Cross Country
A Tragic End in a Snowy Wilderness
Hopes of a joyful reunion for a California family stranded for days in the snowy Oregon wilderness were dashed last week, when the body of James Kim was found in a creek. Kim had left his family behind in the car to go search for help. "Most of us breathed and lived this for days," Josephine County Under Sheriff Brian Anderson said in Merlin, Ore. "You do take it personally." Two days earlier, James's wife, Kati, and daughters, Penelope, 4, and 7-month-old Sabine, had been rescued. The family apparently missed a freeway turnoff and wound up on a mountain road that is not plowed in the winter. To stay warm, the family used the car heater, then burned tires when the gasoline ran out. Kati Kim nursed the children to keep them alive. An autopsy revealed that James Kim, an editor for the technology media company CNET Networks Inc., died of hypothermia.
Actually, Hold the Onions, Please
Public-health officials were scrambling to find the culprit in an E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell restaurants that had sickened more than 50 people and counting, mostly in a few mid-Atlantic states. On Wednesday, the Mexican fast-food chain owned by Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands announced that green onions would be removed from its 5,800 establishments nationwide because some samples tested positive for the bacteria E. coli 0157:H7. The strain, which recently contaminated supermarket-brand spinach, can cause severe cramps, diarrhea, and, in some cases, kidney failure. "These results might help point us in the right direction," says Taco Bell spokesperson Will Bortz. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasized that the tests were preliminary and "no specific food has been implicated yet." Government scientists are looking at everything from cilantro to cheddar cheese to ground beef. In Trenton, the New Jersey state health department ordered all the state's Taco Bells to sanitize, discard their food, and restock; the Garden State had more than 30 of the cases. But officials stopped short of recommending a total ban until the contaminated source is found.
Seeing Red at the Firehouse
The first openly lesbian head of a major municipal fire department was reportedly on the verge of losing her job last week, amid a flurry of lawsuits and an investigation of her job performance. Bonnie Bleskachek says it was unfair of Minneapolis to settle two of the suits brought by women who accused her of sexual favoritism. "This is all based on conjecture and hurt feelings," she told the Washington Post.
The Twin Cities scandal is only one of many that have dogged firehouses nationwide. The Dallas Black Firefighters Association sued the city this year for pervasive discrimination against minorities and women; five female paramedics sued the New York Fire Department for discrimination. In Los Angeles, meanwhile, Douglas Barry was named interim fire chief-the first black to hold the position. His priority? Ending "hazing and horseplay" in the station (evidenced by a fireman suing the city over a prank in which his dinner was laced with dog food) and curbing the department's documented "history of discrimination and exclusion."
A River Runs Through It-Again
With the turn of a valve that opened an aqueduct gate in the Sierra Nevadas, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sought to make up with a once green valley that was drained dry by the city's thirst. In Independence, Calif., water gushed into the lower Owens River for the first time since the early 1900s, when L.A.'s founders diverted the flow toward the budding metropolis-a water grab dramatized in the 1974 film Chinatown.
After decades of animosity, lawsuits, and broken promises between the city and the valley, Villaraigosa helped launch one of the country's largest river restoration plans-one that will provide a steady flow of water to 62 miles of the river. "Los Angeles is prepared to own up to its history," he said. But the nation's second-largest city will now have to look elsewhere for water. Conservation might not be enough, and the City of Angels may have to tap some other sources, like the Colorado River.
The Warhorse and the Long Goodbye
It should have been a breeze moving the famed USS Intrepid aircraft carrier from its New York home, on a Hudson River pier, to its new digs in New Jersey just across the way. But it was anything but. In early November, the massive battlewagon buried its keel in thick river mud as tugs tried to back all 36,000 tons of it away from the pier. Millions of dollars in dredging-which removed almost 40,000 cubic yards of mud-was supposed to have solved the problem as the tugs tried for the second time last week. But again it dug in, slipping free only after one tug began to prod at its stern. The Intrepid even fought its rescuers near ground zero, refusing, at first, to unfurl a giant American flag. Eventually, though, Old Glory flourished. Maybe the old World War II veteran just didn't want to go. It'll be dry-docked for repairs and repainting for the next two years in Bayonne, N.J. That's not quite the same thing as entertaining tourists in the Big Apple.
With Will Sullivan, Deborah Kotz, Alex Kingsbury, Danielle Knight, Kit R. Roane and Associated Press
This story appears in the December 18, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.