Mystery Surrounds Dead Birds On Staten Island
December 31, 2007
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Last week, dozens of dying birds fell to the ground in a Staten Island neighborhood, and officials say they don’t yet know what caused it. The dead birds have been sent for testing but findings have not yet been released.
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Residents and city officials say roughly 40 to 50 black birds were seen tumbling from the sky, flailing on the ground and expiring on a street near Great Kills Harbor around 3 p.m. Friday. Fire Department Battalion Chief John Giacella says firefighters arrived to find the creatures “floundering and foaming at the mouth.”
Some residents say they noticed a strong chemical smell around the same time. Authorities blocked off the street and advised residents to stay indoors for a time. But officials now say air-quality tests have found no hazards.
Sightings of dead birds in Staten Island’s Great Kills and Eltingville neighborhoods have continued through this morning.
Last week, the carcasses of dozens of the feathered animals were suddenly discovered around the intersection of Wiman and Sweetwater avenues. Now the latest sightings appear to be branching out further, from the other side of Hylan Boulevard.
Last night several dead birds were spotted in the Burger King parking lot on Richmond Avenue and Amboy Road, and the Advance received another report from that area this morning. This map shows where the dead birds have been found.
Last week, the bodies of birds were collected for testing, though the results could take weeks. The Health Department said there was nothing to suggest a risk to humans. Officials on the scene last week suspected ammonia fumes emanating from a nearby pile of mulch as the cause. Lately the official guess has leaned toward pesticide.
On Friday, dozens of birds fell out of the sky and died on a street in the Great Kills section of Staten Island. Residents grew concerned as, the Staten Island Advance reported, birds “flopped and twitched…as they breathed their last” (video here). One resident said the birds were flying “as if they were drunk” before falling to the ground.
Residents were advised to stay in their homes as the fire department, police and as well as other city agencies were on the scene, trying to determine why the birds were dying. Some residents returning home weren’t even allowed out of their cars for a while. The dead birds, either blackbirds or purple martins, were all around Wiman Avenue and Tennyson Drive.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Rome Georgia - Pipe Bomb Found At Mt Berry Square Mall
December 31, 2007
A suspected pipe bomb was found at Rome’s Mt. Berry Square mall this morning, prompting an evacuation of the shopping center, and Emergency Management Agency Director Scotty Hancock said it was still unclear whether the device was explosive.
Hancock said it had the physical appearance of a pipe bomb, but no detonator.
“I don’t know if it had the insides to make it explode,” he said.
According to Travis Goss of the Rome Police Department, shortly after 7 a.m., a maintenance worker found a suspicious package and called 911. Officers set up a command center at Treasure Island, as well as barriers around the mall.
At around 9:15 a.m., reporters on the scene heard a call of “fire in the hole,” and then a small explosion from near the main entrance around 10 seconds later. The package was then removed from the site.
Sheriff Tim Burkhalter said the “bomb” was found in a parking island near the front entrance. No suspects have been named, and Burkhalter said the bomb appeared to have been placed at the mall intentionally.
Popularity: 22% [?]
Rhode Island - Suspicious Liquid Sends 4 To Hospital
December 31, 2007
Four people, including two police officers, are recovering from a hazardous material situation.
The incident occurred Sunday night on Old Post Road in Charlestown.
A woman called 911 saying she became exposed to a material after she had struck a large glass container with the unknown material that was located in her driveway when she was attempting to leave her residence.
Charlestown police, fire and EMS units were dispatched to the scene.
“This whole incident was based on precaution. Not knowing what the substance was, having this unknown taste smell, and the fact that we had some sort of container in the middle of someone’s driveway. This residence does have a history with this department of having some criminal issues previously.” said Lt. Patrick McMahon of the Charlestown Fire Department.
The two people at the home and two Charlestown police officers under went a decontamination process then treated and released from South County Hospital.
The incident remains under investigation pending the results of laboratory testing being conducted by the Department of Environmental Management in order to identify the unknown substance.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Brussels Cancels New Years Festivities Amid Terror Fears
December 30, 2007
Traditional New year’s Eve fireworks in the Belgian capital Brussels have been canceled because of a security alert.
The Christmas market will close at 1800 instead of staying open all night, and even the ice rink will close early.
