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• The U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the planning, said flying the military equipment out of Afghanistan to a port will cost five to seven times as much as it does to truck it through Pakistan. About a hundred trucks are stacked up at the border, and hundreds more are loaded and stalled in compounds, waiting to leave Afghanistan.
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Officials say rise of oil trains is fueling concerns about preparedness in small towns, cities
• WOLF POINT, Mont. (AP) -- It's tough to miss the trains hauling crude oil out of the Northern Plains. They are growing more frequent by the day, mile-long processions of black tank cars that rumble through wheat fields and towns, along rivers and national parks.
• As common as they have become across the U.S. and Canada, officials in dozens of towns and cities where the oil trains travel say they are concerned with the possibility of a major derailment, spill or explosion, while their level of preparation varies widely.
• Stoking those fears was the July crash of a crude train from the Bakken oil patch in Lac Megantic, Quebec -- not far from the Maine border -- that killed 47 people. A Nov. 8 train derailment in rural Alabama where several oil cars exploded reinforced them.
• "It's a grave concern," said Dan Sietsema, the emergency coordinator in northeastern Montana's Roosevelt County, where oil trains now pass regularly through the county seat of Wolf Point. "It has the ability to wipe out a town like Wolf Point."
• The number of carloads hauled by U.S. railroads has surged in recent years, from 10,840 in 2009 to a projected 400,000 this year.
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Indian government official says diplomat arrested in NYC reported blackmail attempt by maid
• NEW DELHI (AP) -- An Indian diplomat who was arrested in New York City and accused of paying her housekeeper about $3 dollars an hour had claimed the woman blackmailed her over the summer, an Indian official said Thursday.
• The case has sparked a diplomatic furor between the United States and India, which is incensed over what its officials described as degrading treatment toward Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York.
• The U.S. Marshals Service confirmed it had strip-searched Khobragade and (Continued on page 25)
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