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[IMRA: DM Ben-Eliezer joins the rest of the Israeli politicians who are dropping the ball. The PA is not Enron (in need of better financial controls). Unless Israel takes the initiative and comes up with concrete OBSERVABLE measures for the PA to take (e.g.. estimates of how large a pile of various weapons the PA should be able to confiscate and hand over to the CIA) we will shortly see Mr. Powell's team claiming that the PA is in fact "making an effort" to "reform" and after a terror-supporting public elects a "new" team Israel will find itself facing a...

<p>Recounting one of the city's worst police brutality scandals, Abner Louima again testified yesterday that Charles Schwarz held him down during the 1997 sodomy attack - but his credibility came under fire when he admitted he previously committed perjury.</p> <p>During a grueling two-hour cross-examination at Schwarz's retrial yesterday, Louima admitted telling a sensational lie to the grand jury - quoting an attacker as saying, "This is Giuliani time. It's not Dinkins time."</p>

Washington - The United States on Monday decried an order from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government for white farmers to stop working their land, calling it part of a misguided reform programme. "We think the government of Zimbabwe's land policy, including the chaotic and the often violent seizure of privately owned farms has greatly compounded the country's worsening social, economic and political crisis," state department spokesperson Richard Boucher said. "It has also greatly exacerbated the food crisis in Zimbabwe and southern Africa much more broadly. We continue to support rational, sustainable and equitable land reform in Zimbabwe. Very sadly, that's...

YONKERS - A News 12 Westchester investigation finds the Yonkers Democratic City Committee, which is a political fundraising group, has been in violation of state law for years. The law maintains that if you run for political office or form a political committee and raise money, you must file financial disclosure forms. The law is designed to keep candidates, committees or political parties honest. Legally, they must report all the money taken in and spent on political campaigns. Those who don't file on time could face fines. Any false information can result in jail time. News 12 Westchester's Tracy Everson...

Don’t Ask Me To Sing 'The Star Spangled Banner' by Ron Holland This upcoming July 4th holiday weekend Sunday morning, like every Sunday when I’m in town, I’ll attend church. I generally enjoy the service, every Sunday of the year but not on July 4th weekends. This is the one Sunday when the congregation always sings the "Star Spangled Banner." I really want to sing it, just like I always want to sing at ballgames, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I always stand up, trying to look inconspicuous which one can get away with when there are...

The trailer to the next Lord Of The Rings film has been posted online. The Two Towers is due to be released in December. The trailer features first glimpses of Bernard Hill's character King Theoden, and Eowyn, played by Miranda Otto. It also features a voiceover by Gollum. The trailer, at Movie-List.net, ends with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli being confronted by a face from the past.

***Media Research Center CyberAlert Special*** 3:15am EDT, Tuesday, June 25, 2002 Burying the Liberal Label on Network News MRC Study: On Evening News Broadcasts, Conservative Tag Used Four Times More than Liberal Label Today, the text of a Media Reality Check study to be distributed by fax on Tuesday. Researched and written by Rich Noyes, the MRC's Director of Media Analysis, it confirms Bernard Goldberg's contention in his book that conservatives are labeled more often than conservatives, an observation which Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg challenged in a late March NPR commentary which liberals embraced and that CNN's Jeff...

Sound to make an army flee Foreign Staff A NEW sonic weapon being developed for the Pentagon makes use of one of the most fearsome sounds known to humans: a baby crying. Once aimed at the enemy, a focused beam of the familiar noise, played backwards, will be painful enough to make enemy soldiers run for their lives, according to its developers. They call it the ‘‘sonic bullet’’. There are 50 soundtracks to choose from, and they are played at 140 decibels. That is akin to standing beneath a passenger jet as it takes off. Hardly surprising, then, that the...

Store owner's gun drives off robbers By KATY SCOTT News-Sun Staff Writer The Springfield drive-through owner who shot at two would-be robbers Saturday night, possibly wounding one, said he’d repeat his actions. "I don't like getting shot at, and I don't like shooting at people, but I'd do it again," said Clifford A. Conley, owner of Beverage Oasis, 1953 S. Yellow Springs St. The would-be robbers were described as 6-foot-tall, masked black men with shotguns who entered the business at 10:58 p.m. There have been a string of similar robberies at area bars since April 16, and Springfield Police Chief...

BANGOR — A dozen Canadians traveled by bus from Saint John, New Brunswick, on Monday to obtain access to health care they say they could not get or would have to wait for under their country's single-payer system. The three-hour trip to Bangor mirrored a strategy used by elderly Mainers who have taken long bus rides to Canada to buy low-priced prescription drugs. Organizers of Monday's trip say health care rationing, price controls, waiting lists and limitations on availability of drugs have forced some vulnerable patients to seek care in the United States. The trip was organized by Treatment Access...