“We are still facing a potential threat,” a spokesman for the Belgian capital said.
The alert follows police saying they had discovered a plot to free a jailed al-Qaeda suspect, Nizar Trabelsi. He has denied any such plot.
Last week police detained 14 people suspected of taking part in the alleged plot. But a judge said there was not enough evidence to hold any of them.
Trabelsi himself wrote to a Belgian newspaper to deny any attempt to carry out a jailbreak or terror attack.
Popularity: 21% [?]
U.S. Special Forces On Standby To Safeguard Pakistan Nuclear Arsenal
December 30, 2007
There are reports that U.S. special forces snatch squads are on standby, awaiting orders to seize or disable Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse of government authority or the outbreak of civil war in Pakistan.
The snatch teams, including volunteer scientists from America’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team organization, are under orders to take control of an estimated 60 warheads located in six to 10 high-security Pakistani military bases.
Military sources say contingency plans are being continually being reviewed and re-evaluated to prevent any of Pakistan’s atomic weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists if President Pervez Musharraf’s administration appears threatened by civil unrest.
Members of the special forces are already believed to be nearby in neighboring Afghanistan and are on alert, awaiting orders to launch the mission. Satellite surveillance of Pakistan has also been heightened to keep track of the possible movement of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems.
According to a US Congressional report published in November, Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent consists of warheads for missiles and bombs dropped from aircraft.
To maintain security, the weapons are not stored fully-assembled. Warheads, detonators and missiles are kept separately, but able to be assembled fairly quickly in the event of a national crisis.
While the US has stated publicly its confidence that Pakistan’s military has the weapons “under effective technical control”, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted two years ago that if there was a radical Islamic coup, the US was “prepared to try to deal with it”.
Internal security at Pakistan’s nuclear storage sites is the responsibility of a 10,000-man security force commanded by a two-star general. Every member of the force is vetted with the aim of weeding out sympathisers of the Taliban and al Qaeda or anyone with extreme Islamic views.
US diplomatic and military initiatives since 2001 have concentrated on trying to ensure that pro-western commanders were in charge at the most sensitive sites.
There has also been pressure to keep Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, thought to contain a number of high-ranking pro-Taliban supporters, out of the nuclear loop.
Popularity: 22% [?]
al-Qaeda Sleeper Cell Broken Up In Turkey 5 Arrested Including High School English Teacher
December 30, 2007
Five accused members of an alleged al-Qaeda sleeper cell including a high school teacher were ordered jailed Sunday on terror charges, reports said.
They were among 19 people detained in a sweep Saturday in four cities: Istanbul, Ankara, Aksaray, and the southern city of Adana, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. The others were released pending trial, the report said.
Police also seized firearms, bullets, fake ID cards and other documents, Anatolia said.
The group is an alleged al-Qaeda “sleeper cell” that police had been monitoring for some time, the Milliyet daily newspaper reported.
After monitoring the group for some time, police moved against the alleged cell amid fears members may have been preparing an attack, the paper said.
Among the five key suspects is an English teacher from a high school in the central city of Aksaray, Anatolia said. Police in Ankara did not comment on the report.
Authorities traditionally step up security in Turkey’s main cities in the days before New Year celebrations. Islamic militants have carried out bombings during the festivities in the past.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Man Arrested After Loaded Guns Found In Luggage At Honolulu Airport
December 30, 2007
A man was arrested Saturday night after he tried to board a plane at Honolulu’s airport to the Mainland with two fully-loaded guns.
The State Sheriff’s Office said Christopher Hollie had hidden the semi-automatics in his luggage and refused to tell officers why.
The Sheriffs’ Office said this was a very unusual incident, and that it’s extremely rare for them to arrest a passenger trying to fly out of Hawaii with loaded guns hidden in his or her luggage.
The Sheriff’s Office in charge of airport law enforcement said Hollie was arrested at about 9 p.m. on Saturday.
TSA security said they found a .45 handgun and a .9 mm semi-automatic weapon. Both guns were loaded and concealed in his packed clothes, officials said.
Sheriffs said even though the guns were in checked luggage and were not going into the passenger section of the plane, it was of grave concern because both guns were fully-loaded and ready to use.
