When Boston's Big Dig was still on the drawing board, state and federal transportation officials picked an engineering powerhouse and a smaller, well-established firm to build the forbiddingly complex tangle of tunnels, ramps, bridges and highways. And then, critics say, the officials stepped back and let the two companies do their job with little or no oversight. In the weeks since 12 tons of ceiling panels from a Big Dig tunnel fell, crushing a woman to death in a car, critics say one of the key flaws in the project was the way it was managed. Bechtel Civil Inc., part of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., teamed up with the design firm of Parsons, Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas Inc. to work on the project, starting in 1985. The consortium was known as Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff. "It's been the fox guarding the hen house," said Sen. Steven Baddour, chairman of the Legislature's Joint Transportation Committee. ...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 11:24:00 07-25-06
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 ACLU appeals dismissal of German's CIA torture case |
The American Civil Liberties Union said on Tuesday it has appealed the dismissal of a federal lawsuit filed by a German of Lebanese origin who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA. The ACLU, which represents Khaled el-Masri in the suit against former CIA Director George Tenet and CIA agents, asked the federal appellate court in Richmond, Virginia, to overturn a May 18 ruling by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis tossing out Masri's case as a risk to national security because it would expose state secrets. In a case that has drew wide attention and spawned investigations in Europe, Kuwaiti-born Masri says he was abducted in Macedonia in December 2001, then drugged, beaten and flown by the CIA to Afghanistan, where he was held as a terrorism suspect for five months. He says the CIA then dumped him in Albania. Tenet was director at the time. The CIA declined to comment on the appeal....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/ts_nm/security_masri_dc
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Editor - 11:22:00 07-25-06
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| California heat tests power grid |
Scorching heat is still severely stretching power supplies in parts of the US, with consumers warned of more shortages unless they reduce demand. The National Weather Service has issued another excessive heat warning for California with temperatures set to reach 44C (111F) in Los Angeles. The risk of rolling blackouts still remains and a power grid spokeswoman said: "We still have our guard up." About 29 deaths across the US in recent days are being linked to the heat wave. Electricity is now back on in many of the hundreds of thousands of homes hit by power outages in the past few days, including in California and New York. But in Queens in New York, about 1,000 customers were still without power for a ninth day on Tuesday, a utility company told the Associated Press news agency. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5212650.stm
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Editor - 11:19:00 07-25-06
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| Instrumental but excluded |
If Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert are to be believed, Iran wields significant influence throughout the Middle East, and not least over the current Lebanon crisis. Which, logically, makes it all the more strange that Britain, the US and Israel have so far systematically excluded the Islamic republic from international efforts to end the fighting and achieve a lasting settlement.Tomorrow's Rome conference will be attended by the main western powers and the so-called moderate Arab states. But Iran and its second-string ally, Syria, have not been invited even though it is widely accepted that any peace deal involving their Lebanese political ally, Hizbullah, is unlikely to stick without their support. The UN mission that visited the region and presented its proposals to the security council last week did not travel to Tehran or Damascus. ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1828650,00.html?gusrc=rss
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Editor - 11:17:00 07-25-06
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| Bush vows to help bolster Baghdad security |
Bush said Tuesday that a U.S. military program to bolster Iraqi security forces in Baghdad will better address the violence there as he pledged to stand by Iraq’s new democratic government. “Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible,” Bush said during a joint White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush had praised al-Maliki’s signature program to improve Baghdad security during their last meeting in Baghdad in June. Bush complimented the beleaguered leader for his courage and perseverance in the face of sectarian violence. Recent violence has sapped political support for the more than 3-year-old war in Iraq, in both the United States and Iraq. “He comes wondering whether or not we are committed. He hears all kinds of things coming out of the United States,” Bush said. “And I assured him that this government stands by the Iraqi people.” But the mass majority of Iraq people want the US to leave, so just who is he referring too? ...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14009793/
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Editor - 11:14:00 07-25-06
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| Los Angeles Seeks Information on 50 Women Possibly Missing for Decades |
Homicide investigators are trying to find at least 50 women they have linked to a man who is in prison for killing two women in the early 1980s, officials said. A sheriff's department statement said they may have been rape or homicide victims between and 1975 and 1984.The man, whose identity was withheld pending an official request for public help Tuesday, was known to photograph women he met at Los Angeles bars in the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Monday.He said the man was serving his sentence in a California state prison for killing two women he had photographed.Some of the unaccounted-for women were in photographs the man had kept, Whitmore said, though it wasn't immediately clear how many....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205475,00.html
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Editor - 11:06:00 07-25-06
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