Wendie Tomsic blog

UN envoy: UN workers killed running from bunker

Fearing for their lives, the U.N. workers dashed into a dark bunker hoping to escape the mob of Afghan protesters angry over the burning of a Quran by a Florida church.

Hope wasn't enough for three of them. They were hunted down and brutally slain — their bodies found later in three different parts of the compound in northern Afghanistan.

"They were killed when they were running out of the bunker," said Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, who recounted their harrowing deaths to reporters on Saturday evening. "One was pulled out alive because he pretended to be a Muslim."

De Mistura spoke in a somber tone as he described how three U.N. staff members and four Nepalese guards were killed Friday when the protesters stormed their compound in the normally peaceful city of Mazar-i-Sharif. He placed direct blame on those who burned a copy of the Muslim holy book in Gainesville, Florida, last month, stoking anti-foreign sentiment that already was on the rise after nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan.

"The demonstration was meant to protest against the insane and totally despicable gesture by one person who burned the holy Quran," he said.

He also said the U.N. building would not have been attacked if there had been an adequate cordon of Afghan police separating the demonstrators and the compound.

A formal inquiry is under way, but de Mistura said initial reports indicate that seven to 15 insurgents infiltrated a group of as many as 3,000 demonstrators who overran the U.N. compound, which was protected by Afghan policemen and six U.N.-hired Nepalese guards. The crowd overpowered the guards — who are instructed not to shoot into crowds of civilians, even if they are threatening — and the police were not able to stop them, he said.

Four of the Nepalese guards were killed; some were shot in the yard of the compound. Three Afghan U.N. workers survived by melding into the surging crowd, he said. Four Afghan protesters also were killed in the riot.

Protesters had set fire to cars and an electric generator in the U.N. compound so the bunker was dark. It was the only safe place for the four foreign U.N. workers on the compound, including the Russian chief of mission. But the door of the bunker was made to withstand a bomb attack, not the sheer force of a crowd of people trying to get inside.

When the killers forced themselves inside they saw Pavel Ershov, the mission chief who is fluent in Dari, one of two languages spoken in Afghanistan. They beat him, but stopped after he convinced them, in Dari, that he was a Muslim, de Mistura said.

"He spoke the language and tried to draw their attention on himself," the envoy said. "For a moment, he hoped that they would think there was nobody else there."

But using a light, the attackers found the three other foreigners, then pulled them out and killed them one after the other. Two died of bullet wounds. The third was killed with a knife to the throat.

They were identified by officials in their home countries as: Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede who worked on human rights; Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a 53-year-old female pilot from Norway who was an adviser; and Filaret Motco, a 43-year-old Romanian who worked in the political section of the U.N.

De Mistura spoke to reporters in Kabul after flying back from Mazar-i-Sharif. He was at the airport in Kabul when the victims' bodies were flown to the capital Saturday evening. In talking with top officials in Mazar-i-Sharif, he said he was convinced that the killers were insurgents, not demonstrators.

Protesters confiscated AK-47s from security officers at the scene, but all except one of the U.N. workers were killed with handguns, he said.

Moreover, the mission chief and some of the U.N. Afghan staff workers said the killers spoke in a dialect not common to Mazar-i-Sharif. De Mistura said authorities told him that several of the people arrested were from other parts of Afghanistan, including Kapisa province in the east and Kandahar in the south. Both provinces are hundreds of miles (kilometers) from Mazar-i-Sharif.

De Mistura said he was concerned that the deaths of the foreigners would give people, especially in the West, a reason to argue against continued involvement in the nearly decade-long Afghan war. He said the U.N. would not pull out of Afghanistan, but that he was temporarily redeploying 11 U.N. workers from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul because they can no longer work in the office, which was destroyed and looted.

President Hamid Karzai publicly condemned the March 20 Quran burning, leading some to blame him for triggering the protests. De Mistura, however, blamed the person who torched the holy book.

The pastor, the Rev. Terry Jones, had threatened to destroy a copy of Islam's holy book last year but initially backed down. On Friday he said Islam and its followers, not his church's burning of the Quran, were responsible for the killings.

"Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of offending culture, religion or traditions," de Mistura said. "Those who entered our building were actually furiously angry about the issue about the Quran. There was nothing political there."

But he said that with uprisings in the Middle East, and waning foreign support for the war, Karzai's government needed to pay more attention to the security of foreign civilians working in Afghanistan.

"I'm profoundly sad and I'm also shocked by what I saw, but we continue our work," de Mistura said. "We are not going to be deterred."

Emerson Announces 2011 ASCO Numatics Industrial Automation Engineering Scholarships

s ASCO Numatics business unit will award two $5,000 scholarships to U.S. engineering students pursuing careers in industrial automation-related disciplines.is the world’s leading manufacturer of comprehensive fluid automation, flow control, and pneumatics solutions.

“ is increasingly important to the global economy, and continuing to deliver innovation to meet evolving market needs will require the best talent available. We established this scholarship 3 years ago to encourage talented engineering students to consider entering this exciting branch of engineering, and it is gratifying to see the caliber of students it attracts,” said Robert W. Kemple, Jr., executive vice president, sales and marketing - Americas, ASCO Numatics.

The scholarships are merit-based and will be awarded on the candidate’s potential for leadership and for making a significant contribution to the industrial automation engineering profession, particularly as it relates to the application of fluid control and fluid power technologies. A panel of ASCO Numatics executives and independent judges will select the finalists.

Applicants must be enrolled full-time in an undergraduate or graduate program in an instrumentation, systems, electrical, mechanical, or automation engineering discipline at an accredited U.S. educational institution for the 2011/2012 academic year. Candidates must also be maintaining at least a 3.2 cumulative GPA on a 4.0 scale, and be a U.S. citizen or legal U.S. resident. Complete application details and forms are available at .

ASCO Numatics will present the scholarship awards at PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2011, September 26-28, 2011, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

About ASCO NumaticsASCO Numatics, formed by the merger of ASCO and Numatics, is a business unit of Emerson Industrial Automation. ASCO Numatics offers comprehensive fluid automation solutions, flow control, and pneumatics for a wide range of industry-focused applications. The ASCO Numatics product line in North America consists of more than 50,000 valves, an extensive selection of air preparation equipment, and a full line of actuation products. ASCO products include solenoid pilot valves, angle body piston valves, linear indicators, redundant control systems, and pressure sensors. The Numatics line covers valve manifolds, cylinders, grippers, filters, regulators, and lubricators. For more information about ASCO Numatics products, visit .

Emerson Industrial AutomationEmerson Industrial Automation, a business of Emerson, delivers manufacturing solutions designed with leading technologies — including mechanical, electrical and ultrasonic — to provide the most advanced industrial automation possible for numerous and diverse industries worldwide. The company’s wide range of products and systems used in manufacturing processes and other equipment includes motion control systems, plastics joining, precision cleaning, materials-testing equipment, fluid control valves, alternators, motors, and mechanical power transmission drives and bearings. For information, visit .

About EmersonEmerson, based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets through its network power, process management, industrial automation, climate technologies, and tools and storage businesses. Sales in fiscal 2010 were $21 billion. For more information, visit .

###

Jennifer Guimondjguimond@tizinc.com7817939380Email Information

Lead, other chemicals taint some urban gardens

With remnants of once-legal lead paint, leaded gasoline and other pollutants from the nation's industrial past tainting land in U.S. cities, soil researchers warn that the growing number of urban farmers and community gardeners need to test their dirt and take steps to make sure it's safe.

They point to cities like Indianapolis, where nine out of 10 urban gardens tested by one researcher had problems with lead in the soil. Or the Boston area, where a recent study suggests that even clean, trucked-in soil can end up contaminated, perhaps by windblown dust or dirt splatted by rain, in a few short years.

Agriculture and other experts say such problems don't outweigh the benefits of urban gardening, but those growing food should make sure their soil has been tested and take appropriate steps to address pollution so their fruits and vegetables are safe.

