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BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) — It was dark and hot and everyone was bone tired on Sunday night in Baton Rouge. But they still came, many in truck after truck, to a parking lot on the edge of the edge of the city, all armed with shovels.

Dwayne Nickles, center, loads sandbags into the trunk of his car with Harsha Dissanayake, left.

“Sandbagging — gotta do it,” said Dwayne Nickles, his T-shirt soaked through, grunting as he dug into a massive pile of sand left for those who needed to guard their homes against potential Hurricane Gustav flooding.

Squatting next to Nickles, Louisiana State University student Harsha Dissanayake had too much energy for someone who had spent much of the day at the school medical school helping officials take care of patients.

The 20-year-old moved 10 days ago from Sri Lanka to Baton Rouge, the state capital about 80 miles northwest of New Orleans. When he heard of the impending hurricane, he thought about the miserable experience his country endured during the 2004 tsunami.

“Southern hospitality is real,” he said. “People are so, so nice to me, and they ask me, ‘Did you lose your relatives? What was it like during the tsunami?’ and I feel like they really care. iReport.com: How did you prepare for Gustav?

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“I knew I had to volunteer and do my part to help,” he said.

Dissanayake was, in part, also helping his friend Kenneth De Abrew, also an LSU student. De Abrew had a remarkably cheerful disposition considering he lives on a first floor apartment complex that often floods. See and hear De Abrew talk about his hurricane plans »

“You just have to be ready for it,” he said, laughing. “It’s nature. Actually, it’s kind of exciting!”

He heaved a few bags toward their pile and paused, surveying the dozen sweating people working hard to dig, stuff and seal bags.

“Sandbags actually remind me of bad stuff,” De Abrew said. “They use them in wars to make bunkers.”
Source

In his acceptance speech at Denver he said we meet at one of those defining moments when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.
Source

Addressing a news conference at Zardari house, party’s deputy Secretary General Mian Raza Rabbani said Asif Ali Zardari has accepted the unanimous decision of the central executive council to become presidential candidate. He said leadership of coalition parties has been informed about the decision. He said there is no ambiguity in the restoration of deposed judges as PPP is committed to all its agreements made with the coalition partners. A special committee has already been constituted to prepare the draft of the resolution regarding reinstatement of judges.

A white house spokesman said development and testing of rockets by Iran raises further questions about their intentions. Earlier, Iran said it had successfully launched a rocket capable of carrying its first domestically built satellite.
Source

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Violent protests erupted at Pakistan’s main stock market, as growing economic and political uncertainty pushed Pakistani shares to a new 18-month low.

Angry Pakistani stockbrokers ransack furniture at the Karachi Stock Exchange on Thursday.

The exchange’s main index dropped more than 4 percent on Thursday before recovering slightly to close 2.7 percent lower at 10,213 points. The index is at its lowest since January 2007 and has fallen about 36 percent from an April peak.

With share values dropping for 15 straight sessions, officials said more than 200 small investors, some of whom rent small offices in the exchange building, gathered in its main hall to demand a halt in trading.

When the exchange administration declined, some protesters smashed windows in the exchange and nearby banks, said Mohammed Aslam, the exchange’s security chief.

An Associated Press reporter saw broken lights and window panes littering the floor of the exchange. Television footage saw police shooing the demonstrators away from the building.

Pakistani shares are tumbling amid doubts about the three-month-old government’s ability to survive economic problems including runaway inflation and wide trade and budget deficits.

The uncertainty is compounded by growing U.S. pressure to clamp down on militants launching attacks into Afghanistan, casting doubt on the government’s hopes of negotiating peace deals to curb rising Islamic militancy also threatening Pakistan
Source

NEW DELHI (AFP) - An Air India flight headed for Mumbai overshot its destination and was halfway to Goa before its dozing pilots were woken out of a deep slumber by air traffic control, a report said.

The high altitude nap took place approximately two weeks ago, the Times of India reported Thursday. The report, however, drew a furious denial from Air India.

Some 100 passengers were on board the state-run flight that originated from Dubai and flew to the western Indian city of Jaipur before heading south to Mumbai when both pilots fell asleep, a source told the paper.

