NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Saying his hands were tied by law, a federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina, but rebuked the agency for failing to protect the city.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled Wednesday that the Corps should be held immune over failures in drainage canals that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005. He cited the Flood Control Act of 1928, which protects the federal government from lawsuits when flood control projects like levees break.

The lawsuit led to about 489,000 claims by businesses, government entities and residents, seeking trillions of dollars in damages against the Corps.

The fate of many of those claims was pinned to the suit and a similar one filed over flooding from a navigation channel in St. Bernard Parish. It was unclear how many claims could still move forward.

Kathy Gibbs, a Corps spokeswoman, said “the Corps agrees with the dismissal of the case” but declined further comment because other lawsuits over Katrina damage are pending.

Plaintiffs lawyers said they would appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but conceded that overturning Duval’s ruling would be difficult.

The judge issued a stinging condemnation of the Corps, saying the agency “cast a blind eye” in protecting New Orleans and “squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system … which was known to be inadequate by the Corps’ own calculations.”

But, Duval said, “it is not within the Court’s power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States’ power to address the failures of our laws and agencies.”

Breaches at both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals allowed floodwaters to inundate large areas of the city. Plaintiffs lawyers knew they faced a daunting task because the canals were, over time, used as flood control projects by the Corps.

They tried to bypass the immunity issue by claiming that the Corps used the canals as drainage projects and that the levee failures were brought about by canal dredging.

“I knew we had an uphill battle, but we had to do it,” plaintiffs lawyer Joseph Bruno said. “It’s an outrage. Read the opinion: The judge reads through all the negligence by the Corps, but says he had to rule the way he had to.”

The ruling was another blow to the residents of New Orleans, where loathing for the Corps continues unabated.

“This cost people’s lives and property,” said Gwen Bierria, 66, who is still living in a government-issued trailer and is among the tens of thousands of people who have filed claims against the federal government for damage from the levee breaches.

“Anybody that calls themselves the Army Corps of Engineers should be embarrassed,” she said.

Activists said they would not give up on holding the Corps accountable.

“We will stick with our mission of education that this was the worst engineering failure since Chernobyl,” said Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org, a group that has lobbied for overhauling the Corps.

Since Katrina, calls for a makeover of the Corps have gained momentum, and the agency, which has acknowledged mistakes, has re-evaluated its procedures for picking and designing projects.

Duval agreed that legal and bureaucratic change is required.

“The byzantine funding and appropriation methods for this undertaking were in large part a cause of this failure,” the judge said, referring to the politics-riddled process Congress has for funding Corps projects.

The Flood Control Act is counterproductive, Duval said, because it negates incentives for good government workmanship and creates an environment where “gross incompetence receives the same treatment as simple mistake.”

Isn’t this absurd. I have no more words.

CHICAGO (AP) - Mercury from vaccines seems to disappear rapidly from the blood, returning to pre-vaccination levels in one month, according to a small study of children in Argentina.The findings bolster the argument that a mercury-based vaccine preservative doesn’t cause autism in children, although it’s unclear from the study whether some mercury may linger elsewhere in the body.The research addresses an unanswered question about the safety of thimerosal, a preservative that has been eliminated from routine U.S. vaccines, and breaks down as ethyl mercury in the body. It is still used in other countries, including Argentina.

Scientists assumed the health risks from ethyl mercury were similar to methyl mercury from eating fish. And in 1999, the federal government and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines to lower exposure to mercury from all sources. The decision was based on what was known about methyl mercury exposure.

The new findings suggest that methyl mercury and ethyl mercury are very different and that the removal of thimerosal from vaccines may have been over-cautious.

“The study supports the decision by the World Health Organization to continue to permit thimerosal to remain in vaccines for the world’s children,” said study co-author Dr. Michael Pichichero of the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. He said thimerosal vaccines are cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible to much of the world.

In the U.S.-funded study, blood samples were taken from 216 healthy babies before and after they got vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal. Blood levels of mercury were highest shortly after the babies were vaccinated and fell to pre-vaccination levels within a few weeks.

“The amount found in the blood was about one-tenth of that predicted in that the late 1990s and the length of time it stays in the blood is one-tenth of that predicted,” Pichichero said.

