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Production of the first capsule — consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft — has already begun.

Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass’s preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be “aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule,” with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table’s wood be darkened.

Roosevelt formed the Civilian Conservation Corps and Kennedy created the Peace Corps with strong support and participation, while Clinton’s AmeriCorps has never fully realized its potential, hampered by continuing funding struggles since its 1994 inception.

Still, as Sen. Barack Obama called for greater public service Wednesday, some experts predict the potential now exists for programs seeking an expansion of volunteerism to succeed, despite a slumping economy and the nation being at war.

“This may be a moment in time that is different from when earlier calls did not prove that effective,” said Stephen Goldsmith, a former Indianapolis mayor and chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Goldsmith, a Republican and professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said bipartisan support, serious societal problems and heightened interest in service among young people could offer new or expanded service programs the ability for growth not seen in decades

He said surveys show today’s youth, a group sometimes called the ” 9/11 generation,” is deeply attracted to service, even as such interest has fallen off for other age groups following the attacks in 2001.

“It may represent a real shift to interest in community service,” Goldsmith said.

Amid that environment, Obama outlined several proposals to boost service, both at home and abroad, during a speech in Colorado Springs.

“Loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the 4th of July,” Obama said. “Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it. If you do, your life will be richer, our country will be stronger.”

In his speech at a University of Colorado campus, he pledged that enhanced public service and active citizenship would be a central cause of his presidency.

“We will ask Americans to serve,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve.”

Obama’s draw to youth

For supporters, Obama’s credibility on the topic is enhanced because he proved during the primary campaign that he could captivate and then mobilize young voters. His campaign argues they might also follow him into community service.

Clinton had a similar, though not quite as powerful, pull among youth. But his AmeriCorps program, which recruits workers in exchange for an education stipend, has never caught on the way the Peace Corps did in the 1960s and ’70s.

Funding for AmeriCorps has been strained amid agency mismanagement and disdain for the program among some Republicans.

Still, it recorded its 500,000th participant last year. Volunteers nationwide have served needy communities by tutoring children, feeding the homeless, caring for the elderly and rebuilding areas struck by disaster.

Obama promised to increase AmeriCorps slots from 75,000 to 250,000 and pledged to double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011.

Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain of Arizona also supports an expansion of both programs and has stressed public service, including in the military, during campaign appearances.

Obama repeated his pledge to boost the size of the active military. But he said the nation’s future and safety depends on more than just additional service members.

“It also depends on the teacher in East L.A., or the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia,” he said.

Obama had outlined many of the proposals offered Wednesday during appearances in Iowa last December.

Goals set for students

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

He said he would make federal assistance conditional on school districts establishing service programs and set the goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle school and high school students.

For college students, Obama would set the goal at 100 hours of service a year and create a $4,000 annual tax credit for college students tied to that level of service.

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office said the “special inspection” at the Wachovia Corp (WB.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) affiliate, the former A.G. Edwards, concerned the $330 billion auction rate securities meltdown.

It said regulators were looking for information about Wachovia Securities’ sales practices, internal evaluations of the auction rate securities market, and marketing strategies.

In a front-page report, the Guardian said Washington would open a U.S. interests section in the Iranian capital, halfway towards opening an embassy.

The unsourced report by the newspaper’s Washington correspondent said: “The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a U.S. interests section in Tehran, a halfway house to setting up a full embassy.

The Chicago Sun-Times depicted Blagojevich as the “new sheriff in town” Thursday morning in its coverage of the governor’s plan to form an “elite tactical team” to help the city fight crime.

“Violent crime in the city of Chicago is out of control,” Blagojevich said at the bill signing ceremony. “I’m offering resources of the state to the city to work in a constructive way with Mayor Daley to do everything we can possibly do to help stop this violence,” said the governor.

The summer of 2008 will be remembered as especially violent. Blagojevich said there’s been a child shot nearly every day since June 26, with 29 Chicago Public School students shot since last fall.

“Twenty-eight of those kids are African-American and Latino. Hard to imagine that that would be acceptable if that were, in fact, the case inother parts of the city or in a middle-class suburb somewhere,” he said. “Something is wrong, and this violence has to stop.”

Irish voters dealt a blow to the European Union last month by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty in the only popular vote on the text anywhere in the 27-nation bloc.

According to deputies who attended a meeting with Sarkozy Tuesday, he said that the Irish would “have to re-vote”, despite 53 percent opposition.

A key adviser to the French president said later on Wednesday that Sarkozy could ask Ireland to hold a second referendum on the document, but with some minor changes.

“One of the solutions would be indeed to eventually ask the Irish to re-vote, but probably not on a text that would be exactly the same,” said Henri Guaino in an interview to French television.

“We’ll see,” he added.

Guaino stressed that Sarkozy’s remarks, widely reported in the press, were “not an official statement from the president.”

Sarkozy’s comments were described as “deeply insulting” by Sinn Fein’s Aengus O Snodaigh, who speaks for the party on international affairs. Sinn Fein was the only major political party in Ireland to oppose the Lisbon Treaty.

“In the month since the Irish people voted overwhelmingly to reject the Lisbon Treaty, we have listened to a succession of EU leaders lining up to try and bully and coerce us into doing what they want,” O Snodaigh said.

“The fact is that the people have spoken and the Lisbon Treaty is dead.”

He added that Sinn Fein had sought a meeting with Sarkozy when he visits Ireland Monday.

“It is important that President Sarkozy understands that the Irish people demand that our vote is respected and, more importantly, our concerns addressed,” he said.

Even supporters of the Lisbon Treaty reacted badly to Sarkozy’s initiative.

John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, and Andrew Tyrie, Conservative member for Chichester, have said that the reports of abuse must be examined by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which oversees the security agencies.

A Home Office official has said that MI5 agents “do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhumane or degrading treatment.”

But details of three new alleged abuse cases have raised concerns for Mr McDonnell and Mr Tyrie.

Mr McDonnell said one of his constituents, a male medical student, claims to have been abducted at gunpoint in 2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, which stands opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi.

He said he was then whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with execution.

The student had been held as part of investigations into the suicide attacks in July that year, and claims he was questioned by British intelligence officers after being tortured by Pakistani agents. He was then released to his father.

“I don’t have one,” he muttered.

In the days that followed, a new quality of dread settled over the place like soot, as people weighed their options. Heat or food? Gas or electricity? Medicine or mortgage payments? What to give up? What to cut back? The conversations were everywhere. In the supermarket, I heard one man tell another: “When I was a kid, you woke up, went into the bathroom, and broke up the ice in the toilet. Now my kids will have to do the same. America is moving backward.”