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Sheikh Salah (left), a prominent sheikh in Busayefi, cuts the ribbon on a new bridge May 13. The bridge, constructed by an Iraqi company and funded by the GoI, spans the Mercedes Canal and links the communities of Hawr Rajab and Busayefi. Courtesy photo. FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — Brightly painted flowers, hearts and polka-dots color the new bridge with cheery symbols.  Most importantly, the bridge’s construction between the communities of Busayefi and Hawr Rajab paints a symbol of unity. Once under the control of insurgents, the communities became isolated; they were also separated from each other by the Mercedes...

NURISTAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Operation Mountain Highway II began in Afghanistan's eastern Nuristan province in late April. The operation started April 22 when Soldiers from International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army made a simultaneously night air assault onto three mountains above Gowerdesh Bridge. Afghan and American Soldiers created Observation Posts Mace, Hatchet and Brick, which enabled the Afghan Border Police and ANA to drive up from the south and seize the bridge April 26. "It was (a very) synchronized air assault to get everybody in," said Capt. John Williams, commander of the 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry's Headquarters...

NEW YORK - The Brooklyn Bridge is 125 years old this month and New York City is getting ready to celebrate. The city on Monday announced an array of activities including a special bridge lighting, concerts, lectures, film series and family events. The five-day festivities will kick off on May 22 with a performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, and a Grucci fireworks presentation. The bridge connects Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River, and is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the country. It will be lit up in an array...

TIKRIT — A ribbon cutting ceremony officially opening two temporary bridges in Bayji was held May 8. These two bridges, which expand over the Tigris River, will promote more trade and stimulate the economy of the region by allowing the people of the provinces of Salah ad Din and Kirkuk to unite. Iraqi Security Forces helped to set the conditions in the area to make it possible to reconstruct the bridge, symbolizing the dedication of the ISF. With the skilled workmanship of the Iraqi Army Field Engineer Company who along with the Coalition Forces, built this monument to the people...

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will open the world's longest cross-sea bridge on Thursday, linking the financial and commercial hub of Shanghai with the booming port and industrial city of Ningbo, the official Xinhua news agency said. The 11.8 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) cable-stayed structure, spanning Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang Province south of Shanghai, will be open to traffic on a trial basis at midnight following an inauguration ceremony on Thursday afternoon, Xinhua said. The 36 km span will shorten travel time between Shanghai and Ningbo, two key port cities in China's prosperous Yangtze River Delta, to two-and-a-half hours from...

SNOHOMISH — The patch under the bridge is closed in by brambles. Rodent tracks crisscross in the dirt. It may be dry, but still it's not fit for human habitation. Unless you're a sex offender, that is.The underside of the 88th Street bridge, near this river town's greenhouses and horse farms, is where state government last week assigned a released rapist to sleep. David J. Torrence, who assaulted a 16-year-old girl in 1995, had completed his latest prison term (for failing to register as a sex offender.) He had no place to go. So officials gave him a sleeping bag...

He lived in a $500,000 house, drove a Cadillac Escalade SUV, and talked about his fraternity brothers. But Johnny Lee Reed IV felt the world closing in on him. Worried and increasingly desperate, Reed had spent days trying to convince authorities that someone was bugging his car, his e-mail and his phones, and that his family was in danger. On Thursday, Reed's dramatic standoff shut down the Walt Whitman Bridge for 31/2 hours, snarling evening rush-hour traffic throughout the region. Ultimately, one of the very authorities Reed had petitioned talked him away from the middle of the 3,500-foot span. Yesterday,...

Osama Bin Laden's brother plans Africa-Arabia bridge By Mike Pflanz, East Africa Correspondent Last Updated: 5:52pm GMT 24/02/2008 Osama bin Laden's half-brother is planning to build the world's second longest bridge to connect Africa and Arabia with a six-lane motorway and a railway. Click to enlarge: The bridge would span the 18 mile stretch across the narrowest part of the Red Sea Tarek Bin Laden has been wooing the governments of Djibouti and Yemen with his £35bn idea to bridge the 18 mile span across the narrowest stretch of the Red Sea. Djibouti's prime minister said there was growing excitement...

Police in the Czech republic are trying to find out who stole a 4 tonne railway bridge from the border town of Cheb. The company which was responsible for looking after the bridge raised the alarm when, ever alert, they noticed that the bridge wasn't there any more. The bridge was on a disused stretch of line just outside Cheb. Martina Hruskova, a spokeswoman for the Czech police, commented to AFP: 'We are not sure if it was taken for personal use or for its scrap value.' Exactly what that 'personal use' might be was left unsaid. 'It is the...

