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US ready to move into Basra as British pull out By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:29pm BST 31/08/2007 The Pentagon has warned it will deploy US forces to Basra if a rapid drawdown of British troops jeopardises security in southern Iraq. The American military is known to harbour concerns over the security of the oilfields that are Iraq's only source of oil exports and its supply lines along the north-south highway, known as Route Tampa, in the event the British troop presence is wound up. UK forces have been unable to prevent turmoil Although American army units...

PRO-DEMOCRACY activists, students, Buddhist monks, and citizens who are simply fed up with the ruling military junta in Burma have been staging impromptu protests since Aug. 19, when the cancellation of fuel subsidies sent prices soaring. The burden is unbearable for many of the 90 percent of Burma’s population living at or below the poverty line. The regime has responded to the demonstrations with violent repression. Plainclothes security agents and gangs of young thugs working for the junta beat up the protesters and throw them into flatbed trucks. Among those arrested are members of the 1988 democracy movement who have...

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to media and other inquiries, Jim Brosnahan, attorney for Norman Hsu and a partner at the law firm of Morrison & Foerster issued the following statement: "The 15 year old legal matter that Norman Hsu has is moving toward resolution. We arranged for him to appear in court and put up monies for bail, which can also be used for restitution to any persons who might still be unpaid. We have had productive preliminary conversations with the Attorney General's office concerning resolution of this old matter. "

Grasping at straws? Speeches, protests and presidential politics, Texas style. That's what will be going on in and around the Fort Worth Convention Center on Friday and Saturday, during the Republican Party of Texas' first-ever GOP Straw Poll. Who is coming? What are they saying? What are they doing? Many presidential hopefuls -- Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, to name a few -- have sent their regrets. But several lesser-known candidates -- U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Surfside, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Ray McKinney and Hugh Cort -- are still expected to...

Foxbats Did Fly over Dimona August 24, 2007 In their sensational historical detective work, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press, 2007), Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez have challenge the widely-accepted idea that the Six Day War happened without anyone wanting it. Instead, they present a theory that the U.S.S.R. instigated the war as a way preemptively to destroy the Israeli nuclear facilities. I was drawn to the argument (in an analysis at "The Soviets' Six-Day War) but dared not quite fully endorse it, wondering if all the evidence would hold up under...

Muslim-American attorney Ashraf Nubani dreams of building an ordinary law practice. Meanwhile, there are terrorists—alleged and otherwise—to defend. Ashraf Nubani had a plan when he left the bustle of New York City in 1998, relocating with his wife and four children to the gentler northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. He took a job with a 10-lawyer firm and began developing a specialty in one of its practice areas—immigration. His ever-expanding ties to the metro area's large Muslim community would help grow a general practice in a way he describes only half-jokingly: Step 1: Help the foreign national get an...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's biggest synagogue, a century-old landmark which was torched by the Nazis and left to fester in communist East Berlin, reopened its doors on Friday in the latest sign of the country's Jewish revival. Located in the German capital's now trendy district of Prenzlauer Berg, the 1,000-seat synagogue has been returned to its former glory thanks to a painstaking 7-year restoration project that cost 7 million euros (4.7 million pounds). The restoration of the blue-domed temple follows last year's opening of a new synagogue in Munich and ordination of Germany's first rabbis since World War Two. But...

An archeologist claims to have found a 16th century European coin in a swamp on Australia’s east coast, raising new questions about whether Captain James Cook was beaten to the continent by the Spanish or Portuguese. The silver coin, which is inscribed with the date 1597, was discovered by a group led by amateur archeologist Greg Jefferys. A colleague was digging in the sand with a machete when he found the badly corroded coin on Sunday.It was buried a few inches below the ground in the middle of snake-infested Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. If proved to...

