BUENA PARK, Calif. – Mayor Art Brown spent years pushing for a commuter train station combined with nearby housing in his community. But as townhouses are being finished around the $14 million Metrolink station, he’s facing the prospect that California’s high-speed rail line may plow right through his beloved project.

“The only option they presented to us was either losing the condo units or losing our train station,” Brown said of an engineering presentation to city leaders last year.

That a successful effort to get car-dependent Californians to embrace mass transit could be derailed by another transportation project may strike some as ironic. But it’s also one of the hidden costs — and a potential harbinger of delay — in the ambitious plan that would enable passengers to speed the 430 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 2 1/2 hours.

The conflict is one of many the California High Speed Rail Authority will have to resolve as it races to meet a September 2011 deadline to finish environmental work or risk losing a $2.25 billion federal grant.

“The idea that they would spend millions for a new station and remove it is a colossal waste of time and money,” said Mark Goldsmith, a resident of the “transit village” next to the Buena Park station.

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MARJAH, Afghanistan (AFP) –
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday visited the former Taliban stronghold of Marjah and appealed to wary residents to back his government after a fierce military offensive.

It was Karzai’s first visit to Marjah since about 15,000 US, NATO and Afghan troops stormed the region in the southern province of Helmand on February 13 to wrest it from the Islamist insurgents and drug traffickers.

Arriving in the bomb-scarred town, Karzai met about 300 elders and asked them to support his government, following weeks of fighting that battered the region and forced terrified residents to flee their homes.

The assault on Marjah and Nad Ali district has been keenly watched as the first major test of President Barack Obama’s strategy to end eight years of war by driving out the hardline militia and reasserting government control.

“The promises that we have made for security and reconstruction, we will fulfil them,” Karzai told the gathering.

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FARGO, N.D. – Salesmen in Fargo are hawking products with names like the Muscle Wall and the Sandbagging Buddy. Emergency workers in Keokuk, Iowa, are planning to barricade the water treatment plant with limestone boulders. The farmers’ cooperative in Quincy, Ill., is moving grain inland to keep it dry.

Spring could bring disastrous flooding again to the Upper Midwest, government forecasters are warning. And folks along the Red, the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers are taking precautions, especially after calamities last year and the year before.

“This is like having a two-month warning that a tornado is going to hit your house,” said Richard Thomas, who lives near Fargo. “There’s always the possibility we’ll be just fine, but it’s bothering me. It’s stressful.”

The National Weather Service said heavy snow cover and ground that is already saturated could lead to severe flooding in as little as a few weeks. Exactly how severe will depend on how fast the snow melts and how heavy the spring rains are.

In Fargo and neighboring Moorhead, Minn., an area of about 200,000 people, the chances of major flooding were projected Friday at about 90 percent. The probability of record flooding was put at 19 percent. Elsewhere across the Upper Midwest, the threat is less dire but still serious.

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MOSCOW – A fatal car crash in downtown Moscow has exposed growing public anger at officials who seem to live above the law, as they flout the rules of the road and endanger the lives of ordinary Russians.

A black Mercedes with a flashing blue light on the roof and a VIP inside collides head-on with a little hatchback, killing the two women in the car. The VIP — a vice president of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company — leaves in another car, and police blame the hatchback for swerving into oncoming traffic.

But civic activists have disputed the official version, and a rap song condemning the oil executive to hell has become an instant YouTube sensation, with more than 300,000 hits by Friday afternoon.

In recent years, numerous government officials, powerful businessmen or their relatives have been involved in fatal accidents, often caused by drunken driving, and gotten away with fines or reprisals. But this time people are saying “enough.”

Bloggers are urging Russians to boycott Lukoil gas stations, and opposition activists are calling on the Kremlin to stop the “lawlessness” of officials and rich businessmen who flout traffic rules and avoid responsibility for accidents they cause.

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