Mercury levels also were measured in the babies’ stools and urine. In the stool samples, the levels were highest after vaccination and also fell, but more slowly than blood levels. There was no significant amount of mercury in the urine.

The authors could not determine what happened to all the mercury after it left the blood. All the infants gave samples twice: before vaccination and at one other time, ranging from 12 hours later to 30 days.

The study will be published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics. The medical journal released the findings early because of a controversy surrounding a new TV series premiering Thursday, which features a lawyer who argues in court that a flu vaccine made a child autistic.

The journal is published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which on Monday called on ABC to cancel the first episode of the series, “Eli Stone,” saying that it perpetuates the myth that vaccines can cause autism.

Autism is a complex disorder featuring repetitive behaviors and poor social interaction and communication skills. Scientists generally believe that genetics plays a role in causing the disorder; a theory that thimerosal is to blame has been repeatedly discounted in scientific studies.

Pichichero said he has received research grants and served as a consultant to several vaccine makers, but said there was no industry involvement in the new study. He is an unpaid consultant to the WHO on vaccines.

How can we believe what ‘experts’ say when they’ve been caught lying before - this story bothers me to no end.

CHICAGO (AFP) - Forget about the lost furnishings and finances, the most pitiful victims of the subprime mortgage crisis rocking the United States are the family pets.

Shelters across the country have seen sharp upticks in the number of people giving up their pets in recent months because they have been forced out of their homes.

And — more tragically — neighbors, police and foreclosure agents are finding increasing numbers of pets left to fend for themselves in abandoned homes.

“We’re finding too many animals who have starved to death,” said Stephanie Shain, director of outreach for the Humane Society of the United States.

While some people dump their pets on the street, others go so far as to lock the animal in a closet where their cries for help are harder to hear, she said.

It can take weeks for an animal to starve to death and desperate scratch and bite marks are usually found on doors and windows.

“They will eat anything — furniture, or carpet or wallboard — to try to ingest something,” Shain said in a telephone interview.

“It’s a very fearful and frantic and panicked situation for that animal to be in.”

While there are no national statistics tracking how many animals are abandoned or dropped off at shelters, Shain said anecdotal evidence has shown “huge spikes” in areas hardest-hit by the housing downturn that shows no sign of easing.

Nearly two million families lost their homes to foreclosure in the first 11 months of last year after failing to keep up with mortgage payments, a hefty chunk of which were subprime loans.

That’s an increase of 73 percent compared to a year earlier and represents one out of every 63 households nationwide, according to RealtyTrac which tracks mortgage data.

The Humane Society recently instigated a public-awareness campaign to offer tips on finding animal-friendly rental housing and remind people that pets are much better off in a shelter.

In one of the more shocking stories, more than 60 cats were found abandoned in a foreclosed home in Cincinnati last May, shortly after the foreclosure rate began to spike nationally.

Twenty of those cats are still being fostered while awaiting a permanent home, according to Foreclosurecats.org, a group which launched art projects to help finance the cost of caring for the kitties.

Most are not as lucky. Shelters across the country are habitually overcrowded and underfunded. Even animals which stand a good chance of being adopted are often euthanized in order to free up much-needed space.

That’s why one pet rescue group which used to only deal with finding homes for hard-to-place strays has started temporarily fostering the pets of owners in distress.

“Most of the calls we get are from people who really want to keep their pets,” said Melanie Roeder, the outreach manager at Chicago’s Tree House Animal Foundation.

“We try to counsel them and talk about the idea of fostering, or finding a place on their own.”

The group took in the cat of one woman who only needed a few weeks to find a new place to live and is open to helping others.

For others who are not able to find such a quick fix, saying goodbye is the only option.

“It’s pretty traumatic for everybody, especially the kids,” said Terri Sparks, a spokeswoman for Chicago’s largest shelter, the Animal Welfare League.

“It’s part of the family and they have no other options … people are telling us we’re losing our home and have to move.”

While moving has always been one of the top reasons why people give up their pets to shelters, Sparks said more people started mentioning foreclosures a few months ago.

About 15-20 foreclosed families are now coming into the shelter every week with their pets, and police bring in two or three pets a week found abandoned in foreclosed homes.

I feel sick - these people should be incarcerated, hell, let’s just shoot ‘em.