Survey: Majority of Afghans trust ANP

From ISAF:

Confidence in ANP among Afghans grows
Story by Petty Officer 3rd Class Eric Lockwood

AFGHANISTAN — The Afghan National Police, ANP, are the vanguard of defense for Afghanistan against the myriad threats the country faces — Taliban recrudescence, crime, corruption, to name three. However, their effectiveness drops severely if public confidence in their ability is lacking amongst the masses.

Lucky for the children/future of the country that the level of confidence is rising—the people trust the police. According to a survey administered by United Nations Development Program, UNDP, and conducted by Afghan Center for Socioeconomic and Opinion Research, a non-governmental organization founded in 2003, 74 percent of Afghanis have confidence in ANP abilities. That figure has grown since 2010 by three points.

A similar number of Afghans have a favorable opinion of police, a figure that’s roughly held steady since the organizations previous survey last year.

These numbers would probably not be so impressively high if people didn’t have a generally positive opinion of service in the police force. If the police didn’t act in the interest of the people, it is very likely that service within the institution would carry low, or possibly even no, prestige.

Police service does confer upon the server a high degree of respectability. Indeed, a full three quarters of all of Afghanistan think of policeperson as a prestigious occupation, a number, like the others, up from 2010—by six points.

The number of Afghans who respect the police, in fact, is even higher than that. At 81 percent, a full four out of every five Afghans you speak to will say they respect the police as a whole, up 8 points from last year.

Read the rest here.

GPS shoe helps track seniors with Alzheimer’s

Thank GOODness I'm regressing, and will NEVER be a 'senior' - with or without Alzheimers!!!

From Homeland Security News Wire:

08 February 2012

For $300 consumers in the United States can now purchase a pair of GPS-enabled shoes to keep track of dementia-suffering senior citizens; after purchasing the shoes, buyers will have the ability to set up a monitoring service to locate lost family members who have Alzheimer’s disease

GPS locator embedded to help locate wandering Alzheimer's patients // Source: pc00.com

Developed by GTX Corp and Aextrex Worldwide, the first 3,000 pairs of shoes just recently hit stores.

After purchasing the shoes, buyers will have the ability to set up a monitoring service to locate lost family members who have Alzheimer’s disease. The device can even be programmed to create a “geofence,” where an alert would be triggered if a person strays outside of a certain area....

Okay, I know its a serious topic, but my favourite line of the whole article, given my own current exploratory wanderings? This one:

"They go for a walk and they can get lost for days.”

Although this GPS shoe may be a good idea in theory, some of the statements further in the article are just plain creepy, in my (always) humble opinion. Go read it here.

I was going to end by saying I'll stick with Bratdog's nose for direction, but guess that could be a moot point, if SHE has a 'senior moment' or two.

Afghan soldier boasts of shooting Australians

From AFP:

Feb 11, 2012

An Afghan soldier who opened fire on Australian troops at a remote base last year has claimed he and his fellow army recruits had often discussed killing the foreigners, according to a report.

Mohammed Roozi talks about how he attacked Australian and Afghan soldiers at Patrol Base Nasir in November, saying he turned a machine gun and rocket launcher on them before going into hiding.

Roozi, who seriously injured three Australians and two Afghan soldiers in the attack, has been the subject of a manhunt ever since...

More here.

Good Morning America

Rest In Peace Karol Ann Keasler: New 9/11 victim is identified

Ten years after 9/11, work is ongoing to identify those victims who were not found and identified in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack.

Today comes this:

New 9/11 victim is identified

Friday, February 10, 2012

[...]

The New York City Medical Examiner has announced the identification of the latest victim: Karol Ann Keasler, a 42-year-old who worked on the 89th floor of the south tower. The University of Arizona graduate was an events planner for an investment banking company and engaged to be married.

"I was speaking to her on the phone," her mother Denise Keasler told the Las Vegas Review-Journal three years after the attacks. "I had the TV on. She said she was all right. "Then I watched when the plane hit the building, and I never heard from her again."...

(Source)

From the NY Daily News:

Courtesy of Susan Keasler

Karol Ann Keasler (r.) with her sister, Susan Keasler, in undated photo. Karol Ann’s remains were recently identified.

THE REMAINS of a globe-trotting Brooklyn Heights woman whose journeys took her to Tuscany, Asia and Africa have finally been identified.

Karol Ann Keasler, 42, a bride-to-be who volunteered in a soup kitchen and read novels to the elderly, was finally identified by the city’s chief medical examiner on Friday.

“It’s been almost 11 years,” her younger sister Susan told the Daily News from her home near Las Vegas. “And after all this time, I had come to believe that things like this only happen on ‘CSI.’ ”

Keasler worked as an event planner for investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods on the 89th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. She was identified in part through a breakthrough technology, developed years after 9/11, that can extract a full DNA profile from a small bone fragment.

“I didn’t even realize they were still trying to identify her until the Nevada police came to my mother’s door and told us what they had found in New York,” her sister said.

All they had in the big white ME’s tent off FDR Drive was a bone in Karol Keasler’s foot that had been discovered in the months after 9/11. That turned out to be enough to make a positive ID.

“I feel a little bit restful, a little bit relieved, a little bit thankful,” she said....

Read more about Karol Keasler here.


Never forget.

Falklands minefields tackled

BritishForcesNews on Feb 9, 2012

Over 100 minefields remain in the Falkland Islands, laid by Argentine Forces during the 1982 conflict. The danger posed by the mines mean large areas of the islands are fenced off, but progress is being made to open up the land. Engineers are working to identify where mines have been placed so that areas that are safe can be made accessible to the public. The positions of the mines are marked and fenced off rather than removed, an approach considered to be more cost-effective.

Petawawa soldiers off to Kabul

From Ottawa Citizen:

Back to Afghanistan for Petawawa soldiers

110 troops will support efforts to train, mentor Afghan soldiers in Kabul area

By Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen February 10, 2012

Cpl. Harry O'Connell gets a goodbye cuddle from his young son, Hunter, 3, at a departure ceremony for 110 soldiers from CFB Petawawa Thursday.

Photograph by: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Citizen

For the first time since Canada's combat mission ended, a contingent of troops from CFB Petawawa is preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, this time to assist Canada's training mission there.

About 110 soldiers from the upper Ottawa Valley base will support members of the Royal Canadian Regiment's second battalion, out of CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick, when they take over Operation Attention - the mission to mentor and train Afghan troops in and around Kabul - beginning in March.

CFB Gagetown will supply most of the mission's 950 soldiers, but troops from Petawawa and elsewhere are assisting because the specialized services required aren't all centralized in a single location...

Read much more here, about the latest of Canada's Soldiers off to serve a cause greater than themselves.

My heart goes with them all.


(H/T Heather)