“After operating an overnight flight, fatigue levels peak — and so the pilots dozed off after taking off from Jaipur,” the source, who was not identified in the report, said.

The plane flew to Mumbai on autopilot, but when air traffic there tried to help the aircraft land, the plane ignored their instructions and carried on at full speed towards Goa.

“It was only after the aircraft reached Mumbai airspace that air traffic control realised it was not responding to any instructions and was carrying on its own course,” the source said.

“The aircraft should have begun its descent about 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Mumbai, but here it was still at cruising altitude. We checked for hijack.”

Finally air traffic control buzzed the cockpit and woke up the pilots, who turned the plane around, the report said.

Air India on Thursday said a plane had overshot its Mumbai destination on June 4 but furiously denied it was because the pilots were sleeping, putting the glitch down to a brief communications breakdown.

“The report is absolutely incorrect, devoid of facts, misleading and irresponsible. It is a figment of imagination,” Air India spokesman Jitender Bhargava told AFP by telephone from Mumbai.

“We have gone through the flight reports of the last 30 days. A plane did cross Mumbai for 15 kilometres because it had lost contact for a few moments. At those speeds 15 kilometres is covered in a very short time.”

The plane quickly established contact with air traffic control and landed a short while later, he said.

Bhargava accused the Times of India, one of the country’s biggest papers, of “batting for somebody.” The daily has said in its report that authorities were trying to hush up the incident.

Indian papers also reported this week that a flight operated by private airline Jetlite to the central Indian city of Patna was grounded after the pilot was allegedly found to be drunk.

Source

Security was tight as the Olympic torch began passing through China’s mainly Muslim Xinjiang region, on a highly sensitive part of its trip to Beijing.

Police were out in force as the flame left People’s Square in the capital, Urumqi, on its run around the city.

The torch will spend three days in the region, which is home to around eight million Muslim Uighur people.

Ties between Chinese authorities and the Uighurs are tense. Officials fear separatists could target the relay.

The relay has been moved forward by a week, in an apparent attempt to avoid unrest. The torch’s visit to another potential hotspot, Tibet’s main city, Lhasa, has also been moved up.

Terror allegations

In Urumqi, very tight security was put in place ahead of the relay.

Police carried out vehicle checks and set up checkpoints in the normally busy city. Firecrackers were banned and many local people asked to stay away, reports said.

People entering People’s Square had to pass through metal detectors while police searched their bags, AFP news agency reported.

The majority of the crowd that gathered in the square were Han Chinese, the agency said.

Many Uighurs resent the large-scale influx of Han Chinese settlers into the resource-rich region.

Some groups are fighting to establish an independent Islamic nation, leading to periodic violence in Xinjiang.

Beijing accuses the groups of links to al-Qaeda and this year claims to have foiled at least two Xinjiang-based plots targeting the Olympic Games.

But human rights groups accuse the Chinese authorities of using the alleged terror links as a way of cracking down on the independence movement.

Source

The death of Harry Potter actor Rob Knox at the weekend is the latest in a spate of knifings to have grabbed the headlines. But what are the facts behind knife crime and which young people are in greatest danger?

See the Home Office’s new anti-knife crime poster

Enlarge Image

“Tackling knife culture, especially among young people, is paramount to the safety of our communities, and I am determined to reduce the devastation caused by knife crime,” then Home Secretary Charles Clarke said in the spring of 2006.

Since then there has been a knife amnesty, numerous government initiatives and photo opportunities, with ministers slamming home the same message - that knives will not be tolerated.

But still the deaths caused by knives go on.

The real picture

According to the British Crime Survey (BCS), overall violent crime has decreased by 41% since a peak in 1995.
The average age of homicide victims overall has been going down, with younger and younger victims

Richard Garside

Knives are used in about 8% of violent incidents, according to the BCS, a level that has largely remained the same during the past decade.

But the BCS figures do not include under-16s, something which the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced this month would change.

Criminologist Kevin Stenson, from Middlesex University’s Crime and Conflict Research Centre, said the politicians needed to do more to address the problems of those aged under 16 and added: “They are the people who fear being attacked with knives, they carry them because they are scared and for respect. It is about macho status.”

