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Clinton wants all to gain Net access Seeks to narrow 'digital divide' By Owen Ullmann USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, civil rights leaders and corporate executives from high-tech fields are launching a campaign today to close a widening ''digital divide'' between higher-income Internet users and poorer Americans shut out of the Information Age. The president plans to announce steps to increase computer access to low-income Americans, upgrade technology skills of inner-city workers and create an information bank on ways to bring technology to poor communities. Joining Clinton for his White House announcement will be several chief executive officers, including ...

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A 13-year-old named Jesse Dirkhising was killed on Sept. 26 in Rogers, Ark. Why didn't you know that? The police affidavit describing the circumstances of Jesse's death is stomach-turning. Rather than sicken you, let me quote instead from the much less graphic story that moved on the national wire of the Associated Press. ''According to police, Davis Carpenter Jr., 38, and Joshua Brown, 22, drugged and blindfolded Jesse Dirkhising, gagged him with underwear, and strapped him to a mattress face-down with duct tape and belts. Then the boy was repeatedly raped and sodomized with various objects before he suffocated because ...

Looking out at the fiery edges of the animal rights movement, it's easy to see why the occupants of that lunatic fringe relate so fully to animals. They are animals themselves. According to research by USA TODAY reporters published this week, violence against animal research centers is surging. In recent weeks, more than 80 scientists have received letters booby-trapped with razors. Others have received death threats and been intimidated in their homes. ''I'll be coming to see you (and your family) real soon,'' said one malevolent message. ''I'm glad you like experiments. I have a few of my own ...

valign=top> Wednesday December 8 4:16 AM ET Forbes Would Fight Rising Oil Price Forbes Would Fight Rising Oil Price By SCOTT THOMSEN Associated Press Writer COTTONWOOD, Ariz. (AP) - While presidential hopeful Steve Forbes presents himself as the only true conservative with a chance to win the Republican nomination, he has found an issue in common with Democrats - oil.Forbes says he would open the country's strategic oil reserves in order to fight a recent climb in crude oil prices.``It's sitting doing nothing,'' Forbes said during a stop on his two-day bus tour through Arizona Tuesday. ``We can use it ...

WASHINGTON -- After a federal judge chided the Treasury Department for covering up the shredding of 162 boxes of records, government lawyers admit the department destroyed still more potential evidence in a lawsuit over American Indian trust funds. The destruction of computerized check records was disclosed Tuesday in a letter to a court-appointed investigator overseeing documents in the case. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter yesterday. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth accused Treasury Department lawyers of lying to him about trust fund records. The judge released a report by the investigator saying government lawyers kept ...

Politician Raffles Guns to Raise Money (CNSNews.com) - If political incorrectness is the goal, it's easy enough to achieve: Just ask the US congressional hopeful from Illinois, who's raffling off guns to raise campaign money. Dr. Michael Curtiss, a Republican from Mount Carroll in northwestern Illinois, said he's sold about 1500 raffle tickets for $5 apiece, and he expects sales to grow given the publicity he's getting. Next month, Curtiss will give away an SLR-95 semiautomatic rifle and a .45-caliber handgun, along with lessons on how to fire the weapons and a book about guns and crime. Curtiss said he's ...

World Tribune.com: Front Page Story Palestinian students take to the streets to protest Arafat suppression Special to World Tribune.com MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE Thursday, December 9, 1999 RAMALLAH [MENL] -- Hundreds of Palestinian masked students burned tires in a demonstration near Hebron demanding the release of those who signed a petition that accused the Palestinian Authority of corruption. The demonstrators on Wednesday held the protest in front of the village council in Dura southwest of Hebron. Some of them held signs reading "Release political detainees now" and "No to the muzzling of expression." One of the eight Palestinian signatories of ...

Daily thought for; Thursday December 9th, 1999 ... whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord ... Acts 2:14-18 14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: 15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. 16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; As you read the next two verses, think about the words written ...

By Paul Eckert BEIJING, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Russian President Boris Yeltsin won strong Chinese backing on Thursday for the assault on Chechnya, then blasted U.S. President Bill Clinton over his criticisms with a blunt reminder that Russia was a nuclear power. His outburst at Clinton, delivered in a booming voice, followed a meeting with President Jiang Zemin, who according to a Russian account said he "fully supported" Moscow's military assault on its breakaway republic. "Clinton allowed himself to pressurise Russia yesterday," Interfax news agency quoted Yeltsin as saying of tough remarks by the U.S. president, which were actually ...

Few districts recognize Muslim month of fasting 12/09/99 By Christine Wicker / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Religiously speaking, this December could be what educators call "a teachable moment," that rare instance when the right lesson and the right time come together so perfectly that a kind of magic can happen. This year, Hanukkah, Christmas and the beginning of Ramadan fall in December, a convergence that occurs fewer than 10 times in a century. The Islamic month of Ramadan begins Thursday. Hanukkah began at sundown Friday. And Christmas is . . . is . . . . ...

