NATO Begins Helicopter Attacks in Hopes of Ending the Stalemate With Qaddafi

 

Two American-built Apache helicopters operating from a British helicopter-carrier ship plying the Mediterranean 20 miles off the Libyan coast attacked targets before dawn near the oil city of Brega. British reporters aboard the Royal Navy ship Ocean said that both helicopters returned safely after missions lasting less than two hours. Defense officials in Paris said that French helicopters flying from the helicopter carrier Tonnerre also joined in the Brega strikes.

NATO said in a statement that the British helicopters had successfully attacked “military vehicles, military equipment and fielded forces.”

NATO officials have said that they regard the introduction of attack helicopters — the British Apaches and two French helicopter types, the Tigre and the Gazelle — as potential game changers in a conflict that has shown signs of settling into a stalemate. They say the helicopters’ advantage over airstrikes conducted from fast jets flying as high as 20,000 feet is their enhanced ability to carry out precision strikes against Qaddafi forces operating in urban areas, and to pinpoint targets like snipers or small groups of loyalist fighters hiding among civilians or close to schools and hospitals.

But the helicopters also introduce a new level of vulnerability for NATO pilots. Libya still has some scattered air defenses, consisting mainly of portable antiaircraft missiles and truck-mounted systems, which could pose dangers to relatively slow, low-flying helicopters.

The helicopter attacks were begun a week after Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France approved the deployment of attack helicopters from each of their forces, describing the move as intended to increase the military pressure on Colonel Qaddafi. NATO leaders, including President Obama, have called on the Libyan leader to abandon power and leave Libya, demands that he has repeatedly rejected.

Previously, all of 3,640 strike sorties flown during the 11-week air campaign had been by fixed-wing attack jets or missile-carrying Predator drones, following up on an initial barrage by cruise missiles.

The British version of the Apache flies at a maximum speed of about 160 miles an hour, compared with the potentially supersonic Tornado, Typhoon and Rafale jets that have conducted most of the British and French attacks in the air campaign.

The commander of the British helicopter carrier told reporters aboard the ship that the targets struck early on Saturday included a radar site and an “armed checkpoint” near Brega, a Qaddafi-held port in eastern Libya that has been a major export point and servicing center for Libya’s oil industry. French officials said that French helicopters attacked a military camp, apparently one that a NATO statement described as comprising 14 military vehicles, as well as “two shelters and 12 tents.”

With the costs of the air campaign mounting, and the stresses growing on air crews, finding a way of breaking the stalemate has become a priority for NATO, and particularly for Britain and France, which are carrying the brunt of the campaign.

Mr. Obama has let NATO allies take the lead in the Libyan operations, an unusual role for them in the history of such operations. The United States’ role has been confined primarily to air refueling, airborne command and control, surveillance and the deployment of missile-carrying drones.

Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, the Canadian commander who oversees the air campaign from a base in Naples, Italy, issued a statement on Saturday calling the helicopters’ first missions successful and adding: “We will continue to use these assets whenever and wherever needed.”

Within hours of the Brega attacks, Britain’s Foreign Office announced that Foreign Secretary William Hague had arrived in the rebel capital, Benghazi, for talks with rebel leaders. The London statement said that Mr. Hague’s trip was “meant to show support for citizens fighting the rule” of Colonel Qaddafi.

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NATO Says It Is Stepping Up Attacks on Libya Targets

White House officials said President Obama had been briefed on the more energetic bombing campaign, which included a strike early on Monday on Colonel Qaddafi’s residential compound in the heart of Tripoli, the capital.

United States officials said the effort was not intended to kill the Libyan leader, but to take the war to his doorstep, raising the price of his efforts to continue to hold on to power. “We want to make sure he knows there is a war going on, and it’s not just in Misurata,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity in discussing military planning.

The NATO campaign, some officials said, arose in part from an analysis of Colonel Qaddafi’s reaction to the bombing of Tripoli that was ordered by President Ronald Reagan a quarter-century ago. Alliance officials concluded that the best hope of dislodging the Libyan leader and forcing him to flee was to cut off his ability to command his most loyal troops.

