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There is rising criticism that the Machang Bridge, which opened in July at the cost of millions of won, is only enriching speculative capitalists with tax money. They say that throughout the country, roads built through private investment are becoming white elephants where investors eat tax money via rough traffic predictions and contracts with excessive profit guarantees. The province of South Gyeongsang spent 380 billion won (US$337 million) in budget outlays and 190 million won in private capital to build the Machang Bridge linking Changwon and Masan. For the next 30 years, the earnings from the bridge tolls will be...

Gaza smuggling tunnels are for milk, say Palestinians Gaza smuggling tunnels are for milk, say Palestinians Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons. The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border. Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms...

Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.

(IsraelNN.com) The Arabic Al Jazeera television network has given its viewers an inside look at Hizbullah tunnels used in the Second Lebanon War, which the network noted was a military failure for Israel. The video clips revealed that the tunnels were equipped with showers, kitchens and "were planned like a house," according to the program's anchorman Ghassan Bin Jiddu. One clip showed a restroom with a water tank and a fan for ventilation. Bin Juddo explained that it took eight months to a year to complete a tunnel.

U.S. Army training Egyptians to find and destroy smuggling tunnels www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991542.html The United States Army has begun training Egyptian soldiers to locate and destroy tunnels, in an effort to improve the Egyptian army's ability to cope with arms-smuggling from Sinai to the Gaza Strip. A second, larger group of Egyptian soldiers is also due to arrive shortly for training, which is taking place at a U.S. Army base in Texas. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is teaching the Egyptian troops how to use advanced technological equipment to find and destroy the tunnels, including instruments that measure ground fluctuations and...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

GAZA, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Israeli military officials said Friday they employed a new method to detect tunnels allegedly used for weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip by Palestinians. The new method uses sensors in channels underground that are filled with water, an Israeli army spokesman told Israel Radio. The method is undergoing trials close to the Gaza Strip in western Negev. The tests are being hidden from the view of nearby Palestinians, Kuna reported Friday. The spokesman failed to reveal whether the new method would be put to use on borders separating Egypt and Gaza, the newspaper said.

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

BAGHDAD — A network of underground tunnels near Iskandariyah used by al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) to store weapons, hide fighters and launch attacks against U.S. forces was discovered and subsequently destroyed by Coalition forces, Dec. 16. It was the first known find of a tunnel system in the Multi-National Division – Center area. Soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division found the tunnels as they were searching an area northwest of Iskandariyah, along the Euphrates River. Immediately prior, they discovered a cache of improvised explosive device (IED) components and...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

TECATE, Calif., Dec. 6 — The tunnel opening cut into the floor of a shipping container here drops three levels, each accessible by ladders, first a metal one and then two others fashioned from wood pallets. The tunnel stretches 1,300 feet to the south, crossing the Mexican border some 50 feet below ground and proceeding to a sky-blue office building in sight of the steel-plated border fence. Three or four feet wide and six feet high, the passageway is illuminated by compact fluorescent bulbs (wired to the Mexican side), supported by carefully placed wooden beams and kept dry by two...

KOLD News 13 Tucson is currently running a special report focused on a urgent FBI report outlining a possible terrorist threat in southern Arizona. It speaks specifically to Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista. The document gives no timetable or explanation of how the threat will be carried out. But it does say, “a group of Iraqis may have entered the United States through tunnels from Mexico into Arizona,” and those same “Iraqis are believed to be the ones who will perpetrate the attack on Fort Huachuca.

U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, has introduced the Toll Road Prohibition Act, the latest bill designed to prevent tolling on federally built highways. HR 3802, introduced Oct. 10, would require states and cities to repay the U.S. government all federal funds used for construction of highways, bridges or tunnels, along with “reasonable interest,� before introducing tolls. “The American people should not be required to pay for the same highway twice, once through their tax dollars and again through new tolls on federal interstate highways,� Boswell said. The legislation would not prohibit the states from entering into public-private toll agreements, but...