Jeffrey Tucker Washington agencies pay private-sector clipping services so senior management can know who their friends and enemies are. Journalists who write negatively about, say, the BATF, immediately enter the agency's sights. Even if nothing is done with the information, the knowledge that it's being collected is enough to dampen the criticism that appears in the press. Stopping criticism is the prime day-to-day concern of any bureaucracy, second only to keeping the budget high and growing. To do this, every federal agency has an elaborate public relations department. If you are researching government, it's the last place you want to ...

December 8, 1999 By BENJAMIN WEISER The government charged Tuesday that a bid to release a former member of the Weather Underground from prison was frivolous, and that for a federal judge in Manhattan even to consider the issue would be "a gross and misleading miscarriage of justice." The prisoner, Susan L. Rosenberg, has asserted that she is being unfairly kept in prison beyond her parole eligibility because of crimes for which she was never tried. Ms. Rosenberg had been charged in the 1981 armed robbery of a Brink's armored car in Nanuet, N.Y., in which a guard and ...

Meachum, guns and nonsense I have read some anti-gun nonsense in my time but the column from Mr. Meachum takes the absolute cake. We suffered the introduction of harsh gun laws here (in Australia) three years ago which included the confiscation of several categories of firearms. At the time, we were promised that there was a direct link between the numbers of firearms in the community and gun-related violence. Gun owners like myself were told that surrendering our firearms was for the good of the community. Both PC mantras are parroted by Mr. Meachum in his column. Two years ...

It is a disturbing sign of the times that when federal litigators roar, everyone else listens. Just yesterday Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, threatened to help some 3,200 public housing authorities file a gigantic class-action lawsuit against gun manufacturers unless they yielded in their settlement talks with state and local governments, who have charged them with creating a public nuisance by the reckless distribution of firearms. Those suits ostensibly seek billions of dollars in damages for the various additional expenses that state and local officials claim follow from an epidemic of gun violence. Yet the ultimate remedy ...

Keyes Calls for 'Proprietary' Social Security System By Lawrence Morahan CNS Staff Writer 09 December, 1999 (CNSNews.com) - Promoting the principles of staunch fiscal and social conservativism, Republican presidential contender Alan Keyes is calling for "a proprietary Social Security system in which the people who earn the money invest it as they think best, and keep it in their name and under their control." "If we intend to choose the dignity of freedom over the apparent comfort of socialism, we must simply apply the principle that those who earn the money ought to invest it for their retirement," Keyes said ...

A reader of this newspaper, sharing the concerns of many other belatedly informed Americans, called to ask a question. He was concerned about President Jimmy Carter's terrible mistake that will bring the surrender of the American Panama Canal on Dec. 31 to the unstable government of Panama. The reader asked in wonderment: "Just what was the reason Mr. Carter decided to give our canal away?" It is a question impossible to answer, because there simply is no good reason for the surrender. The United States and Panama joined in a 1903 treaty that gave the U.S. the Panama Canal ...

======================================= Hide the ham: Health fanatics want to slap a "fat tax" on your favorite foods WASHINGTON, DC -- That scrumptious meal you had for Thanksgiving -- and the festive feast you're probably planning for Christmas -- may get hit with a "fat tax" if certain public health fanatics get their way, the Libertarian Party warned today. "Hide the ham, guard the gravy, and hold on to your hamburger: The calorie cops are coming after us," said Steve Dasbach, the party's national director. "If we don't stop them, the grease Gestapo will do to fatty foods what they've already done ...

Contrary to a report here the other day, Exxon-Mobil did NOT rescind their same-sex benefits to homosexual couples. The following is a reply from Exxon-Mobil to my email congratulating them. As you can see, the original post was in error. The reply from Mobil is first, my email to them is beneath that. Spelling errors are theirs. Emphasis mine.========================= Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 14:24:56 -0500 From: "Customer Relations E-mail" To: xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx Dear xxxxx: Thank you for your email to ExxonMobil. It is corporate policy to employ individuals on the basis of qualifications and in conformance with all applicable laws ...

School principal says he may change mind about gun raffles By PETER ZACHARIADIS The Associated Press 12/08/99 2:09 AM Eastern Heavy publicity may end raffles for guns at a Lasalle Parish school where a sixth-grade student recently won a $200 shotgun during a fundraiser for cheerleaders' uniforms. But Eugene Fitzgerald, principal of Goodpine Middle School, isn't sorry that school officials went forward with the unusual way to raise money. "We here at the school live in a rural area where hunting is a very popular sport," he said Tuesday. "And we were trying to save the parents money on ...