Free Republic

NEW YORK, Jun 24, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Even a veteran of network television booking battles like Connie Chung has found the last few weeks seeking guests for her new prime-time CNN news hour to be eye-opening. "It's reached an insane level," Chung said. "Everyone is going after stories. Even if we call at 6 a.m., that person has already been called by half a dozen people." Welcome to the cable news chatter wars, Connie. Chung is arguably the best-known news personality to jump to CNN in the network's 21-year history, and she's taking over the troublesome...

WASHINGTON - It may be the biggest reorganization of government since 1947, but President Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department – which Congress continues to hash over this week – is, at its core, simply a plan to try to gain ironclad control of America's borders, ports, and airports. Of the department's 170,000 expected employees, more than 90 percent will handle border and transportation security – controlling who travels in the country and what they take with them. And more than 60 percent of its projected $37.5 billion budget for 2003 will go toward border, port, and airport security. These facts...

WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda trainees are no longer in Afghanistan learning by the thousands to build bombs or hijack planes. Osama bin Laden, if alive, is incommunicado, hampered from plotting new attacks. His operations czar, Abu Zubaydah, is in US custody, and talking. His military chief, Mohammed Atef, is presumed dead. In short, Al Qaeda Central is no more. Its home turf is gone. Its command structure is broken. Its brazen freedom to recruit, communicate, and plan – and to raise funds – has been sharply curtailed. There's just one problem: Al Qaeda is reinventing itself. Just as a frail...

<p>The abusive behavior of the U.N.'s Bosnian War Crimes tribunal with regard to an American journalist prefigures what it is to come after the new International Criminal Court comes into being in July, and only confirms the wisdom of America's refusal to sign on to the ICC.</p>

BAGRAM, AFGHANISTAN - When Maj. Scott Stockwell of the US Army received word that his unit was being deployed to Afghanistan, he knew it meant all-out war – for bugs. Major Stockwell, of the 25th Medical Attachment of the 3rd Armored Corps, fights sand flies, mosquitoes, houseflies, and ticks – just about any critter that could cause downtime for American troops at the US airbase at Bagram, an hour north of Kabul. "My job is to close with and destroy the enemy – with extreme prejudice," Stockwell says. Noting his PhD in entomology from the University of California, Berkeley, he...

BEIJING - China is North Korea's best ally. But even it is showing signs of exasperation with Pyongyang's slow pace of progress in dealing with its famine, and the exodus of hungry citizens. China is facing mounting international pressure to deal differently with the estimated 100,000 to 300,000 North Koreans who have crossed into northern China. Sunday, China broke the month-long diplomatic standoff over 23 North Koreans who have sought political asylum in the South Korean consulate here. According to the government- run Xinhua news agency, Beijing agreed to allow the North Koreans to leave the country. South Korean officials...

Monday, 24 June, 2002, 07:26 GMT 08:26 UK Mystery noises on Taiwan black box It may take up to a year to explain the disasterA dozen mysterious noises have been detected on the cockpit voice recorder of a China Airlines plane that crashed last month killing 225 people. Taiwan safety experts, pilots, and US investigators helping with the crash investigation said they were not sounds that would come from a normal cockpit. The black boxes are still being analysedHowever, a chief investigator with Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council (ASC), Kay Yong, said more analysis would be needed to determine the significance...

NEW DELHI - As the subject of an unflattering magazine article about his health, India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had several choices: ignore it, send a letter to the editor to correct it, or make sure the man who wrote it never works in this town again. A week after an article by Time magazine's Alex Perry appeared, alleging that the Indian prime minister who led his country during the tense nuclear standoff with Pakistan over the past few months is in very poor health, Indian immigration officials began delving into Mr. Perry's past visa applications. The story on...

MUNICH, GERMANY - Ernst Lihl, brick mason and member of Germany's striking construction union, is ready for a long struggle. He is angry about illegal construction workers, with construction companies, and especially with Germany's politicians. Sitting at a silent construction site, where, until last Thursday, builders were transforming Munich's old convention center into apartment buildings and shopping centers, Mr. Lihl complains that construction workers like him, from western Germany, are being driven out of the industry. "There are companies who fire their own workers to hire cheaper foreign workers," he says. "And the politicians sit around and do nothing. It...

We can only defend our way of life by rejecting the claims of the world's poor We should admit only those we can assimilate. As Enoch Powell said so wisely: "Numbers are of the essence" Bruce Anderson 24 June 2002 Europe is facing a moral challenge: a challenge from the wretched of the Earth. They are demanding a more equitable distribution of the globe's resources; above all, they are demanding the right to settle here, in our affluent and not over-populated continent. The response which the present generation of European politicians make to this challenge will have a crucial influence...