But Ife Igunnubole, a youth worker in Hackney, London, said knives and guns brought a sense of power to youths who felt powerlessness.

He said: “There is a level of desperation on the streets, brought about by poverty, which is creating a culture of fear.”

Mr Igunnubole, who runs mentoring and leadership projects, said tougher sentences and stop-and-search powers were all very well in the short term, but ultimately they were “just scratching the surface” and in the long term there was a need to address issues of poverty and materialism.

‘Poorer most at risk’

Richard Garside, the director of the Centre of Crime and Justice Studies at Kings College London, said: “If you look at the figures for the last 10 years the number of knife victims has remained relatively stable - although there have been spikes - at 200 to 220 a year.

“But there is some evidence the demographic has changed. The average age of homicide victims overall has been going down, with younger and younger victims.”

The falling age of victims is something that has been found with both knife and gun crime.

People give all sorts of reasons why they carry knives, including protecting themselves. But a knife is not a weapon of defence, it’s a weapon of offence

Karyn McCluskey
Strathclyde Police

Mr Garside said: “Those living in poorer parts of town are inevitably most at risk. For many years the murder capital for knife crime has been Glasgow, but now we are seeing it as a major problem in Manchester and London and other cities.”

One Scottish police officer told BBC News: “If you think you’ve got it bad down in London, you should take a look at Glasgow.”

Scotland, and Glasgow in particular, has some frightening statistics when it comes to knife crime.

Last year there were 73 murders in the Strathclyde Police force area, 40 of which involved knives

Knife crime levels in Scotland are 3.5 times higher than in England or Wales

Scotland has a homicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000 in the 10-to-29 age group, which compares with one per 100,000 in England and Wales

Scott Breslin was paralysed from the neck down in a Glasgow knife attack
Karyn McCluskey, head of Strathclyde’s Violence Reduction Unit, said knife crime was endemic and dated back to the “razor gangs” of the 1920s.

She said: “People give all sorts of reasons why they carry knives, including protecting themselves. But a knife is not a weapon of defence, it’s a weapon of offence.”

Ms McCluskey said: “Much of it is to do with bravado. Machismo is a huge issue up here and the lack of role models too. We often get knives being used by grandfathers, fathers and sons.

“Part of the problem is that they don’t have the skills to walk away. If they’re in a taxi queue and it’s raining and they’ve been drinking, if someone looks at them in a funny way there will be a fight. It’s as simple as that.”

She said some offenders mistakenly thought they could stab a rival in the buttocks without harm, but she added: “You can bleed to death if you hit a femoral artery. There is no safe place to stab anybody.”

Tougher sentences

In the past few years politicians both north and south of the border have steadily increased the penalty for carrying knives, but Richard Garside said there was no evidence tougher sentences act as a deterrent.
Beatriz Martins-Paes (left) is serving life for stabbing Charlotte Polius

“Many of these youths say they are carrying a knife for their own protection, but if they are calculating to commit a serious offence they will not think about the prospect of getting caught,” he said.

No doubt 18-year-old Beatriz Martins-Paes was not thinking about tough sentences when she went out one night in April 2005 armed with a 4in (12cm) kitchen knife.

She is now two years into a life sentence.

The teenager plunged the knife into the chest of 15-year-old Charlotte Polius at a party in Ilford, east London, after over-reacting to a perceived slight.

It is a shame courts are not televised, because the evidence of a Home Office pathologist would have been extremely educational viewing in schools.

Charlotte’s mother wept quietly as Dr Vesna Djurovic described how the blade entered the heart and cut through two major blood vessels, causing huge blood loss.

When asked if the teenager could have been saved by paramedics, she said: “No, I don’t think she had any chance of survival.”

But perhaps even more powerful for a class full of inner-city and streetwise youngsters would have been to witness Martins-Paes when she gave evidence.

Girls pay their respects to Rob Knox in Sidcup, Kent
“I cannot explain it. It was all unreal. I did not believe it happened. It was just, like, shocking,” she said.

The weapon she used was a simple kitchen knife and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, said on Tuesday: “The knives we are seeing are not nearly as often home-made constructed weapons, as weapons you would take from the kitchen drawer.

