| Bush Tours Area 2 Years After Katrina
President George W. Bush is marking Hurricane Katrina's devastating blow two years ago by celebrating those he says have "dedicated their lives to the renewal of New Orleans" even as he and others are criticized for not doing more to get the city and Gulf Coast back to their former selves. Bush and his wife, Laura, are to spend Wednesday's anniversary remembering the storm in New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, Miss. It is the president's 15th visit to the Gulf Coast since the massive hurricane obliterated coastal Mississippi, drowned most of the Big Easy and killed 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi when it roared onto land the morning of Aug. 29, 2005 - but only his second stop in these parts since last year's anniversary. .
The eyes have it in pet look-alike contest
Kathy Smith was all smiles after being told she looked like her pit bull. Smith said her first-place finish in Saturday's owner-dog look-alike contest was a compliment to her pet, Ethel Nicole Smith. "I told her she was a beauty, and this is proof," Kathy Smith said of the stray dog she found two years ago running along East 21st Street. Radio personality Brad Streeter of KZSN (102.1 FM) told Smith he picked her and Ethel because of their eyes. "I love her eyes," Smith said, beaming. Smith also has a Dalmatian mix named Lucy to keep Ethel company and has been known to buy the dogs Happy Meals at McDonald's. Saturday was a dog's day afternoon at Cambridge Market, 21st and Webb Road, at a fund-raiser put together by the merchants for the Kansas Humane Society.
Arabic public school divides Brooklyn
This city's first Arabic public school opens this week, and already it has created enough controversy to cast its ultimate future in doubt. The troubles started early. First, parents banded together to block the proposed Khalil Gibran International Academy from opening in Brooklyn's trendy Park Slope neighbourhood. The city agreed, saying the elementary school building proposed by the board of education did not have the necessary space. And, perhaps not parenthetically, some parents said they feared the school would be a security risk. So, the school would be established instead in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill area, which has a large Arabic population. Then, the woman hired as principal, Debbie Almontaser, resigned after the New York Post reported that she wore an "Intifada NYC" T-shirt. Instead of condemning the word intifada — a call for violence in the Middle East — Almontaser told the scrappy tabloid that the slogan was not meant to inflame hatred and to encourage violence but was instead meant to tell women to "shake off" oppression.
Snack attack / With a new law and schools cracking down on junk food, what's left for kids to eat?
When I was growing up, my after-school snack almost always started with a triple-decker peanut butter and sugar sandwich on Wonder bread. When I got older, my sister, brother andI would hit the 7-Eleven after classes for a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts, which we inhaled on the way home. We had never heard of Type 2 diabetes, and the word "cholesterol" may as well have been a foreign word. At this time of year, there is a new crop of kids returning home from school ravenous for something to tide them over until dinner. So what do you have in your cupboards? Choosing from the plethora of products cluttering supermarket shelves can be mind boggling, food labels are often confusing, and knuckling under to the persistent pleas of a child conditioned by Madison Avenue is all too easy.
His goal, helping
NUKOLI�I � Kawaikini Gampon wanted to make a difference. The 8-year-old student at King Kaumuali�i School at first offered to give up his allowance, according to his mother, Raydene."But I told him he didn't have to do that. He could make a difference by volunteering," she said. .
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