“We don’t want to kill him or make a martyr out of him in the Arab world,” said a senior NATO diplomat familiar with the evolving strategy. “But if he sees the bombing happening all around him, we think it could change his calculus.”

American warplanes were not involved in the most recent strike on the Qaddafi residential complex, which also includes administrative offices and a military communications center, or in a separate raid on Monday that temporarily knocked Libyan state television off the air. The decision to let warplanes from other nations carry out the bulk of the attacks is in keeping with the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw to what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called “a support role” in the Libya air campaign.

But the attacks depend on intelligence reports and other military support from the United States, NATO officials said.

NATO officials acknowledged that the alliance’s intelligence was based on intercepted cellphone calls and radio dispatches that might indicate which barracks, buildings or compounds were serving as the government’s hidden command posts.

“If you know your main headquarters is going to be hit, you get out and set up an alternative in some nondescript barracks,” one NATO official said. Attacks on those hidden military posts are wholly legitimate, officials said — but there is always a chance that Colonel Qaddafi might be inside one of them.

Officials in Europe and Washington said the strikes were meant to reduce the Libyan government’s ability to harm civilians by eliminating, link by link, the command-and-communications and supply chains that are required for military operations.

But the attacks also reflect a broadening of alliance targets at a time when the rebels and the government have been consolidating their positions along more static front lines, raising concerns of a prolonged stalemate. Although it is too soon to see results from the recent shift, a NATO official said Tuesday that the alliance was closely watching early signs, like the recent reports of desertions from the Libyan Army.

NATO planes pounded targets east of the port city of Misurata on Tuesday, lifting mushroom-shaped clouds of dust hundreds of feet into the air. On the ground, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces fired missiles and mortars in heavy, though intermittent, barrages on the rebels defending the port area, news agencies reported. Explosions echoed for miles across the water, and rescue ships bound for the port and its stranded migrant workers found themselves without a safe window to dock amid attacks by Colonel Qaddafi’s troops.

By sunset, a NATO warship could be seen patrolling the waters several miles off the coast. A Human Rights Watch representative with contacts in Misurata said one migrant worker was killed and 11 others wounded in shelling by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

The strike on Colonel Qaddafi’s palace and command center was denounced by Libyan officials as an assassination attempt, but alliance officers rejected that suggestion. Pentagon officials said the mission was against a legitimate military target and noted that it was carried out by F-16s from Norway.

But the view from the Kremlin was skeptical. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday delivered his most passionate critique of the Western intervention in Libya, underlining a rare open disagreement with his protégé, President Dmitri A. Medvedev.

At a news conference in Copenhagen, Mr. Putin was asked to elaborate on his comment that the United Nations resolution allowing airstrikes resembled “a medieval call for a crusade.” He responded by launching into an extended caustic attack on the NATO campaign, saying it violated the principle of sovereignty and the wishes of the Libyan people.

Military officials privately acknowledge that removing Colonel Qaddafi from power is the desired secondary effect of striking at state television and other symbols of his authoritarian rule. “His people may see the futility of continued resistance,” one Pentagon official said.

Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, the NATO mission’s operational commander, told reporters on Tuesday at his headquarters in Italy that alliance intelligence officers were picking up reports of Libyan government soldiers who had abandoned their positions. “We are well aware of troops not reporting for duty,” he said.

Senior officers who served in NATO’s previous air war, fought in 1999 to protect the population of Kosovo from Serbian forces, said the campaign over Libya drew on lessons learned then.

Gen. John P. Jumper, who commanded United States Air Force units in Europe during the Kosovo campaign, recalled that allied “air power was getting its paper graded on the number of tanks killed” — even though taking out armored vehicles one by one was never going to halt “ethnic cleansing.”

