“Wounded AP journalists evacuated from Afghanistan - Nevada Appeal” plus 4 more |
- Wounded AP journalists evacuated from Afghanistan - Nevada Appeal
- Third man pleads guilty to terror-related charges - Globe Gazette
- AirPlus International Releases Whitepaper on Successful Travel ... - PR Inside
- Sanford: Travel story was out of context - The State
- McMaster requests ethics investigation on Sanford travel - The State
| Wounded AP journalists evacuated from Afghanistan - Nevada Appeal Posted: 13 Aug 2009 03:51 AM PDT
KABUL (AP) — Two Associated Press journalists wounded in a bomb blast while on assignment with the U.S. military in southern Afghanistan were evacuated to a medical center in Dubai on Wednesday after being treated at a military hospital. The Army, meanwhile, released additional details of the attack, including word that two U.S. soldiers were also wounded in the bombing of a light armored vehicle called a Stryker near the Pakistani border. Photographer Emilio Morenatti and AP Television News videographer Andi Jatmiko were traveling on Tuesday with a unit of the 5th Stryker Brigade when their vehicle ran over a bomb planted in the open desert terrain, the military said. All four wounded were taken by helicopter to a military hospital in Kandahar. The journalists arrived around midnight Wednesday in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where they were to receive further treatment. Jatmiko suffered leg injuries and two broken ribs. Morenatti, badly wounded in the leg, underwent an operation in Kandahar that resulted in the loss of his left foot. The two soldiers, who were not identified, also suffered leg wounds — one of them severe. One of the wounded soldiers crawled out of the vehicle and applied a tourniquet to the other injured soldier, according to Capt. Denis Lortie, commander of Bear Troop, 8th Squadron of the 5th Stryker. Another soldier also applied a tourniquet to Morenatti. Four other soldiers in the vehicle were not injured, Lortie said. The attack took place as four Stryker vehicles were on patrol 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of the town of Spin Boldak and 120 miles (193 kilometers) southeast of Dahaneh, a Taliban-held town where helicopter-borne U.S. Marines launched an operation before dawn Wednesday to uproot the militants. Morenatti, 40, a Spaniard, is an award-winning photographer based in Islamabad who has worked for the AP in Afghanistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. He was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2009 by Pictures of the Year International. In Spain, where Morenatti is widely known, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos spoke with Morenatti's wife, Marta Ramoneda, to offer assistance, the Foreign Ministry said. Jatmiko, 44, of Indonesia, has reported for the AP from throughout Asia for more than 10 years. Indonesian diplomats contacted the AP in Kabul to express concern for Jatmiko and seek assurances that he would be cared for. AP President Tom Curley said their injuries reflected "the risks that journalists like Emilio and Andi encounter every day as they staff the front lines of the most dangerous spots of the world. We are grateful for their bravery and their commitment to the news. Our hearts are with them and their families, especially Emilio's wife, Marta, and Andi's wife, Pingkan." Journalists have faced increasing danger from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, as they go on assignment with Western troops carrying out new offensives as part of the effort by the United States and its allies to turn the tide of the Afghan war. IED attacks are now the cause of the majority of U.S. and NATO deaths in Afghanistan. According to figures from the U.S.-based Joint IED Defeat Organization, the number of incidents from IEDs soared to 828 last month, the highest level of the war and more than twice as many as in July 2008. The IED used in Tuesday's attack employs a pressure-plate detonation mechanism to complete an electrical circuit under the weight of a passing vehicle. Eighteen journalists were killed in Afghanistan between 1992 and 2008, making it the 11th most dangerous country in the world for media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least one more has been killed this year. Journalists have also been kidnapped in Afghanistan. In June, New York Times journalist David Rohde and Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin escaped after being held more than seven months by the Taliban. They were abducted Nov. 10 south of Kabul while heading to interview a Taliban leader, and were later moved across the border into Pakistan. Morenatti, too, has been kidnapped, although not in Afghanistan. In October 2006, the AP photographer was abducted in Gaza City and freed unharmed after 15 hours.