Cal Freeway Tunnel Safety Compromised Due to Greenie Laws A Disaster Waiting to Happen - 210 Freeway Transition Tunnels Guido Meindl - Pasadena Several years ago I brought to the attention of City Council Members the potential disaster waiting to happen on the Transition Tunnels from the 210 South bound to the 210 East bound. Truck traffic on the 210 has continued to increase exponentially over the past and there is no abatement in sight. The recent collision of 2 18 Wheelers on the 210 near Arroyo/Windsor and now the disastrous collision of 30 vehicles in the I-5 Truck Tunnel...

Al Qaeda 'Re-Emerging' in Pakistan Sanctuaries The U.S. military said Tuesday it expected Al Qaeda to continue its "re-emergence" in sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas from where it supported attacks in Afghanistan. Sanctuary was provided to Al Qaeda and Taliban rebels after Islamabad signed a peace deal with militants in a desperate attempt to quell the unrest in its federally administered areas in September 2006, a U.S. military official said. The militants called off the deal in July this year after Pakistani security forces raided a radical mosque in Islamabad where rebels had massed. Dozens were killed in those...

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States has found a half-built smuggling tunnel running under a border crossing checkpoint between Mexico and Arizona, the second discovery of a tunnel in less than a week, U.S. border officials said on Tuesday. Border agents noticed a small hole in one of the gate's vehicle lanes on the U.S. side leading out of downtown Nogales into the Mexican sister city of the same name on Sunday. They found a crudely built opening to the 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) tunnel. Officials believe this is the first tunnel dug directly underneath a legal crossing gate along the...

By day, Lazar Kunstmann is a typically avant-garde Parisian, an urbane, well-spoken video film editor who hangs out in the fashionable Latin Quarter. By night he inhabits a strange and secret world with its base in the tunnels beneath the French capital – the world of the urban explorers. Mr Kunstmann belongs to les UX, a clandestine network that is on a mission to discover and exploit the city’s neglected underworld. The urban explorers put on film shows in underground galleries, restore medieval crypts and break into monuments after dark to organise plays and readings. In the eyes of their...

FRESNO, Calif. — Tunnels run beneath Chinatown in Fresno, Calif.: brick-walled passages that were once home to people and activities that couldn't be mentioned aboveground. Rick Lew knows, because he walked the passages as a child, entering through a trapdoor in his grandfather's liquor store. "There was a nightlife you couldn't see from the streets," he said.< >As late as the 1950s, when Lew was a boy, Chinatown was still thriving — both its respectable establishments and as its shadier side. He remembers visiting the underground world with his father, first passing though a dark basement before descending into a...

First World War tunnels to yield their secrets By Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:42am BST 26/08/2007 As battle raged across the fields of Flanders, British soldiers found brief respite from the horrors of the First World War in "underground towns" far below the mud and gore. Now, more than 90 years after the armies left and the extraordinary networks of tunnels were flooded, the task of finally revealing their secrets has begun. The Tunnels The prize, archaeologists and historians believe, is an unprecedented insight into the lives of British troops on the Western Front. They believe that, because...

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Intelligence experts said they fear Iran may try to thwart future military strikes against its nuclear facility by placing key parts underground. U.S. officials and independent experts said Iran appears to be building a tunnel complex inside a mountain, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The sudden flurry of digging seen in recent satellite photos of a mountainside in central Iran might have passed for ordinary road tunneling. But the site is the back yard of Iran's most ambitious and controversial nuclear facility, leading U.S. officials and independent experts to reach another conclusion: It appears to be the start of a major tunnel complex inside the mountain. The question is, why? Worries have been stoked by the presence nearby of fortified buildings where uranium is being processed. Those structures in turn are now being connected by roads to Iran's nuclear site at Natanz, where the...

Switzerland has opened the world's longest rail tunnel on land - the 34-kilometre (21-mile) Loetschberg tunnel under the Alps. It will cut the journey time between Germany and Italy by at least a third.

If Man Can Climb GWB, Imagine What Terrorist Could Do (CBS) NEW YORK -- After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, security was stepped up on our bridges and tunnels. So how is it that someone was able to climb the George Washington Bridge in the middle of rush hour? CBS 2 HD got a unique perspective from someone who's climbed the bridge more than a half dozen times. A Port Authority worker was first to spot the man climbing the George Washington Bridge on Friday morning and within minutes police officials were on the scene. They knew the man likely...

