Barcelona train accident ..[ 1341 ]

Spanish train kills 12 on tracks near Barcelona

Page last updated at 13:02 GMT, Thursday, 24 June 2010 14:02 UK

Survivors comforted each other as emergency services came to help

A high-speed train passing through a Spanish railway station has hit a group of young people crossing the tracks, killing at least 12 people.

The train was travelling through Castelldefels Playa station near Barcelona when the incident occurred.
At least 14 other people were injured, three critically, officials said.
It is believed they were heading to the beach to celebrate a summer festival and were crossing the tracks rather than using a pedestrian underpass.
They had just arrived on a commuter train from Barcelona. The authorities have said the underpass was signposted and open. Some witnesses said it was crowded and taking a long time for people to get through.
'Brutal' One witness, Fernando Ortega, told Spanish media the platform they had arrived on was "very full" and a large group of people "decided to jump across the tracks and cross to the other side of the station" to avoid the crush.

---------------

The euphoria of getting off the train immediately became screams

 

Marcelo Cardona Eye-witness

"At that moment a train came from the other direction and ran everyone over."
Another witness, who was not named, said: "The door was closed and we could not get through, so we tried to go through the side of the train, and there was no light and nobody alerted us that the train was coming. We were more than 30 people."

Several people contacted the BBC News website to say that they had used the same station and it was common for people to cross the tracks.

Jordi Morell said: "The underpass is quite small and it has been the usual practice for crowded trains coming from Barcelona, to have at least a third of the passengers crossing the line.
"Even at my age (early 60s) I have got down from the platform and crossed the line rather than wait for the slow queue through the underpass."
'Blood everywhere' Many of the victims were heading to the beach for the annual San Juan festivities, which celebrates one of the year's shortest nights with bonfires, fireworks and dancing.
Marcelo Cardona, a Bolivian who was on the commuter train, said the youths had crossed "in a wave" but that he had held back and waited on the platform.
"The euphoria of getting off the train immediately became screams. There were people screaming, 'my daughter, my sister'," he told the Associated Press.
Mr Cardona said he saw "mutilated people, blood everywhere, blood on the platform".
The owner of a nearby supermarket described the impact between the train and the pedestrians as "brutal".
"The noise was like rocks being crushed," he told El Mundo.
Spain's interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said: "We're shocked. It's horrible. The only thing we can do at the moment is send a message of solidarity to the families of those who died and wish that those who are injured will recover as soon as possible."
The accident happened at around 2330 local time (2130 GMT), the interior ministry of Catalonia said.
The ministry added that the rail line was closed and teams of police, medical staff, firefighters and Red Cross workers were at the scene.
No-one on the high-speed train, travelling between Alicante and Barcelona, was hurt.
Although the identities of the victims are not yet known, the president of the government of Catalonia said there were "many of South American origin".
The accident was Spain's worst rail accident since 2003, when 19 people were killed when two trains collided near the central town of Chinchilla.

Replacement is not a "Change:...[ 1340 ]

Replacing McChrystal Doesn’t Change Anything

Changing U.S. military leadership in Afghanistan papers over President Obama’s real problem: the counterinsurgency strategy isn’t working. What’s next for the mission.

Chris Hondros / Getty Images (left); Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Two Sides of the Same COIN: Petraeus (left) and McChrystal both champion a counterinsurgency plan that may not work in Afghanistan.

By replacing a general who was universally criticized with a general who almost can’t be criticized, President Obama pulled a political masterstroke on Wednesday. But the abrupt dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for making inappropriate remarks and the simultaneous announcement that he would be succeeded by his superior, CentCom Commander David Petraeus, papered over Obama’s real problem: the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy that McChrystal championed and Petraeus virtually invented may be fatally flawed, at least as it’s practiced in Afghanistan.