The Sheriff’s Office said Hollie told them he was going to Ohio.
Sheriffs said Hollie was uncooperative after he was arrested.
He told them he worked at Tripler Hospital, but he would not say why he was traveling with loaded guns.
The TSA in Washington told KITV that this was a good example of how TSA works with local law enforcement to provide airport security.
Hollie was booked into the Honolulu Police Cellblock Saturday night, unable to post $25,000 bail.
Police said Hollie faces four felony gun charges, including carrying unregistered weapons.
Hollie makes his first court appearance in Honolulu District Court Monday.
Popularity: 17% [?]
One Murder Closer To A Nuclear Nightmare In Pakistan
December 30, 2007
She had been warned by her security detail not to put herself at risk by exposing herself in the middle of seething crowds. But Benazir Bhutto, fatalist and populist to the last, could not resist.
Moments earlier she had addressed an adulatory mass, convincing them and herself that her party could win next month’s parliamentary elections and allow her to taste power once again in her beloved homeland.
On the way out of Liaqat Bagh Park in the centre of Rawalpindi – the garrison town that neighbours the capital, Islamabad – she felt relatively safe. Security had been tight and the chance to grandstand on the home turf of incumbent President Pervez Musharraf was too good to miss.
As her white bulletproof Land Cruiser left the park, her driver was forced to slow down to negotiate a path through the crowds. Bhutto stood up and out of the sun roof, smiling and waving from under her traditional white headscarf.
Grainy video footage shows that as the car passed, a gunman just a few feet behind raised his weapon and fired three times in Bhutto’s direction. Then the area around the car erupted in a fireball as a suicide bomber flung himself at the vehicle.
What happened next is, extraordinarily, a matter of debate. Some witnesses, backed by doctors who treated the opposition leader, say she was hit in the neck and shoulder by two bullets, one of which severely damaged her spinal cord. Then she was hit by shrapnel from the bomb, which added to her already terrible injuries. She fell down through the hatch, fatally injured and slumped on the car’s back seat in a pool of blood.
Bizarrely, the Pakistan government asserted that her death was more like a grisly accident than an assassination – that the former prime minister died when the blast from the bomb threw her sideways and she smashed her head on the metal lever that opened the sun roof. The blow shattered her skull, they said, an injury from which she subsequently died. The claim came conveniently after Bhutto’s body was buried on Friday, just a day after her death, in accordance with Muslim custom.
However she died, the darkest fears of her supporters, who had welcomed the 54-year-old head of the Bhutto political clan home from exile just two months ago, had become a reality. Their political hope was now a blood-soaked corpse.
The political ripples triggered by her death did not take long to form. As news of her assassination spread, riots broke out across the country of 160 million people, as supporters took to the streets to vent their grief and blame Musharraf’s government for not giving their leader enough protection. As severe doubts arose over whether planned elections for January 8 could now go ahead, Bhutto’s funeral took place at her family mausoleum near the southern city of Karachi, attended by her husband and three children and hundreds of thousands of mourners.
The violence was spreading. Airlines were grounded, major roads blocked and petrol stations were closed as the government tried to restrict movement. In the southern province of Sindh, the base of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), police were ordered to shoot rioters on sight.
Although more than 30 deaths were reported throughout the country, Pakistan security forces yesterday appeared to be containing the outbreaks. But beyond Pakistan’s volatile borders the international repercussions of Bhutto’s death were still being felt.
Pakistan, which neighbours the Taliban and al-Qaeda hotbed of Afghanistan, has been in the frontline of the war against global terror since the 9/11 attacks, an important beacon of stability in a troubled, largely Islamic region.
The violent death of Bhutto – who, it was hoped, would share power with Musharraf in a national unity government after the election – has the capability of plunging Pakistan’s openly warring political factions into a brutal civil war.
With Musharraf’s grip on power and security weakening, there is a twin concern for the future: that the country’s potential as a breeding ground for terrorism could increase exponentially, and that Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands.
M J Gohel, the head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based security and intelligence think-tank, believes there is a strong possibility that parts of Pakistan’s nuclear technology could fall into the grip of militants.
