Doctors: Haiti medical situation shameful
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/americas/01/20/haiti.earthquake.survivors/t1larg.jpg caption="An 11-year-old girl sleeps at a hospital in Port-au-Prince. She survived more than a week under the rubble of her collapsed house." width=300 height=169]
Drs. Dean Lorich, Soumitra Eachempati and David L. Helfet, Special to CNN
Four years ago, the devastating Hurricane Katrina affected millions in the United States. The initial medical response was ill-equipped, understaffed, poorly coordinated and delayed. Criticism was fierce.
The response to Haiti has been the same. The point no one seems to remember is this: Medical response to these situations cannot be delayed. Immediate access to emergency equipment is also crucial.
Within 24 hours of the earthquake, Dr. David Helfet put together a 13-member team of surgeons, anesthesiologists and operating room nurses, with a massive amount of orthopedic operating room equipment, ready to be flown directly to Port-au-Prince on a private plane.
Financial Dispatch: Ford, GM hiring workers
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Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer
There are small glimmers of hope in the American auto industry. Ford Motor says it will hire 1,200 workers in Illinois as part of a $400 million plan to ramp up production of next year's Explorer SUV.
The automaker says it expects to fill the full-time jobs at its Chicago Assembly and Chicago Stamping plants by the end of the year.
The expansion comes as Detroit’s automakers look to recover from a dramatic plunge in sales, which fell to a 27-year low last year. But these new workers will probably not make as much as they would have in previous years.
Under union contracts signed in 2007, the U.S. automakers are able to pay newly-hired employees significantly less than their veteran factory workers. The contracts also allow automakers to give reduced health care and pension benefits to new hires.
Separately, General Motors says it intends to become the first major automaker to design and manufacture electric motors for cars in the United States - adding jobs in the process.
The first of GM’s electric motors will be used in the next generation of the company's rear-wheel-drive hybrid vehicles such as the Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid SUV beginning in 2013.
Parole for "Onion Field" killer?
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[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/01/26/art.crime.powell.mug.jpg caption="Gregory Powell, 75, will face a California state parole board tomorrow morning."]
Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer
The cop killer whose crime was immortalized in Joseph Wambaugh’s best-selling book, “The Onion Field,” will face a California state parole board tomorrow morning.
Gregory Powell, 75, is expected to ask the panel to free him after serving nearly 50 years in prison.
A spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections said Powell has previously been denied parole 11 times.
The case, chillingly detailed by Wambaugh, remains one of the most infamous police killings in history.
On the night of March 9, 1963, Powell and his accomplice, Jimmy Lee Smith, were driving around Los Angeles looking for a liquor store to rob.
Officers Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, on patrol in Hollywood, pulled the two thieves over. It should have been a routine stop. But Powell drew a gun on Campbell. He and Smith disarmed both officers, took them hostage and drove them to a remote onion field.
Expect more late-night talk show drama
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Ed Bark
Special to CNN
Magnanimous in defeat, which could turn into victory, Conan O'Brien bequeathed "The Tonight Show" back to Jay Leno Friday after first thanking NBC for at least putting him on the map.
"This company has been my home for most of my adult life," he told viewers. "I am enormously proud of the work we've done together. I want to thank NBC for making it all possible. I really do."
Such sentiments are predictable when push finally comes to shove. O'Brien's "Tonight" ratings had swelled of late, in no small part because of his unbridled bashing of NBC after he adamantly refused to take another back seat to Leno in the Peacock's pecking order.
On Tuesday's "Tonight," O'Brien cut loose in Spanish, with the English subtitles reading, "NBC is run by brainless sons of goats who eat money and crap trouble."
Stimulus is last chance for U.S. cities
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/OPINION/01/26/fetterman.braddock.stimulus/tzleft.john.fetterman.jpg caption="For decades, Braddock, Pennsylvania, has been in decline as it lost jobs and people."]
