Monday, August 10, 2009 BEIJING: China's state news agency said Sunday there was a bomb threat on a plane from Afghanistan scheduled to land in Xinjiang, the restive western region of China that was rocked by ethnic riots last month.News Agency did not identify the airline or the type of plane, but said the Urumqi airport had been told not to allow the plane to land.It said police and emergency vehicles had been rushed to the airport.Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, was the scene of the worst ethnic violence in China in decades when deadly rioting killed 197 people and injured more than 1,700, according to official count.A Xinjiang regional government duty officer, who refused to give his name, said he had not received any information about the incident, while calls to the region's public security bureau rang unanswered.Calls to the Urumqi airport's information counter also rang unanswered.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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