FBI joins drills on nuke terrorMilitary, U.S. law enforcement step up weapons-of-mass-destruction exercises
WASHINGTON – On the heels of numerous reports suggesting al-Qaida has already infiltrated the U.S. with nuclear weapons and operatives, the FBI has joined the Pentagon in simulation exercises dealing with the threat of nuclear terror.
The FBI conducted a drill in North Carolina last month in which the Joint Terrorism Task Force, based in Fayetteville and Charlotte, dealt with a scenar... (more)
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Do blacks believe levee was blown?Washington Post columnist 'stunned' by 'reasonable' people suggesting plot
Was the levee break that precipitated the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina the result of some government conspiracy against blacks?
A Washington Post columnist says he's amazed by the large number who believe such a notion.
"I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engi... (more)
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Threatened with eviction at gunpoint, the Big Easy holdouts are now hailed as heroesJust days since they were being urged, sometimes at gunpoint, to leave their homes, the hardy band of residents who sat tight in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are now being encouraged to stay put and help to restart the city.
In a remarkable U-turn, the authorities - who had previously reviled, goaded and even threatened force against the few hundred remaining "holdouts" - are hailing them as examples of the indomitable spirit needed to rebuild the "Big Easy".
... (more)
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Boat Owners Subjected to 'Nazi Style' Armed Searches by Homeland SecurityBy VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Two of the Moss Landing Harbor residents who were the subjects of random boat searches during Labor Day Weekend say their experiences were closer to armed invasions than the friendly "safety inspections" characterized by U.S. Coast Guard officials.
Both residents said search crews entered the harbor in inflatable boats with machine guns mounted on their bows. Then, carrying M-16 rifles, they approached residents and boarded and searched their b... (more)
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Former Officer Behind 1999 Apartment Bombings Probe in Custody AgainFormer FSB officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, was taken in custody Sunday after a Russian court overturned his early release. Trepashkin had won support of human rights activist for his efforts to investigate alleged government complicity in the country’s 1999 apartment bombings that claimed over 200 lives.
Former FSB officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, was taken in custody Sunday after a Russian court overturned his early release, his wife informed the Interfax news agency.
... (more)
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Alarm as prescriptions of Ritalin to children reach a record highThe number of children being prescribed drugs for so-called behavioural disorders has soared to a record high, causing alarm that children are being unnecessarily "drugged into submission".
Prescriptions of Methylphenidate - most commonly sold as Ritalin - rose to 359,100 last year, a rise of 344,400 since 1995. Figures from the Prescriptions Pricing Authority reveal that there has been a 180-fold increase in prescriptions since 1991 when only 2,000 were issued in England.
... (more)
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Will Big Brother ride in your car?This week’s edition of The Economist (subscription required) describes a number of technology initiatives around the world that aim to have your car tell your government what you’re doing.
In the United Arab Emirates, IBM has a $125 million government contract to design and develop a real-time telematics service for the UAE’s accident-plagued motorists that, among other things, uses GPS to monitor a car’s speed and compare it to the posted speed limit, send... (more)
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Video camera system gives State Patrol eyes in the sky They're helpful, mute little eyes in the sky, and soon there will be more of them.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation continues to install video cameras throughout Duluth and parts of the North Shore. New high-resolution cameras also have sprung up along the Interstate 35 corridor to the Twin Cities and soon will appear on the Blatnik and Bong bridges.
A State Patrol dispatcher monitors the cameras from MnDOT's Duluth district headquarters off Mesaba Avenue... (more)
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UWGB students answer chancellor’s stamp act: T-shirt protest staged after art is pulled from school exhibitA decision to pull a piece of art from a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay exhibit has spurred activism on the part of students and discussion about First Amendment issues across the campus and in the community.
The art in question is a sheet of mock postage stamps by artist Al Brandtner showing President Bush with a gun pointed at his head, captioned “Patriot Act.”
Some say it advocates assassination. Others say it’s free expression.
... (more)
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Increased Number of Hunger Strikers at GuantánamoWashington, September 17 (RHC)-- The number of hunger strikers at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo has increased, as 11 more detainees have now joined the protest action. The strike began over one month ago and currently involves 131 detainees, according to Major Jeff Weir, a spokesman of the prison camp.
Twenty-one protesters were hospitalized at the prison's clinic due to their deteriorated health and, according to the spokesman, 20 of them are being administered saline ... (more)
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Rove Off The Record On Katrina: The Only Mistake We Made Was Not Overriding The Local Government... Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor and deputy White House chief of staff, spoke at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend. Here is what Rove had to say that the press wasn't allowed to report on.
On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government...
On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician,... (more)
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U.S. Seeks Donations... For IraqWASHINGTON - (KRT) - From the Indian Ocean tsunami to the church around the corner, Americans have shown time and again they are willing to open their pocketbooks for charity, for a total of about $250 billion last year alone.
But now, amid pleas for aid after Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to raise charitable contributions for another cause: the government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.
