BAGHDAD, Iraq - A torrent of raw sewage from east Baghdad roars from a giant pipe into a tributary of the Tigris River. With a rancid stench that saturates the area, the stuff has been pouring into Iraq's main waterway since the U.S. military action to oust Saddam Hussein last year.

"People are now basically drinking raw sewage anywhere downstream from Baghdad, which is much of the population."

The public health dangers range from cholera to minor stomach problems. “There is more diarrhea, there is more skin disease, there is more eye disease, there are more health problems.”

The coalition forces and their civilian counterparts were supposed to be fixing the sewage system of Iraq and millions of dollars have been budgeted for the work.

In addition, a massive $18 billion reconstruction package passed by Congress in November of 2003 set aside $675 million in taxpayer funds for sewage projects.

The sewage treatment plant came to a complete standstill after the 2003 U.S. military action. Iraqis say it had worked until then.

The Tigris River

Shortly after the U.S. military occupied Iraq, the United Nations attempted to repair the plant, at no cost to U.S. taxpayers. But in the summer of 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority asked the U.N. experts to abandon their work.

A year later, even though the sewage is not being processed at Rustamiya, the reconstruction funds have been.

In the summer of 2003 the United States Agency for International Development assigned Bechtel Corp. to the case.

$5.75 million came from USAID – American taxpayer funds that is -- for Bechtel to get started on Rustamiya, and another $9 million for another sewage facility named Kerkh in Western Baghdad.

USAID government awarded Bechtel an extra $6 million as a fee to oversee any contractors hired by the CPA.

During an unannounced visit eight months after work supposedly started -- there was no heavy equipment, no laborers or replacement parts for the pumps and machinery at the Rustamiya site.

From Magdalene_Papillion

By William Lobdell Times Staff Writer

Televangelist Paul Crouch has waged a fierce legal battle to prevent Enoch Lonnie Ford, a former employee, from publicizing allegations that he and Crouch had a sexual encounter eight years ago.

Schwarzenegger outlaws sex with corpses

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia.

The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia in the state and will help prosecutors who have been stymied by the lack of an official ban on the practice, according to experts.

TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (Reuters)  -Residents of an ancient Mexican city protested on Saturday at the construction of a Wal-Mart store on the edge of the ruins. The sprawling warehouse-style Bodega Aurrera, a unit of Wal-Mart in Mexico, is due to open in December in Teotihuacan, a major archeological site outside Mexico City.

Mexico's government this month said a small pre-Hispanic altar was found buried at the construction site. Plans call for preserving the small structure under plexiglass in what will be the store's parking lot.

Day-old babies have eyes for a pretty face
By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 06/09/2004)

Beauty does not lie in the eye of the beholder - it is hardwired into the brains of babies long before birth, according to research.

Scientists have shown that babies as young as one day old prefer to gaze at photographs of pretty faces than ugly ones.

The discovery suggests that people are born with a innate sense of what features are attractive, and challenges the idea that notions of beauty are culturally determined.

Dr Alan Slater, a psychologist, and colleagues at Exeter University carried out the experiments on 100 babies in the first few days after birth.

He showed the infants pairs of photographs of faces that had already been rated on an attractiveness scale of one to 10 by adults. A hidden observer recorded how long the babies spent looking at the images.

The babies, whose ages ranged from a day to a week old, consistently spent longer gazing at the faces judged to be attractive.

"Attractiveness is not in the eye of the beholder, but it is in the brain of the newborn right from birth and possibly before,"' said Dr Slater. Dr Slater believes that the reason for the babies' preferences lies in the link between attractive faces and "typical" faces.

"If you take an average of faces, the result is an extremely attractive individual," said Dr Slater.

"Evolution has built into the developing visual system of babies some innate representation of the typical face which correspondents to an attractive face. The preference in babies for an attractive face is because it most closely resembles the prototype that teaches them what a face is in the first place."

With several Senators absent, the Republican Senate leadership is planning to slip in a vote on the flag desecration amendment - a measure that would not otherwise pass. But due to these absences, this proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- which has already passed in the House -- has a real chance of passing in the Senate. The Senate vote will be extremely close and we need you to tell your Senators to oppose this dangerous amendment.

Click here to take action now!

-ACLU

 McDonald's franchisees in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Brainerd, Minn., and Norwood, Mass., recently began outsourcing their drive-thru order-taking to a call center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Thus, a Big Mac order shouted into a microphone in Missouri gets typed into a computer in Colorado (and a digital photograph of the customer's car is taken in order to reduce errors) and then clicked back to the originating restaurant's kitchen, which has the order ready in less time (30 seconds less, on average, with fewer errors) than the average McDonald's takes.

-News of the Weird

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nearly half of the more than 1,000 screened rescue workers who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks suffer from new or exacerbated respiratory, mental and other health problems, according to a CDC report released on Thursday.

A similar study from the GAO noted that many rescue workers suffer wheezing, shortness of breath, sinusitis, asthma and a syndrome called "WTC cough."  

Nearly half of the 1,138 people screened had problems that either began or worsened after being exposed to the dust, airborne toxins and pollutants unleashed by the collapsed buildings.

The CDC said that only 21% of the workers and volunteers participating in the screening program had appropriate respiratory protection between Sept. 11 and Sept. 14, 2001, the days when the impact of dust, diesel exhaust, pulverized cement, glass fibers and asbestos was considered the greatest.