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BEIJING (AP) — Further souring their frayed relations, China accused the United States on Tuesday of trying to meddle in Chinese affairs by pushing for stronger ties with Taiwan. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said measures introduced in the U.S. Congress sought to enhance Taiwan's military capabilities, expand U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation and authorize the sale of an anti-missile system to the island. The U.S. Senate also approved a defense budget that includes "pro-Taiwan and anti-China amendments,'' Zhang told reporters, urging the Clinton administration to quash the measures. China regards Taiwan as a rebel province and has threatened to use ...

Deadline For CHINA-GATE Charles Smith Softwar On June 29, 1999, Federal Judge Robert Payne ruled against the Commerce Dept. in the China-Gate scandal. Judge Payne has ordered the Commerce Dept. to release documents on meetings between Clinton officials and Chinese Army officers. Judge Payne ordered the Commerce Dept. to comply by July 12, 1999, and to release documents that are being withheld from the public. Additionally, Judge Payne found the Commerce Dept. had not completely released all the required documents as per his original Court order issued in March, 1999. According to Judge Payne, the Commerce Dept. submitted a ...

Upstate waiting for its share of New York's prosperity 2.22 p.m. ET (1823 GMT) July 6, 1999 By Carolyn Thompson, Associated Press BUFFALO, NY (AP) — Politicians who swing through upstate like to talk about New York's growing prosperity and the Wall Street boom. But on her campaign tour this week, Hillary Rodham Clinton will find that many upstate New Yorkers believe they haven't been invited to the party. The truth is many upstate New Yorkers live closer to West Virginia than Manhattan — and have more in common with the former. So, if it's upstate points that Mrs. Clinton ...

SMITH MAKES A BID FOR VETERANS' VOTE; HINTS AT THIRD-PARTY BID Copyright © 1999 Nando Media Copyright © 1999 Associated Press MEREDITH, N.H. (July 5, 1999 10:09 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith is counting on a wave of support from the nation's roughly 30 million veterans to sweep him toward the GOP presidential nomination. But that route could be crowded. That territory already has been staked out by Arizona Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam. Smith proposed spending some of $18 billion in federal money earmarked for the ...

  Making Sense of the Senseless BELIEVE in America's young people.  In the aftermath of the horrible tragedy at Columbine High School, the reputation of America's youth is being trashed by talking heads and pop psychologist.  But not by me.  The real culprits behind these tragedies are the adults.  They are the members of my generation who have stricken the word "discipline" from their vocabularies and replaced it with "tolerance."  But alas, all is not lost.  There are many young people out there like eighteen year old Sarah Roney of Baraboo, Wisconsin, who wrote the following essay, the most ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Department store chain J.C. Penney Co. Inc. said Tuesday it pulled some T-shirts from store shelves after more than 100 customers complained that the shirts carried offensive slogans. The shirts, made by Pennsylvania-based AND1 Basketball, had lines including ``Your game is as ugly as your girl'' and ``You like that move? So does your girl'' and were targeted toward young boys. ``The slogans on the T-shirts came from trash talk on basketball courts,'' a spokesman for the Plano, Tex.-based J.C. Penney said. ``They catered to that market only.'' But he said that, after receiving more than 100 ...

Kosovo and the future of U.S. air power By Mackubin OwensHow quickly the conventional wisdom changes. Only a month ago, the pundits were declaring that Kosovo proved what the "experts" already knew: that air power could not win wars by itself. But with what appears to be the success of NATO in its war against Slobodan Milosevic (however flawed and hollow it may turn out to be), many erstwhile skeptics now are jumping on the air power bandwagon. And many air power advocates who loudly lamented that air power wasn't getting a fair test because it was being misused have ...

Hitlery Clintoon is coming to the Syracuse area on Friday July 9th, 1999. She will be visiting New Venture Gear about 11:00am, and staying at the home of Michael J. Bragman (NYS Assembly Majority Leader) BTW, Bragman was indicted and tried on a kickback scheme but beat the rap with a high priced lawyer, sounds like birds of a feather, he and Hitlery. I will be protesting her appearances and could use some moral and physical support. She needs to be reminded that those of us who have lived here have her number and we do not want our state ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millions of American families would get tax breaks for health care and insurance under a Republican tax plan taking shape in the House of Representatives, its sponsor said Tuesday. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer said these and other health care initiatives would be included in broader legislation that would cut taxes by as much as $1 trillion over 10 years. ``The need for long-term care in America is great and will only grow larger as the baby boomers start retiring in the next decade,'' the Texas Republican said. Archer said the Republican package would ...

DENVER (AP) - The former head of the Silverado Banking savings and loan was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., today after pleading guilty to stealing nearly $9 million from investors. U.S. District Judge Walker Miller also ordered Michael Wise to repay the money he stole. Wise pleaded guilty to two violations of the federal wire-fraud law for his schemes that cost the Aspen-based Cornerstone Private Capital Corp. more than $8.7 million. Wise headed Silverado Banking savings and loan when it failed in 1988 and was acquitted of charges then. Wise built Silverado from ...