A bomb threat prompted authorities to shut down the Fort Pitt, Liberty and Squirrel Hill tunnels for nearly an hour this evening during rush hour. A threat was called in to Allegheny County's 911 sometime around 5:30 p.m. and the tunnels were closed at 5:40 p.m. The Squirrel Hill tunnel reopened to inbound traffic at 6:20 p.m. and the outbound side reopened a few minutes later.

Two incomplete tunnels were discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border in what authorities described as a failed attempt to sneak people into the U.S. illegally. Each tunnel was about 3 feet wide, 3 feet high and 5 feet underground, said Frank Marwood, assistant special agent in charge of investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. They were about 44 yards apart, near San Diego's Otay Mesa border crossing. The passages, discovered Wednesday in a joint effort by U.S. and Mexican authorities, are among dozens found along the border in recent years, many clustered around San Diego and Nogales,...

Key entrances have been plugged in some of the biggest tunnels used to smuggle people and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border but the passageways remain largely intact, raising concerns that smugglers might reuse them, according to a published report. Critics say the unfilled tunnels pose an unnecessary national security risk. Dozens of tunnels have been discovered underneath the border. Smaller passages are easily destroyed, but larger, more elaborate shafts require costly amounts of material and expertise to fill, authorities say. The task is further complicated if the tunnels run under private property. Seven of the largest tunnels have yet to...

SAN DIEGO — While key entrance and exit points have been plugged in some of the biggest tunnels used to ferry people and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border, the passageways remain largely intact raising concerns smugglers reuse them, according to a published report.

Soldiers from the elite Samur (Weasel) unit were busy refueling their Puma AFV by the side of the road Thursday morning, not far from the Rafah crossing. On the fourth day of Operation Squeezed Fruit, their tired, unshaven faces and smiles of satisfaction told the story. By evening, 15 tunnels had been found and most of them had been blown up. Officers directing the operations said many more remained to be found. Some had been located in advance by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), aerial reconnaissance and Military Intelligence, and others were found by Samur teams using their own...

NEW YORK -- Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison in federal court in Manhattan Monday. She was convicted of providing support to terrorists by helping a jailed Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers on the outside. Before sentencing, her lawyer told the judge that any prison sentence for Stewart would be a death sentence because of her serious health problems. Stewart pleaded with the judge to allow her to live out the rest of her life "productively, lovingly, righteously.'' Assistant US Attorney Andrew Dember rejected defense suggestions that Stewart's conduct was judged differently after9-11. "This case...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's attorney general said the arrest a group of corrupt cops along the border with California is imminent. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a Mexico City news conference today the cops protected a Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix gang, which smuggled tons of pot, cocaine and meth into the United States. Two were already arrested Saturday and charged with taking bribes to protect the gang. The attorney general said they worked at the Rosarito police department just over the border from San Diego border. The two are accused of decapitating three of their fellow officers. The news...

MOSCOW, Nov. 25 — The Qaeda military base called Zhawar Kili Al- Badr also has a nickname: Wolf's Hole. Zhawar worms its way deep inside the walls of a gorge in the Sodyaki Ghar mountains of eastern Afghanistan, a half-mile lattice of caves and connecting tunnels barely 4,000 yards from the Pakistan border. The Soviet Army took it in 1986 during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but only after 57 days of aerial bombardment and hand-to-hand combat. "It was seized, blown up. Everything was blown up," Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Lyakhovsky, an Afghanistan veteran now retired from Russian military service, said ...

War On Drugs: While not the end of the tale, the crushing of the Javier Arellano Felix drug cartel is a victory that should be played up. By itself, the arrest is satisfying. Better still, it shows the U.S. can work with Mexico. That wasn't the case when Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was murdered by drug traffickers in Guadalajara in 1985. Back then, Mexican authorities threw roadblocks at apprehending drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was a leading member of the group that kidnapped, tortured and killed the agent. Mexican police told...