"You can control these things once you're cognizant of them," said Nicholas Basta, a soil and environmental chemistry professor at Ohio State University. "But nobody can underestimate the benefits of . . . fresh-grown food."

While lead paint and leaded gasoline were outlawed decades ago, experts say lead remains the biggest problem for urban growers when it comes to soil contamination. While most plants don't draw up lead from the dirt, there's a danger — especially to children — from soil tracked indoors or left on food that isn't washed well.

Other concerns are cancer-causing chemicals such as arsenic, once used to treat lumber and put off by coal-burning plants, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, a byproduct of burning materials like oil, coal, wood and garbage.

Tim Beckman, 44, had been gardening on the east side of Indianapolis for more than 15 years before he saw researcher Gabriel Filippelli on public access TV and asked him to test his dirt. The results were somewhat of a relief: Low lead levels where he gardens. But other parts of Beckman's yard had extremely high levels, and he's since reconsidered where he lets his chickens roam.

Beckman said the test results weren't a surprise. His neighborhood is mostly made up of homes built in the 1940s, when lead paint was in wide use.

"I probably should have been more aware of it at the time, but it (the TV show) was one of those 'ah-ha moments,'" Beckman said.

Filippelli, an earth sciences professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said Beckman's test results were typical of what he sees around the city: Lead levels were higher in soil near the street, where cars burning leaded gasoline once drove, and near the area where water runs off the house, known as the drip line. Based on tests at about 60 gardens around the city, Filippelli said about 90 percent need some kind of work to make gardening safe.

Beckman said the tests made him think about steps, such as putting down mulch near the house, to keep dust from lead-tainted areas from blowing into his garden beds. With the planting season approaching, other alternatives for gardeners include trucking in clean soil that can be placed on top of potentially contaminated land to create raised beds and moving their plants away from contaminated areas.

While no one knows exactly how many urban residents are growing food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are thousands of community gardens nationwide. The American Community Gardening Association said it has more than 2,600 active listings in its online database and has seen a steady increase in people inquiring about community gardening in recent years.

In the Boston suburbs of Roxbury and Dorchester, where four out of five backyard gardens tested had high lead levels, new research has suggested that a one-time fix isn't enough to keep soil safe. The nonprofit Food Project installed raised beds filled with freshly composted soil, but tests showed the lead content in some tripled in just four years. Researchers say that while more study is needed, the early results suggest growers need to change the way they think about city soil and test not only when they first plant but as years go by.

"It's not a static situation," said one of the researchers, Daniel Brabander, an associate professor at Wellesley College. "It's very prudent to characterize it at the start, but depending on neighborhood where you're doing this, it is evolving."

The Food Project has recommended growers also take simple yet potentially effective steps to reduce exposure to contaminated soil by washing their hands after gardening, washing vegetables thoroughly and trying not to track soil indoors.

Murray McBride, director of Cornell Waste Management Institute, said its analysis of garden beds in New York City generally has been encouraging, with one pilot study of 44 gardens finding less than 10 percent had high lead levels in the soil. He said efforts there to bring in clean soil and compost for raised beds may be why lead was less of a problem.

A lack of standard practices as urban agriculture expands has made the problem difficult to assess. Dave Weatherspoon, an associate professor at Michigan State University who studies food issues in Detroit, where urban farming is taking off, said more research is needed to provide a better understanding of what soil contamination could mean for crops and what should be done about it.

"We don't want people to feel that their food isn't safe," Weatherspoon said. "That is the worst thing that can happen to the U.S. food system."

Libya troops advance east

Muammar Gaddafi's better armed and organized troops reversed the rapid westward advance of rebels on Tuesday as world powers meeting in London piled pressure on the Libyan leader to step down.

A conference of 40 governments and international bodies agreed to press on with a NATO-led aerial bombardment of Libyan forces until Gaddafi complied with a U.N. resolution to end violence against civilians.

It also set up a contact group comprising 20 countries and organizations, including Arab states, the African Union and the Arab League, to coordinate international support for an orderly transition to democracy in Libya.

"All of us must continue to increase the pressure on and deepen the isolation of the Gaddafi regime through other means as well," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said after the London talks finished.

