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The United Nations says 3.5 million children in Pakistan are at risk from waterborne diseases, warning of a "second wave of death" from the country's devastating floods. U.N. humanitarian spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said Monday as many as six million people face the risk of contracting diarrhea and dysentery if donors do not provide more aid. Sluggish response The U.N. has launched an appeal for $460 million, but charities say the response has been sluggish, with only about 27 percent of the goal being met so far. Hundreds of angry flood victims blocked a highway outside Sukkur in southern Sindh province Monday, demanding government assistance. The protesters held up traffic as they called for food and shelter. Three weeks of monsoon rains have triggered Pakistan's worst flooding, with an estimated 1,600 people killed and 20 million affected in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh provinces. More flooding likely On Monday, authorities said a new wave of flooding was likely along the Indus River in Punjab and Sindh. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon traveled to Pakistan on Sunday and said the flooding was the worst natural disaster he has ever seen. He urged international donors to speed up aid. Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Monday called the international response to the disaster lamentable.

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Out of sight, out of mind? As surface oil plumes fade from view in the Gulf of Mexico, courtesy of the capped Macondo well, it would be wrong to think that the oil still isn't there, forensic toxicologists warn. "We're finding less and less oil as we move forward," disaster response chief Thad Allen said last week, noting that skimmer boats were having trouble finding slicks. The retired Coast Guard admiral also pointed out that 40% of the leaked oil — more than 90 million gallons of crude by U.S. Geologic Survey scientist estimates — is unaccounted for. For more information: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-08-02-2Amarshes_N.htm

In a rare OpEd in the New York Times, David Stockman, former Republican Office of Management and Budget Director under the Reagan Administration, lambasts the Republican party for its irresponsible stand on maintaining the Bush tax cuts during a time of ballooning Federal deficit. -- An important read. By DAVID STOCKMAN Published: July 31, 2010 IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too.

This article states that the social ecology of the Gulf region has evolved into accepting environmental abuse and a passive resignation that the petrochemical industry in the Gulf Region is intertwined with its political and economic systems. The Deepwater Horizon oil/natural gas spill crisis, as perhaps the United States worst environmental catastrophe, according to this article is only one act of many over a 50 year period that has caused the Gulf of Mexico to become an accepted dumping group for environmental pollutants. If so, what will bring the Gulf back to a having a healthy environment and a resilient and sustainable social ecology? The following excerpt from this New York Times article provides the reader with a sense of the resignation, apathy, and lack of education within the Gulf coast citizenry of what they can do to be a part of bringing the Gulf back from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON Published: July 29, 2010 "...The gulf has changed, Mr. Pitre said: “I think it’s too far gone to salvage.” The BP oil spill has sent millions of barrels gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, focusing international attention on America’s third coast and prompting questions about whether it will ever fully recover from the spill.