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China is not a strategic adversary of the United States, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said during a news roundtable yesterday. “I do not see China at this point as a strategic adversary of the United States,” Gates said. “It's a partner in some respects. It's a competitor in other respects. And so we are simply watching to see what they're doing.” Chinese government officials announced last week that the Chinese military budget would increase 17 percent. This would be the 19th year of double-digit growth in defense spending, DoD officials said. China will budget roughly $45 billion for defense....

SUNDAY Age columnist Terry Lane has been caught out again quoting unreliable Internet sources, despite a similar "almighty stuff-up" last year leading him to offer his resignation. It is the second time Lane has used spurious Internet claims to back anti-George W. Bush attacks in the paper – and this time to criticise Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd. In his latest piece deriding the US Bush administration as a "self-evident force for stupidity", Lane claimed rangers at the world-famous Grand Canyon were banned from answering questions about the age of the park "because the truth will upset Bush's fundamentalist supporters".....

For more than a century and a half, men and women of The Associated Press have had the privilege of bringing truth to the world. They have gone to great lengths, overcome great obstacles – and, too often, made great and horrific sacrifices – to ensure that the news was reported quickly, accurately and honestly. Our efforts have been rewarded with trust: More people in more places get their news from the AP than from any other source. In the 21st century, that news is transmitted in more ways than ever before – in print, on the air and on...

Oct. 1, 2006 — A Republican staff member warned Congressional pages five years ago to "watch out" for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page. Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor. Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don't get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff." Staff members at the House clerk's office did not return phone calls seeking comment. Some of the sexually explicit instant messages...

AMMAN, Jordan — On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Omar received the call to jihad. Literally. “There’s a present for you,” a voice on the other end of the phone said that morning, he recalled. It was a common code whenever his friends and colleagues wanted to share a new broadcast or communiqué from Al Qaeda over the Internet, he said. Abu Omar, speaking on the condition that only his nickname be used, said he soon went to one of the Internet cafes he frequents in Amman and began distributing the latest video by Al Qaeda,...

DELHI -- The discovery of a backpack stuffed with three loaded guns and an assault rifle prompted a lockdown at Delhi High School and Delhi Middle School on Monday. A man searching for aluminum cans found the backpack at 9 a.m. near a trash can on the western edge of the Delhi Educational Park, the campus that houses the middle school and high school. Inside the backpack was a loaded .357 magnum, a 40-caliber automatic pistol, a 380 semi-automatic pistol and an SKS assault rifle with a 30-round banana clip stocked with ammunition, said Sheriff Mark Pazin. "There's nothing more...

In a startling report revealing a tale of transatlantic espionage not witnessed since the glory days of 007, the London-based Financial Times recently detailed how Britain, supposedly America’s closest European ally, has been leading a multi-year European undercover ('back-door') effort within the United States to undermine U.S. climate change policy. While this is not surprising, it does smack of interference with another nation's policies. It also happens to confirm prior ITSSD research, readily accessible on its website.

Schwarzenegger Squashes Religious Freedom Thomasson: “Arnold Schwarzenegger has two faces. He speaks at churches and says he believes in religious freedom and family values, yet he’s stabbing pro-family Californians in the back.” Sacramento, California – Campaign for Children and Families is shocked and dismayed that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed SB 1441 (Kuehl). Today’s disastrous action by Schwarzenegger means Christian and other faith-based colleges in California will be forced to promote transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality if they accept students with Cal Grants. “People of conscience are appalled that Arnold Schwarzenegger has trampled religious freedom to satisfy hyperactive sexual activists,”...

6 April 2005   http://www.lapl.org/catalog/ Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920- Title(s) Politics of psycho-pharmacology / Timothy Leary. Publisher Berkeley, CA : Ronin Pub. : Distributed by Publishers Group West, c2002. Paging 127 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. Series Leary library [ This from Los Angeles Library, it did not show up at the University of California, nor at the New York Public Library. My question : was this written by Timothy Leary (1920-1997). ] Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920- Title(s) Your brain [!] is god / Timothy Leary. Publisher Berkeley, Calif. : Ronin : Distributed by Publishers Group West, c2001. Paging...

On Sunday, the Australian government issued the following alert to its citizens: "We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in the United Arab Emirates because of the high threat of terrorist attack. We continue to receive reports that terrorists are planning attacks against Western interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Commercial and public areas frequented by foreigners are possible terrorist targets." The United States has approved a business deal that would turn over the operation of six major American ports to a company that is owned by the UAE, the very country Australians are to be...