"This includes a unified front of political and diplomatic pressure that makes clear to Gaddafi that he must go."

The United States, Britain and Qatar suggested that Gaddafi and his family could be allowed to go into exile if they took up the offer quickly to end six weeks of bloodshed.

Washington and Paris also raised the possibility of arming the rebels, although both stressed no decision had been taken.

However, President Barack Obama told NBC television that he had already agreed to provide aid such as communications equipment, medical supplies and potentially transportation aid to the Libyan opposition, but no military hardware.

PENDULUM SWINGS

Without the help of air strikes, the rebels seem unable to make advances or even hold positions, and on the ground the pendulum of fighting swung back Gaddafi's way.

It took five days of foreign air strikes to pulverize Libyan government tanks around the town of Ajdabiyah before Gaddafi's troops fled and the rebels rushed in and began a 300-km (200-mile), two-day dash across the desert to within 80 km (50 miles) of the Gaddafi loyalist stronghold of Sirte.

But the rebel pick-up truck cavalcade was first ambushed, then outflanked by Gaddafi troops. Government forces retook the small town of Nawfaliyah, 120 km (75 miles) east of Sirte, and rebels said they had been pushed back a further 25 km (15 miles) to the outskirts of the larger Bin Jawad.

"The Gaddafi guys hit us with Grads (rockets) and they came round our flanks," Ashraf Mohammed, a 28-year-old rebel wearing a bandolier of bullets, told a Reuters reporter at the front.

As the onslaught began, rebels leapt behind sand dunes to fire back. After a few minutes they gave up, jumped into their pick-up trucks and sped off back toward Bin Jawad.

Reports that some Nawfaliyah residents fought alongside government troops were an ominous sign for world powers hoping to end Gaddafi's rule without a descent into all-out civil war.

In western Libya, rebels and forces loyal to Gaddafi both claimed control over parts of Misrata, Libya's third city, which has been besieged by government forces for more than a month.

State television said thousands of people were taking part in a march in support of Gaddafi in Misrata, which it said had been "cleansed of armed terrorist gangs." It was the third time the channel said Misrata had been recaptured from rebels.

A rebel spokesman called Sami said Gaddafi's forces had tried to enter the town from the east.

"Fighting is still taking place now. Random bombardment is continuing," he told Reuters by telephone from the city.

"The humanitarian situation is catastrophic. There is a shortage of food and medicine. The hospital is no longer able to deal with the situation."

LACK OF FOOD

Aid agencies are increasingly worried about a lack of food and medicines, especially in towns such as Misrata where a siege by Gaddafi's forces deprives them of access.

"It is difficult to even get water in from wells outside the town because of the positions of the forces," said Abdulrahman, a resident of Zintan in the west, cut off by pro-Gaddafi forces.

The U.N. refugee agency said it had reports of thousands of families living in makeshift shelters cut off from assistance.

Protection of civilians remains the most urgent goal of the air strikes, and British Prime Minister David Cameron accused Gaddafi's supporters of "murderous attacks" on Misrata.

A series of powerful explosions rocked Tripoli on Tuesday and state television said several targets in the Libyan capital had come under attack in rare daytime strikes.

The Pentagon said 115 strike sorties had been flown against Gaddafi's forces in the last 24 hours, and 22 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been fired.

The United States is scaling back to a "supporting role" to let NATO take full command of the air campaign from U.S. forces on Wednesday, but air strikes by U.S., French and British planes remain key to smashing Gaddafi's armor.

Obama told NBC that military pressure and international sanctions had "greatly weakened" Gaddafi, adding: "He does not have control over most of Libya at this point."

Washington says it has seen no evidence of civilian casualties of the bombardment, but Gaddafi accused Western powers of massacres of Libyan civilians in alliance with rebels who he said were al Qaeda members.

"Stop your brutal and unjust attack on our country ... Hundreds of Libyans are being killed because of this bombardment. Massacres are being mercilessly committed against the Libyan people," he said in a letter to world leaders.

