THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS

Police in the German city of Hamburg said on Saturday they had released three Chechen men who sparked a major security alert after they were overheard at a bus stop talking about becoming "heroes before Allah". "After investigation we have ruled out any threat of a terrorist attack by these men," a police spokesman said, adding the three had been freed during Friday night. ... The search for the men, aged from 21 to 25, on Thursday involved a large-scale manhunt in which more than 1,000 officers put up overnight roadblocks and scoured Germany's second city. The witness (AN EGYPTIAN) became suspicious and tipped off the police after hearing one of them say: "Tomorrow we will stand as heroes before Allah." “It isn’t impossible that it was the result of a bad joke,” said the city state’s interior minister Udo Nagel.

More than 1,000 German police were deployed in a large-scale search for three terror suspects in the north German port city of Hamburg on Thursday, a police spokesman said. Roadblocks and controls were set up at 12 points in Germany's second city after an Arabic-speaking witness overheard the men at a bus stop on Wednesday, praising Allah and heroism in Arabic. One of the men was carrying a backpack. ... Hamburg, which has been put on terror alert several times in the past four years, was the home of a group of radical Arab students led by Mohamed Atta, the man who rammed the first of four hijacked planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Last Friday, a friend of the September 11 suicide pilots was found guilty in a Hamburg court of belonging to a terrorist group, though the court ruled that he knew too little of their plans to convict him on a second charge of abetting mass murder.

The parents of a brain-damaged baby at the centre of a battle over her right to life are to try again to overturn a court order not to resuscitate her. At the Court of Appeal, Darren and Debbie Wyatt, from Portsmouth, will present a letter from doctors saying Charlotte has made remarkable progress. The 22-month-old has serious lung, brain and kidney damage. Doctors at St Mary's Hospital, in Portsmouth, won the legal right not to resuscitate her last October. They had argued that her brain and other organs were so seriously damaged that she had "no feeling other than continuing pain". But she is now said to respond to loud noise and bright images, and even smiles. Charlotte, who was born three months prematurely, spends most of her time in an oxygen box, but is taken out to be cuddled by her parents when they visit. At a hearing in April this year, Mr Justice Hedley renewed the court order allowing hospital doctors to let her die.

PARIS, Aug. 23 - A two-year European initiative to discourage Iran from producing its own nuclear fuel appeared to be stymied today when negotiators called off the next round of talks with Tehran. The talks, which had been planned for Aug. 31, were supposed to focus on a European proposal that was submitted to the Iranian government this month. But France, which along with Germany and Britain has spearheaded the talks with Tehran, said Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel activities that could constitute a first step in producing atomic weapons made a continuation of the negotiations impossible. "We can't continue with formal negotiations as if nothing happened," said the chief spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, Jean-Baptiste Mattéi. "The suspension of their fuel activities was the basis for our negotiations," Mr. Mattéi said. "By resuming some of those activities the Iranians have effectively suspended the agreement these talks were based on." "The next step is the I.A.E.A. report on Sept. 3, and then the board of governors has to decide what to do," Mr. Mattéi said.

New York's subway and bus operator said on Tuesday it awarded a $212 million contract for surveillance cameras, motion detectors and other equipment to detect potential attacks against its stations, bridges and tunnels.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin will lead a team of companies in a deal struck with North America's largest transportation network just one month after bombers attacked the London transit system on July 7, killing 52 people. The $212 million will be the first major piece of a $591 million security plan approved in 2002. Before the Lockheed deal, only $42 million had been earmarked. Lockheed will install 1,000 cameras and 3,000 sensors under the three-year deal that aims to eventually allow the New York Metropolitan Transportation to stop attacks before they happen by spotting unattended packages that may contain bombs and alerting its employees to unauthorized intruders in its tunnels and other sensitive areas.

...the New York Times, CBS, and other news organizations have joined with the ACLU in demanding that the Pentagon release more sensational photos and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse. The inevitable result of such disclosure, according to General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is that Islamic terrorists will exploit the material and kill Americans. Do our media care?Our media will rally around a reporter who goes to jail to protect her sources. But when the Pentagon tries to keep potential propaganda material from falling into the hands of the enemy, the media are in court with the ACLU against the Pentagon. ... “It is probable that Al-Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill which will result in, besides violent attacks, increased terrorist recruitment, continued financial support, and exacerbation of tensions between the Iraqi and Afghani populaces and U.S. and Coalition forces.” ... Actually, it won’t just be Al Qaeda. Our own media will endlessly exploit the photographs.

