THIS IS RIDICULOUS. FLAT SCREEN TVS DO NOT QUALIFY FOR 'SURVIVAL LOOTING'

With law officers and National Guardsmen focused on saving lives, looters around the city spent another day brazenly ransacking stores for food, clothing, appliances _ and guns.

Thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break the glass of a pharmacy. The crowd stormed the store, carrying out so much ice, water and food that it dropped from their arms as they ran. The street was littered with packages of ramen noodles and other items.

Looters also chased down a state police truck full of food. The New Orleans police chief ran off looters while city officials themselves were commandeering equipment from a looted Office Depot. During a state of emergency, authorities have broad powers to take private supplies and buildings for their use.

Officials tried to balance security needs with saving lives. MORE

LOOTING SCENES ARE POLLUTING WHAT SHOULD BE OUR FINEST MOMENT. HOW UNBELIEVABLY EMBARASSING.

President Bush on Wednesday called Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath "one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history."

"This recovery will take years," Bush said as he outlined the federal response in an address from the White House, hours after viewing parts of the Gulf Coast from aboard Air Force One as he traveled to Washington from his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"The country stands with you," he told people in the affected areas. "We'll do all in our power to help."

The Bush administration earlier in the day declared a public health emergency for the entire Gulf Coast in an effort to stop the spread of disease in the storm's wake. MORE

WORSE THAN EXPECTED AND WORST YET TO COME?

Kathleen Blanco, governor of Louisiana, called on the city of New Orleans to evacuate as waters continued to rise. ”We absolutely must evacuate the people in the dome and other shelters in the city,’’ she said on CNN. ”It’s a logistical nightmare.”


The US military on Wednesday added Navy ships, including two helicopter assault vessels and the hospital ship Comfort, and search troops to a relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

US authorities were battling to shore up heavily damaged levees in an effort to save New Orleans from almost total submersion as the city, 80 per cent of which lies below sea level, fills with water.

Police are struggling to contain widespread looting and officials fear the lack of basic sanitation or fresh water will lead to disease. MORE

CRUISE SHIPS FOR KATRINA REFUGEES

Carnival Cruise Lines said Wednesday the federal government has asked whether its cruise ships could be used as emergency shelters or help Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in some other way.

The world's largest cruise line said that although "to undertake such an endeavor would involve many complicated issues, we are actively taking a look at it."

Carnival operates 21 ships, each of which holds anywhere from about 1,500 to 3,000 passengers.

"It is our intention to work with federal officials to determine the feasibility of moving a ship into the area if that is their desire," the company said. MORE

CONDITIONS DETERIORATE IN NEW ORLEANS, DEMOCRATS' BASE BEGINS LOOTING

New Orleans resembled a war zone more than a modern American metropolis on Tuesday, as Gulf Coast communities struggled to deal with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Deteriorating conditions in New Orleans will force authorities to evacuate the tens of thousands of people at city shelters, including the Superdome, where a policeman told CNN unrest was escalating.

MORE

JESSE JACKSON SUPPORTS HUGO CHAVEZ. NEXT THING YOU KNOW, HE'LL BE COZYING UP TO JIMMY CARTER.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson offered support for President Hugo Chavez on Sunday, saying a call for his assassination by a U.S. religious broadcaster was a criminal act and that Washington and Venezuela should work out their differences through diplomacy.

The U.S. civil rights leader condemned last week's suggestion by Pat Robertson that American agents should kill the leftist Venezuelan leader, calling the conservative commentator's statements "immoral" and "illegal." MORE

WHO CARES?

Was hip-hop mogul Marion (Suge) Knight wounded in the opening salvo of a new rap war? Or did the godfather of gangsta rap accidentally shoot himself in the leg with his own gun?
Cops were investigating those dueling theories as witnesses and Knight's pals clammed up about yesterday's early-morning shooting inside a star-studded party in Miami Beach before the MTV Video Music Awards, sources told the Daily News.