John Fetterman
Special to CNN
In 2001, I came to Braddock, the poorest town in Western Pennsylvania, to serve the community's severely disenfranchised young people by starting an employment and GED program. Their lives were the embodiment of what happened to Braddock and this region: chaos through abandonment.
However, tough times and severe hardship are nothing new. It's been this way for decades.
Once one of the most important steel manufacturing centers in the world, Braddock - what's left of it - solemnly affirms one of the great economic maxims of our society: socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor.
Video: Who's protecting Haiti's kids?
Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor
Jobs and population: Too many people for the planet
Editor's Note: This article continues our series excerpted from AC360°'s contributor David Gewirtz's upcoming book, How To Save Jobs, which will be available this month. Over the next few months, we'll be excerpting the first section of the book, which answers the question, "How did we get here?". Last time, we looked at offshoring as a national security risk? This time, we begin our look at jobs and population. To learn more about the book, follow David on Twitter @DavidGewirtz.
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David Gewirtz | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Director, U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute
As more and more workers in countries like China and India aggressively enter what we’d consider the middle class, availability of scarce resources like energy and even food may become a problem for all of us.
People in China and India are doing everything they can to move their populations into the middle class, so their populations reflect more of the relative economic strength evident in America and Europe. In exploring the relationship between jobs, “middle-classing” of developing nations, and population, I was curious what the world would look like if a newly “middle-classed” China and India consumed resources like America and Europe do.
Energy consumption
I decided to take my computer science degree out for a spin and build an economic model. I based the first phase of the model on energy consumption, because energy is a finite resource. Courtesy of the International Energy Agency, I learned that about 13 billion tons of oil equivalent (oil and other resources that make energy) is consumed worldwide.
Today, the United States consumes about 2.3 billion tons of that, or about 18.3 percent of the world’s total supply.
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China consumes slightly more than we do, at about 2.6 billion tons of go-juice. What makes China particularly interesting is that it's consuming more and more each year. While our demand increases only 0.34 percent annually, China’s demand is increasing at 8.68 percent. Even the rate of increase is increasing. Back in 2000, China’s demand only increased by 2.46 percent.
When liberals revolt
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/art.obama.speech.01.cnn.jpg caption="Julian Zelizer says that, since the Massachusetts vote, Obama has seemed to move toward the center."]
Julian E. Zelizer
Special to CNN
In the week since Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts, President Obama has shown signs that he is preparing to move further to America's political center.
In many respects, Obama has reached a fork in the road and must decide whether he plans to veer to the center at the expense of his increasingly discontented liberal base.
We won't know the full outlines of the president's new approach until his State of the Union address on Wednesday. But there are strong indications: He will propose a three-year freeze on discretionary spending in most government agencies and, over the weekend, he endorsed the idea of creating a commission to make recommendations for reducing the budget deficit.
Dear President Obama #372: Beyond the beltway
Reporter's Note: President Obama is traveling a bit to “reconnect” with average Americans. Good idea.
And here’s a better one: He might want to remind his lawmaker friends that those average folks are really the bosses in this relationship.
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Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent
Dear Mr. President,
When my family and I moved to DC a little more than nine years ago, I expected to find that I was wrong in my longstanding assessment of the Cap crowd. I’d made more than my fair share of cracks about the out-of-touch lawmaking, tasseled loafer, lawyer set that roamed the marbled halls of power (yes, I know what you call a hundred politicians at the bottom of the bay) and I was genuinely ready to find out that I was mistaken.
And I might add, often that is the case. I don’t mean that I am often wrong, although some might make that argument. What I mean is, when I or anyone else sits on high, pronouncing judgment on the inadequacies of others, it’s pretty easy for the judge-o-matic to be in error. Sometimes we just don’t understand the circumstances that the person faces, or we misread the sincerity of their actions, or we just don’t have a clue.
Video: Healing Haiti's pain
Dr. Sanjay Gupta | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent
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