The US has maintained a presence at Manas International Airport near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek since 2001. The base has been a key logistical transport hub for US troops in Afghanistan. In 2009, Kyrgyzstan’s then-President Bakiev nearly closed the airport down, but backpedaled at the last moment after the US offered more than triple what it previously paid.If adopted by the Kyrgyz parliament and signed into law, the bill would close the Manas air base – or the Manas Transit Center, as it was re-branded in 2009 – on July 11, 2014. Bishkek must inform Washington that it does not intend to renew the lease at least six months ahead of the deadline.“My deep conviction is that there is no place for a military base at a civilian airport,” President Almazbek Atambayev told reporters on Tuesday. Shortly after being elected in 2011, Atambayev voiced his intent to close Manas after the contract expires, and has reaffirmed his position several times in the past two years. Kyrgyzstan will seek ways to replace the lost revenue, President Atambayev assured: “We need to simply work to do that. We have reserves to compensate that money by implementing other projects.”With the US base gone and money for servicing its needs cut, the airport is expected to lose half of its revenue, according to its First Vice President Nurlan Mamyrov. The company plans to compensate for the losses by optimizing operational costs and seeking new investors.The US air base has witnessed several scandals, including the fatal shooting of a local man by a US soldier at a checkpoint. Public opposition has mounted over those incidents as well as environmental concerns and potential threats from enemies of the US.The latest spate of criticism came in early May after a transport plane operating out of the base crashed. Opponents claimed there was no guarantee that the next US aircraft would not fall on a populated area, and demanded that the base be closed immediately rather than in 2014. … Read More
Hamburg ‘avoids radiation disaster’ as ship loaded with fissile material, explosives burns
It took 200 firefighters working for several hours to douse the fires on the Atlantic Cartier. The ship’s most visible cargo was some 70 cars, 30 of which were damaged in the incident. But now it was revealed that the vessel also had highly dangerous substances on board as well, which posed the threat of radioactive contamination to the area.Fire broke out the ship several hours after it arrived in the port of Hamburg. Three tugs and two fireboats were involved in fighting with the blaze, as firefighters unloaded shipping containers while cooling down the hull of the vessel with water. The ship was seriously damaged by the fire and remains in Hamburg.The Atlantic Cartier was transporting around 9 tons of uranium hexafluoride, a radioactive highly violate and toxic compound most commonly used as an intermediate material in the production of nuclear fuel. The vessel also had 180 tons of flammable ethanol and 4 tons of explosives at the time the fire broke out.The news of the averted disaster in Hamburg was broken by the opposition Green Party. It criticized the city authorities for not reporting the full details of the incident on its own initiative.”It is an outrage that the Senate has not informed the public about this near catastrophe,” Greens’ member of the Hamburg parliament Anjes Tjarks said. “Here one must speak of a cover-up.”The city responded by saying that the firefighters were informed of the dangerous nature of the cargo promptly, which is the reason why the containers in question were quickly removed from the ship.”Thanks to the quick intervention, the harbor and the people in the area suffered from no hazard,” said city spokesman Frank Reschreiter. “There was no leak of the dangerous material.”Hamburg regularly receives shipments of radioactive material, German media report. It is a convenient transit point to deliver them to the uranium-enriching facility in Lingen, Lower Saxony. … Read More
Cop in shootout with Tsarnaev brothers was nearly killed by friendly fire, witnesses claim
In a 10-minute shootout in Watertown, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was fatally injured, while his brother Dzhokhar escaped. Donohue, a 33-year-old transit officer, took a gunshot to his right thigh and suffered severe blood loss that sent him into cardiac arrest and almost killed him.With a severed femoral vein and artery, the wounded officer lost all of his own blood and his heart stopped beating for 45 minutes before he was resuscitated.Initial reports made no mention of the cause of Donohue’s gunshot wounds, but newly-released eye reports suggest that he was struck by friendly fire. Rob Mullen, a Watertown resident and eyewitness, told the Boston Globe that he watched as all the officers fired simultaneously at the black SUV that the Dzokhar used to escape.