The Texas Department of Transportation is pushing Congress to pass a federal law allowing the state to "buy back" parts of existing interstate highways and turn them into toll roads. The 24-page plan, outlined in a "Forward Momentum" report that escaped widespread attention when published in February, drew prompt objections Thursday from state lawmakers and activists fighting the spread of privately run toll roads. "I think it's a dreadful recommendation on the part of the transportation commissioners here in Texas," said Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas. "I feel confident that legislators in Austin would overwhelmingly...

The 84th National Marble Tournament went off well. This years event the weather was good with only one rainy day.

The shift had been an exciting one from the time I arrived. I had some very challenging and complex patients for the first half; all but one of them ended up in our ICU. The one exception was sent over to a higher-level trauma center for his injuries. That patient was a teenaged Homo jackassii who had attempted to car surf and had managed to get up to somewhere around 30MPH when the car reached an intersection and the dufus kid's "friend" slammed on the brakes. The kid shattered both of his ankles, nearly tore one of his feet completely...

Fox News alert as seen on TV. Tony Snow to resign as White House press secretary effective Sept. 14.

Please Freep this poll! The United States Marine Corps and JWT are honored to announce that "The Few. The Proud. The Marines." has been nominated BEST SLOGAN for the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame. More than just a slogan, these three sentences represent what Marines are all about, epitomizing the challenge of becoming (The Few), and the reward of being (The Proud), one of the elite (The Marines). Suffice it to say, few slogans convey such a proud tradition. With your help, we now have the opportunity to immortalize these words as an American cultural icon. The Marine Corps...

In lawsuits, as in baseball, there is no mercy rule. One side can be down by a dozen runs, but the game continues until the bitter end. So it is that SCO filed on Aug. 29 an appeal to the U.S. District Court decision that declared that Novell had never sold Unix's intellectual property to SCO. Spread the word:digg this story On Aug. 12, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix's IP rights. Without Unix's IP, SCO's other cases against IBM, Red Hat and other Linux-using companies cannot be sustained. In Novell's financial earnings...

I discovered while searching that Giant Geyser has become reasonably active, erupting every 7-10 days or so, sometimes even less. Because Steamboat in the Norris Geyser Basin is extremely irregular (1-5 eruptions a year), this probably makes Giant the largest regular performing geyser in the world. For perspective, an eruption of Old Faithful puts out about 10,000 gallons. An eruption of Giant puts out roughly a million gallons. More pictures of this eruption here: Giant Eruptions September 4 and 9, 2006

Lafayette - A woman is in jail for allegedly allowing her five-year-old child to drive a car. Neighbors were able to prevent the situation from turning into a tragedy over the weekend. The car speeding around the corner near Wendy Barrett's Lafayette home, its tires screeching, wasn't driven by someone running late before it made a abrupt stop near her driveway. "I saw a toddler at the wheel and another toddler on the console. I said, 'Ma'am, are you letting your toddler drive?' She said, 'Yes. He's a good driver,'" said Barrett. Holly Schnobrich, 24, of Lafayette was also a...

It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead. They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead. The reason is that producing biofuel is not a "green process". It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make "green" fuel. In the case...

ALTON, Texas - The police chief in this South Texas town has been charged with two counts of sexual assault for allegedly violating male employees who were passed out at his home during parties. Jose Luis Vela, 42, was being held in the Hidalgo County Jail on $200,000 bond after his Thursday arraignment on the two felony charges. The city has placed him on paid leave pending the outcome of the case. "This is the first time I've ever heard of a chief of a police arrested for sexually assaulting his employees," said Sheriff Lupe Trevino, whose office started an...

Our military sources report that aboard the Kearsarge group’s vessels are members of the 22nds Marine special operations-capable Expeditionary Unit, ready to execute landings on Lebanese beaches. Wednesday, Aug. 29, Adm. William Fallon, chief of US Central Command and the war on terror paid an unannounced visit to Beirut, although for years US generals have given the Lebanese capital a wide berth. He left after three hours, the longest time considered safe for him to stay. Our sources reveal he reviewed with Lebanese leaders US preparations for military intervention should the September presidential election descend into civil violence or elicit...