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An alleged Islamic militant has told a Belgian court how he plotted to bomb a military base on an al-Qaeda mission. Nizar Trabelsi, a former Tunisian professional footballer, told how Osama Bin Laden's network sent him two years ago to Belgium to bomb the Kleine Brogel base, which houses nuclear missiles. He is one of 23 alleged Islamic militants on trial. Only eight of them are in custody, while five are still on the run and the others face lesser charges. "I was supposed to go alone in a van. The bomb was behind me," Mr Trabelsi told the Brussels...

I posted a similar message a couple of months ago, and we generated quite a few great ideas for stocking up on certain things in case of a major emergency. We have been stocking up on non-perishables and medical supplies. Next will be emergency equipment: flashlights, batteries, candles, soap, tp, trash bags. Any suggestions?

Climate Fraud: Al Gore resurfaces in an op-ed to say that nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes and climate change is still real. And he has some oceanfront property in the Himalayas to sell you. If hyperbole and chutzpah had a child, it would be the opening paragraph of Gore's op-ed in Sunday's New York Times. Gore surfaced from the global warming witness-protection program to opine that despite admissions of error and evidence of fraud by various agencies, we still face "an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it." Perhaps he's trying to protect...

BASRAH — Two million Basrah residents will soon have a more-dependable source of household water for cleaning, cooking, bathing, and washing. A $5 million project, scheduled to complete next summer, will connect permanent power to the Sweetwater Canal Pump Station #2. About 70 Iraqis are on the crew installing a new switch gear room, two 5 megavolt amp transformers and two new 1.5 megavolt back-up generators. “The project is directly impacting Basrah’s economy,” said Iraqi engineer Sattar, who works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Local Iraqis are on the construction crew earning steady paychecks and most of the...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

Associated Press DENVER --High concentrations of chlorine being used to purge salmonella from a southern Colorado town's water system were expected to drop far enough Saturday that residents could use the water for showering. The disinfection process in Alamosa began Tuesday, five days after officials confirmed the presence of the bacteria in the water. The source is still unknown. Nearly 300 people have become ill, with 73 cases of salmonella confirmed. During the cleansing, the chlorine level in Alamosa's tap water is more than five times greater than what's needed to keep a swimming pool clean. Authorities say it could...

The number of suspected salmonella cases linked to contaminated tap water in Alamosa, Colorado exceeded 200 Sunday. Of 216 reported cases, 68 were confirmed by lab results, public information officer Jim Shires said. health officials said may be caused by the municipal water system. Health officials said the Alamosa tap water tested positive for bacteria believed to be salmonella, but are awaiting final confirmation. Authorities said the first victim began showing symptoms around March 8. State emergency management officials activated an emergency operations center in the Denver suburb of Centennial to help coordinate deliveries of bottled water. “The risk that...

West Palm Beach water system cleansing underway, but boil water order continues WEST PALM BEACH - Chlorine began flowing this morning to cleanse West Palm Beach's contaminated water supply, and authorities are still searching for the source of the contamination that prompted a boil water order likely to last through Wednesday. Affected water customers can help too: At 8 p.m. tonight, people should use plenty of water on long showers, car washes, and clothes washing. "To flush the system in your house, basically," said West Palm Beach spokesman Chase Scott. The boil water alert Friday was for its 125,000 utilities...

Water woes in California awakened some elected officials to the need for a peripheral canal, an alternative to the state's existing water delivery system, where the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta pumps can be shut down at any time for any number of reasons. Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, has become a proponent and has called for construction of an alternate water conveyance system - a peripheral canal - that would transport water supplies from Northern California to the southern regions of the state. Their unified stance intensified after the Department of Water Resources voluntarily shut down the pumps for 10 days...

ATLANTA (AP) – Thousands of Marines and their families went to serve their country at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune. Instead, many wound up fighting it, blaming the government for failing to protect them from an enemy that invaded their lives in a most intimate way: through the water that quenched their thirst, cooked their food and filled their bathtubs every day. The gruff ex-drill instructor is angry leukemia claimed his daughter, Janey. Parents were guilt-ridden that perhaps their own actions had ruined their daughters' health. An aging major still mourns the wife who shared his torment over their baby's fatal...