So NATO began to hit high-profile institutional targets in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, instead of forces in the field. Although they were legitimate military targets, General Jumper said, destroying them also had the effect of undermining popular support for the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

“It was when we went in and began to disturb important and symbolic sites in Belgrade, and began to bring to a halt the middle-class life in Belgrade, that Milosevic’s own people began to turn on him,” General Jumper said.

C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from the Mediterranean Sea.

 

The Guantanamo Files: In Dossier, Portrait of Push for Post-9/11 Attacks

In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Paracha, 63, was one of a small circle of Al Qaeda operatives who explored ways to follow up on the hijackings with new attacks, according to the classified Guantánamo files made available to The New York Times.

Working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 planner who in early 2002 gave him $500,000 to $600,000 “for safekeeping,” Mr. Paracha offered his long experience in the shipping business for a scheme to move plastic explosives into the United States inside containers of women’s and children’s clothing, the files assert.

“Detainee desired to help Al Qaeda ‘do something big against the U.S.,’?” one of his co-conspirators, Ammar al-Baluchi, told Guantánamo interrogators, the files say. Mr. Paracha discussed obtaining biological or nuclear weapons as well, though he was concerned that detectors at ports “would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country,” the file says.

Mr. Paracha’s assessment is among more than 700 classified documents that fill in new details of Al Qaeda’s efforts to make 9/11 just the first in a series of attacks to cripple the United States, intentions thwarted as the Central Intelligence Agency captured Mr. Mohammed and other leaders of the terrorist network.

The plots reportedly discussed by Mr. Mohammed and various operatives, none of them acted upon, included plans for a new wave of aircraft attacks on the West Coast, filling an apartment with leaked natural gas and detonating it, blowing up gas stations and even cutting the cables holding up the Brooklyn Bridge.

For the small circle of Qaeda operatives described in the December 2008 assessment of Mr. Paracha, terrorism appears to have been a family affair. There was Mr. Mohammed, the terrorist network’s top plotter, and his nephew, Mr. Baluchi, who was married to another militant, an American-trained neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui. And there was Mr. Paracha and his son, Uzair.

The newly revealed assessments, obtained last year by the group WikiLeaks and provided by another source to The Times, have revived the dispute, nearly as old as the prison, over whether mistreatment of some prisoners there and the prison’s operation outside the criminal justice system invalidate the government’s conclusions about the detainees.

Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the assessments “are rife with uncorroborated evidence, information obtained through torture, speculation, errors and allegations that have been proven false.”

Likewise, David H. Remes, a lawyer who represents the elder Mr. Paracha, said in an interview on Monday that while he had not seen the assessment, its conclusion that Mr. Paracha posed a “high risk” to American interests was without foundation.

“The notion that he ever did anything that justified his detention, or ever was or is any kind of threat to the United States, is preposterous,” Mr. Remes said. “He is a 63-year-old man with a serious heart condition and severe diabetes, and?he has been nothing but cooperative with the authorities.”

What Mr. Paracha wants, Mr. Remes added,?is either a transfer back to his native country, Pakistan, or “a definitive adjudication of his case.”

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, condemned on Monday the publication of what he called “documents obtained illegally” and noted the military’s findings about some detainees had been changed by a new review under President Obama. The detailed results of that review, however, remain secret.

Mr. Carney said the president remained committed to closing the Guantánamo prison someday. But Mr. Obama’s review identified about 50 detainees his advisers said could not be tried and were too dangerous to release, and Congress has imposed restrictions on bringing prisoners to the United States.

The portrait of Mr. Paracha is one of the striking ones to emerge from the files. The documents say he attended the New York Institute of Technology in the early 1970s and worked as a travel agent in New York for 13 years.

He was arrested in Bangkok in July 2003 after Uzair, who was already in F.B.I. custody in New York, “acknowledged” his father was a militant, the assessment says. Uzair Paracha was convicted in a 2005 trial on charges including material support for terrorism and is serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison.