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| Third man pleads guilty to terror-related charges - Globe Gazette Posted: 13 Aug 2009 06:57 AM PDT globegazette.com Privacy Policy: (hide) Welcome to the web sites of the Globe Gazette, a media company located in eastern Iowa. We believe in your right to know what information is collected during your visit to our web sites and how the information is used and safeguarded. Information Gathered by Voluntary Submission The information you supply will help us to offer you more personalized features, to tailor our sites to your interests and make them more useful to you. The more you tell us about yourself, the more value we can offer you. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary. But if you don't supply the information we need, we may be unable to provide you with services we make available to other visitors to our sites. Of course, even if you want to remain completely anonymous, you're still free to take advantage of the wealth of content available on our sites without registration. Information Automatically Gathered About All Visitors Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, including your IP address but not the e-mail address, when you visit our sites. Your IP address does not identify you personally. We use this information to deliver our web pages to you upon request, to tailor our sites to the interests of our users, and to measure traffic within our sites. To help make our sites more responsive to the needs of our visitors, we may utilize a standard feature of browser software, called a "cookie". The cookie doesn't actually identify the visitor, just the computer that a visitor uses to access our site. A cookie can't read data off your hard drive. Our advertisers or content partners may also assign their own cookies to your browser, a process that we cannot control. We use cookies to help us tailor our site to your needs, to deliver a better, more personalized service. It is a cookie, for example, that allows us to deliver your personalized stock quotes each time you visit a site. Information Shared With Other Organizations Special Attention to Children A final note: The Web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our privacy policy at some point in the future, we'll post the changes before they take effect. Of course, our use of information gathered while the current policy is in effect will always be consistent with the current policy, even if we change that policy later.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| AirPlus International Releases Whitepaper on Successful Travel ... - PR Inside Posted: 13 Aug 2009 07:54 AM PDT 2009-08-13 16:58:02 -
AirPlus International, a leading global provider of corporate travel payment solutions, released a whitepaper today at the ACTE Asia-Pacific Education Conference in Singapore. Titled: Successful Travel Management in Asia-Pacific – Challenges and Solutions in a Fast Changing Region, the whitepaper explores the unique realities of managing travel in Asia-Pacific and provides suggestions to global travel managers for improved performance in the region. A complimentary copy of the whitepaper is available for download at www.airplus.com : and the ACTE Connect : website.A survey of ACTE-affiliated corporate travel managers supported the study. Of those surveyed, 42 percent consider Asia-Pacific to be on the same evolutionary path as Europe and North America, but at an earlier stage. Another 72 percent think travel managers from outside Asia-Pacific lack a good understanding of the region. This is best outlined by the challenges highlighted within the paper which include cultural diversity, multiple languages and alphabets, domestic (not global) distribution systems, insufficient adaptation of management tools, greater regulation and the lower status of travel managers. A few of the whitepaper's suggestions for working more effectively in the region include: improving cultural understanding, meeting the high quality service ethic in the region, visiting the region and recruiting local expertise. Further, 19 percent said travel management has a different meaning in Asia-Pacific but will change to resemble the European/North American model more closely in the future. AirPlus International: Press may contact Rana Walker, Marketing and Communication Manager at +1 (703) 373-0947 or rwalker@airplus.com : mailto:rwalker@airplus.com . About ACTE: Manager+1 (703) 373-0947 rwalker@airplus.com : mailto:rwalker@airplus.com  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Sanford: Travel story was out of context - The State Posted: 13 Aug 2009 08:23 AM PDT The first point of context would be that I have used the state plane less than my predecessors. When measuring four-year terms, Gov. Carroll Campbell flew 451.6 hours, Gov. David Beasley flew 303.17 hours, and Gov. Jim Hodges flew 310.06 hours, while I flew 228.95 hours. I've always tried to watch out for the taxpayer dime and accordingly have tried to be as judicious as possible in using the state plane. Of the 228.95 hours I flew, roughly 70 were in the Department of Natural Resources' single-engine Cessna, because whenever I had a chance I tried to use this small plane that has an operating cost about one-fifth that of the King Air; this alone saved taxpayers more than $60,000. No governor has done this before, and it is hardly "gubernatorial" in its look and feel, but I thought it was worth the savings. As an administration, we also sold the state's fraction interest in the Hawker jet, which had transatlantic capability, and saved more than $1.5 million. We consolidated helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft use between SLED and Natural Resources for several hundred thousands of dollars of additional savings. As well, we decided to rent out both the governor's summer residence in Charleston and the Lace House at the governor's residence, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for the state. The second point of context is that out of the 353 hours flown over the past six and a half years, the AP story called into question about seven hours of flight. That represents 2 percent of the total flight hours taken. A few examples from that article that I consider misleading: The article suggests I had flown back to my "favorite discount hair salon." I did call the office on my way back from official state business in Myrtle Beach to say I wanted to drop by for a haircut, but this so-called hair salon is a walk-in Great Clips where you can get an $11 haircut. Why in the world would I rush back to keep an "appointment" at a place that doesn't take appointments? The article says I flew the family back from Beaufort on Thanksgiving weekends. Does anyone believe that Jenny — or in particular the boys — really wanted to leave Thanksgiving weekend early to walk down the State House steps for the annual Governor's Christmas Tree Lighting? If that isn't official business, I don't know what is. And it's been expected of governors to attend for the last 42 years. The article says that I flew from Columbia to Mt. Pleasant for a dentist appointment. It is true that I went by the dentist office for 15 minutes because I chipped my tooth, but this is hardly the larger context of the visit. At 4 p.m. on that day, March 23, 2005, I testified before the Senate Finance subcommittee on our income tax proposal; I had the chance to tell thousands of people on the coast about it through an in-studio interview with Channel 2 at 6:50. Not knowing when the subcommittee would end, the state plane was used so that I would be certain of making the interview. I won't belabor the point, but it is a simple one. Inevitably, I am certain that there is something our office did less than perfect in my constant moving around the state, but I can say with equal clarity that it was always within the context of trying to maximize my days and watch out for the taxpayer in the process. Mr. Sanford is the governor of South Carolina.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| McMaster requests ethics investigation on Sanford travel - The State Posted: 13 Aug 2009 07:40 AM PDT Sen. David Thomas, R-Greenville, said Monday that Sanford had violated state law by flying business class on overseas trips. McConnell essentially warned Thomas's Senate subcommittee to back off its investigation, saying its findings could taint other investigations. Sanford's state expenses have come under scrutiny since he vanished for six days in June and announced, upon his return, that he was having an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman. Subsequently, he reimbursed the state $3,300, part of the cost of a South American trade mission on which he met with the woman. -- From staff reports  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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