GAO says FEMA squandering aid
The government is squandering tens of millions of dollars in Hurricane Katrina disaster aid, in some cases doling out housing payments to people living rent-free, investigators said Wednesday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has recouped less than 1 percent of the $1 billion that investigators contend it squandered on fraudulent assistance, according to the Government Accountability Office. Its report shows the disaster relief agency’s struggles, one year after the deadly storm, to rush aid to those in need while also preventing abuse.
In its latest report, the GAO found that numerous applicants received duplicate rental aid. In one case, FEMA provided free apartments to 10 people in Plano, Texas, while sending them $46,000 for out-of-pocket housing expenses.
FEMA spokesman Pat Philbin did not challenge the findings. He did say the agency has sought to upgrade the registration process and strengthen its procedures for verifying names and addresses.
New York
Conservative Jews OK gay rabbis
A panel of rabbis gave permission Wednesday for same-sex commitment ceremonies and ordination of gays within Conservative Judaism, a wrenching change for a movement that occupies the middle ground between orthodoxy and liberalism in Judaism.
The complicated decision by the Conservatives Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards leaves it up to individual seminaries whether to ordain gay rabbis and gives individual rabbis the option of sanctioning same-sex unions.
Reform Judaism, the largest branch of the faith in the United States, has ordained openly gay men and lesbians since 1990 and has allowed its rabbis to perform same-sex commitment ceremonies since 2000. Orthodox Judaism does not countenance same-sex relationships or the ordination of gay rabbis.
Though stopping short of endorsing same-sex marriage, the rabbis wanted to allow commitment ceremonies “because in Jewish sexual ethics, promiscuity is not acceptable either by heterosexuals or by homosexuals, and we do in fact have both a Jewish and a social and a medical need to try to confirm those unions,” said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, one of the authors of the change.
Milwaukee
Three killed in factory explosion
An explosion that may have started in a large propane tank flattened an industrial warehouse near downtown Milwaukee on Wednesday, killing at least three people and injuring 46 others.
The fiery blast at the Falk Corp. factory flipped cars, hurled debris into the air and forced the evacuation of dozens of workers at the plant, which makes large industrial gears and couplings. Burning rubble was spread over several blocks.
Fire officials had not determined the cause of the blast.