| Puget Sound: the silent crisis
The new state agency created to restore and protect Puget Sound needs your help to return a beloved, complex body of water to robust health. Puget Sound Partnership is holding an opening series of workshops in nine communities to acquaint the public with the current condition of the Sound and identify the greatest threats to it.Information collected will be used to help develop an action agenda to be presented next fall to Gov. Christine Gregoire. A fundamental challenge for David Dicks, executive director of the Partnership, is convincing Puget Sound residents there is a problem. The scenic beauty of the Sound belies deeper, persistent problems. An updated report, State of the Sound 2007, describes the current condition "to be one of decline, with continuing harms to the clean water, abundant habitat and intact natural processes that are the foundations of a healthy environment." All of us have to better understand the problem before we see our own role in helping solve what the report portrays as a "silent crisis." Restoring Puget Sound means rethinking some of how we live, work and play along its shores and near the waterways that feed into it.
For an impoverished beauty queen, a stark choice: sex work or no work
What Natasha does on the bed in the dingy room with flaking orange paint so shames her she cannot bring herself to use the word. She calls it "so and so" and sells it here from midday to midnight, six days a week. On a very good day she makes £45. With each 30-minute session earning £2.50 that works out at 18 different men, many drunk, some violent. She tries to forget the very good days. "I don't want to be with a strange man who wants to kiss your whole body. Some suck you up and leave red marks. It's ugly." Natasha shuddered. "Ugly, ugly, ugly." Three years ago she won two beauty contests and was runner-up in another two, including Miss Best Legs, on Nicaragua's impoverished Caribbean coast. With dreams of modelling she boarded a bus for the distant capital, Managua.
Romney opens up Republican race
Other contenders, including former Law and Order actor Fred Thompson, and Mr Giuliani, ranked in low single figures. Campaigning under the slogan "Washington Is Broken", a triumphant Mr Romney said a win had appeared impossible just a week ago, but the people of this beleaguered state had backed his call for change. "We are celebrating here in Michigan, I can tell you. Guess what they are doing in Washington? They are worrying," Mr Romney said. "Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism." Hillary Clinton won a "dead rubber" Democratic primary vote with 56 per cent of the vote. But her main opponents, Barack Obama and John Edwards, had withdrawn from the race when the national party punished state for moving its primary to an earlier date.
In Defense of Incandescence
Let us now praise incandescence—and, while we're at it, let's damn fluorescence. Last year a woman compiling a unique kind of anthology asked me for a contribution. She was getting a number of writers to do essays about one word, their single favorite word. An intriguing assignment. But months went by, and whenever I thought of it I just couldn't make up my mind. I couldn't commit myself to a single word (spare me the psychologizing, please). I missed the deadline. .
July 2007
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Children starve as Zimbabwe's grain goes to make luxury dog food
In a chilling threat last week, war veterans, who spearheaded the invasion of white-owned farms, said they were launching an "onslaught" to ensure his ruling Zanu-PF party wins. The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association said its members were "on a mission to defend our motherland".The MDC says it will boycott the polls unless Mr Mugabe agrees to adopt a new constitution ahead of the vote.Changes to Zimbabwe's media, security and electoral laws were rushed through parliament at the end of 2007. They became law on 11 January.Sources say the media amendments will be put to the test in coming weeks as foreign journalists seek visas and state media accreditation to visit Zimbabwe for the elections. In the recent past, foreign journalists have routinely been denied access. .
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton trade blows as Wisonsin decides
Attention is focusing on Wisconsin, which offers 74 convention delegates and an early test of who can galvanise support in industrial states ahead of an even more crucial contest in Ohio next month. There are also 20 delegates at stake in Hawaii's caucuses, a state where Mr Obama grew up but neither candidate has campaigned in person. After eight successive defeats, Mrs Clinton has made a belated effort to stem Mr Obama's tide in Wisconsin where a big slice of the electorate are the white and working class - groups which have largely voted for her in other elections. .
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