Las Vegas Urges Officials To Cancel Mock Nuclear Blast

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is asking the Department of Homeland Security to cancel it’s plans for a simulated nuclear explosion scheduled to take place in Las Vegas next May.

In a letter Wednesday to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Authority President and Chief Executive Officer Rossi Ralenkotter said the premise of an upcoming emergency preparedness drill “will generate undue anxiety about visiting or conducting business in Las Vegas.”

FEMA has been planning its 2010 “national level exercise” since last year. The simulation, which is designed to test the capabilities of first responders to catastrophic events, involves the response to a mock nuclear blast in Clark County.

Nearly 10,000 local, state, and federal agents are expected to participate in the exercise.

In the letter to FEMA’s regional office in Oakland, Calif., Ralenkotter asked FEMA to consider “a non-nuclear scenario” for the exercise. He also requested that the simulation not be associated with the resort corridor.

“Our destination already receives a disproportionate amount of attention when the Department of Homeland Security releases even the most routine bulletin,” Ralenkotter wrote. “This exercise has the potential to escalate that attention and potentially harm our economy.”

Ralenkotter also sent his letter to Nevada’s congressional delegation and other local politicians.

Sen. Harry Reid, in a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano today, weighed in with objections to the exercise.

“I am deeply sympathetic to the need of our first responders to conduct preparedness training, and I look forward to revisiting this issue when Nevada’s economy has improved,” Reid wrote. “However, at this time, economic recovery efforts would be stymied, or reversed entirely, by artificially creating anxiety surrounding tourism and investment in Las Vegas.”

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U.S. Reviews Air Defenses to Thwart Terror From Skies

I’m not sure how one can ever place a price tag on preventing another 9/11…or worse.

The commander of military forces protecting North America has ordered a review of the costly air defenses intended to prevent another Sept. 11-style terrorism attack, an assessment aimed at determining whether the commitment of jet fighters, other aircraft and crews remains justified.

Senior officers involved in the effort say the assessment is to gauge the likelihood that terrorists may succeed in hijacking an airliner or flying their own smaller craft into the United States or Canada. The study is focused on circumstances in which the attack would be aimed not at a public building or landmark but instead at a power plant or a critical link in the nation’s financial network, like a major electrical grid or a computer network hub.

The review, to be completed next spring, is expected to be the military’s most thorough reassessment of the threat of a terrorism attack by air since Al Qaeda’s strikes on Sept. 11, 2001, transformed a Defense Department focused on fighting other militaries and led to the Bush administration’s “global war on terror.”

The assessment is partly a reflection of how a military straining to fight two wars is questioning whether it makes sense to keep in place the costly system of protections established after those attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Though the last of the air patrols above American cities were discontinued in 2007, the military keeps dozens of warplanes and hundreds of air crew members on alert to respond to potential threats.

“The fighter force is extremely expensive, so you always have to ask yourself the question ‘How much is enough?’ ” said Maj. Gen. Pierre J. Forgues of Canada, director of operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, which carries out the air defense mission within the United States military’s Northern Command

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Black Lung Virus Mystery In Ukraine

According to this news report, televised on Russia Today,  scientists now suspect that swine flu virus may have mutated in Ukraine. Some doctors say that flu in the country has shown unprecedented symptoms, creating the effect of “burnt” or black lungs.

Sources in the report say that while scientists are running tests of the virus samples from Ukraine, some doctors are claiming the strain is dangerously mutating and another ‘wave’ may be coming.

Details of this report have not been confirmed by US health experts or WHO.

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