According to his Guantánamo assessment, Saifullah Paracha had “provided useful information concerning senior Al Qaeda members” but “attempted to deceive and misinform intelligence and law enforcement personnel about his own activities.” As a result, the assessment draws heavily on statements by others, notably Mr. Mohammed, who was subjected to waterboarding and other brutal treatment during his interrogation by the C.I.A.

But Mr. Paracha’s assessment suggests that he did not deny militant connections at the highest level. “Detainee claimed he met UBL on a trip to Afghanistan in December 1999 or January 2000,” the documents say, using the government’s initials for Osama bin Laden. It says he offered to let Mr. bin Laden use his broadcasting business in Pakistan to generate propaganda films for Al Qaeda.

Later, Mr. bin Laden dispatched Mr. Mohammed to talk further about the idea, and Mr. Paracha explained “his vision of dedicating a program on his broadcasting network depicting UBL quoting Koranic verses.”

After 9/11, Mr. Paracha’s discussions focused on new plots, the files say. A Casio digital diary he was carrying when he was arrested “contained references to military chemical warfare agents, and their effects on humans,” according to the classified assessment. The document says Mr. Paracha told interrogators he had worked with Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered to be the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and a major proliferator of nuclear technology.

Edward D. Wilford, a lawyer who represented the son at his 2005 trial, said his client had played no “witting” role in his father’s arrest.

“He was not a part of it in any way,” he said. “He didn’t make any calls. He didn’t make any contact. In fact, he was being held incommunicado. He didn’t have any way of knowing what was going on.” The son had been jailed in Manhattan on a material-witness warrant after his questioning by the F.B.I. in March 2003. He was charged criminally in August 2003, after his father’s arrest.

The relationship between father and son is only hinted at in the assessment report. It says that analysts concluded that Saifullah Paracha was “hiding aspects of his son’s extremist activities.” The son, though, talked about his father and his father’s relationship with Mr. bin Laden while testifying in his own defense.

A prosecutor asked whether Uzair Paracha had told F.B.I. agents that his father admired Mr. bin Laden. “I don’t remember if my father actually said that he admired bin Laden,” the son testified. “He said that bin Laden was a humble person and he had a simple way of life.”

 

The Guantanamo Files: In Dossier, Portrait of Push for Post-9/11 Attacks

In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Paracha, 63, was one of a small circle of Al Qaeda operatives who explored ways to follow up on the hijackings with new attacks, according to the classified Guantánamo files made available to The New York Times.

Working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 planner who in early 2002 gave him $500,000 to $600,000 “for safekeeping,” Mr. Paracha offered his long experience in the shipping business for a scheme to move plastic explosives into the United States inside containers of women’s and children’s clothing, the files assert.

“Detainee desired to help Al Qaeda ‘do something big against the U.S.,’?” one of his co-conspirators, Ammar al-Baluchi, told Guantánamo interrogators, the files say. Mr. Paracha discussed obtaining biological or nuclear weapons as well, though he was concerned that detectors at ports “would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country,” the file says.

Mr. Paracha’s assessment is among more than 700 classified documents that fill in new details of Al Qaeda’s efforts to make 9/11 just the first in a series of attacks to cripple the United States, intentions thwarted as the Central Intelligence Agency captured Mr. Mohammed and other leaders of the terrorist network.

The plots reportedly discussed by Mr. Mohammed and various operatives, none of them acted upon, included plans for a new wave of aircraft attacks on the West Coast, filling an apartment with leaked natural gas and detonating it, blowing up gas stations and even cutting the cables holding up the Brooklyn Bridge.

For the small circle of Qaeda operatives described in the December 2008 assessment of Mr. Paracha, terrorism appears to have been a family affair. There was Mr. Mohammed, the terrorist network’s top plotter, and his nephew, Mr. Baluchi, who was married to another militant, an American-trained neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui. And there was Mr. Paracha and his son, Uzair.

The newly revealed assessments, obtained last year by the group WikiLeaks and provided by another source to The Times, have revived the dispute, nearly as old as the prison, over whether mistreatment of some prisoners there and the prison’s operation outside the criminal justice system invalidate the government’s conclusions about the detainees.

Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the assessments “are rife with uncorroborated evidence, information obtained through torture, speculation, errors and allegations that have been proven false.”

Likewise, David H. Remes, a lawyer who represents the elder Mr. Paracha, said in an interview on Monday that while he had not seen the assessment, its conclusion that Mr. Paracha posed a “high risk” to American interests was without foundation.

“The notion that he ever did anything that justified his detention, or ever was or is any kind of threat to the United States, is preposterous,” Mr. Remes said. “He is a 63-year-old man with a serious heart condition and severe diabetes, and?he has been nothing but cooperative with the authorities.”

What Mr. Paracha wants, Mr. Remes added,?is either a transfer back to his native country, Pakistan, or “a definitive adjudication of his case.”

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, condemned on Monday the publication of what he called “documents obtained illegally” and noted the military’s findings about some detainees had been changed by a new review under President Obama. The detailed results of that review, however, remain secret.

Mr. Carney said the president remained committed to closing the Guantánamo prison someday. But Mr. Obama’s review identified about 50 detainees his advisers said could not be tried and were too dangerous to release, and Congress has imposed restrictions on bringing prisoners to the United States.

The portrait of Mr. Paracha is one of the striking ones to emerge from the files. The documents say he attended the New York Institute of Technology in the early 1970s and worked as a travel agent in New York for 13 years.

He was arrested in Bangkok in July 2003 after Uzair, who was already in F.B.I. custody in New York, “acknowledged” his father was a militant, the assessment says. Uzair Paracha was convicted in a 2005 trial on charges including material support for terrorism and is serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison.

According to his Guantánamo assessment, Saifullah Paracha had “provided useful information concerning senior Al Qaeda members” but “attempted to deceive and misinform intelligence and law enforcement personnel about his own activities.” As a result, the assessment draws heavily on statements by others, notably Mr. Mohammed, who was subjected to waterboarding and other brutal treatment during his interrogation by the C.I.A.

But Mr. Paracha’s assessment suggests that he did not deny militant connections at the highest level. “Detainee claimed he met UBL on a trip to Afghanistan in December 1999 or January 2000,” the documents say, using the government’s initials for Osama bin Laden. It says he offered to let Mr. bin Laden use his broadcasting business in Pakistan to generate propaganda films for Al Qaeda.

Later, Mr. bin Laden dispatched Mr. Mohammed to talk further about the idea, and Mr. Paracha explained “his vision of dedicating a program on his broadcasting network depicting UBL quoting Koranic verses.”

After 9/11, Mr. Paracha’s discussions focused on new plots, the files say. A Casio digital diary he was carrying when he was arrested “contained references to military chemical warfare agents, and their effects on humans,” according to the classified assessment. The document says Mr. Paracha told interrogators he had worked with Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered to be the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and a major proliferator of nuclear technology.

Edward D. Wilford, a lawyer who represented the son at his 2005 trial, said his client had played no “witting” role in his father’s arrest.

“He was not a part of it in any way,” he said. “He didn’t make any calls. He didn’t make any contact. In fact, he was being held incommunicado. He didn’t have any way of knowing what was going on.” The son had been jailed in Manhattan on a material-witness warrant after his questioning by the F.B.I. in March 2003. He was charged criminally in August 2003, after his father’s arrest.

The relationship between father and son is only hinted at in the assessment report. It says that analysts concluded that Saifullah Paracha was “hiding aspects of his son’s extremist activities.” The son, though, talked about his father and his father’s relationship with Mr. bin Laden while testifying in his own defense.

A prosecutor asked whether Uzair Paracha had told F.B.I. agents that his father admired Mr. bin Laden. “I don’t remember if my father actually said that he admired bin Laden,” the son testified. “He said that bin Laden was a humble person and he had a simple way of life.”

