Quake aid falling short, says U.N.
Muzaffarabad, Pakistan The top U.N. relief coordinator warned Thursday that bold initiatives like the Berlin Airlift are needed to save as many as 3 million people left homeless by the South Asian earthquake as winter approaches in the Himalayas.
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, reported three quake survivors died of tetanus, reinforcing fears that disease and infected injuries could drive the 79,000 death toll far higher.
Jan Egeland, the U.N. relief coordinator, appealed to NATO and other potential donors to step in with an army of helicopters to fly in relief supplies and evacuate perhaps hundreds of thousands of people.
“The world is not doing enough,” Egeland said in Geneva. “We should be able to do this.”
He called for “a second Berlin air bridge” — nonstop flights reminiscent of the U.S. and British airlift of essential supplies into West Berlin in the late 1940s when Soviet troops blocked the city’s road links to the West for nearly 11 months.
“We thought that the tsunami was as bad as it could get. This is worse,” Egeland said.
DeLay booked for money laundering
Houston Rep. Tom DeLay turned himself in Thursday at the sheriff’s office and was fingerprinted, photographed and released on $10,000 bail on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
Accompanied by his attorney, Dick DeGuerin, the former House majority leader showed up about midday, appeared before a judge and was gone in less than 30 minutes, sheriff’s Lt. John Martin said.
“Now Ronnie Earle has the mugshot he wanted,” DeGuerin said, referring to the Travis County district attorney who brought the charges. DeLay and his lawyer have accused the district attorney of trying to make headlines for himself.
The Texas Republican is scheduled to make his first court appearance today in Austin. The charges forced DeLay to give up his House leadership post.
Stevens indignantly defends bridge projects
Washington In a clash of generations and political philosophy, 37-year Senate veteran Ted Stevens of Alaska told a freshman colleague that he would resign and “be taken out of here on a stretcher” if the Senate killed funding for two Alaskan bridges.
“It is an offense, a threat to every person in my state,” the 81-year-old Stevens said of the proposal by fellow Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to eliminate some $450 million in federal funds for Alaskan bridges and shift $75 million to a Louisiana bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
The dispute temporarily brought the Senate to a halt as Republican and Democratic leaders sought to intercede between Stevens, the Senate president pro tempore who is renowned for winning projects for his state, and Coburn, who was elected to the Senate last year on a platform of slashing the size of government and ending old-school pork barrel spending.
The Senate later rejected the Coburn measure, 82-15.