News Bits
I’m gonna do a mash up of a bunch of news headlines and I’ve seen just by scrolling through my Google Reader in the last 15 minutes. Here goes nothing.
Apparently the Chinese putting lead paint in the children’s toys wasn’t enough, now they’re messing with baby formula. According to the International Herald Tribune, the second baby has died over 1200 babies have been sickened by the contaminated milk powder. The chemical additive found in the baby formula is melamine you may remember this from tainted pet food then entered the United States last year it’s the same chemical. The report calls into question weaknesses in China’s regulatory system… But are we really sure they have a regulatory system? And if so, just what kind of “regulatory” system do they have? Did not hear something about the U.S. government starting to require country of origin labels on food products? Seems to better step this up just a little bit.
O.J. Simpson is back in the news, who cares?
According to CNN it seems that since both presidential candidates are barking over their respective energy plans Congress has decided that they might want to take some action of their own. Not surprisingly the focus in the bills that are being worked on and both houses of Congress is on offshore drilling. Set to expire at the end of the year is the 200 mile ban on offshore drilling and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says she does not have the votes needed to renew the 200 mile ban. Unless Congress comes up with a compromise bill, offshore drillers will be able to begin drilling as close as 3 miles offshore. Does anyone else realize that offshore drilling isn’t going to do much for our current energy crisis? In the long run, assuming if they find oil, it might help boost production and capacity in the United States. But what is it going to do for the average Joe at the gas pump today? Not a whole heck of a lot. And we wonder why Congress’ approval rating is in the toilet… wait, no we don’t.
Computer giant HP is cutting 24,600 jobs as it integrates Electronic Data Systems Corp. Half of the job losses will come from their United States work force. My brain is fried over such a large number. 24,600 jobs?! My brain can’t even process how big of a job cut that is! I remember when MBNA got bought out by Bank of America and they started cutting jobs but I don’t think it it was even close to this scale.
I’m still trying to amass as much information as I can on the effects of Hurricane Ike in Texas. Right now my eyes are going cross eyed from the homework I’ve been doing to my for my class so I don’t feel I’ll be able to do justice to a post if I wrote it now. I’ll scour the new some more tomorrow and see if I can come up with an accurate synopsis of everything that’s happening.
That’s all for now.