Senior Northern Command officer tells Ynet that soldiers killed in Lebanon Wednesday were part of mission aimed at uncovering 40-meter deep poured concrete bunkers along border. Despite challenges, army determined to complete operation A senior IDF Northern Command officer told Ynet that Hizbullah has set up an extensive underground bunker network not far from the Israeli border. On Wednesday two IDF soldiers from the Magellan unit were killed and nine more soldiers were wounded during army operations aimed at uncovering the bunkers. Hizbullah terrorists were hiding out in the fortified underground bunkers some 40 meters (roughly 120 feet) underground, along...

The FBI has uncovered what officials consider a serious plot by jihadists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in hopes of causing a torrent of water to deluge lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned. The terrorists sought to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina, sources said. They also wanted to attack subways and other tunnels. Counterterrorism officials are alarmed by the "lone wolf" terror plot because they allegedly got a pledge of financial and tactical support from Jordanian associates of top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before he was killed in Iraq, a counterterrorism source told...

Per Foxnews Alert! Palestinians Terrorists used a tunnel to get into "Israel Proper" and then fired on Israeli soldiers killing two of them. Now there is an operation ongoing. And Israeli helicopters have been called in. One Palestinian terrorist group claims to have "taken" an Israeli soldier back to Gaza with them. I have a friend visiting over there! I pray she stays safe!

Little known outside police circles, the Tunnel Task Force came to light with the Jan. 24 discovery of the passageway that was used to haul tons of marijuana almost half-a-mile from Mexico. Based in San Diego, the team pools the resources of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection, and it draws support from a special U.S. military unit. U.S. authorities have identified tunnels as an emerging threat to homeland security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.. Since then at least 40 have been uncovered linking cities...

Dug by hand with the help of rogue mining engineers to link warehouses on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border, it was the longest, deepest and boldest drug smuggling tunnel found to date. But before the Mexican gang had even punched through a concrete floor to emerge opposite a washroom in a distribution depot in Otay Mesa, California, a crack law enforcement team with expertise honed in the hunt for Osama bin Laden was on their trail. Little known outside police circles, the Tunnel Task Force came to light with the January 24 discovery of the passageway that was used...

Our contributor Ray Robison notes a startling early 2001 article from the U.K. Sunday Times, claiming Saddam had and tested a nuclear weapon. What makes this old, and apparently dismissed, claim more viable is a document in the Harmony Database (what we call here “The Saddam Files�) recently made available on the web for open source translation from Arabic. Ray has put two and two together. If the implications are proven, it changes the entire argument about the justification for going to war. Ray writes: I only recently read this article and found it interesting but very hard to believe....

Nobody paid much attention when a large white van with Arizona numberplates pulled into a parking space in the shade of the 15ft-high sheet-metal wall that separates Mexico from the United States in the divided border town of Nogales. A few yards away US border guards monitored the steady flow of pedestrians through a heavily fortified gate in the wall. There was no reason to be suspicious of a van legally parked on a metered space directly beneath a pylon of American surveillance cameras. Yet inside the van Mexican gangsters were preparing one of the most brazen smuggling ploys ever...

Aboriginal people built water tunnels Judy Skatssoon ABC Science Online Wednesday, 15 March 2006 The rainbow serpent, a key Aboriginal Dreamtime creation symbol, is closely connected with Indigenous knowledge of groundwater systems (Image: Reuters) Indigenous Australians dug underground water reservoirs that helped them live on one of the world's driest continents for tens of thousands of years, new research shows. The study, which is the first of its kind, indicates Aboriginal people had extensive knowledge of the groundwater system, says hydrogeologist Brad Moggridge, knowledge that is still held today. Some 70% of the continent is covered by desert or semi-arid...

JERUSALEM - Underground chambers and tunnels used during a Jewish revolt against the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago have been uncovered in northern Israel, archaeologists said Monday. The Jews laid in supplies and were preparing to hide from the Romans during their revolt in A.D. 66-70, the experts said. The pits, which are linked by short tunnels, would have served as a concealed subterranean home. Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the find shows the ancient Jews planned and prepared for the uprising, contrary to the common perception that the revolt began spontaneously. "It definitely was not spontaneous,"...

