July 31, 2007 4:38

No Justice for New Orleans

Two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the buildings of New Orleans and ripped up the fabric of the city's social identity, authorities are still struggling to restore a fundamental element of law and order. In one telling account, the LA Times recounts how the city DA recently dropped charges murder charges "against a man alleged to have massacred five teenagers, saying the sole witness was nowhere to be found" only for a furious police chief to produce the suspect after just a three hour search. The "criminal justice system continues to be plagued by political backbiting, inexplicable communication breakdowns and, in some cases, outright incompetence," writes the paper.

The United States could be gearing up for a new generation of government-subsidized nuclear power plants says the New York Times. As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers "the first application to build a new U.S. nuclear power plant in three decades" the NYT writes that a "provision buried in the Senate’s recently passed energy bill, inserted without debate at the urging of the nuclear power industry, could make builders of new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees".

From nuclear to oil and surely one of the great ironies of CO2-driven climate change. With Arctic sea ice in retreat, oil companies are licking their lips at the prospect of a new black gold rush in a region that may hold up to 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Both Canada and Russia are talking up land claims to the Arctic and so the Bush administration wants "Congress [to] approve a [1982 international] treaty that helps determine who has rights to the area's wealth," says USA Today. "We've been watching as other countries are actively pursuing their own interests," says a State Department lawyer.