In his remarks in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, the president said that he didn’t decide to make the move “based on any difference in policy with General McChrystal,” and that the appointment of the widely admired Petraeus would “allow us to maintain the momentum and leadership we need to succeed.” Obama’s bigger problem right now is a rising tide of doubt, not only within McChrystal’s obviously stressed-out team but throughout the military and national-security apparatus, that there is any real momentum or that the policy in Afghanistan is working. COIN is based on the idea of winning hearts and minds in the local population and getting their help in rooting out the guerrillas or terrorists (in this case, the Taliban). 

But a number of well-informed critics say that in Afghanistan, several prerequisites for success are missing—in particular a central government with credibility, a large-enough force for the size of the country, and a local force (the Afghan Army and police) to hand things off to. “This briefs well in D.C. but you can’t operationalize it in Afghanistan,” says one critic of COIN, a military scholar who is engaged in the debate inside the Pentagon but would talk about it only on condition of anonymity so as to avoid the fate of McChrystal.

The outcome, these critics say, could be the worst of all possible worlds: no prospect of “winning” at all in an endlessly prolonged and bloody conflict in which we deceive ourselves for years that we are winning. Something like Vietnam, in other words. “It’s kind of sad and ironic that the fall of McChrystal will result in the reaffirmation of a highly problematic strategy,” says John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. As one general who served in Afghanistan told me back in 2006, for a NEWSWEEK piece called “The Rise of Jihadistan”: “This standoff could go on for 40 or 50 years. It’s not going to be a takeover by the Taliban as long as NATO is there. Instead this is going to be like the triborder region of South America, or like Kashmir—a long, drawn-out stalemate where everyone carves out spheres of influence.”

The comments of McChrystal and his staff in Rolling Stone magazine insulting Vice President Joseph Biden, envoy Richard Holbrooke, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, and others made his position all but untenable, even if he were seen as winning in Afghanistan. But Obama’s decision to fire him was no doubt made easier by the fact that McChrystal hasn’t been delivering, by most accounts. The offensive in Marja quickly bogged down, and McChrystal had to postpone a follow-on offensive that he had, with some degree of hubris, advertised ahead of time. 

Now diplomatic sources suggest that if the administration does go ahead with a Kandahar operation, it will be almost entirely of the civilian nation-building variety, which is not likely to be effective in dislodging the Taliban entrenched there. Some NATO allies are also beginning to suggest that the administration needs to drop its opposition to negotiating with the Taliban, even if they don’t give up fighting as a precondition.

“We could sink in billions more dollars for another 10 to 20 years, and if we’re lucky, we’ll get Haiti,” says the expert engaged in the Pentagon debate, before adding that even in Iraq “people are starting to reassess the surge. Was the surge the real reason [for Iraq’s relative stabilization]? Maybe the Sunni-Shia war had just ended with a Shia victory. May be it was that Al Qaeda had overplayed its hand.”

Obama made a point of saying in the Rose Garden that “Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths.” But he may be flinching now. If COIN is failing in Afghanistan, the only real alternative is bleak: large-scale withdrawal and therefore the failure to stabilize the one country that was most linked to 9/11 nearly a decade later; and along with that—irony of ironies—a return to Biden’s (Vice President “Bite Me” to McChrystal’s antic crew) focus on narrow counterterror ops.

This grim new reality in Afghanistan in turn has given new life to a kind of insurgency-against-counterinsurgency thinking inside the military. Critics say COIN has gone too far in supplanting traditional war fighting in U.S. military doctrine (this is something of an irony since it wasn’t that long ago that the COIN types were saying that they were being ignored). These dissidents lament the “atrophying” of traditional fighting skills, and they say the COIN virus has infected the Israeli military as well because it has done little but that in years of conducting ops against the Palestinians. 

The critics are targeting Petraeus and leading COIN thinkers like John Nagl, the president of the Center for a New American Security, which the journalist Tara McKelvey has called “counterinsurgency central in Washington.” One of these critics, Gian Gentile, was virtually ostracized inside the military after he published a paper in January 2009 in Joint Forces Quarterly criticizing the growing preeminence of COIN.