 

Pakistanis End Strike to Protest US Drone Attacks

。 VOA News ?April 24, 2011

Supporters of a Pakistani religious party Jamaat-e- Islami arrive to join a rally against the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas, in Peshawar, April 23, 2011

Thousands of Pakistanis opposed to U.S. drone strikes on militants in the country's northwest have ended their two-day blockade of a key supply route for U.S.-led NATO troops fighting Taliban insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan.

The call for the blockade, which began Saturday on the outskirts of Peshawar, came from the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party led by former cricket star Imran Khan. ?

Khan demanded Sunday that the attacks end or there would be more demonstrations in various parts of the country aimed at blocking NATO supplies, including in the capital, Islamabad.

NATO ships much of its non-lethal supplies through Pakistan, but local militants often attack the convoys.

U.S. drone strikes against militants based in Pakistan's tribal belt have been a source of friction between the two countries. U.S. officials do not acknowledge the missile strikes, which are deeply unpopular among the local population.

The Pakistani government publicly condemns the drone strikes as undermining its sovereignty, but regional experts say Islamabad privately coordinates with the U.S. government on selecting targets.

24-04-2011 whiteraven (USA)

Yes, end all drone attacks and the production and use of drones on this planet for death and destruction. All these high tech weapons of destruction should be banned. How many useful things could be done with all the money wasted on these? And for what? The monopolies of the filthy greedy world trade banking system...these are the guys that call the shots that Obama sucks up to.

24-04-2011 whiteraven (USA)

Yes, end all drone attacks and the production and use of drones on this planet for death and destruction. All these high tech weapons of destruction should be banned. How many useful things could be done with all the money wasted on these? And for what? The monopolies of the filthy greedy world trade banking system...these are the guys that call the shots that Obama sucks up to.

25-04-2011 joel (usa)

its about time to get new ways or route in supplying the NATO troops, you cannot be :hostage" to those insane pakistanis, they had always been that way, India knows better about them!

25-04-2011 amar (pakistan)

it is impossbile to win war by killing innocent tribal citizens living in remote and rural areas.as much money america is spending for killing these people,if these funds have been used for prosperity of that people,amrican would have been loved and respected everywhere rather than being cursed.

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Suicide Bomber Attacks Afghan Defense Ministry

KABUL, Afghanistan — An insurgent wearing an Afghan Army uniform and a vest laced with explosives opened fire inside the heavily fortified Ministry of Defense headquarters on Monday, killing at least two soldiers, a ministry spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said the intended target was France’s minister of defense, Gérard Longuet, who was scheduled to visit the compound later in the day. Soldiers shot the attacker before he could detonate his vest, said the Afghan military spokesman, Gen. Zahir Azimi.

The attack was the third in three days on government compounds by insurgents disguised as members of the Afghan national security forces. Their seemingly easy access to even the most heavily guarded locations has intensified concerns over Taliban infiltration of the police and military forces, just as they are preparing to take over security from the American-led coalition in some parts of the country this summer and the entire country by the end of 2014.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a Taliban spokesman, said the insurgent was from Panjshir Province — the heartland of the Northern Alliance, which helped the United States oust the Taliban in 2001 — and had been serving in the Afghan Army for three years.

But General Azimi said such assertions were premature. “We don’t know whether he was a member of the army or not,” he said. “All I can say is that he was wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. It doesn’t mean he was an army soldier. We are doing our investigation to find out.”

General Azimi said the attacker entered the compound about 11:30 a.m. and opened fire, killing two soldiers and wounding seven close to the defense minister’s office before being fatally shot. An explosives ordnance team then defused his vest. The defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, was not present at the time, General Azimi said.

Soldiers continued searching the compound, which covers several city blocks in downtown Kabul, looking for other possible attackers late into the afternoon. Contrary to earlier reports, the general said no hostages had been taken. A doctor at Kabul’s military hospital said three soldiers had been killed; there was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the death toll.

