The Business Journal of Phoenix - 1:39 PM MST Monday, September 10, 2007by Mike SunnucksThe Business Journal
The Bush administration announced Monday it is granting $66.2 million to reduce congestion and improve freight flow on several so-called NAFTA highways.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is allocating the money so it can work with state and local governments and the private sector on six interstate highways, with projects including the addition of bypasses and trucks-only lanes. Five of those highways connect to or run near the Mexican or Canadian borders:
Interstate 15, which runs from San Diego through part of northwest Arizona all the way to the Canadian border.
Interstate 10, which runs near the Mexican border from California through Arizona to Florida.
Intestates 95, which runs from Florida through the northeastern U.S. to Canada.
Interstate 5, which runs from the California-Mexico border through Oregon to the Washington-Canada border.
Interstate 69, which free-trade backers hope to turn into a NAFTA superhighway, connecting an existing freeway between Indianapolis and Canada to a proposed highway running south into Texas and splitting to connect with Mexican border crossings at Laredo, Brownsville and McAllen.
The only nonborder highway getting grant money from the Bush administration ...   more »

Computer networks were classified
Federal Government will not comment
New Zealand confirms foreign hacking
CHINA has allegedly tried to hack into highly classified government computer networks in Australia and New Zealand as part of a broader international operation to glean military secrets from Western nations.
The Howard Government yesterday would neither confirm nor deny that its agencies, including the Defence Department, had been subject to cyber attack from China, but government sources acknowledge that thwarting such assaults is a continuous challenge.
"It's a serious problem, it's ongoing and it's real," one senior government source said.
Western intelligence experts say that China has also targeted the US, Canada, Germany and Japan as part of its global intelligence-gathering effort.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday confirmed that foreign intelligence agencies had tried to hack into government computer networks, but said they had not compromised top-secret data banks.
"The assurance I've been given by intelligence agencies is that no classified information has been at risk at all," Miss Clark said.
"We have very smart people to provide protection every time an attack is tried. Obviously we learn from that.
"What I can stress is that absolutely no classified information has ever been ...   more »

 President Vladimir Putin dissolved Russia's government Wednesday and then quickly nominates Viktor Zubkov, a Russian Cabinet official who oversees the fight against money laundering, to be the new prime minister.
Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the State Duma, said Putin nominated Zubkov, who heads the Federal Financial Monitoring Service and who served under Putin when the two worked in the city administration of St. Petersburg in the early 1990s.
Earlier Wednesday, in a major political shakeup, Putin dismissed Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and dissolved his cabinet, paving the way for Putin to name a new head of government.
Most observers had expected that the new premier would be the leading contender to succeed Putin when he steps down after March elections.
But Zubkov had not been even considered as a contender.
A Kremlin source told FOX News that Zubkov was not Putin's choice to be the next president of Russia.
The newspaper Vedomosti, citing unidentified Kremlin officials, reported that Sergei Ivanov, a first deputy prime minister and a leading contender to succeed Putin, could be appointed to replace Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
Another first deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who is a top executive at natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom, ...   more »

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Russia has delivered a belligerent message of defiance to the West after army generals claimed to have tested "the father of all bombs".
Putin quick to pick Russian prime minister
Peter Foster blog: Bombs and bombast
Developed in secret, the unchristened bomb, a vacuum device capable of emitting shockwaves as powerful as a nuclear weapon, was unveiled with great theatre on state television's main evening broadcast.   
A mushroom cloud rises over a plain as Russia’s military test their latest weapon
Boasting that the weapon had "no match in the world," ORT First Channel television showed a Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber dropping its payload over a testing ground, followed by a massive explosion.
Pictures of what appeared to be crumpled multi-storey apartment blocks were also broadcast.
Although there was no independent verification of the Russian military's claim, the test is likely to cause further consternation in the West after a series of bellicose statements by the president, Vladimir Putin.
According to Russian generals, the bomb is four times more powerful than the American Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb or MOAB.
advertisementBetter known as the Mother of All Bombs, the MOAB is a descendent of the ...   more »

By James Rosen
A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday.
Germany — a pivotal player among three European nations to rein in Iran's nuclear program over the last two-and-a-half years through a mixture of diplomacy and sanctions supported by the United States — notified its allies last week that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel refuses to support the imposition of any further sanctions against Iran that could be imposed by the U.N. Security Council.
The announcement was made at a meeting in Berlin that brought German officials together with Iran desk officers from the five member states of the Security Council. It stunned the room, according to one of several Bush administration and foreign government sources who spoke to FOX News, and left most Bush administration principals concluding that sanctions are dead.
The Germans voiced concern about the damaging effects any further sanctions on Iran would have on the German economy — and also, according to diplomats from other countries, gave the distinct impression that they ...   more »