Author: Admin

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Pictou Island had 2,000 to 3,000 seals on it when struck by a “severe” storm that buried the tiny Canadian island in snow and created rough ocean effects Wednesday and Thursday.

Jane MacDonald, an island resident, said that she woke up Thursday morning to see “wall to wall seals” and their puppies “decimated” by the storm.

MacDonald commented, “The seal puppies were literally swept away into the water because their mothers couldn’t get them to higher ground. A wave would hit and the pup went under. The mother pushed it up with her nose, and then another wave would hit.”

“After the sixth or seventh wave, the pup didn’t come up,” MacDonald said. “The more you watched, the worse it got. The mothers struggled so hard to save their babies and it just couldn’t be done, I’d never seen anything like that.”

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A report from the new US and NATO commander in Afghanistan says there is an urgent need for more foreign troops and civilians, more Afghan forces and a new strategic approach to reverse Taliban gains.

File:General Stanley A McChrystal 01.jpg

The assessment by US Army General Stanley McChrystal is still officially secret, but the Washington Post published an unclassified version on Monday, which it says has only a few deletions requested by the government.

In the document, the general, who arrived in Afghanistan in June, says “success is not ensured by additional forces alone, but continued under-resourcing will likely cause failure.”

He writes that the US and NATO effort has long been “under-resourced,” and that must change within 12 months or the coalition “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” He says a lack of even the “minimum” resources is “a recipe for failure” in a counterinsurgency,” and the Taliban and related groups have made significant gains in recent years as a result.

The report says that “failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term [next year] — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

General McChrystal says while the Afghan government and military “must ultimately defeat the insurgency,” the coalition can not wait for the Afghans to be capable enough to do the job alone.

Although the Washington Post published most of the document on its website, Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss its details, calling it “pre-decisional” and “classified.”

“The national security team, to include the commander-in-chief, have it. They are reviewing it. They will use it to help them make decisions about the future. The secretary [of Defense] is absorbing the assessment along with the president. If there are decisions that flow from that, they will make them at the appropriate time,” the spokesman said.

Whitman would not say when McChrystal will make his expected detailed request for more troops, or when a decision might be made.

On the president’s aircraft Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that while the general may want more troops, he does not expect a formal request for a little while. “We are going to conduct that strategic assessment and do that in a way that lays out the best path forward before we make resource decisions, rather than having this go the other way around where one makes resources decisions and then finds a strategy,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs said any decision on troop levels will wait until the conclusion of a broader assessment of the way forward in Afghanistan, of which he indicated McChrystal’s document is only one part.

Last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates appealed for patience, saying these are extremely important decisions, and the president should be given the time to get them right. The secretary indicated he, the president and other senior officials have sent questions to McChrystal about his assessment, and are awaiting his answers.

In the document, the general was critical of NATO forces, saying that they are “poorly configured” to fight an insurgency. He says if NATO countries continue to be “pre-occupied” with protecting their forces rather than protecting the people and accomplishing the mission, they “run the risk of strategic defeat.” He said the coalition must operate “dramatically differently — even uncomfortably differently.”

He also repeated some of his earlier calls for more civilian help and a new approach by his troops that makes the security of the Afghan people their top priority. He said the coalition is in a “war of ideas,” in which he says it must demonstrate its commitment and its ability to deliver security without causing undue civilian casualties.

In an interview with Voice of America, Afghanistan Ambassador to the United Nations Zahir Tanin endorsed General McChrystal’s sense of urgency, and his view that while a comprehensive approach is needed, security comes first. “From a military point of view, I think without enough resources, without the ability to stop the Taliban’s advances, it would be very difficult to make any progress in other areas, including political progress in Afghanistan,” Tanin said.

Ambassador Tanin said McChrystal is in the best position to assess the security needs and if there is a need for more forces, the Afghan government must support such a request.

He also rejected concerns expressed by some, including Secretary Gates, that sending more foreign troops could alienate the Afghan people. The ambassador says the key for Afghans is not how many foreign troops there are or what strategy they implement, but whether they deliver security and defeat the insurgents.

In the report, McChrystal concluded that “while the situation is serious, success is still achievable.” But he said the effort needs “a fundamentally new approach” that is “properly resourced and supported” throughout the coalition and across military and civilian agencies.

Monday, March 30, 2009

At least eight people have been killed on Monday after a gunman entered a Carthage, North Carolina nursing home and opened fire on its residents.

Local police reported that Robert Stewart, a 45-year-old man, entered the Pinelake health and rehabilitation centre, which gives care to Alzheimer’s disease patients, and shot a nurse and seven patients to death. Six of the victims were killed at the scene. The others died later at a local hospital. The ages of the patients were between 78 and 98.

The alleged gunman also wounded two other people, among them a visitor and a policeman, who confronted the gunman in a hallway and stopped the rampage. The suspect himself was injured before being arrested by police. His condition is currently not known.

“He [the policeman] acted in nothing short of a heroic way today, and but for his actions, we certainly could have had a worse tragedy. We had an officer, a well-trained officer, who performed his job the way he was supposed to and prevented this from getting even worse than it is now,” said Maureen Krueger, the Moore County District Attorney.

“This is a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through,” said Chris McKenzie, the Carthage police chief. “It’s a horrible event in any size town, particularly, though, when you deal with a small town such as Carthage. It’s hard. This is my home, my small town. I was born and raised here so I take it to heart a little bit. All you can do is move forward.”

