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Excerpt - PRAGUE (Reuters) - Islamic extremists planned to kidnap dozens of Jews in Prague and hold them hostage before murdering them, the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported on Friday. The Czech Republic's leading newspaper quoted unidentified sources close to intelligence agencies as saying the captives would have been held in a Prague synagogue while the captors made broad demands that they knew could not be fulfilled. When those demands -- which were not specified by the sources -- were not met, the extremists would blow up the building, killing all who were inside, the paper added. ~ snip ~...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

Less than a week after taking office, the Czech Republic's new minority government is embroiled in a major political row with opposition parties over a US project to base missiles on Czech territory. Washington wants to deploy 10 interceptor missiles and a radar in Europe to reinforce its defences against the threat of a ballistic missile attack from North Korea or Iran, and currently has its eye on either the Czech Republic or Poland as the favoured home for the new system. The Czech Republic's new right wing Civic Democrat government, which finally took office on September 4 after three...

On today's episode of Meet the Press (Sunday, September 10, 2006), Tim Russert interviewed Vice President Cheney. In the interview, Russert took issue with the fact that the Vice President once stated on his show that it was "pretty well confirmed" that Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001. Here's the craftiness by Russert: Mr. Cheney made the "pretty well confirmed" remark in a December 9, 2001, appearance, over four-and-a-half years ago. Russert failed to inform his audience this morning when the remark was originally made. In addition, in three following...

Lopez: In sum, how many times did Bill Clinton lose bin Laden?Miniter: Here's a rundown. The Clinton administration:1. Did not follow-up on the attempted bombing of Aden marines in Yemen.2. Shut the CIA out of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation, hamstringing their effort to capture bin Laden.3. Had Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden lieutenant, slip through their fingers in Qatar.4. Did not militarily react to the al Qaeda bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.5. Did not accept the Sudanese offer to turn bin Laden.6. Did not follow-up on another offer from Sudan through a private back channel.7. Objected to...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight. After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn't — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one. Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell — a specialist in neutron stars...

This Day In History SOVIETS INVADE CZECHOSLOVAKIA: August 20, 1968 On the night of August 20, 1968, approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring"--a brief period of liberalization in the communist country. Czechoslovakians protested the invasion with public demonstrations and other non-violent tactics, but they were no match for the Soviet tanks. The liberal reforms of First Secretary Alexander Dubcek were repealed and "normalization" began under his successor Gustav Husak. Pro-Soviet communists seized control of Czechoslovakia's democratic government in 1948. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin imposed his will on Czechoslovakia's communist leaders, and...

Conservative leader Mirek Topolanek was named as the Czech Republic’s new prime minister yesterday following the politically brokered resignation of outgoing premier Jiri Paroubek and his cabinet. Topolanek, 50, was appointed prime minister by President Vaclav Klaus as a first step toward forming a minority government, a job that will require negotiations with Paroubek and could take more than a month. Paroubek, 54, handed his resignation to Klaus and was “entrusted to temporarily lead the Czech Republic government until the time that a new government is designated”, said presidential spokesman Ladislav Jakl. The transfer of power capped a 10-week power...

Moscow calls provocation incident involving diplomat in Prague MOSCOW. April 19 (Interfax-AVN) The Russian Defense Ministry has described as a provocation an incident involving Russian Military Attache in Prague Col. Alexander Sketin. "This is pure provocation and a result of military-political intrigues on the Czechs' part," Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Vladimir Fyodorov told Interfax on Wednesday. "All the circumstances of the incident are being scrutinized now, and I hope the results will become known in the near future," Fyodorov said. A number of media outlets reported earlier that Sketin had scuffled with police following a dinner with Stanislav Bradka, director...

"More details have emerged about the arrest in Prague on Sunday of a person described by the Swedish media as "Osama bin Laden's man in Sweden." The man, a 39-year-old Swede of Lebanese origin, is now in custody awaiting a decision on whether extradition proceedings can begin against him. " ~snip~ "Mr Kassir was on a Czech Airlines flight from Stockholm to Beirut, where he hoped to be reunited with members of his family. The plane had a brief stopover in Prague, and as soon as he stepped onto Czech soil he was approached by members of an elite police...

