Week in Review: The Triple Threat Edition (August 8 -14)
They say trouble's a-brewin' in Princeton-town...Remember the anthrax scare of 2001? Well, white powder worries has hit once again. This time, packages of suspect contents were mailed to the Princeton University Medical Center and a Princeton-based manufacturer in what police call two unrelated events.
The Princeton Packet reports that on Monday morning, an employee at Church & Dwight (famous for producing household products) opened a letter containing a white powdery substance, thus triggering a lock-down of the building and quarantine of 120 employees for more than an hour. Shortly after, a Princeton University Medical Center employee reported seeing white powder in his mail as well.Authorities rushed to address both scares in a timely manner, with the police, Fire Department, and Princeton First Aid and Rescue squad alerting national authorities (think Department of Homeland Security and the FBI) and conducting prompt substance tests. They soon revealed that the packages contained nothing more than...powdered sugar and a crumbly, low quality adhesive?!Yes, that's right. Church & Dwight received no more than a package of confectioner's sugar. And of the hospital threat, Roy James, deputy chief of the Princeton Fire Department, said:
"When you looked at it, it was some sort of yellowy substance on the box and on the stuff inside. It is like an adhesive, but when you put your finger on it, it turns powdery.”
(Phew! Close call.)The troubles for Princeton, however, didn't end there.Over in New York, in perhaps what constitutes a more real - ahem, legal and reputation-costing - threat, the Princeton Club is being sued for 'racial discrimination' by a former employee now seeking $10 million in damages. Jo-Ann Garcia was fired in March after nearly 30 years working at the club and contends that she was replaced by a white, equally or higher paid employee. Garcia added that during her time at the club, Spanish speakers were segregated and ordered to avoid speaking Spanish in front of guests.In case you were not familiar with the what it means to have Garcia suing an 'establishment' like the Princeton Club, The New York Daily News not-so-deftly juxtaposes the two for you. Garcia is a 51-year-old native Puerto Rican, pitted agains the "elite" and "exclusive":
Princeton Club of New York, whose roots date back more than 110 years, [which] has been in its W. 43rd St. home since 1963. Its elegant clubhouse features fine dining in the Woodrow Wilson Room, 52 guest rooms, a fitness center and squash courts.
Yikes.Finally, allllll the way from the South Pacific comes news of a happier yet still threatening kind.The good: A team of researchers found that hundreds of species thought to be extinct are rediscovered every year. The bad: These species tend to remain on the brink of extinction anyways.Researchers from Princeton University, the National University of Singapore and the University of Adelaide studied amphibians, bird and mammal species to conduct the first-ever full study on species rediscoveries. From United Press International:
"Despite many rediscoveries, 92 per cent of amphibians, 86 per cent of birds and 86 per cent of mammals remain highly threatened under current trends of habitat loss, independent of how long they were missing or when they were rediscovered, the researchers said. Most rediscovered species have small geographic range size, which is the main driver in species extinction globally."
Bottom line: save the wildlife, folks. Animalsareyourfriends.