LOS ANGELES Federal, state and local officials are on the hunt for an invasive mussel that has been spotted in California for the first time ever and could clog water supply pipelines. Quagga mussels were found earlier this month at Lake Mead in Arizona and at Lake Havasu near the Whitsitt intake facility for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The discoveries launched a wider search for infested reservoirs and pipelines in California that are connected to the Colorado Aqueduct. The aqueduct delivers water to an estimated 18 million people in urban Southern California, including Los Angeles and San...

Scientists have linked exposure to small levels of a chemical found in public drinking water supplies in 26 states to suppressed thyroid function in more than a third of women and girls 12 and older.     The exposure to perchlorate, a study showed, was most acute in women with low levels of iodine in their systems, said Dr. James L. Pirkle, director of sciences in the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention's Environmental Health laboratory and the study's author.     "It's already been known that high levels of exposure to perchlorate [reduce] thyroid function, but this large study of more...

The bluegill is a freshwater fish of many talents, able to elude predators by hiding in submerged tree stumps and to survive for weeks without food. Now, with the help of a scientific contraption developed by the U.S. Army and a private company, the fish also is keeping vigil over the Washington region's water supplies, where it might be able to save millions of lives in the event of a terrorist attack. The scaly sentinels are a key component of the IAC 1090 Intelligent Aquatic Biomonitoring System, a new water-monitoring device that electronically analyzes the behavior of eight captive bluegills...

Law enforcement question pilot at Lincoln Park airport LINCOLN PARK, N.J. -- The pilot of a single-engine aircraft seen flying over New York reservoirs was questioned by law enforcement officers Friday at a local airport, federal officials said. At about 4 p.m. Friday, the New York State Police aviation unit received a call from state police in Delaware County, N.Y., that a low-flying plane was seen over Pepacton, Cannonsville and Ashokan reservoirs, said Maj. Alan Martin of the state police in Middletown, N.Y. It was described as a white plane with a red stripe and matched the description of a...

Over in the alternative universe of the 9-11 Commission hearings watched only by me, Richard Ben-Veniste recently proposed an amazing new standard for investigating Arabs in this country. In the middle of haranguing Condoleezza Rice, Ben-Veniste demanded to know why the suspected 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, had not been more aggressively investigated, despite the fact that – I quote – he had "no explanation for the funds in his bank account, and no explanation for why he was in the United States." So let me get this straight: Airport security can't acknowledge that a person is an Arab, but they...

Much of Colorado’s water leaves the state in its rivers. That can be explained by the state’s obligations under interstate and international compacts. Additionally, Colorado has not fully developed — put to use — all of its water. The amount of water yet to be stored in reservoirs for consumptive use is a matter of discussion. .. In an average year, about 16 million acre-feet flows through Colorado rivers... Under the Colorado River Compact of 1922, the upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming are obligated to allow 75 million acre-feet of water, spread over a span...

A Blackstone official fed up with the cost of cleaning up after rude teens who urinated into the water supply says the boys should be forced to pay the $40,800 bill. “For these kids to actually break open a hatch on the water tank and do what they did, there has to be some type of punishment that equals the crime,” said Blackstone Selectmen Chairman Charles Sawyer. Two 15-year-old Blackstone boys allegedly got past the fence protecting the Bellingham Road water tower one March night. They cut through barbed wire, made their way to the top, destroyed several pieces of...

New York City's water supply could be the target of contamination if a water system map made its way into the wrong hands, an environmentalist said. The threat has arisen since someone broke into a vehicle belonging to a Department of Environmental Protection maintenance supervisor and stole an agency laptop containing a map of the water system. If the map was detailed enough,"there could be the opportunity to pose a threat," the executive director for the Center for Environmental Information, Cindy Stachowski, said. Even without a map, Ms. Stachowski added, someone pouring biological, chemical, or radiological contaminants into a fresh...

China's water crisis -- from severe shortages to heavy pollution -- is the worst in the world and requires urgent action, a top government official says. China was "facing a water crisis more severe and urgent than any other country in the world," Vice Minister of Construction Qiu Baoxing told a conference in Beijing on developing China's urban water supply.

Singapore opens world's biggest desalination plant SINGAPORE, Sept. 13 KYODO Singapore on Tuesday opened its first desalination plant, believed to be the world's biggest, to reduce the tiny island-state's dependence on imported water. The SingSpring Desalination Plant, built at a cost of S$200 million (about $119 million), is located in Tuas in the western part of Singapore and can produce about 136,000 cubic meters of water per day.