USA
President Bush's controversial plan to station up to 6,000 National Guardsmen along the Mexican border won't adversely affect either the US war on terror or the nation's response to domestic emergencies, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress Wednesday. Instead, he suggested, the plan, which has drawn fire from both ends of the political spectrum, will provide "useful real-life training" for Guard members.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, sent out mock mega-wave warnings to more than 30 Pacific Rim nations Tuesday in the first extensive test of a tsunami-warning system. The exercise was used to gauge the system's effectiveness after giant Indian Ocean waves claimed more than 200,000 lives in 2004. Thailand was the only country to report communication problems during the test.
As the BellSouth Corp. did a day earlier, Verizon Communications denied a week-old USA Today story Tuesday that alleged it had shared millions of domestic phone call records with the National Security Agency. AT&T is the only company named in the story not to deny involvement.
The 11-million-gallon Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill in 1989 may still be causing harm to sea otters and ducks that dwell along Alaska's Prince William Sound coastline, according to a study by the National Marine Fisheries Service in Juneau. An Exxon spokesman countered that "the sound has recovered, is healthy, and is thriving."
For the first time, the US government released video footage Tuesday taken by two security cameras of a hijacked airliner plowing into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Judicial Watch, a legal activist group that pressed for the release, said the videos are an important part of the public record of the terrorist attack and may help quell conspiracy theories that a missile, and not a plane, was involved.
Archaeologists in Rhode Island have found the remains of four Revolutionary War-era British ships within a mile of Newport's shoreline, they said Tuesday. Capt. James Cook may have sailed one of the ships on his epic voyage to Australia, researchers believe.
