SUJAWAL: A torrent of water threatening to deluge Thatta has begun to recede, local officials said on Monday, as emergency workers plugged a breach in defences against the swollen Indus River.
Pakistan Army personnel and workers were on a war footing over the weekend battling to save Thatta, after most of the 300,000 population fled the advancing waters.
'War footing'? Would the Pak Army know what that is?
The breach near Thatta has been half-plugged and fortunately the flood has also changed its course and is moving away from the city and populated areas, senior city official Hadi Bakhsh Kalhoro said.
The water is flowing into the sea and its level is receding, and many people are returning to their homes, he said, adding levees, hastily built from clay and stone, were holding back the floodwaters.
The low-lying town of Sujawal, near Thatta, had been flooded on Sunday and almost the entire population of about 100,000 had evacuated, with power supplies cut and some residents waiting on the roofs of their homes for rescue boats.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/31/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
almost the entire population of about 100,000 had evacuated, with power supplies cut and some residents waiting on the roofs of their homes for rescue boats.
Replace Thatta with New Orleans and you got "deja vu all over again" only with the Pak Army in charge.
The entire 2,000-mile US-Mexico border will be monitored by drones starting Wednesday when a new Predator drone begins flying from Corpus Christi, Texas, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.
There are already three drones operating along portions of the border. Aside from the new drone launched today, money for two more was included in $600 million legislation President Barack Obama signed earlier this month, which ramps up border security ahead of midterm elections on Nov. 2 and as Mexicos heated drug war gains more attention. Meanwhile, Napolitano calls the border safer than ever.
"With the deployment of the Predator in Texas, we will now be able to cover the southwest border from the El Centro sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground," Napolitano said during a conference call, according to Reuters.
"This is yet another critical step we have taken in ensuring the safety of the border and is an important tool in our security toolbox," she said.
Previously, the drones had covered only California to the west Texas portion of the border, according to the Associated Press.
By the beginning of next year, six should be operating along the border, covering California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.
The Predator B drones that are being deployed have night-vision cameras and can stay in flight for 30 hours, detecting drug and human smuggling, Reuters added.
#2
Drones do not matter when you aren't going to do anything to the people they spot.
You need a barrier system to make it so difficult that most people stop trying, border observation and enforcement to gather up those that do persist and repatriate them to the far SOUTH of Mexico, and internal enforcement to make employment of illegals costly enough to where the jobs dry up.
Nothing else will be effective.
Posted by: No I am The Other Beldar ||
08/31/2010 13:50 Comments ||
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#3
Entire US-Mexico border to be monitored by Predator drones
#7
I was out in Dulzura, San Diego east county today, looking for the site for a replacement bridge supporting the reservoir flume from Barrett Lake to Otay Lake. Apparently my F-150 (drink up!) looked unfamiliar on the flume dirt roads. Three Border Patrol contacts in an hour. All nice, friendly, and polite. Of course, I had ID and construction plans with me....but they were out in force today
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/31/2010 18:41 Comments ||
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#8
but they were out in force today
It's almost 9/11, Frsnk. Everyone is on alert, even civilians.
#10
I've been called worse...by close family. A mulligan for TW
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/31/2010 20:10 Comments ||
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#11
The Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) fly MQ-9 Reapers, not MQ-1 Predators. There may be some confusion because General Atomics still calls them Predator B. The CBP bought them without weapons capability although it could be installed relatively quickly. The Texas Air Guard is getting MQ-1B Predators, but they fly overseas, not on the Texas border.
#13
We are not firing Hellfire missiles at populous areas of the US-Mexican border. If all you are looking for is recon there are, as rwv pointed out, cheaper alternatives to the Predator.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
08/31/2010 23:21 Comments ||
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#14
Hey Frank G - I was a Copper out there for many years. In the early 80's when I was a rookie, if you took some dirt roads south off SR-94, after a couple miles you would come across a 2 foot tall concrete marker. It said "Mexico" on the north side and "USA" on the south of it. That was all the warning you got out there. The dirt road just continued on south. I'd make a U-turn and get the hell back north.
