News Cut

Five at 8: 3/31/09

Posted at 8:11 AM on March 31, 2009 by Than Tibbetts (1 Comments)

While Bob takes a well-deserved day off after covering the flood in Moorhead -- if you haven't read the Saving Riverview Circle series, please do -- Steve Mullis and I will be house-sitting here at News Cut today.

  • A quick flood update... well, it's snowing now. A lot. Perhaps the linguists among us can help with a cogitation I tooted about yesterday: What's the portmanteau for blizzard + flood?

  • LIFE has partnered with Getty Images to put together a massive, time-sucking image library at life.com. Apparently there are 7 million images on the site now, which, if viewed at a rate of one per second during your work day (excluding holidays), you'd finally get to your TPS reports around March 5th, 2010. It will be an interesting complement/competitor to Boston.com's well-edited Big Picture.

  • Laura Yuen has been writing fantastic stories about the disappearance of young Somali men from Minneapolis. (U.S. officials fear the men were recruited to join a terrorist group in Somalia.) Yuen's latest story about relatives of the men using their ties to their homeland in their search for the young men is no exception.

    If you're not familiar with the story, consider this primer on the group known as Al-Shabaab.

  • The U.K. is apparently in a tizzy over Google Street View, the mapping function that allows you to get a glimpse of life as it was when the Street View car and its 360-degree, panoramic camera drives past. This 'outrage' seems a little odd coming from the country with the most surveillance cameras per capita in the world.

    The Brits have been having fun with it though, spotting a(n allegedly) cheating husband, UFOs and (allegedly) rocker Liam Gallagher.

  • OK, the weather outside is reminding me where I live -- Fargo -- so I have to pass on a couple of flood links. The NY Times has a story that asks whether Fargo-Moorhead will 'lose' by winning the flood fight.

    In other words, since the DIY levees are holding, the opportunity to have the feds pick up the tab for a massive flood abatement project is gone. After the catastrophe in 1997, Grand Forks now has flood protection that in some cases is nearly 6 feet higher than the '97 crest.

    Also worth reading: profiles of Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker from the Fargo Forum and MPR's Stephanie Hemphill.


    Comments (1)

    Bob
    I Made it back to Home In Colorado Springs about 11:15 Monday night. The road were not the best to travel on but they a definnately better than what they would be if i we traveling today or tomarrow. Thanks for all the help you were to me while i was there and keep up the great work that you are doing there.

    Mike

    Posted by Mike Trei | March 31, 2009 11:21 AM


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