Dear Slog,
I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long for news. I was still on a couch early this morning. It was covered in blankets from Mexico.
Headlines!
Oil: leaking into the Yellowstone River. ExxonMobil says that one of their pipelines sprung a leak, putting about 1,000 barrels’ worth of crude right in the middle of a natural treasure.
Libya: nearly free of Qaddafi. Libya’s rebels are on the verge of capturing Tripoli; they’re encouraging the dictator to step down for better treatment after the end of the revolution.
Assistance to Gazans: might be delivered by Greeks. Gaza, the occupied Palestinian territory that’s been blockaded by Israel for several years, is in dire need of food, building, and medical supplies (the vast majority of Gazans survive on food aid). A flotilla of ships crewed by activists, similar to the flotilla of ships that was raided by Isareli commandos, was unable to leave Greece because the ships all developed mysterious malfunctions (some suspect Israeli sabotage). The Greek government has offered to move the supplies the activists plan to deliver to Gaza.
Fisher Communications: the local broadcaster, which owns KOMO and a number of other radio and TV stations, is fighting against a hostile takeover and other financial shenanigans.
Alaskan cruises: expected to be less popular than previous years. The Port of Seattle projects that the drop in passengers will force the city’s economy to lose out on more than $50 million in tourism revenue.
Thai elections: resulted in a victory for the faction founded by Thaksin Shinawatra, the exiled former prime minister. Thai politics have turned violent and divisive in recent years; governments led by Thaksin’s allies have been overthrown by the military, with the powerful constitutional monarchy’s tacit assent.
Hama, Syria: seemingly targeted by government troops. The army, including a force of tanks, is massing to retake the rebellious city, which the government recently evacuated.
Go eat soup.
Excuses are like assholes. We all have one and they all stink.
Not to pick on one hung over news intern, but you made two statements in the article while providing no link to substantiate them:
1. Libya is “nearly free of Qaddafi”. How did you come to that conclusion from the article you linked?
2. Flotilla “ships all developed mysterious malfunctions (some suspect Israeli sabotage)” The article you linked said nothing of the sort, and Google didn’t really give any authoritative links either.
James Brown is cool, but Jim Morrison died 40 years ago today. A Doors video would have been better.
Um, this part of the Yellowstone River is about 300 miles downriver from Yellowstone National Park. No geysers or bison or tourist dollars are at risk.
@4 who mentioned anything about the park? the river itself is quite a treasure, and you’d better believe a shit ton of tourist dollars are at risk. the city of laurel has a 50k+ person attendance for their fireworks display on the 4th and this could perhaps harm their tourist dollars for the holiday if parts of the city stay evacuated, or if the local gov’t decides to not let anything explode that close to a huge oil spill.
Damn you people have cranky commentry today. Happy pre-Fourth!
Gaza hasn’t been occupied for years (it had been under siege for quite some time, until the egyptians overthrew their government). The border through egypt is open now so any attempts to land via sea at this point are simply attempts at PR. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but it is what it is.
If you’re going to complain about the actions of israelis at least have the decency to complain about things they’re actually doing (like the fact that the west bank is occupied right now).
Mexican blankets, that explains it.
@4 “in the middle of” does not imply that the river itself is the natural treasure. I think it’s fairly obvious the intern just had a geography goof. And the only part affected is the stretch between Laurel and Billings, which is a pleasant enough city river (for a river that’s surrounded by oil refineries and coal plants), but it’s not the wildlife paradise and fishing mecca other parts of the river are. Calling it a “treasure” requires a pretty broad definition of treasure.
And the fireworks have a BNSF mainline, I-90 and a huge refinery between them and the river. I doubt the spill is going to affect that other than putting a bit of a damper on the celebration.
Unpaid Intern. I bet you’ll be making a trip to the STD Clinic in a couple of weeks to treat the scabies you picked up off those Mexican blankets.
I nominate 5280 to do the morning news next weekend.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Libya is still not free, and Thailand has it’s first woman Prime Minister (source CBC with cool vids)
ugg troll is ugg…ly?
@13 somebody needs to do something.