“Parents have a duty now to be asking their teenagers: ‘Are you involved in this knife carrying?’”

It may be that the recent spate of knife deaths is simply a spike on a graph - a statistical quirk - but there is no doubt the carrying of knives and guns has not gone out of fashion.

Whether this home secretary, or this government, can turn the tide remains to be seen.

Chris.Summers-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species Wednesday because of the loss of Arctic sea ice but also cautioned the decision should not be viewed as a path to address global warming.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses, meaning, he said, that the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

But Kempthorne said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.

The Endangered Species Act “is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy,” said Kempthorne, reflecting a view recently expressed by President Bush.

The department outlined a set of administrative actions and limits to how it planned to protect the bear with its new status so that it would not have wide-ranging adverse impact on economic activities from building power plants to oil and gas exploration.

“This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting,” said Kempthorne. He said he had consulted with the White House on the decision, but “at no time was there ever a suggestion that this was not my decision.”

Kempthorne, at a news conference, was armed with slides and charts showing the dramatic decline in sea ice over the last 30 years and projections that the melting of ice - a key habitat for the bear - would continue and may even quicken.

He cited conclusions by department scientists that sea ice loss will likely result in two-thirds of the polar bears disappearing by mid-century. The bear population across the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland doubled from about 12,000 to 25,000 since 1960, but he noted that scientists now predict a significant population decline. Studies last year by the U.S. Geological Survey suggested 15,000 bears would be lost in coming decades with those in the western Hudson Bay area of Alaska and Canada under the greatest stress.

Kempthorne said that it is melting sea ice and not subsistence hunting and energy development that poses the threat to polar bears. While some subsistence hunting by Alaska natives is allowed, the United States bans hunting bears for sport.

Canada allows limited sports hunting of bears. The Hudson Bay bear population off Canada has decined by 22 percent in the last 20 years, according to one study.

But when asked how the bear will be afforded greater protection, Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had difficulty coming up with examples.

Better management of bear habitat on shore and making sure bears aren’t threatened by people including hunters, more studies on bear population trends and their feeding habits were among the areas mentioned. “I don’t want to prejudge recommendations for (bear) management,” said Hall whose agency administers the Endangered Species Act.

Environmentalists were already mapping out plans to file lawsuits challenging the restrictive measures outlined by Kempthorne.

“They’re trying to make this a threatened listing in name only with no change in today’s impacts and that’s not going to fly,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark of Defenders of Wildlife and a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director.

Members of Congress also were skeptical.

The Bush administration “is forcing the polar bear to sink or swim,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of a House committee on global warming.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called it “a lifeline for our last remaining polar bears” but said the bear’s survival won’t be assured without limits on oil development in the same Arctic waters where the bears are found.

Despite the new listing, the announcement underscores the need to approve climate legislation that would limit the release of greenhouse gases and avert the future effects on climate change, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Environment Committee.

Scientists have blamed global warming for the disappearance of sea ice which is vital for the bear’s survival.

Summer ice surrounding the North Pole declined an average of 10 percent per decade since 1979, with a loss of about 28,000 square miles per year, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Last year was the sharpest drop, as the amount of sea ice in September fell to 1.65 million square miles, or 23 percent below the previous low in 2005.

Kempthorne proposed 15 months ago to investigate whether the polar bear should be declared threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That triggered a year of studies into the threats facing the bear and its survival prospects.

A decision had been expected early this year, but the Interior Department said it needed more time to work out many of the details, prompting criticism from members of Congress and environmentalists. Environmentalists filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing a decision and a federal court on April 29 set a May 15 deadline for a decision.

A species is declared “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act if it is found to be at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future. If it does not make progress toward recovery, it can be declared “endangered” meaning it is at risk of extinction and needs even greater protection.
Source

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - In the classic Hollywood western, a cowboy portrayed by John Wayne gallops across the sagebrush steppe and rocky ridges of the American West with only his horse for a companion.

What the films don’t show is the cowboy buying and hauling hay for his horse, or what happens to the horse when it is too aged, infirm or irascible to ride.