CAMP RAMADI — The engineers had the first span of the bridge ready to go out on the river, but when the water levels were checked, the river had risen 24 inches in an hour. It didn’t stop the Soldiers from the 814th Engineer Company; it only forced them to adjust their plan and raise the 30-foot section of the bridge a little higher to get it on the pontoon floating in the river. The weather would prove to be the most difficult challenge in building the 120-meter Mabey Logistics Support Bridge spanning the Euphrates River over the course of...

PennDOT ordered the emergency closure of the Birmingham Bridge this morning due to an unexplained drop of up to 8 inches in a portion of the span over the Monongahela River. The drop, apparently noticed overnight by a motorist who called 911, occurred on the span linking Fifth Avenue, Uptown, to the South Side. The inbound, or nothbound, lanes were likewise ordered closed, at 8:45 a.m., to allow for a comprehensive inspection of the entire bridge, which really is two independent superstructures. Crews were working to shore up the western edge of the outbound span where the roadway had dropped...

Body Found May Be Last Ala. Bridge Child Monday January 21, 2008 1:16 AM By GARRY MITCHELL Associated Press Writer MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - A body believed to be the last of four children who were allegedly tossed from a coastal Alabama bridge by their father was recovered Sunday, authorities said. The body of an Asian child was found in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana by boaters who contacted Coast Guard officials, who then took the body to Venice, La., Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran said. Authorities in Alabama will not be able to confirm whether the body is...

Sunday, 5:50 p.m. (Jan. 20) -Body of small Asian child found near Venice, Louisiana. -An autopy will determine if it is 2 year old Hannah Luong. -The Coast Guard in New Orleans received a call around 10 a.m. that a body had been found near Plaquemines Parish.

The collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge in Minneapolis started with a design flaw in the gusset plates, confirming suspicions that arose in the first week of the investigation. A source familiar with the conclusion told CNN earlier this morning that the NTSB will announce that finding later today, ending speculation that poor maintenance caused the deaths of 13 people last August: Federal investigators have identified a design flaw as the cause of last year's Interstate 35W Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 people, a congressional official said Tuesday. The official, who was briefed by the National Transportation Safety Board,...

The body of one of four children allegedly thrown from a coastal bridge by their father was recovered Saturday, Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran announced. At a press conference this morning, Cochran said, "The inevitable nightmare that we had feared has now been confirmed." A search of waterways around Dauphin Island for the children - ranging in age from a few months to 3 years - began Tuesday. The father, Lam Luong, has been charged with capital murder in the deaths. According to CBS affiliate WKRG, the body of an infant was found this morning by a duck hunter about...

PHARR, Texas -- A fiery crash on a bridge that spans the United States' border with Mexico left at least four people dead. It happened Thursday night on the Texas side of the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge and involved at least five vehicles, including two tractor-trailers.

MOBILE, Ala.) Jan. 10 -- The suspect accused of causing the deaths of his four children, Lam Luong, had his first court appearance before a judge on Thursday. The judge was tough, the court appearance routine. It's what happened after that court hearing that is now causing confusion. Luong met with his court-appointed attorney, Joe Kulakowski, minutes after the hearing on Thursday. The lawyer recorded his conversation with Luong and, it was during that conversation the accused man told his lawyer he did NOT throw his children off the bridge. The accused man explained he had been questioned repeatedly by...

An attentive Samarra Teacher College student hears the answer to her question from the Salahahdin Provincial Gov. Hamad Hamoud Shekti. Hamad, along with local and 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) leaders, was in Samarra to reopen a bridge to Iraqi citizen traffic, which officials believe will revitalize the city. Photo by Maj. Johnpaul Arnold, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (AA) Public Affairs. SAMARRA — The city of Samarra reopened its Samarra Dam Bridge Thursday after eight months of traffic restriction due to security, easing access from surrounding communities to its markets and services, with...

We have had a fairly mixed year. Both good stories and bad were bountiful, and sometimes good and bad news came together to neutralize mega-stories. Take Pakistan, where Pervez Musharraf’s lifting of both his military uniform and his country’s State of Emergency was closely followed by the untimely assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Nobody quite knows what the net effect of these events will be.

Reportedly built to make it easier to drive along the scenic southern coast without the significant possibility of a rock crashing through your windshield.