One year ago, prisoners at the New Folsom State Prison – a maximum-security facility outside Sacramento, California – reportedly began plotting terrorist attacks against three National Guard facilities, the Israeli consulate and several synagogues in the Los Angeles area. The attacks are believed to have been planned for the fourth anniversary of September 11th or the Jewish holidays. According to ABC News, a law enforcement report has determined that the plotters intended “to kill everyone at the target[s],” potentially resulting in dozens of casualties inflicted on innocents as part of the jihad (holy war) the prisoners were determined to wage against the United States. The frightening thing is that the would-be assailants were not terrorist adherents to the political ideology of Islamofascism when they went to jail. They became Islamists while in prison – thanks to the sort of recruitment opportunities afforded clerics usually selected by Saudi-backed Muslim-American organizations.

We don't know what he'd [John Roberts] do if he had to rule on Roe versus Wade, but at least he has a shot, I think, at becoming the kind of justice that is not in the hip pocket of the right wing. Having said that, ladies, get your abortions now. If you need one, go now!... I am more sympathetic on the abortion issue than I am on most right wing socially conservative issues, because you know, you don't have to be religious to be against abortion. I do sort of understand what they're saying. If you've ever seen a sonogram, you know, you could see something that's emerging as a human being in there. And we are sort of reaching in and killing it. I'm just not against that...

I'm a board member of PETA. And this [caller] is exactly right, and I'm glad he raised the issue. It's despicable the way we treat animals in this country. And it's part and parcel to our general lack of compassion for things that don't affect us directly.

US President George W Bush says he still has not ruled out the option of using force against Iran, after it resumed work on its nuclear programme. He said he was working on a diplomatic solution, but was sceptical that one could be found."All options are on the table," said Mr Bush, when asked about the possible use of force during an interview for Israeli TV. "The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said.

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The premature baby of a 37-year-old woman who gave birth just hours after finding out she was pregnant is going home Annice Allen said she went to hospital thinking she was having severe menstrual cramps. Three hours later, she found out she was 23 to 24 weeks pregnant and gave birth to a 1-pound, 4-ounce girl she named Jimice. "The doctor says, 'Ok, the fetus is 23 weeks,'" Allen said. "We said, 'The fetus?' We went back and forth with that, and he said, 'How old are you?' I said, 'I'm 37.' So, he puts his hand on me and says, 'A fetus is a baby.' I said, 'I know a fetus is a baby, but I didn't know I was pregnant.'" The baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. "One push, and out comes the baby," Allen said. "She comes out, (husband) Jimmy hits the floor, my mom picks Jimmy up, and it was really crazy." After four months in the hospital, Jimice now weighs 5 pounds, 2 ounces and is going home. Prior to Jimice's birth, Allen said she and her husband had tried to have children but had given up after two miscarriages. "We kind of gave up on it," Allen said. "Then, finally, here she comes." Doctors said the baby was on a ventilator for about one month.

"... a remarkable productivity story playing out in the trash business...the widely believed shortage [of dump space] that had drawn headlines in the 1980's... [has become] ...a glut of disposal space..." ... "the waste industry is in the early stages of the kind of increase in efficiency more typically seen in technologies like computer chips and turbines that generate electricity."... The change is shown in the published disposal records of the three largest waste haulers - Waste Management, Allied Waste Industries and Republic Services - which combined handle more than half the nation's trash. In the last four years, they buried 882 million tons of waste. But the remaining permitted capacity of their combined 410 dumps did not shrink. It expanded over those four years by more than one billion tons. The three companies now expect expansions of another 1.8 billion tons. At that level, their combined capacity could handle the nation's trash sent to dumps for about 26 years. "... "The nation's 25 biggest dumps, which are beginning to resemble operations in other more efficient and consolidated industries, account for about 24 percent of total capacity, Solid Waste Digest estimates, and that concentration will probably continue. Already, the Republic Services landfill in Las Vegas has more than 200 million tons of space, as does Waste Management's site in Arlington, Ore. And a desert site yet to begin accepting trash, owned by the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, can hold more than 600 million tons, or enough to take 20,000 tons a day for 100 years."

Britain yesterday described as "unacceptable" the smuggling of weapons from Iran into Iraq after revealing that a consignment was intercepted at the border between the two countries. ... A senior British official disclosed yesterday details of the incident two weeks ago when a group crossing from Iran was intercepted near Maysan, which is in the British controlled sector of Iraq. Iraqi security forces opened fire and the smugglers fled back to Iran leaving their cache of timers, detonators and other bomb-making equipment. ... Disclosure of the smuggling came hours after four American soldiers were killed and six were wounded as a patrol was attacked near Baiji, 112 miles north of Baghdad, late on Tuesday. A bomb wrecked two Humvees and a bigger armoured vehicle.