2 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 21, 2006 NATION/WORLD Cyclone slams Australian coast NEWS IN BRIEF HEADLINES FROM AROUND THE WOR Officials said they used lessons from Hurricane Katrina to plan evacuations and disaster relief CAIRNS, Australia (AP) - Metal roofs littered streets, wooden houses lay in splinters and banana plantations were stripped bare after the most pow- erful cyclone to hit Australia in three decades lashed the country's eastern coast yesterday. Amazingly, the storm caused no reported fatalities, and only 30 people suffered minor injuries. But the dam- age from Cyclone Larry, a Category 5 storm with winds up to 180 mph, was expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Hardest hit was Innisfail, a farming city of 8,500 people 60 miles south of the tourist city of Cairns in northeastern Queensland state. "It looks like an atomic bomb hit the place," Innisfail mayor Neil Clarke told Australian television. "It is severe dam- age. This is more than a local disaster, this is a national disaster" The town urgently needs accommoda- tion for people whose homes were dam- aged, a power supply to feed hospitals and other infrastructure, he said. There was no official count of the homeless yesterday, but given the number of homes badly damaged, the figure could run into the thousands, Clarke said. The casualty toll was so low because people left town or went to shelters after authorities posted warnings. Resi- dents and officials were mindful of the damage Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans and Mississippi last August, said Ben Creagh, a spokesman for Queensland state Department of Emer- gency Services. "Everyone here studied Katrina and took a lot of messages away, a lot of lessons at the expense of the poor old Yanks;" Creagh said. "There was abso- lutely no complacency at the planning level at all, and I think that shows.... Good planning, a bit of luck - we've dodged a bullet." Within hours of the storm's landfall, officials declared a state of emergency, prepared Black Hawk helicopters to run rescue missions and announced cash pay- outs for victims - $720 for each adult and $290 for each child who lost their home. Prime Minister John Howard indi- cated more aid was to come. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said 55 percent of homes in Innisfail had been damaged, though rescue teams had yet to get full access to the swamped region. All roads into the town remained blocked late yesterday. Innisfail Barrier Reef Motel owner Amanda Fitzpatrick echoed the mayor's damage assessment. CLEVELAND Bush urges critics to look at progress President Bush cited success in stabilizing an insurgent stronghold in northern Iraq yesterday, saying he has "confidence in our strategy" and critics should look beyond the images of violence to see clear signs of progress. Bush tried a new tactic to boost sagging support for the war, relating to his audience in Cleveland a lengthy story about a campaign to rid the northern city of Tal Afar of ter- rorism against civilians. Success there "gives reason for hope for a free Iraq," he said. Bush described how the insurgents who have been using murder and intimida- tion to run roughshod over the city now have been killed or captured by Iraqi forces and coalition troops working together. The president's detailed description of the campaign - and the eventual success story - was meant to underscore another point the White House is trying to make: evidence of progress is more difficult than daily bombings and deaths to capture in media sound bites. MINSK, nlput Citizens in Belarus continue to protest election AP-'PHOTOI Covered in blood, Kate Charleston stands outside her home in Innisfail, Australia, from which she narrowly escaped yesterday. "We could only go out in the eye of the storm and have a look and it just looks like an atomic bomb has gone off;" she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Farmers were expected to be among the hardest hit. The region is a major growing region for bananas and sugar cane, and vast tracts of the crops were flattened. "It looks like someone's gone in there with a slasher and slashed the top off everything;' said Bill Horsford, a cane farmer. One lawmaker estimated lost rev- enues could run to $110 million. The storm also barreled over a portion of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, damag- ing a narrow band of coral, said David Wachenfeld, director of science at the government body that cares for the reef. The reef is more than 1,240 miles long, and the affected area is only about 30 miles across and far from the places where nearly 2 million tourists a year gaze in awe at the coral's vibrant colors and fish life, he said. It would take 10 to 20 years for new coral to grow and replace the damaged area, he said. The storm was the most powerful to hit Australia since Christmas Eve 1974, when Cyclone Tracy destroyed the north- ern city of Darwin, killing 65 people. A man who answered the phone at an Innisfail evacuation center late yesterday said it was too soon to estimate the num- ber of people who lost their homes. Do new bases hint at a longer stay in Iraq? The U.S. recently built a heli-park, a large base complete with a Burger King and Pizza Hut and is planning a 6,000 person mess hall BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States. At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clog- ging the roads. At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry air- men and soldiers for chow. Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad. "I think we'll be here forever" the 19-year-old air- man from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base. The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majori- ties tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country. The question of America's future in Iraq looms larger as the U.S. military enters the fourth year of its war here, waged first to oust President Saddam Hussein, and now to crush an Iraqi insurgency. