Quotes & amp;amp; Notes

by Inlander Staff


Kudos In Order -- At the Heroes of Health Care awards last week, Spokane's own Project Access was honored for linking doctors with the uninsured. The Spokane County Medical Society accepted the award, but countless individual doctors deserve recognition, especially Dr. Sam Selinger, who spearheaded the effort here. The award was given by the Washington Health Foundation during a ceremony in Seattle.





4,047 -- That's the total number of minutes that ABC, NBC and CBS's evening newscasts spent covering Iraq in 2003, according to a study by ADT Research.





39 -- Total number of minutes spent covering AIDS in 2003 by those same networks.





15 -- Number of minutes spent covering global warming.





Lighten Up, Leadfoot -- With gasoline hovering around $1.90 a gallon and more increases on the horizon, Response Insurance offers these tips for increasing your gas mileage.


4 Lighten the car's load. Every 200 pounds of weight reduces gas efficiency by one mile per gallon.


4 Sell your Hummer and buy a hybrid. (OK, they didn't really put that in, but we couldn't resist.)


4 Don't drive in that herky-jerky style, with fast starts and abrupt stops. It wastes gas and annoys the hell out of the rest of us who have to follow you.


4 Slow down. Every mile per hour driven faster than 55 MPH costs another 1 percent in fuel economy.


For brochure, call (800) 610-5928.





Special Treatment -- Speaking of high gas prices, it looks like the 9/11 Commission will be taking a closer look at the special flights organized by Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to evacuate Saudis from the United States in the days after 9/11. What's interesting is that no Americans could fly during those days. Only Saudis with clearance from the White House could get into the air, as has been reported by author Craig Unger in his book House of Bush, House of Saud. And now we learn from Bob Woodward's new book that Prince Bandar promised to boost production and thereby decrease gas prices in time for the November election -- a charge the White House and Bandar have denied. Still, it sounds kind of like payback for a very big favor.


The Commission is interested because none of the Saudis on those flights were interviewed by the FBI, even though some were bin Laden family members and at least one -- Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who died mysteriously a few years ago -- is suspected to have had al Qaeda ties and may have had important information to share.





Publication date: 04/29/04