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Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, July 28, 2008 – The Konar River runs for 150 kilometers and serves as a natural border between eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Although the villages along the eastern and western banks of the river are part of Konar, the river reinforces cultural and political alliances between Afghans on the eastern shore and tribesmen across the border in Pakistan. The people on the eastern side have had very little connection to the provincial government. The Bar Sholtan Truck Bridge under construction in the Shigal district will give Afghan and coalition forces access to the most problematic...

CAMP TAJI, Iraq, July 25, 2008 – Multinational Division Baghdad engineers with the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team journeyed to the Grand Canal Bridge in Taji Qada, northwest of Baghdad, on July 22 to monitor repair progress. Construction workers from a local construction company weld steel that is going to be used to fix the hole in the northbound lane of the Grand Canal Bridge in Taji, northwest of Baghdad, July 22, 2008. U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Lyndsey R. Dransfield, Multinational Division Baghdad  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The bridge, which spans a portion...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

Rotting holes in steel support beams, enormous rust patches, small splits in steel girders and broken bracing are evident all along the underside of the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge, the heavily traveled Interstate 95 span that crosses the Merrimack River between Amesbury and Newburyport. A just-released state safety report filed in the wake of last year's disastrous collapse of the similarly designed Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis gave the 57-year-old Whittier Bridge "poor" ratings due to deterioration. On a 10-step ranking system, the rating is just two steps above the point where engineers consider closing a bridge due to safety...

WASHINGTON — The Texas Department of Transportation, long viewed as hyperpartisan and arrogant by some members of the state's congressional delegation, has been trying to soften its image by reaching out to lawmakers of both parties in the nation's capital. But while state transportation officials are having some success in easing the personal animus, they still face a stiff challenge in selling their policy agenda to the state's elected officials in Washington. Many Texans on the Potomac cringe at the agency's embrace of toll roads, the controversies surrounding the Trans-Texas Corridor and TxDOT's resistance to many of the highway earmarks...

If the British and French can design and build spectacular bridges at a modest or at least reasonable cost, why can’t we? Or maybe we can, but we haven’t tried it lately, at least not in Oregon. The question comes up because Peter DeFazio, our man in Washington, is chairman of the highways and transit subcommittee in the U.S. House. His committee will write the next highway bill, probably by the end of 2009. And when DeFazio led his colleagues on a fact-finding trip to Europe, he saw the viaduct at Millau. It’s the most spectacular bridge he has ever...

HARRISBURG -- With a section of a Pittsburgh bridge dropping 8 inches and an Interstate 95 support pillar cracking in Philadelphia, Gov. Ed Rendell is turning up the heat under the Legislature to provide infrastructure repair funds more quickly. Mr. Rendell sent a letter to all 253 legislators yesterday urging quick passage of a $240 million "supplemental debt authorization." His program of borrowing would enable state officials to fast-track repairs on some of the state's 6,000 bridges classified as structurally deficient, along with fixing ailing highways, repairing "state-owned, high-hazard dams" and beginning flood mitigation projects. Also yesterday, Mr. Rendell called...

Senior executives of the Texas Department of Transportation can expect some heavy grilling from state legislators when the state Legislature convenes next January, state Rep. Jim McReynolds said Friday. Speaking to the monthly First Friday luncheon of The Chamber, Lufkin-Angelina County, McReynolds said many legislators, especially those from rural East Texas, are unhappy with TxDOT leaders over the Trans- Texas Corridor project and how it has incorporated plans for an Interstate 69 through the region. McReynolds said he attended all four of the TxDOT hearings on the TTC held in his district, which included one in Diboll, and "never heard...

Not one of the 11 East Texans who approached the podium at Wednesday's hearing on Interstate 69 voiced support for the planned highway. "This is highway robbery, and we should not pursue this project," said David Simpson, a Longview resident and fifth-generation Texan. "This process has bypassed the Constitution. It has bypassed the U.S. Congress, and I'm opposed to it because of the unconstitutional way that it has been pushed through." The public hearing, held at Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center, was a chance for residents to comment and ask questions about Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor. The corridor would extend...