Posted by: retired LEO ||
08/31/2010 23:52 Comments ||
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This is filed as non-WoT, since it's increasingly clear that Mr. Enright is nuts.
A film student arrested in the slashing of a Muslim taxi driver in Manhattan last week was indicted on Monday on charges of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault as hate crimes.
The student, Michael Enright, 21, was not in Manhattan Criminal Court during the brief hearing; James Zaleta, an assistant district attorney, informed his lawyer, Lawrence M. Fisher, that Mr. Enright had been indicted. The indictment is expected to be unsealed on Sept. 22.
Enright is singing to the wall over at Bellevue right now ...
Mr. Enright had recently been embedded with a Marine unit in Afghanistan and was working on a documentary about it. He had also volunteered for a nonprofit group whose mission included fostering understanding among religions and cultures, veterans and civilians.
So he wasn't a tea party activist, much to the dismay of the Progressive community and the MFM ...
The taxi driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, 44, said Mr. Enright had first made small talk with him. After he told Mr. Enright that he was Muslim, Mr. Sharif said, Mr. Enright responded with an Arabic greeting, silence and then told him, "This is the checkpoint" and "I have to bring you down."
Mr. Enright then slashed Mr. Sharif in the throat, face and arms, prosecutors said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/31/2010 00:00 ||
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Thought Enright was drunk at the time. The term "hate crime" has become so politicized. Sometimes "hate crime" is used and sometimes it is not--use seems to be somewhat whimsical depending on the politics of the time. We had a heinous crime in Knoxville where 4 African-Americans thugs; some with a previous record, both raped and murdered a young white couple. The young man was raped, killed and set on fire. The young girl was raped, tortured and stuffed in a trash can and left to die. By all measures it should have been a hate crime. It was not prosecuted as such--probably just not to stir up racial tensions. There was a time when murder, attempted murder, and assault charges were sufficient.
#3
Enright doesn't fit the radical left-wing media meme: He was in favor of the Manhattan Murder Victory Mosque. The MSM just couldn't find a white right wing extremist in this story. It is so hard being a "MSM Journalist?" these days. People just aren't accepting the lies anymore. It used to be so easy.
#4
It is so hard being a "MSM Journalist?" these days.
It's because they're like flat worms living in a two dimensional world trying to perceive a three dimensional object that intrudes upon their concept of reality.
#5
Does this mean that the "kill whitey" teens at the Iowa state fair will also be charged with hate crimes? Or is hunting down, beating, and screaming racial epitaphs insufficient for probable cause?
Acknowledging flaws in its reports and growing public skepticism toward the theory of manmade global warming, the United Nations hired an independent review panel in March to audit its climate-science arm. The group found plenty of problems. Big fish. Small Barrel.
The InterAcademy Council, an independent group of scientists representing agencies from around the world, presented the findings of its five-month investigation Monday morning at the United Nations. The group took issue with the structure, methods and leadership of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the group responsible for a 2007 report that erroneously forecast the imminent melting of Himalayan glaciers, the rate of melt of polar ice caps and dwindling Amazon rainforests. Good start.
"The IPCC has raised public awareness of climate change, and justified socialist driven policymakers," said Harold Shapiro, chair of the IAC Committee to Review IPCC and former president of Princeton University. But the controversies that have erupted, and revelations of errors, have put the group under the microscope. "We recommend some significant reforms," he told the U.N.
"The IPCC has yet to review the IAC's findings, so I am not able to comment on its findings," said longstanding chair Rajendra Pachauri in a press conference following the presentation. But he did note that none of the seven reviews of the IPCC to date had found flaws in the U.N. group. And none ever will as long as this commie is in charge.
"The scientific community agrees that climate change is real," Pachauri said. Bingo- those are the magic words that the watermelons have to push. The article makes clear that this latest audit did not review the science- it wasn't what they were charged with. So Pachauri has yet more time to push the Big Lie.
