Free Republic

On Lailat al-Kader, the holiest night of Islam, in the epic conflict between shopping and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's impending death, shopping has proved victorious. Or at least that's what Khaled Barghouti thinks. Smoking a water pipe at the Ramallah Coffee Shop, where PA officials and Fatah officials like to hang out, Barghouti explained that "we have a conflict between shopping and Arafat's death... it seems that shopping has won." As the Ramadan fast comes to a close, Palestinians made sure to get their shopping done. The streets of Ramallah throbbed Tuesday night with youths and women pushing perambulators....

An elderly Vietnamese man thought to have died in a hospital revived after spending the night in the morgue, state media and a doctor said on Friday. Nguyen Van Quan, 73, was declared dead and taken to a Ho Chi Minh City hospital morgue on the night of August 15 but was found alive by his daughter the next morning as she was retrieving the body for the funeral, the Vietnam News daily said. "I was shocked and frightened when I saw the blanket that covered my father moving," Quan's daughter was quoted as saying. "When the morgue's officials pulled...