Expressway Was Shut Down In Both Directions; Northbound Lanes Won't Open Until Monday CHICAGO (CBS) ― A bridge overpass sustained severe damage when a dump truck ran into it on the Bishop Ford Freeway late Friday morning. Engineers are still on the scene trying to figure out how they're going to fix it, so they can get southbound traffic moving again. The crash happened around 10:30 a.m. on the inbound side of the expressway 115th Street. The dump truck bed rose up and knocked the bridge deck out of alignment. Gravel spilled onto the pavement. Traffic was stopped in the...

Bridge Ladies Slammed for Anti-Bush Sign Richard Kim "WE DID NOT VOTE FOR BUSH." Those words were handwritten on the back of a menu by the US women's bridge team and held aloft during the award ceremony at the world team championships in Shanghai last month. The team had just won the tournament, destroying Germany in the final, and were making what they thought was a small political statement. It wasn't a particularly radical message (who else didn't vote for Bush?), and it was made spontaneously, in a moment of international goodwill and humor. As today's NYT chronicles, the United...

I prank, therefore I am Engineering students have pulled some amazing pranks over the years. But UBC's Golden Gate prank may have been the greatest everBy ERIN MILLAR -- Maclean'sAt about 3:40 a.m. on Feb. 5, 2001, a moving van stopped abruptly in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. Although it was still dark, witnesses said they saw around a dozen figures emerge and push a large object over the side of the bridge. They then reboarded the van, and sped away into the night. Nothing to see here. Move along. A couple of hours later, as the morning...

November 14, 2007 Anti-Bush Sign Has Bridge World in an Uproar By STEPHANIE STROM In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest. At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was...

The Minnesota Department of Transportation emergency response executive who failed to return to the state for 10 days after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed was fired Friday for taking unauthorized trips, making excessive personal calls on her MnDOT cell phone and bringing embarrassment to the state.Staying away from crisis Kevin Hanretta, who was at a conference with Pitt when the bridge collapsed, told MnDOT's investigator that Pitt was torn between staying on the East Coast and returning to Minnesota. Hanretta told the investigator that Pitt decided to stay put because her staff was "doing a great job" and she was...

FARAH PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Nov. 9, 2007 – Construction is under way for a $1.7 million bridge across the Farah Rud River in Tojg. The project, funded by the Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team, will employ several hundred local people for two years. Engineers survey the site of the future Tojg Bridge, which will span the Farah Rud River in Afghanistan. Defense Department photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The project will benefit not only the 10,000 residents of Tojg, but also people from the districts of Shib Koh, Qalay Ka, Lashe Jowain and Farah City. In summer, the Farah...

Led by the state's twin deacons of demagoguery, U.S. Rep. James Oberstar and state Sen. Steve Murphy, the party of government wasted no time in going public with its shopworn answer to every conceivable catastrophe: more funding and more taxes. Ten years ago, long before Tim Pawlenty or George W. Bush took office, Minnesota's Office of Legislative Auditor made clear in a report to lawmakers that there was a "backlog of bridges that are classified as having structural deficiencies." The 2005 "bridge to nowhere" highway bill (one of the reasons the GOP lost control of Congress in '06) was loaded...

TOJG VILLAGE, Afghanistan, Oct. 24, 2007 – Construction is under way for a $1.7 million bridge across the Farah Rud River here. The project, funded by the Farah Provisional Reconstruction Team, will employ several hundred Afghans for two years. Each year, the Farah Rud River rises about six feet, cutting the people in Tojg off from the main road and their farmlands. The nearest crossing is several hours away, in Farah City. Eight to 10 people drown annually attempting to cross the river. The massive masonry and reinforced concrete bridge will span 300 meters and rise 12 meters over the...

Yob family all get ASBO Unruly ... Bridge family, pictured several years ago, all given ASBO     By ANDY RUSSELL ALL five members of a family from hell were kicked out of their home and the surrounding area yesterday after a four-year reign of terror.Anti-social behaviour orders were issued against the Bridge family — who were banned from entering the Wirral in Merseyside for up to seven years.John Bridge, 40, his wife Karen, 37, and sons John Jnr, 20, Alan, 18, and Luke, 16, terrorised neighbours in New Brighton, a court heard.The family had used threatening and violent behaviour,...

HANOI - A bridge under construction collapsed in southern Vietnam on Wednesday, killing at least 60 workers, and 100 others were missing, a contractor and police said. State-run Vietnam TV showed footage of the damage to the collapsed concrete and steel structure in Can Tho City and reported that people were still trapped in the rubble. A contractor with China State Construction Engineering Corp, one of the firms involved in the construction of the bridge, said by telephone that 60 people were dead. "They are still pulling out bodies from the rubble, I could hear the screams," the contractor said...

