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I'm having trouble posting today, is FR back 100%???

Spain: Bomb explodes at Italian center
BARCELONA, Spain, July 12 (UPI) -- A bomb exploded outside the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona Tuesday, injuring one police officer, El Mundo reported online.

Spain: Bomb injures cop, kills police dog (July 12, 2005) -- A bomb exploded Tuesday outside the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona, injuring a police officer and killing a police dog.

The bomb exploded while police were examining a suspicious looking object on the front steps, a metal can with wires coming out of it. A bomb sniffing dog was killed when the device went off.

Police are not ruling out a terrorist attack, nor are they discounting the possibility that it was the work of Basque separatist group ETA.

Some officials, however, said they thought it might be the work of Italian anarchists, as there was graffiti written on a nearby wall of the letter "A" written in a circle, the symbol for anarchy

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050712-08105900-bc-spain-bombing.xml

Here is an article I found quite disturbing, in that I had no idea that this happens with train crews.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050709-9999-1n9train.html

Railroad officials call idling common practice
By Michael Stetz and Gregory Alan Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS
July 9, 2005

Given the recent terrorist bombings in London, it was probably not the best time for a train crew to stop its 44-car freight train in the middle of San Diego, leave the engine humming and disappear into the night.

But that's what happened Thursday.

Officers discovered the train around 11 p.m., parked on Morena Boulevard not far from Mission Bay.

Police Sgt. Kerry Tom said the crew left a little note behind: "We've worked our maximum allotted hours and we took a taxicab home."

"Who would leave 44 cars on a track and the engine running, just abandoned there?" Tom said.

But officials for Burlington Northern Sante Fe railroad say such a move – the crew had worked the federal maximum of 12 hours and had to stop the train – is neither unusual nor dangerous.

In fact, it's typical railroad procedure.

"It's common practice to leave trains idling," said Steve Kulm, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration.

Federal law mandates that to prevent fatigue, railroad workers have to stop working after 12 hours even if they haven't reached their destination. A railroad company can be fined if its workers exceed the limit, Kulm said.

The gap between train crews varies, depending on the urgency of the schedule. In this case, it took about 1½ hours for a fresh crew to arrive at the train. There is no federal requirement that crews must stay until they are replaced.

Even if a crew change takes hours, the train engine is left idling, said Burlington spokeswoman Lena Kent. That's because the idling engine serves as a generator to keep the brakes working.

There's no real danger of the train being stolen, the company stressed, because the engine is actually disabled and it takes special equipment to put the train in motion.

"It's not like an automobile," Kent said. "You can't just press the pedal and go."

The amount of training a locomotive engineer needs is not insignificant, said John Bentley, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen in Cleveland. It takes about a year to learn to do the job.

No federal law requires the cab to be locked when the crew is gone, and it's unknown if that was the case in this situation. Some cabs lock only from the inside, Kent said.

A federal Transportation Security Administration official said his office doesn't regard the San Diego incident as cause for alarm.

"TSA doesn't see this as a security or a safety breach," said Nico Melendez, the agency's western field director for public affairs. "It is rather standard for locomotive companies to do this. . . . There are steps they take to disable the train."

But, again, this is all about timing.

In London, dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured Thursday morning when a series of bombs went off in the city's subway system. Another bomb ripped apart a double-decker bus.

It was the worst attack on that city since World War II.

The railroad company believes that if it hadn't been for the bombings, its idling train would have been a nonstory. This was a cargo train, not a passenger train, Kent emphasized. And the cargo cars were empty.

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"It in no way posed a security threat to anybody," she said. "This has been blown way out of proportion and completely sensationalized."

The crew didn't stick around because they were doing what they always do, she said. "They didn't see it as a security threat."

A man who works at a gas station near where the train was found said he has seen crews climb off trains before.

"They will stop up there and climb down off their ladder, go and get something to eat at the Circle K or Santana's Mexican restaurant," said Steven Dix, a cashier at the Arco gas station on Morena Boulevard and West Morena Boulevard. "This last Saturday, there was one out there from 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. . . . I don't know if they leave anyone on the train or not."

Although security officials seemed unconcerned, Dix said he thought it was "insane" that a train was left unattended Thursday night.

Not so, says the railroad.

It's ho-hum.