Category Archives: Human Interest
New Orleans is buzzing with anticipation this morning as we prepare for tonight’s North American “red carpet” premiere of The Big Fix – the jaw-dropping exposé on the Gulf oil spill that has BP and our federal government running for cover. Co-directors of the highly anticipated film, Josh Tickell and his wife Rebecca, are returning home with a rallying cry for the Gulf Coast that will be heard all the [...]
Read More »The World Health Organization (WHO) announced this past week that cell phone use may cause brain cancer. Although we’ve heard this rumored and bandied about before, the official WHO report has created quite the international stir. Frankly, I’m not at all surprised by the disclosure. A debate has been simmering for years about whether cell phone makers have misrepresented the risks inherent in the use of their products. And I’ve [...]
Read More »I traveled to France last weekend to see the much-ballyhooed world premiere of the BP oil spill documentary The Big Fix at the Cannes Film Festival. I can’t offer enough praise. It’s a brilliant piece of work, exceeding all hype and expectation. The audience at the screening I attended was completely blown away by both the stunning cinematography and the jaw-dropping evidence that the BP spill involved a coverup at [...]
Read More »It’s been more than a year since BP’s runaway Macondo Well began filling the northern waters of the Gulf of Mexico with more than 200 million gallons of sweet crude, fouling shorelines from Louisiana’s marshes to the Florida Panhandle. As our nation’s worst man-made environmental disaster unfolded, it quickly became the lead story of the summer – with photos of oiled birds and video of gushing oil entrancing the American [...]
Read More »NEW ORLEANS – Relatives of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are flying over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, back to the epicenter of the worst offshore oil spill in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, on land, vigils were scheduled in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to mark the spill. On the night of April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, a rig operated by Transocean [...]
Read More »GULF SHORES, Alabama – An oil spill victim police who police said had his claim denied threatened to kill everyone inside a local claims office. Police aren’t releasing the man’s name because he’s now in custody at a psychiatric hospital, but say the man threatened to kill himself, then open fire at a Gulf Coast Claims Facility. Police put out a “BOLO” or Be on the Lookout” radio transmission and [...]
Read More »FORT WALTON BEACH – Staff’s Restaurant has been a fixture downtown for nearly 100 years. These days it doesn’t look like it will make it to its centennial. Fifth generation family members blame the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a long wait for claims money from BP and fewer customers for putting them on the brink of closure. “We’ve been through the Great Depression, hurricanes and economic hard times, but the [...]
Read More »With the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill upon us, we’re seeing a torrent of “follow-up” and “one-year review” stories on the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history. I’ve been struck by the disparity between what I see and read in the media and what I see down here on the ground everyday in my home state of Louisiana and other parts of the Gulf Coast – sick [...]
Read More »BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. – By October, Tim Nguyen found that his work in a Mississippi shipyard was no longer paying the bills. His hours had been cut back, part of the general ebb of work along the Gulf Coast after the terrible summer of BP. Mr. Nguyen went to an office of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which was set up to administer BP’s $20 billion fund for coastal [...]
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