Thursday, December 04, 2008

Auto Chiefs Plead for Money; Zimbabwe Pleads for Life

Live on CNN, auto maker execs are pleading for $34 billion. See how easily it went up from $25 billion in a matter of days.
Ford's Alan Mulally asks congress to "kick its tires." We're a good company, he said. See them beg
If we give them the money, we must kick them out. They have failed miserably. The economy isn't to blame for their failure.
These leaders have poorly run their companies for years on end while paying themselves millions. Their ignorance and greed is now in a position to effect millions of people who might lose jobs, causing an even bigger ripple in the economy. They need to not only be fired but fired in a public way. We need to make an example of them.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's pleading for help with a cholera outbreak that's threatening lives.
Seems if our former leaders (the Bush lot) of the U.S. had been bright enough, leader-ly enough, we'd be in a better position to help ourselves and the world.
HARARE (AFP) — Zimbabwe's government pleaded for international help Thursday after declaring a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 560 people a national emergency and admitting that hospitals are no longer working.
The government and doctors said hospitals needed medicines and equipment to keep health care centres going and even money to pay salaries and water treatment chemicals as the country's economic crisis bites ever harder.
According to the government and World Health Organisation, more than 560 people have died in the cholera epidemic and more than 12,500 cases recorded.
The state-run Herald newspaper said the government had declared the cholera outbreak "and the malfunctioning of central hospitals as national emergencies" on Wednesday and had appealed for international aid.
"Our central hospitals are literally not functioning," Health Minister David Parirenyatwa told a meeting of aid groups, the newspaper reported.
He put the death toll so far at 563. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Wednesday there were 565 deaths and 12,546 recorded cases.
Elsewhere, in Nigeria, people have no food and water.
Alertnet: Water, medicine and food supplies are running low for an estimated 10,000 people displaced by violence in Jos, northern Nigeria, following three days of violent clashes.
Calm has been restored to the city following sectarian violence that broke out on 27 November, but thousands of residents whose houses were burned down during the three days of fighting are still sheltering in mosques, churches, army barracks and hospitals.
"The city has virtually run out of food, water and medical supplies," Baba Hassan Ibrahim, deputy speaker of Plateau State parliament, told IRIN. "The injured and the displaced are bearing the brunt because they are surviving solely on inadequate relief items."
No medium-term government emergency programme has yet been announced for those who have lost their homes.
Jos grain market now "rubble"