It's not often that an individual makes such a significant and undoubtedly lasting impact on a state as big as Texas, but my long-time friend and Chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Ric Williamson, certainly did. As most of you know, Ric died suddenly last month at age 55. It is true that as the state's transportation policymaker, he was a controversial figure. But, it has been my experience that people with visionary instincts and those who prefer to think outside the box are often considered different and unconventional. The world has a long legacy of resisting new ideas, even...

Combat engineers with Company E, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, from Fort Stewart, Ga., set up an armored vehicle-launched bridge in Arab Jabour during Operation Acheron, Jan. 10. Photo by Sgt. Luis Delgadillo, Multi-National Division-Central. FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — Opening a new passage in southern Arab Jabour, Coalition Forces moved and set up an armored vehicle-launched bridge and cut 200 meters of new road, Jan 10. The new road is drivable and the bridge makes a 35-foot gap passable for vehicles. Connecting roads from Patrol Base Hawkes to vital canal roads in...

COLTON, N.Y., Oct. 30 — The bridge that carries Route 56 over the Raquette River here is so ordinary that it has no name, only a number, 1027260. But for now it is a bridge like no other, studded with instruments like a cardiac patient, giving up secrets that may explain how to keep others from falling. Bridges are big, dumb pieces of steel and concrete, and mostly out of mind, until one collapses, as the Interstate 35W bridge did in Minneapolis on Aug. 1. Even now, three months later, no one is sure why that happened, but it has...

U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, has introduced the Toll Road Prohibition Act, the latest bill designed to prevent tolling on federally built highways. HR 3802, introduced Oct. 10, would require states and cities to repay the U.S. government all federal funds used for construction of highways, bridges or tunnels, along with “reasonable interest,� before introducing tolls. “The American people should not be required to pay for the same highway twice, once through their tax dollars and again through new tolls on federal interstate highways,� Boswell said. The legislation would not prohibit the states from entering into public-private toll agreements, but...

Minnesota Democrat Jim Oberstar, bowing to political reality, unveiled a bare-bones bridge repair and reconstruction bill Tuesday without a 5-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax increase. The move by the influential chairman of the House Transportation Committee appears to end debate on Capitol Hill over a national gas tax hike in response to the Interstate 35W bridge tragedy in Minneapolis. Oberstar, saying "fixing bridges is more important than fighting the White House and the Senate," is now proposing a $2 billion federal bridge program, a far cry from the $25 billion initiative he had hoped to pass with a stepped-up gas tax,...

WASHINGTON - The Senate approved $1 billion on Monday to speed repair and replacement of America's crumbling network of bridges, six weeks after the Interstate 35W span collapsed in Minneapolis. The Senate approved the funds on a 60-33 vote as the Senate began debate on a $104.6 billion measure funding transportation and housing programs for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. "Our bridges are deteriorating far faster than we can finance their replacement," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., lead sponsor of the bridge-repair funds. "More than one in every four bridges on U.S. highways is rated as deficient." If approved,...

A new overpass bridge collapsed in the southern city of Karachi on Saturday, killing at least four people and crushing vehicles under mounds of debris, officials said. Mayor Mustafa Kamal said officials were using heavy machinery and bulldozers to try to rescue injured people trapped in vehicles when the 330-foot-long curved section of the overpass crashed onto a road below. Azhar Faruqi, the city police chief, said authorities had taken two bodies to a hospital, while another two bodies could be seen inside a crushed car. At least five people were injured. The cause of the accident was not immediately...

HYDERABAD, India: The police continued to find and defuse bombs throughout the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Sunday, a day after a pair of synchronized explosions ripped through two popular gathering spots, killing at least 42 people and wounding scores of others. State and national officials are calling the blasts in Hyderabad, a city with a history of Muslim-Hindu tensions, acts of terrorism. After the attacks, the police defused 19 more bombs - all fitted with timers and placed in plastic bags - at bus stops, movie theaters, road intersections and pedestrian bridges. The police said each of the...