"We are a people united behind the leadership of the revolution, facing the terrorism of al Qaeda on the one hand and on the other hand terrorism by NATO, which now directly supports al Qaeda," Libya's official news agency quoted him as saying.

ELECTIONS

The rebels deny any al Qaeda links and on Tuesday promised free and fair elections if Gaddafi is forced from power.

Admiral James Stavridis, head of U.S. European Command, told the U.S. Senate that intelligence on the rebel forces had shown 'flickers' of al Qaeda or Hezbollah presence, but no "detail sufficient to say there is a significant al Qaeda presence."

Clinton met the opposition Libyan National Council envoy Mahmoud Jebril before the London talks.

After the conference, she said a political resolution could include Gaddafi leaving the country, and noted that a U.N. special envoy would visit Tripoli soon to explore that option and urge Gaddafi to implement a real ceasefire.

"As you know there is a lot of reaching out that is occurring, a lot of conversations that are going on," she said.

"He will have to make a decision and that decision, so far as we're aware, has not yet been made."

Obama once again ruled out sending ground troops to Libya or directly toppling Gaddafi militarily.

"To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq," Obama said in a televised address before the conference.

However, the United States and France both said they could consider arming the rebels. "I'm not ruling it in, I'm not ruling it out," Obama told NBC.

Washington argues that this possibility is covered by the U.N. resolution, but even its allies disagree.

"I remind you it is not part of the U.N. resolution, which France sticks to," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters, "but we are ready to discuss it with our partners."

(Additional reporting by Angus MacSwan, Alexander Dziadosz, Edmund Blair, Maria Golovnina, Michael Georgy, Ibon Villelabeitia, Lamine Chikhi, Hamid Ould Ahmed, Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Andrew Quinn, David Brunnstrom, Steve Holland and Alister Bull; Writing by Jon Hemming and Kevin Liffey; Editing by Peter Millership)

The New York Times Paywall: Yes, It Works

div class="yn-story-content">

If you haven't heard, The New York Timesaround its digital content beginning 2 p.m. ET on Monday. Based on our initial tests, it's already fully functional.

After clicking through 20 articles on the site, further access was blocked by a pop-up message politely requesting I subscribe to read more. I was still able to read a seemingly unlimited number of articles if I clicked through from Facebook, Twitter or another online publication. I was also able to read another five by arriving via Google and, interestingly, five more if I searched through Bing, suggesting that I can simply switch search engines if I need to pull up more than five Times articles about a given subject in a 24-hour period down the road. (I've reached out to the Times to confirm that the paywall is supposed to work this way, and will update this post with any further information.)

This all makes a good deal of sense. The Times isn't trying to get everyone to start paying for its digital content -- in fact, the publication has repeatedly stressed that the paywall will only impact a small percentage of its readers, and it very much wants new and casual readers to continue to have access to its content. Specifically, it will impact those that have a habit of arriving at the nytimes.com to read several articles per day, and/or those who frequently access Times content through its mobile and tablet applications. It won't impact lighter readers, and those who tend to arrive at the Times from search or social media. I fall in the latter category, and I suspect many of you do, too.

Paywall DetailsFor the first four weeks, the Times is offering a heavily discounted digital subscription rate of $0.99 for the first four weeks. After that period, readers who wish to continue reading more than 20 articles per month, and who want to have access to full Times content on their mobile and/or tablet devices, must then choose between three different plans at :

$15 for four weeks of access to NYTimes.com and a mobile phone app.$20 for four weeks of access to NYTimes.com and its iPad app.$35 for four weeks of access to all of the above.Print subscribers to the Times will continue to have access to all of the Timess digital offerings at no additional charge. International Herald Tribune print subscribers will have free access to nytimes.com only.

Those who decline to subscribe will still be able to read all NYTimes.com front page content and up to 20 additional NYTimes.com articles per month, as well as browse -- but not click through to read -- the Top News sections of the Timess smartphone and tablet applications, without paying. In addition, non-subscribers will have access to articles found through search (limited to five per day from major search engines), blogs and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, even if they have exceeded their 20-article reading limit.