(March 2) -- Special Agent Frank Marwood was showing a visitor the half-mile long, 80-foot deep smuggler's tunnel his agents discovered beneath the U.S.-Mexican border at Otay Mesa when his cellphone interrupted. An agent was reporting in with a startling new find: another tunnel, this one shorter and more crudely built, but big enough to provide yet another subterranean port of entry into the USA. These are busy days for the men and women who guard the nation's border - particularly for the team of federal agents charged with rooting out border tunnels.

A whole underground city exists under Sofia streets. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels spread under the capital. Some of them are so big that buses can pass through them. Nowadays the catacombs host thousands of clochards. Witnesses say, ten to twenty thousand people live there. "These figures are unrealistic," said Sofia Mayor Boyko Borissov but he could give the exact number of the homeless living in the tunnels Jordan Todorov says: "I was surprised to learn recently about the underground tunnel in Mexico. Exactly at the same time some Bulgarian newspapers published simmilar kind of stories. "According to Standart daily...

The Tappan Zee Bridge, the most critical transportation link across the Hudson River north of New York City, is not even half as old as the Brooklyn Bridge, but its warranty has already expired. Started on the cheap during the Korean War, the Tappan Zee was deliberately built to last just 50 years. It passed that milestone last month, just days after transportation planners began gathering public advice about how to fix or replace it. But the decaying, overburdened span's anniversary was more bitter than sweet. Little love has been lost between the Tappan Zee and the tens of thousands...

Tunnel from Gaza to Israel discovered JPost Staff and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 10, 2005 For the first time since Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip this summer IDF forces uncovered an underground tunnel, apparently used to smuggle arms, near the Erez goods crossing Saturday afternoon, Army Radio reported. The tunnel, which reached into Israeli territory, was dug under a garbage site in Beit Hanoun, and was reported to be a few dozen meters in length. The IDF said that it has lookouts in the area, but the tunnel was dug in an area out of the sight of...

The Palestinian Authority did nothing to stop terrorists excavating a new “bomb tunnel” running from the Gaza Strip into Israel – despite repeated submissions from Israel. IDF brigade commander Col. Muni Katz disclosed Saturday, Dec.10, that the tunnel 4 m deep and 40 m long runs from a rubbish dump in the N. Gazan town of Beit Hanoun under the Erez border crossing and several hundred meters inside Israel. It comes out very near Kibbutz Erez and Moshav Netiv HaAsara and appeared ready for use by bombers against Israeli targets. It was discovered while work was in progress and the...

Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohammed Al-Hadi -- if that's even his name -- is just one of nearly 750 people U.S. investigators want to know more about in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. He has at least four aliases and two different birth dates. He is a Yemeni, with a Michigan driver's licence and a Detroit wife. He was on a plane from Frankfurt, Germany headed for Chicago when it was diverted to Toronto. He was arrested at Pearson International Airport and may be extradited to the United States to face two charges related to false passports and fraudulent misuse ...

FBI: Terror suspect plotted fuel attackAl-Marabh planned to blow up tunnelJail informant reported `martyr' bid JOHN SOLOMONASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh, who ran a print shop with his uncle in Toronto, plotted to steal a fuel tanker truck and blow it up in one of the heavily travelled tunnels between New Jersey and Manhattan, FBI documents allege. Al-Marabh, 36, was arrested Sept. 19, 2001, in Chicago in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. His arrest prompted an RCMP raid of his uncle's copy shop on Charles St. in Toronto. The U.S. deported him...

Iran has expanded the tunnels it uses to hide a major part of its nuclear weapons program to a network covering a large area of southeastern Tehran, an Iranian exile who opposes that nation's Islamic government said Monday. Alireza Jafarzadeh said the secret construction of missiles extends well beyond Parchin, a military zone 20 miles southeast of the Iranian capital. Jafarzadeh told reporters in September about the Parchin tunnels.

WASHINGTON (AP) - An Iranian exile who opposes his country's Islamic government said Monday that Iran's military is building a series of secret tunnels to hide equipment for missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Alireza Jafarzadeh, who helped expose nuclear facilities in Iran in the past, told a news conference in September that tunnels were under construction mainly in an area called Parchin. But on Monday he said the secret construction of missiles extends well beyond that location. He said that on orders of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the Iranian defense ministry has taken over an area in eastern and southern...