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All three newscasts filed a report from overseas: ABC and NBC on current stories; CBS aired a retrospective Investigation. Armen Keteyian's expose was into KBR, the onetime Halliburton subsidiary that was contracted to deliver reconstruction projects in post-invasion Iraq. Keteyian investigated a water treatment plant in southern Iraq that was covered in a toxic orange dust of the chemical hexavalent chromium. Now five years after that project, members of the Indiana National Guard who were assigned to its security detail are falling sick with a rare and lethal form of lung cancer. A lawsuit filed by the guardsmen argues that KBR knew of the contamination for four months before it notified army medics.
ABC's Miguel Marquez (embargoed link) updated us on the crisis in Zimbabwe. As well as cholera and inflation, Marquez adds hunger to the nation's woes. The United Nations estimates that 5.5m residents now need food aid. Inflation, by the way, is currently running at an annual rate of 231,000,000%. Marquez quoted President Robert Mugabe this weekend: "I will never, never, never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine." NBC's In Depth report was filed by Jim Maceda from Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan. He sought out a pair of cousins, two of the six schoolgirls who were attacked by anti-co-ed militants last month. The girls thought that men on motorbikes were teasing them by throwing water on their faces. It was not water but acid, designed to intimidate them against getting an education. One of the girls is now partially blinded. "You can spray us a thousand times. We will not stop going to school," the blinded girl's sister swore, in tears.
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