Although more than $30 billion in taxpay... (more)
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The Coming Category 5 Financial HurricaneBefore the US House of Representatives, September 15, 2005
The tragic scenes of abject poverty in New Orleans revealed on national TV by Katrina’s destruction were real eye-openers for many. These scenes prompted two emotional reactions. One side claims Katrina proved there was not enough government welfare, and its distribution was based on race. The other side claims we need to pump billions of new dollars into the very federal agency that failed (FEMA), while givin... (more)
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Mayor Ray Nagin: Troops are "decontaminating themselves as they would if they were operating in a toxic environment"BATON ROUGE, La. -- A weakened levee system and a lack of drinkable tap water will make it "extremely problematic" to follow the New Orleans mayor's timeline for allowing residents to return to the evacuated city, the head of the federal disaster relief effort said Saturday.
Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen said federal officials have worked with Mayor Ray Nagin and support his vision for repopulating the city, but he called Nagin's idea to return up to 180,000 people to New Orlea... (more)
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NOLA Mayor Says Forget The Feds & Come On BackFeds try to stop Mayor Ray Nagin from bringing people back to New Orleans.
Federal and local authorities on Sunday clashed over whether New Orleans was ready for residents to return, putting in doubt efforts to quickly resettle the devastated city.
Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal recovery efforts in New Orleans, said the city lacked most of the basic services -- such as drinkable wa... (more)
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Wading into an E. coli stewMy memory is muddy, what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim.
— "New Orleans is Sinking," The Tragically Hip
They swam, they dogpaddled, they floated, they waded.
Up to the knees, the waist, the chest and above the head.
In abyssal New Orleans, there was no escape from water. It deluged homes, lapped at rooftops, turned streets into channels, fire escapes into cataracts and ent... (more)
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Blair gave Murdoch 'veto' over EU, says PM's ex-aide
Tony Blair promised Rupert Murdoch that he would be consulted on any change to Britain's policy towards Europe, according to a diary kept by a former Downing Street press officer.
But the original entry in The Spin Doctor's Diary was toned down on the orders of the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus McDonald. The original entry, published in today's Mail on Sunday, described the atmosphere in No 10 as "very edgy" after pro-euro comments by the then Secretary of State for Tr... (more)
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Blair attacks BBC for 'anti-US bias'Tony Blair has denounced the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina as 'full of hatred of America' and 'gloating' at the country's plight, it was reported yesterday.
Blair allegedly made the remarks privately to Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, which owns the rival Sky News.
The comments threatened a new rift between the government and the BBC following the Andrew Gilligan affair over events leading to the Iraq war and recent criticisms of mini... (more)
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Child STD cases prompt sex abuse investigationsUp to 70 cases of possible abuse are being investigated by police in Western Australia's north after reports of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) among children.
Six of the cases involve children aged under five.
Under a new system, health authorities are obliged to report cases of STDs among children to police and social workers.
Detective Senior Sergeant Martin Voyez says as a result, there have been three convictions of child abuse in the north-w... (more)
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Indonesia reports bird flu deathAn Indonesian woman who died last week had the H5N1 bird flu virus and was the fourth Indonesian to die of the disease, the health ministry has said.
It was not clear how the 37-year-old woman, who lived in south Jakarta, caught the virus, the ministry said.
More than 60 people have died in four Asian countries since late 2003, and millions of birds have been culled to try to stop the virus spreading.
Scientists fear it could combine with human flu to... (more)
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Cut the high-tech noise in ChinaIMAGINE what would have happened if during the 1980s an American communications company had provided information that allowed the South African government to track down and imprison an anti-apartheid activist. That is pretty much the moral equivalent of what Yahoo has just done in China in the case of journalist Shi Tao. And the California-based Web giant deserves the same kind of public opprobrium that would have fallen on any Western company that dared to publicly cooperate with the enforcers ... (more)
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Chinese try to break nuke talks standoffBeijing -- The United States joined North Korea Saturday in raising objections to a Chinese compromise proposal designed to break a stalemate in six-nation talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and the chief U.S. negotiator, said he and other diplomats were consulting with their governments to come as close as possible to China's new suggestions, which seek to bridge a U.S.-Nort... (more)
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Blair relished ‘first blooding’ in Iraq, claims No 10 diary DOWNING Street was embarrassed last night after a frank account of the tantrums and cynicism of Tony Blair’s inner circle were published in the diaries of a former No 10 aide.
The prime minister’s office censored parts of the diaries, the first memoirs from a No 10 spin doctor.
Lance Price, a former deputy to Alastair Campbell, reveals in his book, The Spin Doctor’s Diary, that:
Blair privately seemed to “relish” sending... (more)
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Iran warning on sanctions threatIran has warned the UN's atomic agency not to refer it to the Security Council over its nuclear programme.
A referral could lead to UN sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Tehran hinted that such a move could prompt it to start uranium enrichment as well as a uranium conversion process that has already been resumed.
The remarks came after the UK foreign secretary described as "unhelpful" an assertion by Iran's president that Iran had a right to pro... (more)
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US Ambassador To Iraq Predicts US Will Go Into Syria…Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, made the off the record prediction that the US will go into Syria to combat insurgents that have been using the country as a staging ground for terrorist activity in Iraq.
Ambassador Khalilzad’s comments were made at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend.
In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Mo... (more)
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