National: A look at terrorism threat on fourth anniversary of 9/11 By LISA HOFFMAN - America is wounded like it hasn't been for four years, reeling from a major shock to its infrastructure and economy, unsettled by the flailing of government in the face of chaos and anxious about steadily escalating oil prices.

So, with the nation's attention - and much of its homeland-security and emergency-response muscle - concentrated on Hurricane Katrina's ugly aftermath, what better time for al Qaeda to again hit the "Great Satan" than now.

The fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a date that for its symbolism alone has annually been considered a high-risk time, might make this moment even more attractive to terrorists.

But U.S. homeland-security officials, who say they have not been distracted from their counterterrorism responsibilities despite the enormous demands of dealing with Katrina's wake, say they have detected no signs of an attack in the works.

"There is no specific intelligence to suggest there is an effort on the part of terrorists to conduct any imminent attacks," said Russ Knocke, principal spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which handles both counterterrorism and emergency management in the country. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

National: Thousands dead, 1 million evacuated. Katrina? No, Pam By DAVID R. BAKER - Government officials gathered in Baton Rouge, La., a year ago to deal with a powerful hurricane bearing down on New Orleans.

They faced a nightmare scenario. A flooded city, 1 million evacuees, 60,000 dead - all the work of Hurricane Pam.

The storm was not real. Staged with the help of a San Francisco company, Pam was a simulation designed to force government agencies to examine - and possibly rethink - their disaster plans. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

National: Despite Katrina, Bush trying to cut funding By JAMES W. BROSNAN - Even after requesting $60 billion for Katrina relief, the White House is trying to trim the regular budgets of U.S. agencies that track hurricanes and perform flood control.

Instead, Congress is likely to add money for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Senate returns Monday to take up a funding bill that includes $4.5 billion for NOAA - $895 million more than requested by Bush, who wanted to trim NOAA's budget by more than $350 million. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

National: Price of storm relief threatens to wash away Bush agenda By CAROLYN LOCHHEAD - The most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history is sucking up money at the rate of $2 billion a day - more than the cost of the Iraq war - and throwing an awkward spotlight on GOP efforts to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains and shave Medicaid spending while thousands of poor people are homeless on the Gulf Coast.

Despite Republican assurances that President Bush's second-term agenda remains on track, Hurricane Katrina has dealt a blow to his plans to overhaul Social Security and the tax code, extend his signature tax cuts, shrink the federal deficit and stay the course in Iraq.

"The political and substantive reality is that the agenda has to change," said Leon Panetta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a former longtime Democratic House member from California. "I don't think they have any choice." - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

National: Blues for a lost city, visions of rebirth By DOROTHY KORBER - That gut-wrenching wail America hears is New Orleans singing the blues - music of sorrow and pain and desolation. But the blues are also cathartic; they heal.

Though people who love the city are grieving what is lost, they can foresee its healing and eventual rebirth. There are different visions for that future. What is clear is that the price - in human suffering and the nation's resources - will be steep.

Ari Kelman, for one, has no doubt that New Orleans will rise again. Kelman, an environmental historian who wrote a recent book on the relationship of the city and the Mississippi River, describes the place as a paradox: impossible but inevitable. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

Digging for clues on the Denali Fault by NED ROZELL Tony Crone and Steve Personius of the U.S. Geological Survey's Geologic Hazards Team look at soil from a trench along Alaska's Denali fault. They were looking for evidence of torn ground that would indicate large earthquakes in the past. Photograph by Ned Rozell

Alaska: UPPER SCHIST CREEK, ON THE DENALI FAULT - Digging for clues on the Denali Fault by NED ROZELL - Standing in a grave-like trench that spanned the Denali Fault, Tony Crone squinted at a wall of rocky yellow soil.

"OK, we've got two, maybe three events here," he said.

"Sweet!" said Patty Burns, chief digger on the trench and a geologist with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Burns and two colleagues from Colorado were searching the western part of the Denali Fault in the Alaska Range for evidence of past earthquakes. After several days of shoveling dirt and heaving rocks, the geologists had found proof of a few ancient earthquakes that had torn the former ground surface.

