Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
Baghdad is hot at the moment and water cools people off and quenches thirst but, Ashraf Khalil writes in an August 4 Los Angeles Times article, "Typhoid and hepatitis E are running rampant through Sadr City [an area is Baghdad] this summer, as residents rely heavily on a sewage-tainted water supply to endure temperatures of 115 degrees and up. The outbreak has strained local healthcare facilities and left Health Ministry officials able to only guess at the scope of the problem."
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"Children fret because they can’t sleep. Adults grow irritable. There’s no water because electric pumps don’t work. Food spoils without refrigeration. Water stored in rooftop cisterns spurts from taps scalding hot," The Statesman Journal writes of the situation facing the people of Iraq in an August 8 editorial. "Iraqis are glad to be free of Saddam Hussein, true. In many ways, however, people’s daily lives are far more difficult than under the old regime."
"Construction of BP's controversial $3bn (£1.6bn) oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Turkey resumed only after the intervention of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, and other senior members of the Bush administration, it has emerged," Saeed Shah writes in today's Independent. "Work on the strategically important scheme, led by BP, was halted in a region of Georgia in July while the government there sought assurances on 'security' concerns."