LONDON — The French government tried to blame the 1985 sinking of Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior on British spy agency MI6, according to official documents released under freedom of information. The campaign of misinformation and smears - suggesting MI6 bombed the ship in New Zealand and framed French secret agents, or that MI6 knew in advance of the French mission — infuriated Margaret Thatcher's government. The documents, released under Britain's Freedom of Information Act to The Guardian newspaper, show how Malcolm Rifkind, then a Foreign Office minister, told British diplomats in Paris to demand an end to the "campaign of misinformation"....

School officials thumb their noses at California parents who object to a highly controversial musical being performed by students. You might expect to find musicals containing depictions of rape, incest and bestiality somewhere off-Broadway—not in a high school production. But at La Canada High School in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., this year's spring musical is the highly controversial "Bat Boy." The main character is a pointy-eared half-human boy with fangs who's discovered living in a cave in Hope Falls, W.V. While exploring the world, Bat Boy and the rest of the cast use drugs, alcohol and sex as tools for...

"It started with (hurricane) Katrina," he said to the early morning NBC anchor. Then, according to Tim, there were the problems with the CIA agent leak. Added to the truthfulness problems about WMD which Bush used to justify our attack on Iraq, it explains why the Bush White House is in trouble, with job disapproval/trust ratings in the negative sixty percent range! Before he left office -- in fact, if memory serves, on the day he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives -- Bill Clinton sent missles to bomb Baghdad. Of late, those who recall that sort of...

It's hard to imagine that The New York Times' editorial page could misconstrue an issue involving guns, seeing as how the writers of the Gray Lady's editorials are so open-minded about the Second Amendment. (That, dear readers, would be sarcasm.) An offering last week about legislation before the U.S. House that would protect gun manufacturers from nuisance lawsuits posited: "This extraordinary shield, written to the diktat of the National Rifle Association, is so sweeping that it would have barred the D.C. sniper settlement and other valid negligence claims." Hmm. Sounds like an editorial written to the diktat of the Brady...

<p>Much of what was reported as fact by government officials and the media during the chaotic first week afterward turned out to be fiction.</p> <p>Myths and misinformation multiplied, from how many people died to what conditions were really like inside the Louisiana Superdome.</p>

Israel And Freedom For Jonathan Pollard By Caroline Glick The Jerusalem Post - With INA Publisher's Note Below Jerusalem ---- April 28......Jonathan Pollard is one of the most polarizing figures of our times. Pollard, a former intelligence analyst in US naval intelligence, has now served 20 years of a life imprisonment sentence following his conviction for transferring classified US intelligence materials relating to Arab ballistic missile and nonconventional weapons programs to Israel from May 1984 until his arrest in November 1985. For his contribution to Israel's security and for his long suffering in prison, Israel considers Pollard a national hero....

St. Petersburg police officers have added the Colt AR-15 rifle to their inventory to counter the expiration of the assault weapons ban and the appearance of more heavily armed criminals. ST. PETERSBURG - (AP) -- The expiration of the nation's ban on the sale of assault rifles and the appearance of more heavily armed criminals have pushed more than 100 St. Petersburg police officers to order assault rifles of their own for official duty. The first group of officers completed the required 16 hours of instruction for using Colt AR-15s in January. The semiautomatic weapons fire bullets that travel up...

I'm yielding the floor to Dafydd ab Hugh for his dissection of a story by WLS in Chicago about their interview with retiring Congressman Henry Hyde: A transcript of a video report that appeared on an ABC affilliate makes a rather startling claim Upon careful parsing, however, there appears to be an awful lot of gravy for so little pot roast. Here is the screaming headline: Clinton impeachment was retaliation for Nixon, says retiring congressman by Andy Shaw. Rep. Hyde reflects on 30 years of office (New headline) By the time we get all the way to the lede, an...

An outbreak of the killer Marburg virus beyond northern Angola is being successfully controlled thanks to a combination of frontline assistance by international health agencies and "social mobilization," says Angola's top health official. ... ... the disease has been mainly confined to the northern province of Uige, where 277 people have died, ...

When some members of Congress violate the Constitution, how can we have any confidence in their leadership? Yet that is precisely the effect these unlawful filibusters of judicial nominees are having -- undermining confidence in the Senate. Instead of voting yes or no on President Bush's picks for certain federal judgeships, Democrats are refusing to allow a vote to even take place, using a Senate rule that no motion may come to a vote while still under discussion. The filibuster, as it's called, has been used by both sides for over a century and a half to delay votes while...