think on this.

» BP fails to put money in promised escrow account.

In a deal negotiated last month, President Obama and BP officials agreed the company would pay $5 billion annually over the next four years into an escrow account for damage its oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico caused. Ken Feinberg, who was appointed to administer oil spill claims out of the escrow fund, has said he “hasn’t been able to start writing claims checks” because BP PLC has failed to deposit any money into the $20 billion fund it promised to create.

» Belated Justice for Victims of NJ's Hair-Braiding Slavery Ring

Earlier this month a man from the African nation of Togo was sentenced to 24 years in prison in New Jersey for smuggling African girls and women into the U.S. to work as slaves in hair braiding salons. From 2002 to 2007, the man, Lassissi Afolabi, in partnership with his ex-wife and her son, brought at least 20 women to America to work 14-hour days for no pay at all.

The workers, or victims, braided hair at salons in very civilized-seeming places like Newark and East Orange, New Jersey. That’s the thing about modern-day slavery, though; it happens where people least expect it. It’s more than a bit sickening that almost 150 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves are still being brought from the very same parts of Africa to work here in America.

Afolabi managed to produce fraudulent work visas for the women. Once they got to America, some were sexually assaulted and some were beaten. Their passports were taken from them. They were told not to learn English, make friends or keep their tips — or else. Their captors even tricked some into believing that a voodoo curse would harm them if they tried to escape.

» Breastfeeding Over Burgers

Via the Women’s Rights blog at Change.org, a manager of a Johnny Rockets’ restaurant triedto make a woman who was breastfeeding do it outside on a bench or in the bathroom. As the writer, Sarah Menkedick, pointed out, this is just the most recent in a series of incidents in which breastfeeding women were shamed.

I’ve never been sure where this squeamishness over breastfeeding comes from, but as I’veobserved before, women who breast feed and women who don’t largely break along lines of education and class. No one wants to be bullied out of breastfeeding at a place like Johnny Rockets’ or Target, and have to get into big fights to exercise a basic right.

» Scocca : Volvo Drivers Will No Longer Be Electronically Protected From Ax Murderers Lurking in the Back Seat

Next year, Volvo will stop selling an optional system that allows drivers to remotely monitor the car to detect the heartbeat of an intruder, USA Today reports. Having established a reputation for its commitment to crash-survival technology, the soon-to-be-Chinese-owned Swedish car maker decided for the 2007 model year to also offer customers electronic protection from bad movie scenarios, so as “to buttress appeal with female buyers.” “Almost no one was using the intruder query function,” a Volvo spokesperson told USA Today. Instead of a heartbeat detector, future Volvos will have an electronic “system that detects pedestrians in the car’s path and hits the brakes if the driver does not.” So if you manage to fight off your ax-wielding attacker, don’t bother trying to run him down with your car.

» A Shot That Saves the Lives of Addicts Is Now in Their Hands

In a haunted world of heroin and hurt and heartless hustles, located between a dusty brickyard and rusty railroad tracks along the border of Chicago and blue-collar Cicero, Steve Kamenicky is the go-to guy. Longtime addicts and novice users seek out Mr. Kamenicky, known as Pony Tail Steve, sometimes in the middle of the day, other times deep into the night. They go to him, usually in a panic, desperate for an injection for a fallen buddy or lover of what some call a miracle drug. They hurry over the paving bricks that Mr. Kamenicky neatly laid to lead the way to his tent, pitched among the tall weeds and trees in one of a string of small encampments of the homeless on the edge of the brickyard. Mr. Kamenicky, 52, is not a dealer. His own heroin addiction is much too strong. He shoots every $10 bag of heroin he can. But his fellow addicts consider Mr. Kamenicky a savior.

“I’ve saved more people than the paramedics,” he boasted the other evening as he sat in a Cicero parking lot, his long, salt-and-pepper ponytail snaking down his back. The drug he administers to fellow heroin users is called Naloxone or Narcan, its brand name. Mr. Kamenicky estimated that in the last few years he had brought back from the deadly depths of heroin overdose at least 35 addicts — in abandoned buildings, crack houses and around kitchen tables. Naloxone, which is injected, reverses the effects of an opiate overdose. A drug that was a few years ago given by doctors and paramedics, Naloxone is now directly dispensed to drug users like Mr. Kamenicky, who are trained by the Chicago Recovery Alliance and receive Naloxone through a doctor-supervised program. The effort is part of an up-from-the bottom movement in the struggle to rescue those addicted to heroin and other opiates.

“It saves lives,” said Dr. Virgilio Arenas, who leads the addiction division at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Naloxone is an effective antidote. It works within minutes once administered.” Mr. Kamenicky receives Naloxone free, as do drug users across the city, from the alliance, a nonprofit needle-exchange and H.I.V.-prevention program. The alliance also dispenses fresh syringes, condoms and other paraphernalia to users in the hope that they will stay alive long enough to make “any positive change,” the group’s mantra.