Some things in politics seem to be inevitable--and one of them is that any road or bridge tragedy will be followed by an argument to raise the gasoline tax. That's what is now happening in the wake of the terrible Minnesota bridge collapse, but that state's transportation and tax record shows precisely why voters are skeptical. The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax,...

Toll roads will not solve Texas' roadway woes, state Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, told the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors on Tuesday. The state must take care of its infrastructure needs, and Eltife said he has always supported indexing the gasoline tax to inflation to ensure funding to handle those needs. "I think we need to get back to the basics in this state and pay for road and bridge improvements," he said. "We ought to index the gas tax to inflation, we should build our own roads," Eltife said. "The toll roads are a piece of...

Democratic calls for raising the federal gas tax to pay for national bridge repairs are wrongheaded, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Thursday at a transportation forum in Irving. "We cannot adopt every bridge in America," said Ms. Hutchison, R-Texas. "We have to be very, very careful that the federal government not become the genesis [of the funding] for all of the nation's bridges and for all of its highways." Transportation officials in Austin and Washington have warned that the gas tax revenues supporting the Federal Highway Trust Fund will have a $4 billion deficit by 2009 unless new sources...

JACKSON, Miss., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A Mississippi subcontractor made an appearance in court on charges of hiring illegal aliens for bridge construction sites. Jose S. Gonzalez, the owner of the Tarrasco Steel Co., appeared in federal court following his arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Northern District of Mississippi ICE agents arrested the 32-year-old as part of an ongoing investigation into charges he hired illegal alien workers from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico at construction sites throughout the Gulf Coast region. Tarrasco Steel is a subcontractor that provides steel rebar and installation services to highway bridge construction projects. In...

Bridge Politics Unless we change the way we fund our highways, infrastructure will continue to crumble. Jim Peron | August 8, 2007 Politicians are drawn to tragedy like flies to pie. Take the Minneapolis bridge collapse. You have to wonder what makes this a federal responsibility. The typical excuse is that the state can't afford such pricey projects, so it behooves the federal government to step in to help. Whatever Minnesota's spending constraints, the state can apparently afford to spend hundreds of millions for corporate welfare to Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, for a new baseball stadium....

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 8 — Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said on Wednesday. The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River...

The owner of Tarrasco Steel, a company that supplied workers on the Biloxi Bay Bridge, was arrested and charged with hiring illegal immigrants on projects in three states. Some had improper welding certification. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Jose S. Gonzalez, 32, at his office in Greenville Thursday, according to a news release. Tarrasco Steel was hired as a subcontractor for rebar installation services to major bridge projects in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. The federal government considers those bridges as critical infrastructure, and they were part of routine inspections of facilities that if damaged could pose a threat...

The owner of Tarrasco Steel, a company that supplied workers on the Biloxi Bay Bridge, was arrested and charged with hiring illegal immigrants on projects in three states. Some had improper welding certification. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Jose S. Gonzalez, 32, at his office in Greenville Thursday, according to a news release. Tarrasco Steel was hired as a subcontractor for rebar installation services to major bridge projects in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. The federal government considers those bridges as critical infrastructure, and they were part of routine inspections of facilities that if damaged could pose a threat...

Tuesday, August 7, 2007 It took a collapsing bridge in Minnesota to alert people across the country to the fact that many other bridges in many other places have been allowed to deteriorate without adequate maintenance. If this were just a matter of poor political leadership at various levels of government, we could at least hope for better leaders in the future. But the problem goes deeper than that. It is not just the people but the incentives that are responsible for the neglect of infrastructure, while tax money is lavished on all sorts of less urgent projects. In other...

In the Military there is a long standing tradition that you do not march soldiers over a bridge in step. When marching and approaching a bridge the command of Route Step, MARCH is given. This command keeps the soldiers marching in formation, but every soldier is allowed to march at her/his own step. Although this is widely practiced in the Army, I found very few who knew the reason why. What could have possibly prompted this tradition? Submitted by Bruce Brantley No Rating Solution: (Hide) The reason is the possibility of the bridge collapsing. There are many stories of bridges...