“Every cop out there just unloaded everything he had on the SUV,” Mullen said, recalling the scene as he saw it from the second-floor window of his house on Laurel Street.Watertown resident Jane Dyson told the Globe that she watched the SUV speed away “with that appeared to be several police officers running close behind, firing weapons, trying desperately to stop the vehicle.”Up to 300 rounds of ammunition were fired during the violent shoot-out to capture the Boston bombing suspects, but there is little evidence that Dzhokhar was in possession of a gun. The Tsarnaev brothers allegedly set off a number of explosives, including another pressure cooker bomb and pipe bombs.By the time Donohue was hurt, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was handcuffed, injured and run over by the SUV his younger brother was driving as he tried to escape.The transit officer allegedly fell to the ground as Dzhokhar was driving away, which suggests that his colleagues were responsible for his injuries and near-death experience. Neither suspect was armed and firing when Donohue was hit with a bullet.Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told the Globe that the shoot-out was a “wartime situation”, which “police agencies are not generally prepared for”.Facing exploding devices and frantically trying to capture America’s most wanted men, bullets were flying in all directions.David Procopio, a state police spokesman, said that even if the allegations about the friendly fire are correct, they don’t detract anything from the heroism demonstrated that day.“Considering the chaos on those dark streets, where a pair of homicidal terrorists were firing shots and throwing bombs at police, the fact that friendly-fire incidents may have occurred detracts nothing, not one bit, from the valor and heroism of the officers and troopers who caught up to them that night,” he said.But US police have been known to cause accidental injuries even in situations that are not as “warlike” as the Watertown shootout. Police were at fault for all nine of the injuries during a shooting at the Empire State building last year.The narrative changes when police are at fault for their colleagues’ injuries, but the spokesman for the Massachusetts police believes that allegations of friendly fire will not in any way detract from the courage of the officers at Watertown. … Read More
Bay area ‘lewd behavior’ ban on pooping or peeing on subways goes into effect
Starting Monday, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) riders will have to think twice before using trains or train platforms as public bathrooms, or risk losing the ability to use them at all. SF Weekly reported on Monday that transit police will now be able to issue “prohibition orders”…
No probe into Stockholm police’s ‘racial profiling’
Sweden’s Ombudsmen for Justice (JO) announced on Monday it will not investigate the alleged racial profiling carried out by Stockholm police in the city’s public transit system during a push to deport illegal immigrants. … Read More
New law will ban protesters from riding mass transit in California
Starting next week, law enforcement officers policing the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland and other cities can issue bus and subway bans for unruly passengers — and according to one local news report, that power could be used to prevent political protesters from getting to demonstrations or essentially going anywhere.Under the recently passed State Assembly Bill 716, BART can issue “prohibition” orders to any passenger cited or arrested for certain offenses, essentially blacklisting some people from boarding public transit vehicles if they’ve been charged with certain crimes.BART Board President Tom Radulovich told Bay City News the law is “an important safety initiative to keep our employees and riders safe,” adding, “We’re very concerned that for the past few years folks have been assaulting our station agents.””We are really wanting to send the message that if you are going to come onto our system and be unruly or violent, there are going to be consequences,” BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told local ABC affiliate KGNO News.But while the new bill will provide BART police the authority to immediately revoke riding privileges for persons arrested or convicted of acts involving violence, threats of violence, lewd or lascivious behavior or possession or sale of drugs on area transit, those charged with minor infractions could be targeted too. “AB 716 won’t only target violent behavior,” KGNO reported. “It can be applied to protestors who have been arrested during free-speech movements.”The law will allow for prohibition orders to be issued on-the-spot if a person is just once arrested or convicted for a misdemeanor or felony involving lewd, violent or drug-related acts in a BART zone, but passengers cited three or more times for minor infractions in just as many months are subject to the ban as well.Under the bill, a transit district may issue a prohibition order to any person charged with violating a number of local statutes, including Section 640 of state Penal Code — the law that goes after riders accused of “Willfully disturbing others on or in a system facility or vehicle by engaging in boisterous or unruly behavior” and those “Willfully blocking the free movement of another person in a system facility or vehicle.”Although the official statute includes a note from the state declaring