#2
"The scientific community agrees that climate change is real,"
And the sun is a variable star as well. Neither of which gives a rat's ass about the infestation of organics upon this blue rock. Both the earth and sun simply exist and those little poor creatures have little if any say about it one way or another as its been for billions of annual orbital trajectories. The 'scientific' community has devolved into just another contemporary religious organ no different than the ancient priests of Egypt who self empowered themselves as guardians and controllers of the Nile. 'What would you do without us', now just subordinate yourself to our grandeur and authority peasants.
Roald Hoffmann was invited to speak and to organize a workshop for young scientists, noticed no Israelis wanted. After trying unsuccessfully to work behind the scenes, he is now asking the sponsoring organization and invited speakers to boycott the conference.
#1
Make a change for academics to be overtly anti-anti-semitic, rather than anti-semitic, but then it seems unlikely Prof Hoffman isn't Jewish himself, albeit not the self-loathing type.
"'It's extremely frustrating for everybody,' says Bernd Rode, one of the conference's founders and a chemist at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Even if nothing else is done, Rode says, conference organizers will hold a panel discussion at the meeting to allow participants to discuss the issue thoroughly."
That'll be the cue for the frothy-mouthed anti-semitism.
#2
Now, seriously, I didn't realize there were any young scientists in Jordan.....
and anyhow I think Chemistry is considered un-islamic ( with the exception of "explosives 101") by the bunch of religious idiots pulling the strings of the "Prince Abdallah" puppet.
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
08/31/2010 17:49 Comments ||
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The race to build the world's first flying military jeep just moved a step closer to the finish line. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected two companies to proceed with the next stage of its Transformer, known as TX--a fully automated four-person vehicle that can drive like a car and then take off and fly like an aircraft to avoid roadside bombs.
Lockheed Martin and AAI Corp., a unit of Textron Systems, are currently in negotiations with DARPA for the first stage of the Transformer project, said several industry sources at a robotics conference here in Denver. DARPA has not announced the official winners yet.
AAI's winning concept does not have a shrouded rotor, but it is also far from being a traditional helicopter. The company, which produces the Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle, is basing its proposal in part on the slowed-rotor/compound concept, a technology that uses rotor blades heavily weighted in the tips, or high inertia. The rotor provides lift on takeoff, and then as it gains speed, the rotor slows down and the wings provide lift.
Lockheed Martin has declined to detail any aspect of its submission, but those familiar with the Phantom Works project speculated that it might combine aspects of the company's Joint Tactical Light Vehicle, a follow-on to the Humvee, with a ducted fan propulsion system that it would use to fly.
The two companies are still a ways away from building flying Humvees; the first stage of the DARPA project is merely working on conceptual designs. The total funding available for Transformer is about $40 million.
Officials from both companies declined to comment on the record about the negotiations, and DARPA did not respond to request to comment.
[The Register.com] Security researchers have disrupted the botnet known as Pushdo, a coup that over the past 48 hours has almost completely choked the torrent of junkmail from the once-prolific spam network.
Researchers from the security inteligence firm LastLine said that they identified a total of 30 servers used as Pushdo command and control channels and managed to get the plug pulled on 20 of them. As a result, the torrent of junkmail spewing from it dropped to almost zero on Thursday, according to figures from M86 Security Labs.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/31/2010 00:00 ||
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For the last 2 weeks I have been getting a torrent of spam through my hotmail accounts, 6+ copies each of the same stupid stuff. In the last 2 days, it has nearly stopped, so I suspect it's related. From another article on this: ""Previous experience has taught us that these botnet takedowns are short lived," said Hay at M86 Security Labs. "Disabling control servers does not incapacitate the people behind the botnet. It is highly likely they'll be back before long with new control servers, and bots to do their spamming. In the meantime, we can enjoy a few days with less spam about.""
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The race to build the world's first flying military jeep just moved a step closer to the finish line. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected two companies to proceed with the next stage of its Transformer, known as TX--a fully automated four-person vehicle that can drive like a car and then take off and fly like an aircraft to avoid roadside bombs. 
Security researchers have disrupted the botnet known as Pushdo, a coup that over the past 48 hours has almost completely choked the torrent of junkmail from the once-prolific spam network.