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- A squad of men and women in battle-dress uniforms road-marches down a trail. With camouflage paint on their faces and M-16 rifles at ready, they approach a tree line, spread out and begin to stealthily climb a hill. The sun has not yet burned off the ground fog. Every few feet, they stop, crouch behind obstacles, and search to their front. Their mission: take out a fortified hilltop compound. They emerge from one fog and suddenly plunge into another as they assault a guard tower and bunker. Their "plan" evaporates. Confusion. Crossed signals. ...

President Clinton will be arriving at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport tomorrow, July 7, 1999 at approximately 3:30PM. It's another leg on his tour of poverty-stricken, "hard scrabbled" (whatever that means) areas - areas that have been "left behind" by the booming economy. While in Phoenix, he'll be visiting La Canasta Mexican Food Products Inc., a tortilla factory owned by a group of hispanic women. Here's a link to an Arizona Republic story about the tortilla factory, http://www.azcentral.com/news/0703canasta.shtml . A round-table discussion with local business leaders is also planned. Since I wasn't able to secure an invite to the "burrito bash," ...

The "Head Geek" at a U.S. High School wonders if geeks might band together in a powerhouse techno-union to represent their interests and fight Luddite blockheads in journalism and politics. It's a great idea, especially if they never try and meet. Aaron Scott writes that he's the "Head Geek" at his high school, which means that he works for the tech administrator doing IT work and coordinating the other work study nerds. "As you may imagine, we catch a lot of flack from other students because we spend so much time and energy on the computers at school, not to ...

The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Service was established last year to make sure dangerous people don't get their hands on guns, but officials say the system can't work without cooperation from the states. The FBI tries to weed out people with past convictions, outstanding felony warrants, restraining orders for domestic violence and other violations during its background checks for gun purchases. But much of the information in state computers never reaches the FBI. ``We can only check what's in there,'' says James E. Kessler, Jr., head of the FBI's Clarksburg, W.Va.-based background service, called the National Instant Check ...

Headline: Turkey-Bomb Wire Service: APn (AP US & World) Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999 Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. ADANA, Turkey (AP) -- In the third major attack since Turkey sentenced Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan to death, a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a police station, injuring 17 others. The assailant, identified as 19-year-old Rusen Tabanci, flashed the "V" for victory sign Monday before detonating the bombs strapped to her body, killing herself. The Anatolia news agency said she was a Kurdish rebel wanted by security forces. On Sunday, a bomb blast in a crowded Istanbul park killed ...

Bill Clinton's presidency has been a very difficult time for conservatives. We have seen our ideas demonized and then shamelessly stolen, our ideals shattered, our values denigrated and our character impugned. Our entire worldview has been turned upside down. But worse than all of this, our thirst for justice has gone unquenched. It has all been a big lie, and he seems to have gotten away with it. He talked like a centrist but governed like a liberal. He presided over the largest tax increase in U.S. history and tried to socialize one-seventh of the economy with his wife's health-care ...

City parochial and private school students posted a double-digit lead over their public school counterparts, scores of the fourth-grade state reading exams show. Citywide, 43.7 percent of parochial and private school students passed the state's tough new English Language Arts exam, compared with 32.1 percent of public school students. The difference was even more striking when compared with results from non-religious private schools, which had almost twice as many pupils pass - 65.1 percent. Statewide, the performance gap was smaller: 53 percent of private school kids passed the test compared with 48 percent of public school kids. But some ...

When last we spoke, there was a great mystery about the origin of a widely distributed fake essay attributed to retired Gen. John Shalikashvili in which the Clinton administration policy on Kosovo was effectively deemed a failure. This was before the Serbs had agreed to leave Kosovo. Thanks to e-mail from a number of readers, we know now that the words were pirated from an analysis by Strategic Forecasting and Intelligence (STRATFOR), an Austin-based company. Someone somewhere cut and pasted STRATFOR's May 3 weekly war analysis and added the name of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of ...

I'm so tired of the spin this president and his aides put on so much of what comes out of the White House. For example, the other day, a Page 1 New York Times story was headlined: "Aides Say Clinton Is Angered as Gore Tries to Break Away." And then, midway there was this paragraph in the double bylined - John M. Broder and Don Van Natta Jr. - article: "The motives for Mr. Clinton's aides and advisers to talk about the president's feelings toward Mr. Gore are not entirely clear. They may be trying to help the vice president ...

FOR EDUCATIONAL AND DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY. Let's see if we have this straight. The Los Angeles Times turned a team of reporters loose for six months to try and dig up some dirt on GOP Presidential front runner George W. Bush. After six months, the best they could come up with was that he may or may not have gotten preferential treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. We say "may or may not" because the Dallas Morning News took a look at the same records that the LA Times "found" and concluded that ...