Tue 25 Jun 2002 Bill drawing a $12m blank in Clinton memoirs race David Cox In New York PUBLISHERS who paid $12 million for the rights to Bill Clinton’s memoirs say the former US president has barely put pen to paper. While Mr Clinton is apparently suffering from writer’s block, his wife, Hillary, now a New York senator, has made such progress on her memoirs that the publishers Simon & Schuster, who paid $8 million for it a year ago, plan to release them next summer. Observers believe there may be little public interest, however, in the wake of events...

Freep this poll on the President's speech about the Middle East> Take the poll

Bush speech about the future of Palestine abandoned jargon in favor of plain, honest conviction. GEORGE BUSH has a novel approach to the Middle East; he tells the truth. Yesterday's statement wasn't filled with diplomatic jargon. It didn't try to reconcile six different policies through artful fudging. Instead the statement has the ring of honest conviction. This has a number of practical advantages. First, when Arab rulers come down to Crawford, there won't be any need to shade U.S. policy this way or that to meet the exigencies of the moment. The president will be able to point to his...

Thousands could face war crimes charges, says Hartmann 11:42 BELGRADE, Tuesday &#8211; According to estimates, between 4,000 and 16,000 people in the Balkans could be accused of war crimes, a spokeswoman for the Hague tribunal&#8217;s chief prosecutor has claimed, reports Beta news agency. According to Beta, Florence Hartmann said the tribunal supported the establishment of a court council within the existing Bosnian state court that would take on war crimes trial. The &#8220;big fish&#8221; are on trial in The Hague but the &#8220;small fish&#8221; are to be tried at the local level,&#8221; Beta quotes Hartmann as saying. (Beta)

<p>When the latest Congressional wealth figures came out last week, we learned that no fewer than 40 U.S. Senators are millionaires. But more intriguing is the fact that the richest among them are all liberals.</p> <p>The richest Senators are nearly all Democrats, and most of those can be found on the party's furthest left reaches. The seven Democrats worth more than $10 million include legendary liberal Ted Kennedy ($10.2), trial lawyer John Edwards ($13.6), national-health care proponents Jay Rockefeller ($82.1) and Jon Corzine ($93.5) and the richest of them all, John Kerry ($139.7) of Massachusetts, the Sierra Club's poster politician. The richest Republican by far is Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island ($53.6), who is also by far the most liberal GOP Senator.</p>

<p>ITHACA -- They sang, they danced, they played cello and the bongos in a true alternative graduation ceremony. But the multi-talented seniors at the Alternative Community School also celebrated their commitment to justice, equity and compassion at commencement Monday night.</p>

We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail! [President Bush] Good morning!! Do not let the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington, nor the brave members of our Nation's military who have given their lives to protect our freedom, die in vain!! President Bush stated yesterday that he supports the notion of a Palestinian State, but not with Arafat as its leader - he must go. The FBI, using authority granted by the Patriot Act, is now going into libraries with search warrants checking on the reading records of people they, with...

Who the heck was Nate...and when did he start pickling prawns? The origin of Nate's Original Peel and Eat Pickled Prawns seems muddled by antiquity. This classic appetizer product was created decades ago by a Pacific Northwest native and is still in limited distribution hereabouts. We've loved the taste, but price and availability have long restricted our consumption. No more, thanks to some experimentation in our kitchen. Farmed shrimp are now in abundance on the market at reasonable prices d the following recipe will convert them to a gourmet hors d'oeuvre worthy of royalty. Pickling dampens their delight as an...

<p>Investors pounded Martha Stewart's namesake company Monday amid growing controversy surrounding her sale last year of ImClone Systems stock.</p> <p>Now, the question of what Ms. Stewart knew, and when she knew it, has cast a new spotlight on the murky rules involving the use of nonpublic information by Wall Street brokers and their clients.</p>

BRANDON -- Christine Miloslavic was thrilled to see her neighbor, Joel Wells, building a fence in his back yard. The two had been feuding since April, when Miloslavic accused Wells of trapping her 14-year-old daughter's cat, Gobblin, and having it killed by animal control. The plump, black and gray cat was one of several to disappear in the neighborhood after Wells installed a baited metal cage in his back yard. The fence, Miloslavic thought, was a great idea -- the less she had to see of her neighbor, the better. But on Wednesday, when she looked at the fence, she...