Pakistan's foreign minister is due to hold talks with his Indian counterpart, after vowing that the train bomb attack will not undermine peace efforts. During the scheduled peace talks in Delhi, Khurshid Kasuri and Pranab Mukherjee are likely to discuss Sunday's blasts in which 68 died. On Tuesday, Mr Kasuri paid a hospital visit to survivors of the attack. Indian PM Manmohan Singh has said the attack was an "act of terror" aimed at disrupting the peace process. Observers say while the attack casts a cloud over the talks between the two foreign ministers, it could inject urgency into the long-running process. Meanwhile, police in India have issued images of two men they believe got off the train just before the attack. The 68 victims, mostly Pakistanis, were killed after explosives started a fire in two carriages of the Delhi-Lahore train. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk
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Editor - 19:42:00 02-20-07
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 Audit finds U.S. anti-terror statistics inflated Marriage fraud, other non-terror issues counted in numbers since 9/11 |
Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday. Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found. Responding, a Justice spokesman pointed to figures showing that prosecutors in the department's headquarters for the most part either accurately or underreported their data — underscoring what he called efforts to avoid pumping up federal terror statistics. The numbers, used to monitor the department's progress in battling terrorists, are reported to Congress and the public and help, in part, shape the department's budget....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17249651/
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Editor - 19:40:00 02-20-07
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| La. levee plan leaves some helpless |
State and federal plans for a massive hurricane protection bulwark for Louisiana would sacrifice dozens of coastal communities, some with thousands of residents, to the next Katrina-sized hurricane. The reason: Protecting them would cost too much. "We believe that it's probably not possible to provide adequate protection that people should be living down there," says Randy Hanchey of the state's Department of Natural Resources, which drafted one of the plans. Even so, the state has not encouraged residents to move from those areas. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, ordered by Congress last year to design its own set of storm defenses, reached a similar conclusion, project manager Tim Axtman says. "The reality is, the cost of protection doesn't equate to what's there," he says....
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-20-la-levee-plan_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 19:36:00 02-20-07
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| Soldier Pleads Guilty to Raping, Killing Iraqi Teen Girl |
A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Tuesday to rape and murder in the death of a 14-year-old girl and her family last year in Iraq. A judge has not yet accepted the plea.The military court still must decide whether the killings were premeditated and will hear evidence Wednesday.The court will consider whether Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, of Barstow, Calif., should be found guilty of premeditated murder and whether he is guilty of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, defense lawyer William Cassara said Tuesday.In a plea agreement read in court Tuesday, Cortez said he conspired with three other soldiers — Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, Spc. James P. Barker and Steven D. Green, who has since been discharged — to rape the girl, 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,253238,00.html
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Editor - 19:34:00 02-20-07
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| Pension gap divides public and private workers |
Johnnie Nichols, a civilian Defense Department employee, contributes to a federal pension that will let him retire at age 56, after 32 years of service.His wife, Kimberly, a math teacher at a private business college, has no pension after two decades of teaching and running a horse farm. Their marriage reflects the new world of retirement: government employees who have secure benefits and private workers who increasingly are on their own. "If we were both in her shoes, we'd be in a world of hurt," says Nichols, 45, an information technology manager in Middletown, Ind. "We wouldn't be able to retire until age 67." As the first wave of 79 million baby boomers heads to retirement, the nation is dividing into two classes of workers: those who have government benefits and those who don't. The gap is accelerating in every way — pensions, medical benefits, retirement ages....
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-20-pensions-cover_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 19:32:00 02-20-07
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| Blair to announce Iraq troop pullout timetable At least 1,500 to return home within the next several weeks, reports say |
Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce Wednesday a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, with 1,500 to return home in several weeks, British media reported. Blair will also tell the House of Commons during his regular weekly appearance before it that a total of about 3,000 British soldiers will have left southern Iraq by the end of 2007, if the security there is sufficient, the British Broadcasting Corp. and The Sun newspaper said, quoting government officials who weren’t further identified. The BBC said Blair was not expected to say when the rest of Britain’s forces would leave Iraq. Currently, Britain has about 7,100 soldiers there. The announcement comes as President Bush implements an increase of 21,000 more troops for Iraq, but while some of the other coalition partners are pulling out: The Italians and Slovaks have left, and the Danes and the South Koreans want to start withdrawing...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17246357/
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Editor - 19:30:00 02-20-07
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