Cincinnati Superhero!

I guess his heart's in the right place...
Cincinnati's streets are being patrolled by their very own SuperHero: Shadow Hare. Every day he's out there, keeping his eyes open for crime and prepared to make a stand for justice. And like his comic-book inspirations, he wears a mask and cape!

He's not alone either: the World SuperHero Registry lists dozens of masked "vigilantes" across America, prepared to put their money where their masked mouths are, and step up to the plate. So far though, none who've registered can fly or bounce bullets off their chests.
And God only knows what'd happen if they encountered a real criminal: maybe they plan to keep the bad guys laughing til the cops arrive!

Rio Rocks - By Rolling Its Poor?

So, South America is to host its first-ever Summer Olympics!
Imagine that! Rio de Janeiro hosts the 2014 FIFA World Cup, followed in Aug.2016 by the Summer Olympics and the Summer Paralympics (Sept.)! The football tournament will be an ideal test for the infrastructure of Ronaldo's hometown, although huge numbers of partygoers are nothing new to the city reknowned for its legendary annual Rio Carnival!
What tourists often don't see are Rio's more impoverished areas: many thousands of poor in slums perched on unstable hillsides, with limited sanitation and intermittent electricity. Muggings, murder and narco-terrorism are rampant in these areas...bringing the city's death rate to nearly 40:100,000. And its lowly-paid police force is often part of the problem.
This is a golden opportunity for Brazil to polish the image of its jewel city, by not only creating new sport, accomodation and transport facilities, but also making real efforts to improve the lives of its "underclass”.
It is hoped the country does far more for its poor than what Beijing's bulldozers did for the 2008 Olympics. But already Rio is building an 11km. concrete and steel wall to encircle the shantytowns and separate them from the wealthy suburbs. Officials say it’s an ‘eco-barrier’ to protect the rainforest from further encroachment by the surrounding slums - Brazilian human rights groups call it ‘social apartheid’.

Communication Is The Key

Public Relations:101 - inform people!
During this week's Civil Defence response to the Samoa tsunami, this most basic lesson was forgotten. The poor information flow seemed to begin in Hawaii, where the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said (contrary to its name!) that it did not issue tsunami warnings – that was up to individual countries. All it did was state whether a tsunami was building, but it couldn't do that until a few markers had been hit so it could analyse data (sadly, one of those hit 'markers' was Samoa).

If that is so, then blame must lie with NZ Civil Defence HQ, which appears to have not contacted major news networks with warnings – even though there're dedicated 'hotlines' for this. Information that did filter through (to some locations and not to others) seemed contradictory and confused: for example, Wellington Airport, sitting just 13m.above sea level was not notified at all!
On breakfast tv, the CD spokesman dodged questions, labelled eyewitness accounts of death and injury "rumours" and said he'd provide "some details in an hour"...about the time a tsunami was expected to strike!
When Civil Defence situations arise, fast accurate and regular information flow is needed. This week, we did not get it. Again. How many times will CD fluff a "near-miss", before The Real Thing catches it out?