Cracow tops Prague in popularity 07.03.2006 Cracow has topped Prague in popularity. For the first time ever, more tourists visited Cracow than Prague in 2005. Some 8 million tourists came to Cracow and 3.5m of them stayed at least one night in hotels. According to Andrzej Kozlowski, the former head of the Polish Tourist Organisation, this increase in popularity is the result of promotional and marketing efforts, as well as the plethora of budget airlines flying to Poland. "Prague was trendy - so everyone went to Prague. Now the trend has moved over to Cracow," says Mr Kozlowski.

Russia morally responsible for 1968 invasion: Putin Wed Mar 1, 2006 2:47 PM ET PRAGUE (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday his country bore a moral responsibility for the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, but stopped short of offering an apology that many Czechs have long sought. The invasion ended the pro-democracy movement known as the "Prague Spring" and put the country firmly under Moscow's thumb. "We do not bear any legal responsibility, but the moral responsibility is there," Putin said at a news conference in Prague after arriving on Wednesday as part of a trip to...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version January 13, 2006, 8:11 a.m. The Butcher with the Terror Ties The evidence mounts. Drip, drip, drip. Drop by drop, isolated news stories and emerging documents are eroding the popular myth that Saddam Hussein had no connections to Islamofascist terrorists. These revelations undermine war critics’ efforts to whitewash Baghdad’s ancien regime — such as when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid declared: “There was [sic] no terrorists in Iraq.” Likewise, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) describes a “nonexistent relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.” Reid, Levin, and others who dismiss...

PRAGUE--On Oct. 27, 2001, the New York Times reported (erroneously) that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta "flew to the Czech Republic on April 8 and met with [an] Iraqi intelligence officer," helping to give credence to the so-called Prague connection. It subsequently cast doubt on it, editorializing in November 2005 that the alleged meeting between the hijacker and the Iraqi was part of President Bush and his team's "rewriting of history" based on nothing more than a false tale "from an unreliable drunk." But was the putative Prague connection solely an invention of the Bush administration--or was it the product of...

ATTA IN PRAGUE [Andy McCarthy] Ed Epstein has stayed on the case and has done the 9/11 Commission one better: he has actually conducted something resembling an investigation into whether the top hijacker met with in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent five months before 9/11. Ed’s report on what he found out, after traveling to the Czech Republic and meeting with the BIS (i.e., Czech Intelligence) officials who were personally involved in the matter is featured in the Wall Street Journal this morning (registration required). His article will not be good news for the Richard Clarkes of Clinton revision-world,...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Former President Clinton praised former members of the Soviet bloc in the Baltic states and eastern Europe for moving to democracy, but said "we're going through a critical period" on the future of Kosovo. The Serbian province populated by ethnic Albanians and Serbs has been run by the United Nations since NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, later renamed Serbia-Montenegro. Kosovo wants full independence; Serbia refuses to give it. As president, Clinton ordered the bombing of Serbian targets to force former President Slobodan Milosevic to end a crackdown on armed ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. Clinton...

Under Downtown Prague Volume 58 Number 6, November/December 2005 by Nick Holdsworth The Czech Republic's biggest excavation reveals layers of history.(Courtesy Archaia) Every Czech school child knows the story. Prague was a crowded medieval city bursting at the seams when, in 1348, its problem was solved at a stroke by the brilliance of Charles IV. The greatest of Czech kings ordained that a massive swathe of farmland around the walled city should become a new urban space called Nove Mesto, or New Town. The Prague we know today is said to be largely a product of Charles IV's effort at...

PRAGUE, Sept. 27 - The special police unit arrived in the darkness, carrying submachine guns and taking positions around an unmarked cargo truck parked beside a nuclear reactor. The doors to the reactor swung open and a forklift hurried three large steel casks onto the truck. Each container held several fuel rods of highly enriched uranium, potent enough for use in a nuclear bomb. As the city slept, the truck and its armed escorts slipped away from the reactor, at a Czech Technical University campus on the outskirts of the city, and passed through deserted streets, stopping at last...

The background: On April 21, 2001, the CIA's liaison officer at the U.S. Embassy in Prague was briefed by the Czech counterintelligence service (known by its Czech acronym, BIS) about an extraordinary development in a spy case that concerned both the United States and the Czech Republic. The subject of the briefing was Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the consul at Iraq's embassy in Prague. .... So when al-Ani replaced Salim at the Iraq Embassy in Prague in 1999, both the United States and the Czech Republic wanted him closely watched in case he had a similar assignment. The BIS...