Report: Blackwater created shell companies

WASHINGTON (AP) — The security company Blackwater Worldwide formed a network of 30 shell companies and subsidiaries to try to get millions of dollars in government business after the company faced strong criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, The New York Times reported Friday. The newspaper said that it was unclear how many of the created companies got American contracts but that at least three of them obtained work with the U.S. military and the CIA. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has asked the Justice Department to see whether Blackwater misled the government when…

Flight attendants face soaring tension in the unfriendly skies

On one 12-hour flight, Libby Rehm of Estes Park, Colo., had the bad luck to be in a seat with a broken armrest that set off the flight attendant call button if she leaned on it. Attendants “kept getting mad at me” instead of being sympathetic, she reports. Dev Norwood of Stockbridge, Ga., watched a fellow flier try to work while a child dropped toys over the man’s seatback. The mother refused to step in, and a flight attendant told the man “he should be more tolerant,” Norwood reports. Jean Rowley of Huntington Beach, Calif., recalls a crewmember who bashed a sleeping passenger’s …

New test may ‘revolutionize TB care,’ diagnosing

Scientists are reporting a major advance in diagnosing tuberculosis: A new test can reveal in less than two hours, with very high accuracy, whether someone has the disease and if it’s resistant to the main drug for treating it. The test could revolutionize TB care and replace the 125-year-old process used now, which is slow and misses more than half of all cases, experts say. A better test would be a powerful tool to curb TB in poor countries, where most people spread the lung disease before they are …

U.S. changes military commanders in Iraq

RAMADI, Iraq (AP) — The United States changed commanders in Iraq Wednesday, beginning the final phase of American military involvement in the country despite political uncertainty and persistent violence. The transfer of authority came a day after President Obama announced the shift from combat operations to preparing Iraqi forces to assume responsibility for their own security. Obama made clear in Tuesday’s speech that this was no victory celebration. A six-month stalemate over forming a new Iraqi government has raised concerns about the country’s stability and questions over whether the leadership can cope with a diminished but still dangerous insurgency. Newly promoted Army Gen. Lloyd Austin also maintained a somber tone as he took the reins of the some 50,000 American troops who remain in…

Obama: New Orleans will be rebuilt

NEW ORLEANS — Five years after failed levees and a slow federal response wrought disaster here, people in this once-drowned city and across the Gulf Coast remembered the catastrophic floods of Hurricane Katrina with candlelight vigils, parades and a visit from the president. President Obama, in town Sunday for the five-year remembrance, promised the government will help finish rebuilding New Orleans. The rebuilding will bring the city improved schools, health care and housing, making it a better place than it was before Katrina, Obama told an invitation-only audience at Xavier University. He called the federal response to Katrina in 2005 a “shameful breakdown in government.” PHOTOS, VIDEOS: Katrina’s effects 5 years later MISSISSIPPI: Residents unable, unwilling to rebuild POST-KATRINA: Scandals linger …

Chile miners must move tons of rocks in rescue

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile (AP) — The 33 trapped Chilean miners who have astonished the world with their discipline a half mile underground will have to aid their own escape — clearing thousands of tons of rock that will fall as the rescue hole is drilled, the engineer in charge of drilling said Sunday. After drilling three small bore holes in recent weeks to create lines of communication with the miners and deliver basic food and medicine, Chile’s state-owned Codelco mining company will begin boring a rescue hole Monday afternoon that will be wide…

Mortgage brokers are becoming a vanishing breed

INDIANAPOLIS — Most of the mortgage brokers that seemed to populate every office building and commercial street in cities nationwide just five years ago have vanished. Ken Blaudow, owner of Indy Mortgage had 85 employees originating home loans in 2003. Now he has three and is about to give up his leased office in Castleton, Ind., and move his company into two bedrooms of his house. “It’s drastically down,” he said of his industry. “And there are a lot of funky new rules.” Much of the decline has come from the implosion…

New Orleans’ progress mixed with pain

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans notes improvements five years since Katrina horrifically altered landscape, psyche NEW ORLEANS — From jazz funerals to block parties to solemn church memorials, residents across the Gulf Coast are planning a medley of events to remember the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina five years ago this weekend. For many, this weekend is a painful reminder of Aug. 29, 2005, when Katrina made landfall in southern Louisiana, leading to levee breaks that flooded 80% of New Orleans, killed at least 1,800 Gulf Coast residents and caused more than $100 billion …

Food-safety experts: Finding an outbreak’s source not easy

Government food-safety experts say they are in a tough spot when it comes to publicly fingering a product or company in an outbreak such as the one currently linked to a half-billion eggs distributed across the USA. “The mantra is: You have to be fast and right. You can never be fast enough, and you always have to be right,” says Ian Williams, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s outbreak response branch. …

FDA chief on salmonella: Agency needs more authority

Food and Drug Administration chief Margaret Hamburg said Monday her agency is limited by law to a mostly reactive stance on food safety and argued that it needs a more “preventive approach.” Giving a series of network interviews in the wake of the egg and salmonella breakout, Hamburg said the FDA is taking the issue “very, very seriously.” At the same time, she said Congress should pass pending legislation that would provide her agency with greater enforcement power, including new authority over imported food. “We need better abilities and authorities to put in place these preventive controls and hold companies accountable,” Hamburg said as she…

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