“Fighting as a core competency has been eclipsed in importance and primacy by the function of nationbuilding,” Gentile wrote. “Not only has the [military] Service’s intellectual climate become rigid, but also its operational capability to conduct high-intensity fighting operations other than counterinsurgency has atrophied over the past 6 years.”

Indeed, COIN thinking has become almost a cult, stunting fresh ways of thinking, some experts say. As McKelvey wrote in one early critique in 2008, counterinsurgency may have been too quickly anointed as a panacea, the “thinking man’s warfare.” “Counterinsurgency has a special allure for liberal writers and thinkers because it offers a holistic approach, emphasizing efforts to win the hearts and minds of local people, and attempts to transform formerly autocratic governments into ones that respect human rights, women’s education, and the rule of law,” she said. But “skeptics say that despite a sophisticated veneer, counterinsurgency is warfare of the nastiest, most brutal kind, and it lasts for years and years.”

Perhaps there is a silver lining. McChrystal’s very public ouster and Obama’s dramatic decision to hand things over to Petraeus, who enjoys near-hero status among both political parties in Washington for his performance in Iraq, could well move this vital debate forward. Petraeus, after all, is the general who oversaw the writing of the military’s counterinsurgency manual, so he is perhaps the best man to assess whether it needs revision in the Afghanistan theater.

Afghanistan regret for the removal of the U.S. commander..[1339]

Afghans do not expect change from U.S. shake-up

Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL

Thu Jun 24, 2010 9:41am EDT

1 / 6

President Barack Obama is followed by General David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, as they arrive in the Rose Garden of the White House, in Washington, June 23, 2010. Obama has chosen Petraeus to replace Stanley McChrystal as the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, an Obama said on Wednesday.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan expressed regret on Thursday at the removal of the U.S. commander credited with reducing civilian casualties in the war against the Taliban but said it did not expect the shake-up to bring strategic changes.

President Barack Obama recalled General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and replaced him on Wednesday with McChrystal's boss, General David Petraeus, architect of the Iraq war turnaround.

McChrystal resigned after comments, mostly attributed to aides, appeared in a magazine profile that criticized some of Obama's closest advisers. The profile portrayed him as a derring-do soldier sometimes exasperated by politicians.

"We wish he hadn't gone, but this is America's internal issue," said General Zaher Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry.

"We expect him to follow McChrystal's assessment, which has reduced civilian casualties, brought down arrests and house searches and involved coordination on operations," he said.

DEADLY MONTH

The war has reached a critical stage in Afghanistan, despite the presence of around 150,000 foreign troops, with the Taliban at their strongest since being overthrown in 2001.

June has already been the costliest month in casualties for foreign forces, with the deaths of four service members in a vehicle accident late on Wednesday bringing the toll to 79.

More than 300 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan this year, compared with 521 for all of last year, according to icasualties.org. Scores more insurgents have died, but hundreds of civilians have also been killed -- most in Taliban bombings, but many too in crossfire or misdirected air strikes.

With the Taliban virtually bringing tens of thousands of foreign troops to a bloody stalemate, Afghanistan has been seeking ways to bring an end to nearly nine years of fighting.

Earlier this month, some 1,600 elders and religious leaders met in Kabul for a peace "jirga," or conference, where participants agreed the only way to end bloodshed was to reach out to the insurgents.

Apart from agreeing to start negotiations with the militants, the jirga also recommended a review of the cases of all prisoners in Afghanistan, including suspected insurgents, and a removal of Taliban figures from a U.N. sanctions list.

Completing a four-day visit to the country, ambassadors from the 15-nation U.N. Security Council said they were reviewing the 137-name U.N. blacklist case by case.

At least five of those named are former Taliban officials who serve in parliament or privately mediate between the government and insurgents battling NATO-led forces and their Afghan partners.

"TRICKY"

The Taliban said Obama had sacked McChrystal in order to shift blame for policy failures.

"Obama's strategy is a failure but he is tricky by washing his hands on McChrystal in order to maintain his own image and that of his party in America and the world," a spokesman said in a statement.

