The Continuing Crisis

• Think Your Commute Was Bad? (1) The main road linking the port city of Mombasa, Kenya, to Nairobi and beyond (to landlocked Uganda) was blocked in mid-November by damage from heavy rains, leading to a 30-mile-long stream of stopped vehicles, stranding more than 1,500 trucks. (2) In October at the end of China's traditional, annual week-long getaway, new traffic checkpoints for the notorious G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway reduced the previous 50 lanes of traffic (yes, that's "fifty") to 20. Videos from a TV network's drone showed a breathtaking traffic jam-cum-parking lot that quickly inspired delight, or compassion, all around the Internet (bit.ly/1je9mG6). [BBC News, 11-19-2015] [CityLab.com, 10-8-2015]

• Police chiefs of six small Ohio towns recently demanded an investigation of Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer after, comparing notes, they learned that Overmyer had approached each one claiming to be helpfully "collecting" for "disposal" their departments' confiscated drugs -- on behalf of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. (DEA, reportedly, knew nothing of this.) The Ohio attorney general is investigating. [Courthouse News Service, 1-12-2016]

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