British Lt. Col. Scott. Frazer, clinical director of Brady Lanes Medical Facility, shows U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman Christopher Conley, and Lt. Cmdr. Amy Garret the European style portable ventilator and instructs them on its use. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Felix Figueroa, 82nd Sustainment Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs. BASRA — U.S. Navy medics assigned to the 2515th Naval Air Ambulance Detachment recently met up with their British counterparts to talk about ways to streamline lateral communications and familiarize each other with equipment. “We’ve met some British medical personnel in passing while dropping off and picking up patients,� said...

BLAIRSTOWN, N.J. -- A man whose name is on a terrorism watch list and suspected of taking photos of a bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey was questioned and released after authorities determined he did nothing wrong. The man had pulled over to the side of the road on Monday, the day before the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. State police responded to a call reporting that a man who appeared to be Middle Eastern was photographing the Interstate 80 bridge over the Delaware River. New Jersey State Police Capt. Al Della Fave said the man,...

  CCM IN THE NEWS Bridge Opening At 6:00 p.m. Date Posted : 09/03/2007 Bridge to Reopen Monday Evening  At a press conference this afternoon, Caltrans Director Will Kempton announced that the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge would be ready to open at 6:00 p.m. today, 11 hours ahead of schedule. Praising his own crews and subcontractors, C.C. Myers said it was a testimony to teamwork and thinking outside the box.  New Bridge In Place Date Posted : 09/03/2007 Just before 3:00 a.m. Monday, work crews moved the 6500-ton bridge into place which allows the final stages of upper and...

A new overpass bridge collapsed in the southern city of Karachi on Saturday, killing at least four people and crushing vehicles under mounds of debris, officials said. Mayor Mustafa Kamal said officials were using heavy machinery and bulldozers to try to rescue injured people trapped in vehicles when the 330-foot-long curved section of the overpass crashed onto a road below. Azhar Faruqi, the city police chief, said authorities had taken two bodies to a hospital, while another two bodies could be seen inside a crushed car. At least five people were injured. The cause of the accident was not immediately...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police have detained a 45-year-old municipal worker for stealing a bridge. The 5-meter span metal bridge disappeared from a river crossing in the Ryazan region, east of Moscow. Police said they tracked it down to the man, who had used his work truck to remove it and then chopped it up and sold it for scrap. In a statement, Ryazan region police called it "the bulkiest theft of the year."

Miss. River Bridge Closed at Memphis Published: 8/27/07, 1:06 PM EDT WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. (AP) - Officials shut down a major Mississippi River bridge Monday after one of its piers settled nearly 4 inches during the night in a construction zone. The pier that settled is between two other piers, so the Interstate 40 bridge was still supported. The most motorists might have noticed on the six-land span would have been a slight dip, officials said. "We want to be proactive and take all the traffic off the bridge so that our inspectors can take a very thorough look at...

Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: pigeons. Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span's framework helped the steel beams rust faster...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: pigeons. Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span's framework helped the steel beams rust faster. Although investigators have yet to identify the cause of the bridge's Aug. 1 collapse, which killed at least 13 people and injured about 100, the pigeon problem is one of...

Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse: Failure Analysis The I-35 West bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, consisted of three trussed spans and several beam and post spans typical of 1960's era freeway construction. Analysis to date here at Free Republic has centered on looking for the triggering cause in the bridge collapse, and the sequence of failure, as determined by available pre- and post-collapse imagery and video. Efforts so far have been hampered by uncertainty regarding the condition and disposition of the eastern truss panels originally located above and near pier 6. I hope to rectify this uncertainty and...

PANJSHIR PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2007 – Whether crawling over dirt mounds to inspect a school, hiking mountains 9,000 feet above sea level, or handing out stuffed animals, members of the Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team are pushing progress in Afghanistan. “It’s a very unique job,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Christopher Luedtke, PRT commander who deployed from Hill Air Force Base, Utah. “No day is ever the same here in the Hindu Kush (Mountains).” A combined team of airmen, soldiers, U.S. civilians, and Afghans make up this team north of Kabul. They support the construction of micro hydro plants for...