Those more mundane details are at the heart of a debate about growing cases of mistreatment of horses in the United States, at a time when hay and grain prices are skyrocketing and when options for disposing of unwanted horses are dwindling.

Just a year ago, the sale of an average horse suitable for recreation — one with neither prized bloodlines nor a performance record to heighten its status — would have fetched several thousand dollars.

Today, prices in some cases have dropped to just hundreds of dollars, largely because of higher costs for their maintenance and transport.

The situation for marginal horses — horses whose poor physical condition or disposition makes them targets for slaughter — is even worse, after a court ruling sought by animal-rights groups effectively shut down the U.S. horse slaughter industry last year.

The result is that a growing number of unwanted horses are being starved or turned loose to fend for themselves in the U.S. West, according to animal welfare advocates.

“What concerns me is a fate worse than slaughter,” said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an authority on the handling of livestock such as horses. “We’ve got people turning horses loose in fields, dropping horses off in the night — my worst nightmares are coming true.”

Such images have strong resonance in the West, the land of the rider on the range immortalized in art by Frederic Remington and in popular culture by actors such as the late President Ronald Reagan.

Far from Kentucky, where thoroughbreds race the Churchill Downs, owning a horse in the West is a middle-class occupation. The average horse owner rides for recreation and keeps their horse on their own land or land rented for the purpose, rather than at a commercially run barn.

Horses eat hay made from either grass or alfalfa, or a mix of both, and a modest amount of grain. Prices fluctuate, but in east central Idaho, hay prices have risen to $145 from $120 per ton a year ago, a jump of 21 percent. In northern Idaho it costs $220 per ton and as much as $300 per ton in parts of California. Feeding a horse can cost $2,000 a year or more.

TURNED LOOSE

The West is also the region where the historic practice of releasing domesticated horses into the wild — first by Spanish explorers and last by ranchers — gave rise to the herds of Mustangs, or feral horses, that still inhabit the vast public lands of Western states.

But the romantic concept of freeing a tamed horse to roam the West’s wide open spaces bears no resemblance to the reality, said Kirk Miller, livestock investigator in Idaho and Montana for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“They have no survival instinct in the wild, no clue as to what’s dangerous to eat, no knowledge of how to grub for food under the snow,” he said.

Miller and Colorado State’s Grandin are among animal experts who say the campaign led by the Humane Society of the United States to end domestic horse slaughter was well-intentioned but misguided.

Now the tens of thousands of American horses marked for slaughter are shipped to Canada and Mexico, where long, stressful journeys end in what some horse advocates say can be unduly painful deaths.

Most horses are slaughtered for human consumption, with Europe and Asia providing markets for their meat.

Some horse associations are siding with the Humane Society in its fight to end export of horses for slaughter altogether. But others are seeking to re-establish processing in the United States to broaden the outlet for unwanted horses and to ensure the animals are killed by a mechanical method approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society, said for Americans to have their horses killed for their meat would be akin to sending their pet dogs to slaughter for human consumption.

But unlike its canine counterpart, a horse weighs an average of 1,000 pounds and disposal of its carcass after Humane Society-recommended euthanasia has become burdensome. Where permitted by law and where able, owners can bury carcasses on their own land or pay several hundred dollars in assorted fees to deposit the remains at a local landfill.

Those complications may be behind what state livestock officials and federal land managers in the West say is a spike in the number of horses shot dead and dumped on public lands.

Scot Dutcher, animal protection chief with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said the abandoned horse cases officials are addressing now is a ripple compared to the wave that may come.

“If it becomes illegal to export horses for slaughter, we’ll be dealing with an equine tsunami,” he said.

Meanwhile, officials at some sale barns in Montana are asking owners of especially old or underweight horses to pay the auction house if the animals do not bring a sufficient price.

And horse rescues, nonprofit groups that rehabilitate and place unwanted and often abused horses, are reporting a rise in the number of calls they are fielding and the number of horses they turn away for lack of resources.

“I could have 500 horses here tomorrow,” said Brent Glover, head of Orphan Acres, an Idaho rescue operation that can maintain a maximum of 130 horses.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Eddie Evans)

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