31
Jan
Katrina Suit Against Army Corps Of Engineers Dismissed; World News Briefs
KATRINA VICTIMS SUE, SUIT DISMISSED
NEW ORLEANS - A federal judge threw out a key class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina, saying that the agency failed to protect the city but that his hands were tied by the law.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over failures in drainage canals that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005.
The ruling relies on the Flood Control Act of 1928, which made the federal government immune when flood control projects like levees break.
By Matt Wade Herald Correspondent in Islamabad and agencies
A FORMER head of Pakistan’s military intelligence says Australia’s troop deployment in Afghanistan is doomed to failure and has urged the Government to withdraw its forces as quickly as possible.
NYT: Power Failures Outrage South Africa
Electricity shortages, now expected to be a fact of life for the next five years, are threatening economic growth.
ISRAEL COMMISSION CRITICIZES WAR CONDUCT
NYT: JERUSALEM — In a widely anticipated judgment, a formal inquiry released Wednesday found “grave failings” among Israel’s political and military leaders in the 2006 Lebanon war, especially in their failure to decide what kind of war to fight.
But the inquiry was less scathing than many had expected in evaluating the performance and motivations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and he seemed likely to keep his post.
The war against Hezbollah was “a serious missed opportunity,” the inquiry concluded, in which “a semi-military organization of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technological advantages.”
NOTE: THE WORDS CLUSTER BOMBS DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE ENGLISH SUMMARY, Israel dropped over a million bomblets on Southern Lebanon after a cease fire accord was reached.
AOL/AP: HAITIANS HUNGRY, HAVE TO EAT DIRT
Hungry Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Jan. 29) - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti’s worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.
With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies….
Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.
Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun
Why Lovers of Israel Should Vote for McCain (according to Joe Lieberman)
By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent
In an interview with Haaretz, Lieberman says he believes McCain is the candidate most likely to thwart a nuclear Iran.
DECEPTION EXERCISES Margaret Thatcher told Royal Navy to Raid Swedish Coast
By Pelle Neroth, MilitaryForums (UK) Jan/27, 2008
MARGARET THATCHER ordered the Royal Navy to land Special Boat Service (SBS) frogmen on the coast of Sweden from British submarines pretending to be Soviet vessels, a new book has claimed.
The deception involved numerous incursions by British forces into Swedish territorial waters in the 1980s and early 1990s, designed to heighten the impression around the world of the Soviet Union as an aggressive superpower.
Sometimes the boats landed commandos, but often their job was to fool the Swedes by mimicking the sonar signals given off by the Soviet vessels that stalked the same waters.
The Swedish government, neutral in the cold war, is not believed to have known about the deceptions, which were carried out by the British and American navies.