The victims of the shooting have been identified. They are: Bessie Hendrick, 78; John Goldston, 78; Jessie Musser, 88; Tessie Gardner, 88; Lillian Dunn, 89; Margaret Johnston, 89; Louise Decker, 98; and Jerry Avent, the nurse.

Carthage is located approximately sixty miles southwest of North Carolina’s capital of Raleigh. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 1,871. The Pinelake nursing home, where the attack occurred, contains 110 beds and has both short and long term patients.

Saturday, June 4, 2005

On Friday, the U.S. military released the results of their investigation and confirmed that in 5 separate incidents, American guards at the Guantánamo Bay prison “mishandled” the Islamic holy book. However, they stress that guards were usually “respectful” of the Qur’an.

One incident involved splashing a Qur’an with urine by urinating near an air vent while others involved kicking, stepping on and writing in Qur’ans.

Brigadier-General Jay Hood, the commander of the jail, said that these incidents are the exception to the rule. In a statement issued late Friday, he said: “The inquiry … revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Qur’an dating back almost two-and-a-half years.”

Gen. Hood looked into the allegations, published and then retracted by Newsweek, that American personnel flushed a Qur’an down a toilet. He said that the inquiry did not find any evidence supporting this particular allegation. “The inquiry found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Qur’an down a toilet. This matter is considered closed.”

The incidents reported are:

• a guard kicking a prisoner’s Qur’an;
• Qur’ans wetted by water balloons thrown by guards;
• a “two-word obscenity” written, in English, inside the cover of a Qur’an. Military officials state that it is equally possible that a guard wrote this in the prisoner’s Qur’an or that the prisoner wrote this in his own Qur’an;
• a guard who urinated too close to an air vent, spraying a Qur’an with urine;
• an interrogator who stepped on a Qur’an during an interrogation.

The investigation also revealed 15 alleged cases of Qur’an mistreatment by detainees themselves. Detainees used Qur’ans as pillows, urinated on them, and, several times, tore pages out of copies of the books, according to the report. For example, the report states that a guard observed a “detainee place two Qur’ans in his toilet and state he no longer cared about the Qur’an or his religion,” on February 23, 2004. It is believed that such behavior is intended to cause disruption and problems for the guards.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Chris Christie, governor of the US state of New Jersey, complained on ABC’s Sunday morning talk show This Week that TV series Jersey Shore promotes a negative image of the state.

Prompted by a feature in The New York Times on Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, one of the stars of the MTV show, interviewer Jake Tapper asked the governor whether he thought the series was positive or negative for the state. Christie unequivocally answered that the show was “negative for New Jersey… It takes a bunch of New Yorkers, drops them on the Jersey Shore, and tries to make America feel like this is New Jersey”. He concluded, “I can tell people: they want to know what New Jersey really is? I welcome them to come to New Jersey any time.”

In a wide-ranging interview the governor also faced questions about local and national politics, including New Jersey’s US$11 billion budget deficit. Specifically, he was challenged over his plans to not pay $3 billion into public pension funds, payments described by the interviewer as a “legal obligation”. He said that he “wasn’t going to put $3 billion into a failing pension system” and that there would be further reforms of pensions and health benefits.

Christie was further questioned over his ongoing conflicts with teachers unions. He responded that “we can’t have one sector of our society sheltered from the ravages of the recession, at the cost to people who have been hurt by the recession the most”, citing the example of construction unions in New Jersey currently suffering unemployment between 35 and 50%.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

United Arab Emirates (UAE) developer Emaar Properties has claimed that their Burj Dubai commercial and residential tower, currently under construction, has become the world’s tallest building, reaching a height of 512.1 metres (or 1,680 feet) and 141 storeys.

The current official record holder, Taipei 101 of Taiwan, has a height of 508 metres and 101 storeys, and will retain the “tallest building” title for some time to come. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat sets the criteria for achieving height records for buildings, and will not evaluate the Burj Dubai until construction is complete in late 2008. Although final height details have been kept secret by the developer, the Burj Dubai is expected to reach nearly 700 metres in height, with approximately 160 storeys.

The current record holder for the world’s tallest free-standing structure is the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada. It has a height of 553 metres. The Burj Dubai, therefore, would claim both records when it is completed.

Once the Burj Dubai is completed, it will have required 330,000 cubic metres of concrete, 39,000 tonnes of steel and 142,000 square metres of glass, according to Emaar Properties. The building will have 56 lifts (elevators) that can move at a rate of speed of 1.75 to 10 metres per second.

Dubai is undergoing a construction boom currently with the Burj Dubai as the planned centrepiece of a $US20 billion project, which will eventually realize some 30,000 apartments and boast the world’s largest shopping mall.

There have been criticisms of the working conditions for construction workers in the UAE. A majority of the estimated 500,000 construction workers in the UAE are foreign workers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In a 2006 report on the UAE’s treatment of migrant workers, entitled Building Towers, Cheating Workers, Human Rights Watch documented abuses in UAE such as, “extremely low wages, several years of indebtedness to recruitment agencies for fees that UAE law says only employers should pay, the withholding of employees’ passports, and hazardous working conditions that result in apparently high rates of death and injury.”

In October of last year, Human Rights Watch delivered specific recommendations to the UAE government for improvement of working conditions. The UAE government acted swiftly on the report and put in place several improvements, which were applauded by Human Rights Watch.

However, the salaries of migrant construction workers remain in the range from $106 to $250 per month, while the national average wage is over $2,000 per month. Trade unions remain illegal in the UAE.