Tonight's replacement of the Island Park bridges will make Canadian highway history, save millions of dollars, and give the public a look at adventurous engineering. For the first time in Canada, a highway bridge will be replaced overnight using rapid-lift technology known as self-propelled modular transporters. The new technique will reduce two years of traffic tieups to a mere 15 hours and save $2.4 million in traffic detour costs. It will also save time and money for motorists. "Reduced congestion is a great value to people," says Frank Vanderlaan, project engineer with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. "It's a lot...

Two failed bridges. Two scarily similar scenarios. Last week, the Interstate 35W span over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic and construction crews. Federal investigators now wonder whether the design of steel plates joining beams is to blame. Eleven years earlier, the eastbound I-90 bridge over the Grand River in Lake County (Ohio) failed. The reason: the same steel plates, called gussets. They had corroded, then buckled after crews blasted them during painting preparations. But while the Minnesota catastrophe has shaken the nation and prompted warnings to states to inspect other truss bridges and...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The state has for years diverted as much as $750 million annually from a "dedicated" tax fund intended for bridge and highway maintenance and repair, using the money instead to cover unrelated budget costs, state Sen. Thomas Libous said Tuesday. "We're raiding the fund and that's wrong," the Broome County Republican said in announcing a bill with bipartisan support to end the practice. "I've been saying that for three years ... but now it's a matter of public safety." He said the $3 billion fund created in 1991 now pays for dozens of budget items not...

How many other substandard bridges in Republican districts has the democrat-dominated congress been denying funds for replacement? They want to blame Bush for Minneapolis; Democrat Hypocrisy at it’s finest! Chatham board to discuss how to get money to replace Skidaway Narrows bridge By Larry Peterson Created 2007-08-08 23:30 Funding to replace the substandard Skidaway Narrows bridge will be discussed at Friday's Chatham County Commission meeting. Faulty spans have attracted sharper scrutiny since a bridge collapse last week in Minneapolis that killed at least five people. Meanwhile, Skidaway Narrows became a political football this week when a leading local Democrat blamed...

Among the dozens of wrenching accounts to come out of the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, the actions of 20-year-old Jeremy Hernandez were a bright spot: [ . . . ] Mr. Hernandez had recently been forced to drop out of an automotive repair program because he could not afford the $15,000 tuition. [ . . . ] That has changed. On Saturday, Mr. Hernandez learned that Dunwoody College of Technology had offered him a full scholarship toward a degree in applied science. [ . . . ] When President Bush’s staff contacted him to request a...

A week after a deadly bridge collapse, U.S. Navy divers cut through tangled debris with underwater torches and saws on Wednesday in the search for victims while investigators identified a possible flaw in the 40-year-old span's design.

Security is being beefed up at the site of last week's bridge collapse after 16 people were arrested for trespassing and hindering the investigation, Minneapolis police said Wednesday. Authorities are adding cameras, motion detectors and other technology that will alert police to intruders, Capt. Mike Martin told reporters during a news conference. "The most important part is: Maintain the honor and the dignity (of the scene)," Martin said. He said the state Department of Transportation is assuming control of security in the area, which is considered a death-scene investigation site. Five people are confirmed dead in the collapse of the...

CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton is arguing that unsafe bridges, crowded seaports and clogged highways endanger the economy as well as putting the public at risk. Last week's fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis underscores the critical need for infrastructure improvements nationwide, Clinton said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon in New Hampshire. She proposed spending $10 billion over 10 years to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, waterways and seaports. "Something is very, very wrong when, at the dawn of the 21st century, in the richest country on earth, people are actually nervous about driving over...

A Quarter-Billion Dollars Goes to Repair a 1/3-Mile, 64-Foot-High Bridge Before adjourning for its August recess early Sunday, Congress quickly passed a bill spending $250 million to repair the 1,907-foot I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an expenditure of about $130,000 per foot. This is more than three times the cost-per-foot of Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." Under the bill, the federal government will bear the full cost of I-35 repairs. The quarter-billion-dollar spending measure raced through Congress in about two days. According to the Department of Transportation, the collapsed I-35 bridge was 1,907 feet long (just over one-third of a...

By now it's been so widely adopted by the media that it's easy to be numb to it, but Chicago Tribune's E.A. Torriero breathed new life into the Bush-caused-it meme in the I-35W bridge collapse story by adding a new twist. The bridge collapse, suggested Torriero, is insult added to injury for mostly Muslim Somali immigrants already angered by American foreign policy. In a story filed the evening of August 7, Torriero portrayed the collapse as insult added to injury for Somali immigrants, weaving in suggestions that America under President Bush is becoming akin to a third world country, unable...