June 24, 2002 The Politics of FútbolBy WILLIAM SAFIRE ARPERS FERRY, W. Va. -- You isolationist moms may call it soccer, a word derived from the second syllable in "association football," but we pre-emptive interventionists call the game that has the world transfixed this week fútbol. Set aside the game itself; this is not the sports page. Consider instead the intelligence, geostrategic, cultural and diplomatic ramifications of fútbol, with its World Cup played, as always, halfway between U.S. presidential elections. On intelligence: The game of fútbol first came to the attention of our satellite mapping analysts at the C.I.A. during...

On April 12, the day his company went public, David Neeleman appeared to be everywhere yet nowhere. The chief executive of JetBlue Airways watched its stock price and trading volume soar in a private room at the NASDAQ building in Times Square. He ventured outside, greeted passers-by and tickled a baby in a stroller. He choked back tears as he thanked his family and the JetBlue crew at a news conference. All the while, as the company celebrated the best-received initial public offering of the year, reporters, executives and family members repeated the question: "Where's David?" In many ways, Neeleman's...

Stephen M. Case, a hero of the 1990's for having built America Online into a multimedia giant, sat on the stage at his company's annual meeting last month, listening to investors mock him for overseeing multibillion-dollar losses. Jeffrey R. Immelt, following in the footsteps of the lionized John F. Welch Jr. at General Electric, has tried to soothe rebellious shareholders by releasing more information than Mr. Welch ever did, but G.E.'s stock has still fallen more sharply than most others this year. Meanwhile, Charles R. Schwab, hoping to capitalize on Wall Street's new unpopularity, has appeared in a television advertisement...

It could get really ugly today for Martha Stewart. Stewart — who looked chunky and very un-Martha-like in the Hamptons over the weekend — faces a new pounding of her financial empire in the stock market. Stewart's broker was suspended by Merrill Lynch late Friday after the market closed — and experts say her company's stock could now fall even more than it has so far in the ImClone scandal. "The stock price is reacting to the news — these headlines are not going to make the stock go up," Michael Holland, president of the money management firm Holland &...

June 24, 2002 Case Against Seven Tied to Group Labeled Terrorist Is DismissedBy GREG WINTER federal judge has dismissed the Justice Department's case against seven people accused of funneling charitable donations to an Iranian military group deemed partly responsible for the 1979 takeover of the United States Embassy in Tehran and still labeled a terrorist threat. After deliberating for months, Judge Robert M. Takasugi of Federal District Court in Los Angeles ruled on Friday that a 1996 law passed by Congress to classify foreign groups as terrorist organizations is "unconstitutional on its face," and thus cannot be used as the...

Monday, 24 June, 2002, 10:16 GMT 11:16 UK Scotland dubbed 'top alien nation'Bonnybridge tops the list for reported sightingsScotland can rightly lay claim to being the "Costa Del Sol" for aliens, according to tourism officials. They are pointing to a survey which says that Scotland has the highest concentration of reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) of any country in the world. The results have been published to coincide with International UFO Day and refer to 300 reported UFO sightings in Scotland a year. According to the study, Scotland also recorded the highest number of reported UFO sightings per...

June 24, 2002 Slave 'Railroad' Buffs Question Museum SiteBy FRANCIS X. CLINES NIONVILLE, Ohio, June 20 — The lunch crowd was heedless of the runaway slave tunnels beneath the Unionville Tavern, where Debra Laveck poked around, trying to rediscover an old Underground Railroad crawlway to a cemetery across the road. "There was a fake grave over there where the abolitionists had the runaways climb down into the tunnel," Ms. Laveck explained. She was delving deep into the historic past, where the cramped tunnel, barely wide enough for a slave's shoulders, snaked darkly below what is now a paved road. "Right...

June 24, 2002 Senators Say White House Should Offer Amtrak HelpBy IVER PETERSON emocratic United States senators from New York and New Jersey accused the Bush administration yesterday of threatening the economic life of the Northeast by failing to extend an emergency loan guarantee to keep Amtrak trains rolling after a threatened midweek shutdown. Shouting over the Sunday morning din of Pennsylvania Station's rotunda, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York and Senators Robert G. Torricelli and Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey said that the administration should guarantee the $200 million loan that the rail service says it needs...

June 24, 2002 Treasury Secretary Condemns Corporate ScandalsBy BLOOMBERG NEWS ASHINGTON, June 23 (Bloomberg News) — The Treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill, said today that people should be "outraged" by recent corporate scandals, as President Bush's administration continues to seek a way to bolster investor confidence. Mr. O'Neill, speaking on ABC's "This Week" program, also called for better disclosure of the cost of stock options and said corporate boards should show restraint on executive pay. The administration has been emphasizing corporate responsibility as financial markets react to scandals that have enveloped corporations like Enron, Tyco International and Adelphia Communications. "I...

Johannesburg - The announcement by the Zimbabwean government that white-owned farms should cease operating on Monday was the last nail in the coffin of the country's economy and could have fatal consequences for the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), the New National Party said. The reaction came after it was announced that about 2,900 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were ordered to cease operating on Monday after a controversial land reform law was amended to give the government sweeping powers to seize farmland for redistribution, according to Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) spokesperson Jenni Williams. She said many of the...