“It’s a very, very valid risk,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before al-Qaeda or somebody sympathetic to them gets hold of nuclear weapons, and if al-Qaeda or its sympathisers are to get hold of them, then Pakistan is at this point the weakest link in the chain.”
Nuclear materials controlled by Islamic fanatics is the White House’s worst nightmare but Bhutto’s death brings the possibility closer.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Customs Agents Beheaded In Mexico - Gunmen Kill Off Duty Soldiers In Mall
December 29, 2007
Mexico’s drug wars are heating up with the cartels sending a powerful message to those who attempt to stop them.
Suspected drug smugglers have dumped the beheaded or mutilated bodies of five people around the Mexican capital in recent days in what appear to be revenge killings for a cocaine seizure at the airport.
The severed heads of two men who worked for a private customs firm were found near Mexico City airport on Saturday while their bodies appeared just outside the city.
One of the heads had an index finger stuffed in its mouth and the other had a finger in its ear.
Mexico’s attorney general said over the weekend agents had seized half a ton of cocaine found at the airport on a flight from Colombia.
Three other bodies, two of them headless and without an index finger, were found this week in Tlalnepantla on the edge of the city. The hands of the third body were chopped off. These three bodies have not been identified.
“By the way they were killed, it leads us to believe they were informants or that (drug dealers) were trying to send a message,” Elena Cardenas, a spokeswoman for Tlalnepantla municipality, said on Wednesday. “‘Listen, see, don’t talk,’ that’s their motto,” she said.
Mexico has been blighted by beheadings and other gory killings in a 3-year-old war between drug gangs for control of smuggling routes to the United States.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to violence hot spots.
While the operations have led to a string of high-profile busts, drug violence has still killed around 2,500 people this year.
On Wednesday, the attorney general’s office said it had seized nearly 2 million pills of over-the-counter cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make the highly addictive methamphetamine.
Beheadings by organized criminal elements are common in Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Michoacán states, where drug cartel operations are widespread. The gruesome tactic has not been used commonly in Mexico City, however. These incidents could be an ominous sign the tactic may be spreading to the heart of Mexico.
Off Duty Soldiers Shot In Mexico Shopping Mall
The men were shot in the back as they entered the mall in the normally quiet mining city of Torreon in Coahuila state near Texas on Tuesday afternoon, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
A member of Mexico’s air force who was with the soldiers was shot and seriously wounded in the attack.
The gunmen escaped, the ministry said.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of troops to the front lines of his war against powerful drug cartels in Mexico.
Calderon says more than 15,000 people linked to organized crime, including drug capos, have been arrested in 2007, and the Mexican military has made record drug seizures.
But drug cartels still wield power, especially along the border with the United States, killing rivals, police chiefs, soldiers and recently a politician.
Some 2,500 people have died in sometimes gory Mexican drug violence this year and government officials predict the killings will continue in 2008.
Popularity: 19% [?]
The New York Sun - Bhutto Killed By Renegade Commando Sniper Team
December 28, 2007
This is one of those stories I had to read three or four times to let sink in. There are varied reports as to the actual cause of Bhuttos death, but this one has serious implications if proven to be true.
American and Pakistani military leaders are seeking to account for what may be renegade commando units from the Pakistani military’s special forces in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan’s opposition leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.
The attack yesterday at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. At first, Bhutto’s rally was hit by a suicide bomb that turned out to be a decoy. According to press reports and a situation report of the incident relayed to The New York Sun by an American intelligence officer, Bhutto’s armored limousine was shot by multiple snipers whose armor-piercing bullets penetrated the vehicle, hitting the former premier five times in the head, chest, and neck. Two of the snipers then detonated themselves shortly after the shooting, according to the situation report, while being pursued by local police.
A separate attack was thwarted at the local hospital where Bhutto possibly would have been revived had she survived the initial shooting. Also attacked yesterday was a rival politician, Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister who took power after Bhutto lost power in 1996.
A working theory, according to this American source, is that Al Qaeda or affiliated jihadist groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan’s Special Services Group, the country’s equivalent of Britain’s elite SAS commandos. This official, however, stressed this was just a theory at this point. Other theories include that the assassins were trained by Qaeda or were from other military services, or the possibility that the assassins were retired Pakistani special forces.
Popularity: 19% [?]
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