Levee failure known early, records show

Twenty-eight government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, reported that New Orleans levees were breached Aug. 29, the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, documents released Thursday show.

A timeline of e-mails, situation updates and weather reports, pieced together by Senate Democrats, indicates the Bush administration knew as early as 8:30 a.m. EST about levee failures that would ultimately lead to massive flooding of the city and its surrounding parishes.

Senate Democrats said the documents raise questions about whether the government moved quickly enough to rescue storm victims once they realized the levees had broken.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said President Bush and his top aides were fully aware of the massive flooding – and less concerned whether it was caused by levee breaches, overtopped levees or failed pumps, all three of which were being reported at the time.

Democrats said the documents showed there was little excuse for the tardy federal response.

Mineola, N.Y.

Jury rejects claims over tossed shrimp

A Long Island jury didn’t bite on a widow’s tale that a sizzling shrimp tossed by a Benihana chef ultimately led to her husband’s death.

The six-member panel rejected the $16 million claim that a neck injury suffered by Jerry Colaitis – allegedly while he was trying to dodge a shrimp at the restaurant in Munsey Park, N.Y. – set off a series of medical problems that ended with his death 11 months later.

The shrimp-tossing incident occurred in January 2001 when Jerry Colaitis, 46, took his family to the Benihana for a birthday.

Jacqueline Colaitis testified that her husband wrenched his neck while trying to dodge a piece of grilled shrimp flicked by a chef. Later that night he experienced neck pain. After undergoing two spinal surgeries, he contracted a staph infection and died Nov. 22, 2001.

San Francisco

Sheehan won’t run against Feinstein

Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan announced Thursday that she would not run against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sparing the incumbent a high-profile challenger in the June primary.

At a news conference in San Francisco, Sheehan sharply criticized Feinstein for voting to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in the war, said Feinstein’s votes to spend money on military operations in Iraq had allowed Bush “to prolong the murder and the mayhem.”

“I am not running against Sen. Feinstein, but I will continue to be a thorn in her side,” said Sheehan, who had been weighing a Senate run for weeks.

Tulare, Calif.

Tiny woman gives birth by C-section

A woman who weighs 37 pounds, stands 3 feet tall and uses a wheelchair has given birth to her first child.

Eloysa Vasquez, 38, has Type 3 osteogenesis imperfecta, a disorder that makes bones soft and brittle.

Her tiny, distorted body left little room for a fetus to grow, and Vasquez suffered two miscarriages before doctors at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital delivered her son, Timothy, by Cesarean section Jan. 24.

“We just took one day at a time. We had a lot of people praying for us. We just believed … and here we have our son,” Vasquez told the Fresno Bee for a story Thursday.

Baby Timothy weighed only 3 pounds, 7 ounces because doctors had to deliver him eight weeks prematurely to protect the mother’s fragile health. The child did not inherit his mother’s genetic condition.

According to the university, only one in 25,000 to 50,000 births are to a mother with osteogenesis imperfecta. Even fewer involve women with the severe form with which Vasquez was born.