city was lied to and shortchanged?"

-- Also today: This summer's hottest trend--sadistic child abuse--made a raging comeback, inspiring not one but two headlines. In Phoenix, a couple was arrested after police discovered their five-year-old twin sons locked in a makeshift cage containing the requisite feces-and-urine-stained mattress and a whole bunch of roaches. The Associated Press reports that the boys--who are neither toilet-trained nor able to speak--have been placed in state custody while their parents are held on suspicion of child abuse and kidnapping. Meanwhile in Indianapolis, a 33-year-old mother and two of her female friends were arrested after police discovered the woman's three children--ages six, eight, and 10--malnourished and covered with rashes after reportedly being forced to spend an undetermined amount of time drinking vinegar, eating hot peppers, and taking cold showers as punishment. The Indianapolis Star reports that the kids were discovered after a neighbor alerted police to "banging and screaming" coming from their apartment; at the scene, police arrested mother Mary Corrigan and friends Edee Mowrer, 36, and Julie Watson, 27, on preliminary charges of child neglect. (Creepy fact #1: Not only did these women think to "punish" the children by making them drink vinegar and eat peppers, they strategically gave the kids acid- reducing gum to offset the effects of said vinegar and peppers. Creepy fact #2: Mom Mary Corrigan is a former employee of Indianapolis' Baptist Children's Home and Family Ministries.)

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27

From the inexplicable evils of the U.S. we turn to the enlightened rationality and/or wussiness of France, where today the government floated an idea to finance health care for the elderly by making people work on a national holiday. Such a plan has worked for Germany, where citizens have been working on November's Day of Penance and Prayer since 1995, with social taxes from the extra workday going to help care for German old folks. The issue is particularly poignant in the wake of France's recent heat wave, which claimed thousands of French lives and inspired sharp criticism of the French government, which many felt responded too slowly to the tragedy unfolding before their eyes. "It's a very important, very strong symbol," said French Secretary of State for War Veterans Hamlaoui Mekachera to the Associated Press, describing the abolition of a national holiday as proof that France is ready to make sacrifices to better care for the vulnerable. "The gesture of solidarity is more important than the financial gesture... so that we never witness again what we saw." Whether or not France decides to forgo a holiday, the fact that the French government even pays lip service to things like "gestures of solidarity" and "the vulnerable" makes Last Days envious and swoony.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28

Nothing happened today (unless you count the broadcast of MTV's 2003 Video Music Awards, highlighted by the onstage, open-mouthed kissing of both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera by Madonna, the canniest non-musical maneuver the latter's made since Truth or Dare, and the greatest TV moment since Bob Dole fell off that platform in 1996).

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29

Today brought the arrest of Blaster.B: Jeffrey Lee Parson, a 6-foot-4, 320-pound 18-year-old from Hopkins, Minnesota, in connection with the hot e-mail virus. Today also brought the crowning of a new Pizzazz! champion: the Opera Diva, a high-tech, high-concept performance artist (with invaluable backup) who turned the packed house at the Bagley Wright Theatre into a howling mob of maniacal foot-stompers and should be hired by Teatro ZinZanni immediately.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30

Nothing happened today (unless you count the innumerable fascinating things that undoubtedly happened at Bumbershoot).

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31

Ditto (ditto).

Next week, Teresa. Everyone else, send Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com .