Free Republic

At the beginning of the 3rd century civil war raged in Britain as the Roman emperor Septimius Severus sought to quell unrest in the north. But unknown to the fighting cohorts and Caledonian tribes, high above their heads two stars were coming together in a huge cataclysmic explosion. Now 1800 years later the light from that collision will finally arrive on Earth creating a new star in the night sky - dubbed the ‘Boom Star - in an incredibly rare event which is usually only spotted through telescopes. Before their meeting the two stars were too dim to be seen...

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday. In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions. Arthur Ventham, a former Australian army officer and customs officer, joined the operation in 2002 and worked at various sites in Iraq and neighbouring states. He said that at Iskendurun in eastern...

In the scandal over the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Kofi Annan's main line of defense has been that he didn't know. Perhaps he should take a closer look at internal U.N. Oil-for-Food audit reports, more than 50 in all, produced by his own Office of Internal Oversight Services--the same reports he's declined to share with the Security Council, or release to Congress. One of these reports has now leaked. It concerns the U.N. Secretariat's mishandling of the hiring of inspectors to authenticate the contents of relief shipments into sanctions-bound Iraq. (Obtained by a journalist specializing in the mining industry,...