As of 2005, 155,144 of the nations 592,473 bridges (26.2%) were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete - see how bridges in your state are ranked.

Nearly a fifth of America's roads are now considered in poor shape and about one-in-four bridges is rated "structurally deficient." The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that the cost to fix these problems is a staggering $460 billion. The tab grows far larger when you add in the hundreds of billions to build the new transportation infrastructure that's needed to handle the country's growth. Part of the problem is that big increases in state and local spending for politically popular programs, especially Medicaid and education, as well costly public employee pensions and benefits, have crowded out infrastructure -- even as...

Arkansas was a State that used to have some of the worst highways in the nation. When Mike Huckabee was Governor in Arkansas, under his leadership, a major restoration of the highway system took place. The Club for Growth is complaining that a 4-cent tax on diesel fuel was assessed to fix the roads in Arkansas. However, over 80% of the voters in Arkansas supported that measure. Today, Arkansas has some of the best roads in the nation. In light of what happened with the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, we can appreciate Governor Huckabee for his leadership...

It’s not clear why a major section of the nation’s interstate highway system collapsed Wednesday night over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, causing a still unknown number of fatalities and indefinitely severing an important transportation link. But one thing has been all too clear for decades: America is neglecting its vital physical infrastructure, and the bill is coming due. As a nation, we’ve long borrowed from our future; everybody knows about the inevitable Social Security and Medicare crises that will happen in the next three decades as the number of retirees expands in relation to the number of workers. Far...

Though inspections rate more than 70,000 bridges nationwide structurally deficient, a top transportation official Friday called the deadly failure of a Mississippi River bridge an "anomaly" and said motorists shouldn't fear for their safety. "I don't believe that they should be worried at all," National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker said while visiting the bridge wreckage in Minneapolis. Rules in place for 30 years "have improved the conditions and the standards that in fact these things are being inspected on," he said. "But with that said, as a result of this catastrophic disaster, we're going to be looking at...

The cause of Wednesday's bridge collapse in Minneapolis isn't yet known, but that hasn't stopped the tragedy from reigniting the debate over the condition of U.S. "infrastructure," which has to be the ugliest word in the English language. It's even uglier when Congress and the building lobby use it as an excuse to spend more without rethinking their own contributions to the problem. Nobody denies that our roads and bridges are feeling the stress of age, more drivers and heavier truckloads. It's possible that the I-35W bridge collapse over the Mississippi was the result of such stress, specifically from the...

Big rigs damaging area bridges August 3, 2007 By Mike Puccinelli cbs 2 Chicago JOLIET -- Big rigs are taking a toll on Will County bridges. The wear and tear could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Will County Sheriff's deputy Jim Wendt says a bridge that should be less traveled by trucks has had patchwork done in the past, but the repairs just fall apart. But the road is not the one less traveled and county engineers say that's making all the difference. "It's in poor shape at the present time," said engineer Sheldon Latz. The road is...

A steam pipe explodes near Grand Central Terminal, a levee fails and floods New Orleans, a bridge collapses in Minneapolis. These disasters are an indication that this country is not investing enough in keeping its vital infrastructure in good repair, engineering experts warn. “Governments do not want to pay for maintenance because it is not sexy,” said John Ochsendorf, a structural engineer and an associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said the bulk of the nation’s highway system was built in the 1950s and 1960s and is ageing. Referring to the collapse in Minneapolis, he said “This type...

MINNEAPOLIS - Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River was "structurally deficient," yet they relied on patchwork repairs and stepped-up inspections that unraveled amid a thunderous plunge of concrete and automobiles. "We thought we had done all we could," state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. "Obviously something went terribly wrong." Questions about the cause of the collapse and whether it could have been prevented arose Thursday as authorities shifted from rescue efforts to a grim recovery operation, searching for bodies...

LOS ANGELES California motorists make millions of daily crossings of bridges and overpasses classified as "structurally deficient" like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, but state transportation officials say none are in danger of falling down. Of the 50 most heavily trafficked bridges and overpasses deemed structurally deficient in the United States, 38 are in populous Southern California, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Federal Highway Administration. Of those, 32 are in Los Angeles County, five in Orange County and one in Riverside County. Bridges with the designation in Essex and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey...