They traveled to this remote alpine bench about 10 miles east of Cantwell to learn more about the fault, a line through the Alaska Range visible on maps and satellite images. When part of the fault ruptured in a whopping 7.9 earthquake in November 2002, it scarred the tundra, ice, rock and pavement surface of Alaska with a gash more than 200 miles long. Energy from the earthquake continued southwest, making Calgary high-rise workers woozy and triggering small earthquakes at Yellowstone. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

Alaska: Sealaska Timber inks $1.7 million deal with Taiwan By PAULA DOBBYN - A Sealaska Timber Corp. executive signed a $1.7 million contract with a Taiwanese businessman in Girdwood on Friday for the export of old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar logs, according to company and state officials. The signing took place on the second day of an Alaska-Taiwan trade conference at Alyeska Resort. - Read this Anchorage Daily News Story...
Anchorage Daily News www.adn.com

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Week In Review: Floodwaters drop in New Orleans - Floodwaters began slowly receding in New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers used sandbags and rocks to plug a 200-foot gap in a levee that burst and inundated New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the first of the city's pumps returned to operation. But health officials warned that the toxic water could spread disease, and natural gas was leaking all over. Mayor Ray Nagin ordered law officers and the military to evacuate all holdouts for their own safety.

Bush, Congress pledge to investigate - Both President Bush and Congress vowed to investigate what went wrong with the federal response to the Katrina disaster. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was removed from his role as manager of relief efforts and called back to Washington. He was replaced on the Gulf Coast by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., called for FEMA to be made independent of the Department of Homeland Security. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

Washington Calling: Katrina's political fallout ... junk food in schools ... other items By LANCE GAY - Katrina relief problems? What problems? - Republicans are scrambling to minimize the political fallout from such debacles as the crowds of hungry and thirsty left outside the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center pleading for help. The party line is that the pictures didn't reflect the massive federal effort under way to help the dispossessed, and that Michael Brown, the embattled director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, did everything he could.

Democrats are seizing on the mistakes and screaming for Brown's head, saying the Bush administration once again forgot about the poor and disabled in the rush to evacuate New Orleans.

Early polls show that while many agree the relief effort went awry, only 13 percent of Americans blame Bush for the debacle. As TV cameras depict truck convoys of relief goods streaming to New Orleans, GOP operatives see the criticism over the trauma of the evacuation as a tempest they can weather.

Upshot: Don't expect heads to roll. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

Fairbanks Daily News Miner: Alaska's 'bridges to nowhere' add to national political storm By DERMOT COLE - BRIDGE BLUES: From the left and the right and from coast to coast, Alaska is getting hammered.

"Don Young's Way" across Knik Arm and the plan for a quarter-billion-dollar connection between Ketchikan and Gravina Island are being derided everywhere outside Alaska as wasteful "bridges to nowhere."- More...
Fairbanks Daily News Miner www.news-miner.com - Sunday - September 11, 2005

John Hall: A new cycle of 9/11 investigations - As the nation marks the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, sneak attack by the al Qaeda terrorists, investigations are about to begin into another catastrophe - the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and its floods.

An investigation probably will show more shocking malfeasance at all levels of public responsibility than the press has dug out so far. That's what happened after 9/11. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005

Dale McFeatters: Oil for bribes - The U.N. oil-for-food program, intended to feed the Iraqi people, proved both corrupt and ineffectual as has now been amply documented in an investigation headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

His panel estimated that Saddam Hussein raked in $12.8 billion through kickbacks, smuggling and sanctions-busting as a consequence of "the United Nations' failure to properly oversee the program and maintain the integrity of the sanctions regime."

The panel found that the United Nations was incapable of administering a program of the scope of oil-for-food and, barring substantial institutional reforms, shouldn't try. The actual corruption, in the sense of money changing hands, within the world agency seems small considering that it was a $100 billion program. Only three officials have been charged, including Benon Sevan, the head of oil-for-food, who is alleged to have taken a paltry $160,000. - More...
Sunday - September 11, 2005