In the Nation
N.Y.: Radioactive threat was a dud
NEW YORK - New York police scaled back their deployment of additional security checkpoints and radiological sensors in Lower Manhattan yesterday after determining that a report of a possible radioactive attack against the city was unsubstantiated.
The police learned of the threat report from Debka.com, a counterterrorism news site in Jerusalem that reported a surge in worrisome electronic chatter on al-Qaeda Web sites on Thursday. The messages, according to Debka.com, detailed planned attacks against New York, Los Angeles and Miami using trucks carrying radioactive bombs.
City police spokesman Paul J. Browne said the department began tightening security Friday night around bridges and tunnels in Lower Manhattan as a precaution, while checking with intelligence agencies to determine whether there was any veracity to the threat. Trucks and sport utility vehicles were stopped and searched in Lower Manhattan, and extra radiological sensors were sent out in police cars, helicopters and boats.
The deployment had been scaled back by midday yesterday after the department determined that no other agency could confirm the threat, Browne said. - N.Y. Times News Service
Rain hampers search in Minn.
MINNEAPOLIS - Divers' operations to find five people still missing since the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge were hampered yesterday because heavy rain had strengthened the current in the Mississippi River.
Overnight thunderstorms dropped as much as two inches of rain on the region, making the river dangerous for divers around the twisted bridge wreckage, a Navy spokesman said.
The delay followed two days in which the military divers recovered three bodies. That brought the confirmed death toll to eight and reduced the list of known missing to five. - AP
Army Corps to test New Orleans levee
NEW ORLEANS - A $3 million experiment by the Army Corps of Engineers this week will simulate the conditions that caused some of the levee failures that led to Hurricane Katrina's disastrous flooding.
In the test, the Corps will gradually pump water into a section of the London Avenue Canal, one of the canals whose flood walls toppled during the storm two years ago, leading to most of the flooding that ravaged the main part of the city.
Engineers will monitor the amount of seepage beneath the flood wall and how much the structure tilts - measures that will tell them how much rising water the wall can withstand. The Corps promises to monitor the experiment carefully to ensure the test does not cause a new breach. - Washington Post
Elsewhere:
A fire broke out in a house without smoke detectors early yesterday, killing six members of a family, officials in St. Joseph, Mo., said. The father escaped by leaping out a second-story window and was being treated for injuries. The names of the victims, believed to be four children and two adults, were not immediately released.