More than 70,000 bridges across the country are rated structurally deficient like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, and engineers estimate repairing them all would take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion.That works out to at least $9.4 billion a year over 20 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.The bridges carry an average of more than 300 million vehicles a day.It is unclear how many of the spans pose actual safety risks. Federal officials alerted the states late Thursday to immediately inspect all bridges similar to the Mississippi River span that collapsed. In...

Jack Cafferty was just on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and said that if we weren't spending a total of 1 Trillion dollars in Iraq we could have repaired that bridge and all of the bridges in the U.S.A. instead of building new bridges for roads in Iraq. He laid blame on...guess who? But of course...Bush! When all else fails...CNN and the Liberals find a way to blame Bush. Don't the Democrats run that state for the most part?

(CBS 3) PHILADELPHIA -- Governor Ed Rendell called attention to the deplorable condition of many Pennsylvania bridges, following a deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis during the height of rush hour Wednesday. “We’re first in state owned bridges that are over 75 years of age. We are also first in the nation in number of structurally deficient bridges", Rendell said. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, there are roughly 25,000 bridges in Pennsylvania, 5,900 of which are structurally deficient. According to a Federal Highway Administration web site, a “deficient” rating does not necessarily mean a bridge is likely to collapse;...

In 1967 what was known as the "Silver Bridge" connecting West Virginia and Ohio succumbed to stress fatigue and collasped into the Ohio River. The bridge that fell in Minnisota yesterday was built in 1967. The Silver Bridge was 40 years old.The bridge that fell in Minnisota yesterday was 40 years old. The Silver Bridge was Highway 35.The Minnisota bridge was also Highway 35. Just coincidence I know, but interesting. Silver Bridge Collapse

NEW YORK (AFP) - The deadly collapse of a road bridge in Minnesota has raised questions about America's aging infrastructure, with experts warning that billions need to be spent to bring standards up to scratch.

OROVILLE, Calif. - A highway overpass that was under construction collapsed Tuesday, crushing a delivery truck and seriously injuring a construction worker who clung to a steel beam as it tumbled 50 feet to the ground. Firefighters swarmed the FedEx (nyse: FDX - news - people ) delivery truck to cut its driver from underneath a large steel beam that crushed the hood but missed the cab. A second beam landed on the back of the truck. The cause of the collapse was being investigated. The driver, Robert Sylvester, 45, of Chico, was pulled free about 2 1/2 hours...

Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis..... Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars...... Just now breaking.......

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has rated almost 200,000 bridges, or one of every three bridges in the U.S., as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Furthermore, more than one-fourth of all bridges are over 50 years old, the average design-life of a bridge. The Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) of the U.S. National Research Council recently estimated that the cost of damage to America's bridges currently stands at about $20 billion and is increasing at the rate of $500 million per year. SHRP concluded that the structural deterioration found in these bridges is primarily the result of corrosion.

I wonder if there are trolls in St. Louis.

BAGHDAD, June 2 -- Insurgents blasted a gaping hole in a major bridge on the main highway from Baghdad to northern Iraq on Saturday, part of a growing effort to target Iraq's infrastructure and immobilize its people. Ever since a large chunk of Baghdad's steel-beamed Sarafiya bridge splashed into the Tigris River in April, attackers have systematically targeted bridges in and around the capital. The tactic has further sealed off neighborhoods, blocked vital transportation links and, in some cases, worsened divisions between Sunnis and Shiites. Concern about the attacks has led the Iraqi government to prohibit oil tankers and other...

If Man Can Climb GWB, Imagine What Terrorist Could Do (CBS) NEW YORK -- After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, security was stepped up on our bridges and tunnels. So how is it that someone was able to climb the George Washington Bridge in the middle of rush hour? CBS 2 HD got a unique perspective from someone who's climbed the bridge more than a half dozen times. A Port Authority worker was first to spot the man climbing the George Washington Bridge on Friday morning and within minutes police officials were on the scene. They knew the man likely...