| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
|
Locked on 02/24/2004 11:47:52 AM PST by Admin Moderator, reason:
Thread 4. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084291/posts |
Posted on 02/05/2004 8:31:17 PM PST by Mossad1967
Edited on 02/09/2004 3:20:18 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
SANAA, Yemen, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A purported statement by al-Qaida in Yemen warned Saturday of a "major strike" soon in the United States.
The statement, distributed by the Yemeni Tagamoo Party for Reforms, said: "A major strike, a big event will take place in America soon," reminiscent of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Q: A question on Afghanistan. The commanders there recently are expressing a lot of optimism on finding bin Laden. One even says he's (Inaudible.). Is there any basis for an increased optimism in that?
Rumsfeld: How does one answer that? We've got a terrific team out there in General Lawson and General Barneau and the Ambassador (Inaudible.). They're all working hard. I suppose what that may be a reflection of is their enthusiasm, the fact that they feel they're well organized and they're disciplined and they're working the problem, and they're hopeful. But I think neither one of them, or whoever said it, I don't know, but I doubt that either one of them if they had reasonably good intelligence would be making a statement like that and tipping off UBL that they were close on his heels.
So I think what you probably heard was a feeling of confidence in the people they've got working the problem and the enthusiasm they have and the contention they have that ultimately they'll find him. I've always believed ultimately they'll find him.
How about Al-Qaeda's Attempted In-Kind Contributions to the DNC?
Saudi man may have mad cow disease
By RAWYA RAGEH
The Associated Press
2/6/2004, 12:00 p.m. ET
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi medical authorities believe a man hospitalized last month and now in a coma is suffering from the kingdom's first case of the human form of mad cow disease.
Official medical records shown to The Associated Press on Friday by the patient's family said test findings a day after Abdul Karim Eskandar was admitted to the hospital "were suggestive of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."
Abdul Karim Eskandar, 64, was admitted to Jiddah's King Faisal Specialist Hospital Jan. 20, and lost his memory, eyesight and speech before falling into a coma.
It was not clear how the Quran teacher had contracted the disease, since he had never eaten beef, according to his son, Abdul Moneim Abdul Karim.
Abdul Karim said doctors told him a handful of other patients had also been diagnosed with the disease.
AP was not immediately able to contact any of the other patients or their families.
Abdul Karim said Eskandar started complaining of feebleness and blurred vision in November. Doctors initially suspected that he had suffered a stroke.
After the diagnosis — tests had been sent to Mayo Medical Laboratories in the United States for confirmation — doctors said Eskandar may have unwittingly consumed beef during a trip to England in 1999, at the height of the spread of variant CJD there.
One doctor told Abdul Karim that his father could have contracted the disease without eating contaminated beef, the son said.
Attempts to reach Eskandar's doctor were not successful and it was not immediately possible to reach health officials because of a two-week Muslim holiday.
"We will not give up on him because we are not convinced with the doctors' diagnosis here," Abdul Karim said. The family plans to take Eskandar to the University of Vienna Medical School, which has agreed to carry out further tests.
A letter from a professor of internal medicine at the Austrian school said Eskandar seems to be suffering from a "neurological disorder of unknown origin."
The causes of classic CJD, a fatal human dementia known for 80 years, are unknown. The disease, which is neither bacteria nor fungus, could be inherited, spread through infected surgical equipment, tissue transplants or hormones. Variant CJD is linked to the consumption of tainted beef.
U.S. adds 3 Chechen Islamist groups to terror list
U.S. blacklists Islamic groups
March 01, 2003
The United States has placed three Chechen rebel groups on its blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations, linking them to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and freezing any assets they may have on U.S. territory, the State Department said yesterday.
Russia has been urging the United States to designate the groups — the Islamic International Brigade, the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment and the Riyadus-Salikhin Battalion — as terrorists for more than a year. It cited various violent acts they have committed, including the hostage-taking at Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in October, in which 129 persons died.
But Washington dismissed suggestions that the move rewards Moscow at a time when its vote on the U.N. Security Council is badly needed in support of a war in Iraq. U.S. officials insisted that they had blacklisted the groups because they "threatened the safety of U.S. citizens and U.S. national security or foreign policy interests."
"We recognize that there are terrorist elements among those fighting Russian forces in Chechnya," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "At the same time, we do not consider all Chechen fighters to be terrorists." [...]
U.S. officials said the three groups did not exactly match the ones Russia wanted to see blacklisted. Riyadus-Salikhin, Arabic for Fields of the Righteous, was not known until the theater attack and drew its members from the two other organizations, they said.
The officials identified Shamil Basayev* as a key rebel, whom they described as the leader of Riyadus-Salikhin and former commander of the International Islamic Brigade. [...]
The United States, which repeatedly criticized Russia's campaign against Chechnya for abusing human rights, has softened its stance since September 11, viewing the conflict as part of the global fight against terrorism. Mr. Boucher said the matter has also been taken up by the United Nations.
"Because these three groups are linked to al Qaeda, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and Spain have requested today that the United Nations 1267 Sanctions Committee include the groups on its consolidated list," he said.
The spokesman said France has indicated it will join the designation, which would be the first time all five permanent members of the Security Council have joined in submitting names to the sanctions committee.
The things you learn on FR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.