WASHINGTON

GOVERNMENT MISSES DOZENS OF SECURITY DEADLINES SINCE 9/11

The Bush administration has missed dozens of deadlines set by Congress after the September 11 attacks for developing ways to protect airplanes, ships, and railways from terrorists.

A plan to defend ships and ports from attack is six months overdue. Rules to protect air cargo from infiltration by terrorists are two months late. A study on the cost of giving anti-terrorism training to federal law enforcement officers who fly commercially was supposed to be done more than three years ago.

“The incompetence that we recently saw with FEMA’s leadership appears to exist throughout the Homeland Security Department,” the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said. “Our nation is still vulnerable.”

Congress must share the blame for the department’s sluggishness in protecting commerce and travel from terrorists, according to other observers.

Lawmakers piled on deadline after deadline for reports, plans, and regulations while the department, created after the 2001 attacks, had to integrate 22 agencies with 170,000 workers and cope with terrorist threats and hurricanes.

Those deadlines, sometimes for minor projects, distract the department from putting in place the most important security measures, experts say. The Transportation Security Administration, for example, scrambled to try to meet a February 15 deadline to ban butane lighters from airplanes, a precaution that does little to protect airliners, they said.

– Associated Press

SOUTH

HURRICANE’S DEATH TOLL RISES TO 21 IN FLORIDA

The death toll from Hurricane Wilma rose to 21 in Florida, after state emergency officials reported seven more deaths Saturday in the storm’s aftermath.

The deaths brought the total number of casualties from the storm – which pummeled Mexico, Haiti, and Jamaica before hitting Florida – to 38.

Some people died during cleanup, others were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning or traffic accidents during power outages, Florida emergency officials said.

Among the deaths: A 51-year-old man was killed Thursday while helping repair a roof on a friend’s business; a 75-year-old man was struck Friday by a tree limb while surveying damage, and a 39-year-old woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a smoldering charcoal grill in her kitchen.

Late Saturday, a worker was killed when the mechanical excavator he was driving tumbled off a mound of hurricane debris and into some power poles, Miami fire-rescue officials said. He was not included among the 21 deaths reported Saturday. Five days after Hurricane Wilma ripped through South Florida, about 832,700 people remained without power. Electricity might not be fully restored until November 22, officials warned.

– Associated Press

PHILANTHROPY

GATES FOUNDATION AWARDS $258.3M IN GRANTS TO FIGHT MALARIA

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity co-founded by the world’s richest man, has announced $258.3 million in grants to find ways to combat malaria, which kills 2,000 African children every day.

The Seattle-based foundation is making three grants to try to stop malaria, a statement by Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates, said. The gift includes $107.6 million for malaria vaccine testing, $100 million to develop drugs, and $50.7 million for insecticides and other mosquito control methods.

“Far too long malaria, has been a forgotten epidemic,” Mr. Gates said in the statement. “It’s a disgrace the world has allowed malaria deaths to double in the last 20 years when so much more could be done to stop the disease.”

The foundation is part of Mr. Gates’s pledge to give back some of the wealth he’s accumulated from the growth of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker. Mr. Gates had $51 billion in assets as of last month, according to Forbes magazine. Each month the foundation receives around 3,000 requests for funding, and Mr. Gates and his wife personally sign off on grants over $1 million.

– Bloomberg News