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister, has said he opposes permanent foreign bases. A wide range of American opinion is against them as well. Such bases would be a "stupid" provocation, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, former U.S. Mideast commander and a critic of the original U.S. invasion. But events, in explosive situations like Iraq's, can turn "no" into "maybe" and even "yes." The Shiite Muslims, ascendant in Baghdad, might decide they need long-term U.S. protection against insurgent Sunni Muslims. Washington might take the political risks to gain a strategic edge - in its confrontation with next-door Iran, for example. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other U.S. officials disavow any desire for per- manent bases. But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad, is different from "permanent," and the official U.S. position is carefully worded. Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman on international security, told The Associated Press it would be "inappropriate" to discuss future basing until a new Iraqi government is in place, expected in the coming weeks. Less formally, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about "permanent duty stations" by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was "an interesting question." He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad govern- ment, if "they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time." In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language intriguing. "If they aren't planning for bases, they ought to say so," she said. "I would expect to hear 'No bases."' Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete. In 2005-06, Washington has authorized or pro- posed almost $1 billion for U.S. military construc- tion in Iraq, as American forces consolidate at Balad, known as Anaconda, and a handful of other installa- tions, big bases under the old regime. They have already pulled out of 34 of the 110 bases they were holding last March, said Maj. Lee English of the U.S. command's Base Working Group, plan- ning the consolidation. "The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi security forces," English said. The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops, frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets. Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from the nearest town, say it hasn't been hit by insurgent mortar or rocket fire since October. Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The pro- posed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man's-land and build new security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers. The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi elec- tricity grid - a typical sign of a long-term base. At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facil- ity, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat - in military parlance, a "vehicle entrapment ditch with berm." Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year. Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force's huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length of 13 foot- ball fields, filled with attack, transport and recon- naissance helicopters. Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth ramp beside the runways, for medical- evacuation and other aircraft on alert. And $25 mil- lion was approved for other "pavement projects," from a special road for munitions trucks to a com- pound for special forces. Thousands of opposition supporters gathered in the center of the Belarus' capital yesterday for a second night, hoping their protest would help overturn a presidential election that the U.S. said was flawed by a "climate of fear." Their numbers were smaller than on election night, and prospects for a Ukraine- style "Orange Revolution" seemed remote. But with overnight temperatures at 28 degrees Fahrenheit, protesters set up a dozen small tents and vowed to turn the demonstration into a round-the-clock presence. The small but assertive move could rally others to the cause. But it could also prove unacceptable to authorities. Officials put on a show of force, with busloads of riot police fanning out into nearby streets and courtyards and preventing people from approaching the main square. Police had only a small and unobtrusive presence at the protest the previous night, when an estimated 10,000 people braved the freezing cold and snow to regis- ter their outrage after authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko was declared the overwhelming winner of Sunday's elections. LONDON Testimony ends in 'Da Vinci Code' trial Arguments closed in "The Da Vinci Code" copyright case with the lawyer for the men suing the publisher of the blockbuster novel suggesting that author Dan Brown's testimony was unreliable and questioning why his wife, who helped research the best seller, did not testify. Jonathan Rayner James, whose clients say Brown stole their ideas for his huge best seller, said Monday that the novelist's testimony should be treated with "deep suspicion." He also asked why Brown's wife, Blythe, who did much of the research for the book, was not called as a witness in the copyright-infringement case. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing "Da Vinci Code" publisher Random House, claiming Brown's book "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." BAGHDAD Residents say U.S. Marines killed 15 civilians Residents gave new details yesterday about the shootings of civilians in a western Iraqi town, where the U.S. military is investigating allegations of potential miscon- duct by American troops last November. The residents said troops entered homes and shot and killed 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine. The military, which announced Friday that a dozen Marines are under investigation for possible war crimes in the Nov. 19 incident, said in a statement yesterday that a vid- eotape of the aftermath of the shootings in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, was presented in support of the allegations. - Compiled from Daily wire reports CORRECTIONS Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@inchigandaily.com. t£ 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com 01 DoNN M. FRESARD Editor in Chief fresard@michigandaily.com 647-3336 Sini-Thurs. 5 p.m. - 2 a.m. JONATHAN DOBBERSTEIN Business Manager business@michigandaily.com 764-0558 Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. i1 . r 1 Warning... M ay , C ause Beat the Price Increase! Sign up by April 15 to save $100. 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