Mr. Longuet, who had arrived on Sunday to meet with French troops deployed here, was not in the ministry at the time of the attack, according to the military command in Paris. He had been scheduled to attend a joint news conference with Afghan military officials at 1:30 p.m.

It was the latest in a string of attacks aimed at Afghan government and military officials in what the Taliban has called the beginning of its spring offensive. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed five NATO service members in eastern Afghanistan. A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed the police chief of Kandahar Province. In both attacks, the bombers were dressed in Afghan Army or police uniforms.

“Using these kinds of attacks is very useful for us in recruiting someone and working inside Afghan forces,” Mr. Mujaheed, the Taliban spokesman, said in a telephone interview after Saturday’s attack. “This inflicts more casualties and does not cause any civilian casualties.”

He added, “We have many more youths who are already in Afghan military ranks waiting for their chance to attack.”

General Azimi said the government was working to root out insurgents from the army and police forces, but acknowledged that the task was daunting. “We have set up a security team who is watching suspicious people inside military forces, but it’s hard to recognize them,” he said.

Even when they are not in the military, insurgents have easy access to police and army uniforms, General Azimi said. An elder in a remote village in the eastern province of Paktika, along the Pakistan border, recently told a reporter for The New York Times that insurgents had been showing up in his village dressed in Afghan Army and police uniforms.

“You know, finding uniforms is easy,” General Azimi said. “They can find it anywhere, and they can make it. People sell military equipment in the bazaar. We have collected and confiscated uniforms several times, but again it’s hard to collect all of them. Besides, you can find them in the provinces as well.”

The attack on the Defense Ministry was just part of a bloody two days for Afghan security forces. In Ghazni Province, south of the capital, six police officers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, said Musa Khan Akbar Zada, the provincial police chief.

Three more police officers were killed Sunday night in Oruzgan Province when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, said the provincial police chief, Fazal Ahmad Shirzad.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, Scott Sayare from Paris, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.

 

Spiroscout inhaler uses GPS, WiFi to track asthma attacks

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
By Dana Wollman posted Apr 14th 2011 9:31PM Back in 2009, we told you about a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist using GPS to tag asthmatics in an effort to better understand what was triggering their attacks. Two years later, David Van Sickle is about ready to turn his research into a commercial product dubbed the Spiroscout. The USB-powered inhaler uses GPS as well as WiFI to track patients' inhaler use, which Van Sickle says will yield a fuller, more accurate body of data than the self-recorded logs patients are often asked to keep. The benefit is two-fold, Van Sickle says: physicians can use this data to adjust their patients' medication, if necessary, while epidemiologists might have more insight into population-level trends. As PhysOrg notes, this isn't the first inhaler of its kind (that honor goes to SiliconSky GPS, though its product was also based on Van Sickle's first-iteration technology), but it may be the most practical one to date in that it doesn't come with a bulky box attached. Spiroscout isn't available just yet -- the company expects it to ship in the fall -- but curious asthmatics can reserve theirs now.

View the original article here

Spiroscout inhaler uses GPS, WiFi to track asthma attacks

 By Dana Wollman posted Apr 14th 2011 9:31PM Back in 2009, we told you about a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist using GPS to tag asthmatics in an effort to better understand what was triggering their attacks. Two years later, David Van Sickle is about ready to turn his research into a commercial product dubbed the Spiroscout. The USB-powered inhaler uses GPS as well as WiFI to track patients' inhaler use, which Van Sickle says will yield a fuller, more accurate body of data than the self-recorded logs patients are often asked to keep. The benefit is two-fold, Van Sickle says: physicians can use this data to adjust their patients' medication, if necessary, while epidemiologists might have more insight into population-level trends. As PhysOrg notes, this isn't the first inhaler of its kind (that honor goes to SiliconSky GPS, though its product was also based on Van Sickle's first-iteration technology), but it may be the most practical one to date in that it doesn't come with a bulky box attached. Spiroscout isn't available just yet -- the company expects it to ship in the fall -- but curious asthmatics can reserve theirs now.