Police were puzzled by the failure to find a shell casing inside SkyBar's VIP Red Room at the plush Shore Club - and that no one got a good look at the shooter. Knight gave only a cursory account of the shooting, raising more doubts about the event. He was in stable condition last night after doctors removed the bullet and set a fractured bone in his right leg. MORE

'WE HAVE A HUMONGOUS, UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT HEADING NORTH AT 110 MPH... OVER AND OUT.'

A car carrying the Rev. Al Sharpton led sheriff's deputies on a nine- mile chase at speeds up to 110 mph before state troopers stopped the vehicle and arrested the driver, authorities said.

The civil rights activist called the sheriff's report "ludicrous" and accused the Ellis County officers of "embellishing the story."

"That nine-mile chase is news to me," Sharpton told The Associated Press. "All I know is that the police pulled us over because they wanted to talk to the driver about speeding."

Chief Deputy Charles Sullins said driver Jarrett B. Maupin, 43, was rushing Sharpton to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after Sharpton visited anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan on Sunday at her camp outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford. MORE

CATASTROPHE, BUT NOT OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS - THEY SHOULD THANK GOD.

Announcing itself with shrieking, 145-mph winds, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast just outside New Orleans on Monday, submerging entire neighborhoods up to their roofs, swamping Mississippi's beachfront casinos and blowing out windows in hospitals, hotels and high-rises.

For New Orleans _ a dangerously vulnerable city because it sits mostly below sea level in a bowl-shaped depression _ it was not the apocalyptic storm forecasters had feared.

But it was plenty bad, in New Orleans and elsewhere along the coast, where scores people had to be rescued from rooftops and attics as the floodwaters rose around them.

At least five deaths were blamed on Katrina _ three people killed by falling trees in Mississippi and two killed in a traffic accident in Alabama. And an untold number of other people were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods, many of which could not be reached by rescuers because of high water. MORE

PRAYERS FOR NEW ORLEANS...

Monstrous Hurricane Katrina barreled toward this city on Sunday with 175-mph winds and a threat of a 28-foot storm surge, forcing a mandatory evacuation, a last-ditch Superdome shelter and prayers for those left to face the doomsday scenario this below-sea-level city has long dreaded.

Katrina’s eye was expected to make landfall about sunrise Monday on the southeastern Louisiana coast, although Mississippi also was in danger, said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Katrina has already been blamed for nine deaths in South Florida.
MORE

JOHN ROBERTS ON WHACKO 'MICHAEL JACKSON' JACKO; CHALK ANOTHER ONE UP FOR THE NOMINEE

Last week, researchers found several memos from the summer and fall of 1984 in which future Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, working as a Reagan White House lawyer, argued against sending presidential thank-you notes to Michael Jackson for his charitable works. But it turns out this was just the beginning of what appears to be the young lawyer's concerns about the star. Three new memos uncovered by Post reporters show Roberts described Jackson as "androgynous," "mono-gloved" and a balladeer of illegitimacy.

On April 30, 1984, Roberts wrote to oppose a presidential award that was to have been given to Jackson for his efforts against drunk driving. Roberts particularly objected to award wording that described Jackson as an "outstanding example" for American youth.

Roberts wrote: "If one wants the youth of America and the world sashaying around in garish sequined costumes, hair dripping with pomade, body shot full of female hormones to prevent voice change, mono-gloved, well, then, I suppose 'Michael,' as he is affectionately known in the trade, is in fact a good example. Quite apart from the problem of appearing to endorse Jackson's androgynous life style, a Presidential award would be perceived as a shallow effort by the President to share in the constant publicity surrounding Jackson. . . . The whole episode would, in my view, be demeaning to the President." MORE

HAGEL: A REPUBLICAN QUAGMIRE

A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.

Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at levels above 100,000, a contingency for which the Pentagon is preparing. MORE

GREAT. AS SECURE AS OUR BORDERS ARE, WE'LL SEE YOU SOON.