that Section 640 “shall not be interpreted to affect any lawful activities permitted or First Amendment rights protected under the laws of this state or applicable federal law,” allowing BART officers to ban users even accused by law enforcement of a misdemeanor could disenfranchise a huge percentage of their rider base and has critics already warning of potential authoritarian overreach.”Certain instances have happened over the years that have caused some tragic things to happen, but you got to be careful who your profile,” BART passenger Kadmiel McCrory told KGNO.Indeed, one doesn’t have to look too deep to divulge instances of arguable overreach in not just the Bay Area but on the BART system as well. On the morning of January 1, 2009, BART Officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot an unarmed, 22-year-old passenger, Oscar Grant, on an Oakland train platform. The killing of Grant remains a highly contested issue among Bay Area residents, and has spawned a number of large protests impacting the BART system, including a November 2010 demonstration that led to 152 arrests. Then in July 2011, BART police shot and killed another passenger — a mentally ill homeless man name Charles Blair Hill — who is alleged to have thrown a knife at an officer. The response that occurred as a result can easily be considered a precursor to enacting AB 716.Following the 2011 shooting death of Hill, BART passengers orchestrated a massive protest that made national headlines thanks in part to the involvement of Internet hacktivist group Anonymous. A rally for Hill days after his death began peacefully but ended in violence and at least three dozen arrests. When a second protest was planned the following month, BART officials responded by having cell phone service shut down in four separate train stations to prevent demonstrators from coordinating their actions.”We’re going to take steps to make sure our customers are safe,” BART spokesman Jim Allison said in a statement that August. “The interruption of cell phone service was done Thursday to prevent what could have been a dangerous situation. It’s one of the tactics we have at our disposal. We may use it; we may not. And I’m not sure we would necessarily let anyone know in advance either way.”Although that protest never materialized as planned, Anonymous responded by leaking the names, passwords and other identifying information for more than 2,000 customers of a BART-affiliated website, announcing in a statement, “we will not tolerate censorship.”“Anonymous demands that this activity revolving around censorship cease and desist and we know you are already planning to do this again,” the hacktivists wrote. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union opposed the decision to throttle cell service as well.Now with AB 716 going into effect, protesters may once again find they are unwelcome to ride on the fifth-busiest heavy rail rapid transit system within the United States. Accumulating only three easy-to-obtain infractions in just 90 days can cause a prohibition order to be issues, and when the law goes into effect on Monday, BART officers will actually be provided with the names and photographs of prohibited individuals in order to keep them from riding mass transit, BART police Chief Kenton Rainey told the San Francisco Appeal. According to Rainey, officers’ computers will contain information about active orders, and any persons picked up or cited on the BART system for new crimes can be matched against the database to see their status.Rainey added that BART officers will go through training to work with special-needs riders, including the homeless and mentally ill. Even if one of those passengers is cited with a prohibition order, though, it might take a lengthy appeal process to have their ban rescinded. Prohibition orders restrict passengers from riding for anywhere from 30 days up to one year. … Read More
Doctors: All bomb patients likely to survive
BOSTON (AP) — In a rebuttal to the terrorists and a tribute to stellar medical care, all of the more than 180 people injured in the Boston Marathon blasts one week ago who made it to a hospital alive now seem likely to survive.That includes several people who arrived with legs attached by just a little skin, a 3-year-old boy with a head wound and bleeding on the brain, and a little girl riddled with nails. Even a transit system police officer whose heart had stopped and was close to bleeding to death after a shootout with the suspects now appears headed for recovery.”All I feel is joy,” said Dr. George Velmahos, chief of trauma surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, referring to his hospital’s 31 blast patients. “Whoever came in alive, stayed alive.”Three people did die in the blasts, but at the scene, before hospitals even had a chance to try to save them. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who police say was fatally shot Thursday by the suspects was pronounced dead when he arrived at Massachusetts General.The only person to reach a hospital alive and then die was one of the suspected bombers — 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev.Continue Reading… … Read More
