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US not ready for WMD attack, report says
The United States is unprepared for an attack involving weapons of mass destruction, according to a report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
The report, and the commission’s prediction that it is “more likely than not” that a WMD will be used by terrorists by the end of 2013, were the principal topics at Thursday’s joint subcommittee hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee on the Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2011. Lawmakers discussed the commission’s statement, made in a prior report, that “Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.”
Flood evacuations in Minot, N.D., Manitobans along Souris River brace for record high water levels
Homes in Minot, N.D. are hit by flood waters on June 23, 2011.
Officials ordered immediate evacuations Wednesday in Minot, North Dakota as the area deals with the worst flooding it’s seen in more than four decades.
Meanwhile in Manitoba, the province says several communities will be bracing for rising waters with record-high flood protection levels.
In North Dakota, more than 11,000 people within the Minot flood zones –about a quarter of the city’s residents—were forced to leave Wednesday afternoon. Water from the Souris River breached Minot’s levees Wednesday afternoon.
The Souris River, which is also called the Mouse River south of the border, is expected to reach unprecedented record levels by the end of the week, cresting by June 26.
Officials say there’s nothing more they can do to hold back the water.
“What I see right now is probably the most devastating in terms of the number of people directly impacted and what will likely be the damage,” said Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk of the North Dakota National Guard.
The community was pitching in Wednesday to help those in the flood zones get out with Read more…
DARPA’s advance research arm building virtual Internet to battle cyber attacks
The Pentagon’s advanced research branch is working on a virtual version of the Internet to further the U.S.’s resistance against cyber attacks. According to Reuters, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, more commonly known as DARPA, is setting up something called the National Cyber Range. The National Cyber Range would be a virtual “testbed” to simulate a mini-Internet. Officials could use it to test virtual cyber-warfare games that experiment with different computer-generated-attack situations.
DARPA, the same agency that started that whole Internet thing in the 1960s, created the National Cyber Range project to make it simple to create different scenarios, combine those scenarios, and ultimately test any potential situations that may have to be dealt with on the real Internet. The purpose is to test things like network protocols as well as satellite and radio Read more…
America’s Debt Could Soon Spark A European-Style Crisis
WASHINGTON: America’s rapidly growing national debt could soon spark a European-style crisis unless Congress moves forcefully, the Congressional Budget Office warned Wednesday in a study that underscores the stakes for a bipartisan group working on a plan to reduce red ink.
Republicans seized on the nonpartisan report to renew their push to reduce costs in federal benefit programs such as Medicare, the federal government health care program that benefits the elderly.
At issue is the $9.7 trillion of US debt held by investors and foreign countries like China, the measure that economists deem most important. Government accounts like the Social Security trust funds account for the rest of the $14.3 trillion total debt.
Democrats and Republicans have been stepping up budget talks aimed at averting what could be the disastrous first-ever default on U.S. government debt. A bipartisan group led by Vice President Joe Biden tasked with reaching an agreement has not made the politically difficult compromises on the larger issues, such as Read more…
Flood of US weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan fueling militant groups, experts say
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Some of the U.S. weapons bound for U.S. and Afghan troops in Afghanistan are being stolen, landing instead in the hands of those they are meant to be used against, and fueling militant groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, Pakistani officials say.
These weapons — which are typically snatched from Afghan troops during raids or sold by them to the Pakistani Taliban after they defect, are easily available in black markets in Pakistan’s tribal regions.
Some weapons, along with other military-issue supplies, are also being seized by Taliban militants in attacks on NATO convoys passing through Pakistan on their way to resuply soldiers in Afghanistan. Although such raids have been taking place for years, the Pakistani Taliban appear to have widened the zone where they are willing to operate, attacking NATO trucks in major cities as well, including in the capital of Islamabad as recently as June 9.
An estimated one-third of the supplies bound for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan travel by land from Read more…
CIA informants’ detention by Pakistan’s spy agency intensifies U.S-Pak edgy ties
The detention of Pakistani informants, who helped the CIA by providing information prior to the raid that killed the Al Qaida leader, by Pakistan’s top intelligence agency has intensified the already tense relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
According to a report that appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has detained five CIA informers who supplied information to CIA ahead of the raid the previous month in which the Al Qaida leader was killed.
One of the arrested CIA informants was reported to be a currently serving major in the rank of Pakistan Army. According to U.S authorities, the detained major took note of license plates of vehicles stopping over at the compound of Osama Bin Laden.
Meanwhile U.S officials have stated that Read more…
Record Midwest flooding to create largest ever ‘dead zone’ in Gulf of Mexico, more storms and levee releases on the way
The US Midwest continues to get slammed by heavy rains and winter snow melt that have swelled the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and left countless thousands of acres of the plains under water. Many towns and cities along the Missouri River in Nebraska, Iowa, and even up into the Dakotas and Montana, are now threatened by new flooding caused by levee breaches and more rains expected to hit in the coming days. Worse, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supported scientists say the overall flooding could create the most severe dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that has ever occurred.
Epic flooding, repeated onslaughts of severe storms and extreme tornadoes have created one of the worst disaster situations ever experienced in the Midwest, and things are only expected to worsen. According to recent reports, six major water reservoirs along the Missouri River are severely swollen, and six dams between Fort Peck, Mont., and Gavins Point along the South Dakota and Nebraska border, have either already reached peak releases, or are expected to Read more…
Water shortages in the West: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’
An extraordinary set of circumstances produced the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The question now is whether the compact and other laws and treaties collectively called the Law of the River are sufficiently resilient to prevent teeth-barring among the seven states of the basin in circumstances that during the 21st century may be even more extraordinary.
For the most part, speakers at a recent conference sponsored by the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center agreed that there’s no need to start over even if future circumstances will require states of the Southwest to “bend the hell out of it,” in the words of law professor Douglas Kenney.
Kenney, director of the law school’s Western Water Policy Program, last winter released the first part of a several-tiered study of challenges to administration of the river. Obscured by drought that had left Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, reduced to its lowest level since 1938, demand had quietly crept up and overtaken supply during the last decade, he said.
Despite occasional wet years such as the current one, climate-change projections foresee significantly hotter temperatures and perhaps a 9 percent decline in water volume during coming decades, according to the newest study issued this spring by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
DeBecque Canyon on the Colorado River near Palisade (Best)
Some people believe earlier spring, warmer temperatures, and the extended drought of the last decade are harbingersof Read more…
Look Out Above! Russia May Target U.S. Sats With Laser Jet
Back in the early 80s, Soviet engineers began outfitting an Ilyushin-76 jet with a laser cannon. Two models of the “Falcon-Echelon” planes were flown — presumably as counterweights to U.S. efforts to construct a fleet of missile-zapping jets. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Falcon-Echelon program perished, as well.
Or so it seemed at the time. Now, there’s mounting evidence that Read more…
China ratings house says US defaulting: report
BEIJING — A Chinese ratings house has accused the United States of defaulting on its massive debt, state media said Friday, a day after Beijing urged Washington to put its fiscal house in order.
“In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting,” Guan Jianzhong, president of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd., the only Chinese agency that gives sovereign ratings, was quoted by the Global Times saying.
Washington had already defaulted on its loans by allowing the dollar to weaken against other currencies — eroding the wealth of creditors including China, Guan said.
Guan did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The US government will run out of room to spend more on August 2 unless Read more…
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