Italy has arrested 141 people in a security swoop following the bombings in London and Egypt last month and remains at high risk from an attack by Islamic militants, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

Italy, the subject of several Internet threats from purported Islamic militant groups, said it had begun expulsion procedures against 701 people.

"The latest evaluations ... confirm an ongoing high risk of a terrorist attack on our country," the ministry said in a statement after a parliamentary meeting on the findings from a series of nation-wide raids in recent days.

Italy has not been attacked by Islamic militants on its home soil, but after bombings in July in London and the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheik most Italians fear it is only a matter of time before they are hit.

Italy, like Britain a close ally of the United States, has sent 3,000 troops to Iraq.

Officials have boosted security on Italy's transport system.

MORE

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.

OPERATION HELMET provides helmet upgrade kits free of charge to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to those ordered to deploy in the near future.

Troops and their loved ones should not feel they aren't protected with the standard issue helmet. Our forces are issued head armor (kevlar helmets) that offers "pretty good" protection from bullets and small frags. That was the main danger in previous combat engagements. The helmets still offer that protection, but new elements have entered the picture, that of IED's (roadside bombs) and other explosives with which these helmets were not designed to defend against.Home

CALLING FOR ISLAMIC REFORM? GO BACK INTO HIDING.

British author Salman Rushdie on Thursday called for a reform movement that would move Islam into the "modern age" to combat jihadists and closed Muslim communities in the West that produce disaffected youths wielding "lethal rucksacks."

In 1989, Rushdie was forced into hiding when the late Iranian Islamic fundamentalist leader Ayatollah Khomeni issued a religious death decree for alleged blasphemy against Islam in Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses. MORE

MONICA LEWINSKY'S FORMER BOYFRIEND'S WIFE HAS A CHALLENGER

The potential Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Clinton's first re-election bid said Wednesday that the former first lady is using New York as a doormat to return to the White House.

In a speech formally launching her Senate campaign, Jeanine Pirro aimed to turn Clinton's popularity among Democrats nationwide into a liability on Election Day 2006, still 15 months away.

"New York deserves a senator who will give her all to the people of New York for a whole term, full time, and not miss votes to campaign in the 2008 presidential primaries," Pirro said. MORE

PRAYERS FOR A SAFE RETURN

"Unstable" weather conditions prompted NASA to scrub Discovery's scheduled landing Monday, the first space shuttle landing attempt since the Columbia disaster.

The next opportunity is scheduled for Tuesday at 5:07 a.m. ET at the Florida landing site.

"We just can't get comfortable with the stability of the situation for this particular opportunity. So we're going to officially wave you off for 24 hours," Ken Ham at Mission Control told the shuttle. MORE

GOOD TIMING GUYS. YOU SHOULD BUY DOT-COM STARTUPS NOW ALSO.

Two of the 12 jurors who voted to acquit singer Michael Jackson of child molestation and other charges said Monday they regret their decisions.

Jurors Ray Hultman and Eleanor Cook, who both have pending book deals, planned to appear Monday night on the MSNBC show "Rita Cosby: Live and Direct."

In a preview shown Monday on NBC's "Today," Cosby asked Cook if the other jurors will be angry with her. MORE

MAY GOD REST HIS SOUL

ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings died today at his home in New York City. He was 67. On April 5, Jennings announced he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Kayce Freed, his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23, and his sister, Sarah Jennings. More...

WHOA ... DOESN'T DUTCH LAW PROHIBIT THEM FROM ACTING SO FAST LIKE THIS?

Aruban authorities investigating the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway are looking for a pair of size-14 tennis shoes that suspect Joran van der Sloot might have lost, a police official said.

"He says he might have lost a pair of sneakers on the beach the night Natalee disappeared," said lead police investigator Roy Tromp. "That's what he claims in one of his many statements."

Tromp said the 17-year-old suspect described the shoes as white and blue and brand new.

"He claimed he lost them in the area of Fisherman's Hut, but we [are] looking at other places, including the pond," he said. More...