Afghanistan's conflict cannot be resolved by a shake-up of generals, the statement said, adding Petraeus was not as smart as McChrystal and even questioning his physical strength, noting his collapse during a congressional hearing last week.

McChrystal's counter-insurgency strategy aims to take on the Taliban where they are strongest, in their Kandahar spiritual homeland in the south, and boost security simultaneously with a push for improved civilian governance and development.

Petraeus, as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, was widely credited with turning the tide there with a similar strategy when sectarian violence verged on civil war.

While he has a strong following on Capitol Hill and swift Senate confirmation is expected, a key first task will be forging a good relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Since McChrystal took over as commander in June last year, he has formed a strong relationship with the Afghan president, accompanying him on several tours of the country in a bid to show support for the government.

The Afghan president expressed regret at McChrystal's departure, a spokesman said.

"We had hoped this would not have happened, but the decision has been made and we respect it," said spokesman Waheed Omer. "He looks forward to working with his replacement."

Obama said McChrystal's dismissal was needed to safeguard the unity of the war effort but insisted the switch in generals was a "change in personnel but it is not a change in policy."

In the field, some U.S. troops said they expected business as usual.

"General Petraeus is of the mind if something is not broken don't fix it," said First Sergeant Todd Sullivan in a mess hall at a camp in Gurgan, Kandahar.

(Writing by David Fox; Additional reporting by Jonathon Burch and Michael Georgy in GURGAN, Afghanistan; Editing by Paul Tait)

Nasa, image of the Say, June 24th [ 1338 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Rachmaninoff on Mercury

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved the name Rachmaninoff for an intriguing double-ring basin on Mercury. This basin, first imaged in its entirety during MESSENGER's third Mercury flyby, was quickly identified as a feature of high scientific interest, because of its fresh appearance, its distinctively colored interior plains, and the extensional troughs on its floor. 

 

The basin's name honors the Russian composer, pianist and conductor, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). IAU names craters on Mercury after "deceased artists, musicians, painters and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field and have been recognized as art historically significant figures for more than 50 years." 

 

The process of proposing a new crater name includes gathering fundamental information about the crater, such as the crater's central latitude, central longitude, and diameter. Justification is provided as to why the crater is of sufficient scientific importance to be named, and details are provided about the name choice, including sources that support the worthy contributions made by that individual. 

 

.Ten newly named craters join 42 others named since MESSENGER's first Mercury flybyin January 2008. 

.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Πέμπτη, 24 Ιούνιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

French Technology to Russia..[ 1337 ]

France Hands Over Night Vision And Comms Technology To Russia

Defense Technology News — By RIA Novosti on June 24, 2010 at 4:32 am

(No Ratings Yet)

Paris, France: Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said Tuesday it had signed several contracts with the French defense firm Thales on the transfer of technology and delivery of communications equipment for Russian armored vehicles.

"The first contract involves transfer of technologies to Russia, which now will have the right to produce officially licensed thermal imagers at Vologda Optical and Mechanical Plant," said Igor Sevastyanov, Rosoboronexport deputy director general.
"The second contract provisionally allows Russia to bring in communications equipment for integration into Russian armored vehicles for testing," Sevastyanov said. He added that the communications equipment would be mounted on T-90 tanks and BMP-3 armored personnel carriers.
Rosoboronexport did not specify the sum of the contracts.
The plant in the city of Vologda in central European Russia will assemble the Thales-developed thermal imaging cameras. Localized production will allow Russia to reduce production and maintenance costs by at least 5-10% and manufacture thermal imagers for civilian purposes in the future.
Civilian uses of the thermal imagers could include monitoring the efficiency of thermal insulation and detection of heat leaks, among other applications.
Russia may only be able to export thermal imagers produced at its plant with the permission of the French authorities. The list of potential customers will exclude so-called rogue states such as Iran.
According to experts, Russia is lagging 20-30 years behind the West in many areas of technological progress and has recently started attempting to close the gap by purchasing production licenses abroad.