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Katrina sends quake-leery California scrambling to revise emergency plans Wed Sep 28,11:38 AM ET LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The humanitarian debacle spawned by Hurricane Katrina one month ago has badly shaken Californians and sent their leaders scrambling to update plans to cope with a long-feared catastrophic earthquake. Seismic experts warn there is a 62 percent chance of the "big one," measuring at least 6.7 on the Richter Scale, hitting San Francisco and a 70 percent chance of Los Angeles being brought to its knees by a quake with a magnitude of at least 7.2 in the next 30 years. Such...

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss personally delivered to Congress the findings of the agency's inspector general report on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, opening a debate about how much of the highly classified and critical document should be made public. The report, which congressional officials had yet to review Tuesday evening, is a hard-hitting chronicle of actions taken by individuals and the CIA bureaucracy before the attacks nearly four years ago. The findings are expected to highlight failures of specific individuals, according to present and former government officials speaking on condition of anonymity. Goss had told Congress earlier...

MINNEAPOLIS - When Erika Sass moved here from Washington state, she had a choice of how to get to work: hop in the car and drive 15 minutes or get on her bike and pedal an hour. She chose the bike. "I've never seen trails like this," Sass said of the bike paths crisscrossing the Twin Cities, one of the nation's top bicycling areas. The transportation bill signed Wednesday by President Bush spends most of its $286.4 billion on road-building, but it also includes a chunk of change — $3 billion by one group's estimate — to expand cycling and...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Arnold Schwarzenegger returns this weekend to the bodybuilding contest that bears his name, continuing his embrace of a sport in which steroid use endures from his own days - at a time when talk of doping is a national pastime. California's governor, who acknowledges taking steroids as a competitor, makes his annual pilgrimage to the Arnold Classic to reconnect with adoring fans of the sport that made him famous, far from a gathering political storm back home. Instead of politics, the weekend is about athletes and big muscles. But just below the surface, it's also about...

Rebels' threat sends oil prices surging By Anton La Guardia, Toby Harnden and Edmund Conway (Filed: 20/08/2004) Threats by Shia insurgents to set Iraq's oilfields alight sent crude prices surging to record levels yesterday as the Iraqi prime minister issued a "final call" for the rebels to disarm. The endgame appeared to be near in the siege of Najaf's Imam Ali mosque, one of the holiest places in Islam, where fighters loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have barricaded themselves. Last night, intense shelling could be heard in the old town which had earlier been pounded by US aircraft...

CIA Sends Some Holiday Goodies Overseas Wednesday December 24, 2003 1:01 AM WASHINGTON(AP) - Spies want a little something in their stockings, too. So the CIA, experiencing its largest overseas deployment since the Vietnam War, delivered some holiday goodies to its hundreds of personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shipment totals about seven tons and consists mainly of items that are difficult to obtain in those countries, CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said. That includes 2,750 pounds of coffee, tea and hot chocolate, 5,150 pounds of chocolate and candy, 400 pounds of DVDs and CDs and 6,000 pounds of books...

TOKYO (AP) -- It takes tough managers to succeed in Japan's cutthroat instant noodles business, and one company wants to ensure it has the toughest - through ramen noodle boot camp. Newly promoted managers at Nissin Food Products need to survive three days on a tiny, uninhabited island where they will dig their own toilets, make fire from dry leaves, catch their own fish and even carve their chopsticks from local bamboo. The plan is to promote team spirit, perseverance, creativity and an appreciation for the product, said Masanaga Oguchi, spokesman for the Osaka-based ramen noodle maker. "In our daily...

ROSENDALE, N.Y. - Manna Jo Greene wasn't left in the dark during the massive blackout. In fact, she gave the state some of her own electricity. Manna Jo Greene sent power Friday to the state grid from a solar panel on a building she built behind her house. Sunshine was abundant Friday. "The meter is literally running backwards right now," Greene said. "Because I have bright sun and we're not using much power." Even as blackouts blanketed New York late Thursday afternoon, the 1-kilowatt solar system kept her refrigerator and computer running on the rural property in the Hudson Valley,...

US sends warning to Libya over 'pursuit of WMD' By Kim Sengupta 21 June 2003 Libya has been "aggressively pursuing" the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction since the United Nations sanctions against the country were suspended after the Lockerbie trial, America claimed yesterday. John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, signalled that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime was once again in Washington's sights. Although the alleged nuclear threats posed by Iran and North Korea have both been in the headlines, the Bush administration is closely monitoring developments in other countries such as Libya and Syria....

US sends second wave of troops By Andrew Gumbel 05 March 2003 Military officials said yesterday they had ordered 60,000 US troops to the Gulf and expected to send between20,000 and 30,000 in the next few days as part of a second wave of the planned invasion force. The new deployments, including tank divisions from Germany and Fort Hood, Texas, push the number of US troops heading to the region to about 300,000. Britain is also expected to send 6,000 troops in the next few days, to supplement the 20,000 already in position in Kuwait. The final destination of the...

Britain sends 30,000 troops to Gulf as the drumbeat of war grows louder By Kim Sengupta and Andrew Grice 21 January 2003 Six days before the United Nations inspectors present their report on Iraq, Britain ordered the mobilisation of 30,000 assault troops to join the massed American forces. The force – a quarter of the British army – will join the American army, on land, sea and air being rapidly assembled in the Gulf. A large US force is already in the area, with 62,000 mobilised in the past ten days and a further 60,000 on their way. Britain's contingent,...