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WASHINGTON - Israel has begun a campaign in the United States and the United Nations to urge a reconsideration of the way the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, operates. Israel charges that UNRWA workers simply ignored the fact that Palestinian organizations were turning the camps into terrorist bases, and it is demanding the agency start reporting all military or terrorist actions within the camps to the UN. However, it insists it is not interested in evicting UNRWA from the camps. Meanwhile, Jewish and pro-Israeli lobbyists in the U.S....

Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- As it takes its turn at the European Union's helm for the next six months, Denmark feels it has an image problem. The reason is its rightward turn in elections last November, and its ensuing crackdown on immigration which, while largely in line with the European trend, is thought by some Danes to be at odds with their country's image of tolerance. The vote catapulted Liberal Party leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen to power promising a tougher stance on asylum-seekers and on foreigners benefiting from the country's generous welfare system. By unseating...

<p>The state will not hold back money for Orange County's 50,000 welfare recipients, the state's chief check writer said Friday - one day after Davis administration officials said they could not legally write the checks without a state budget.</p> <p>"I'm glad it's all been resolved - at least for this month," said Larry Leaman, Orange County's social services director. The county was prepared to keep $5.7 million in programs afloat out of its own pocket.</p>

U.S. MARINES, ISRAEL EXAMINE W. BANK OPERATIONS WASHINGTON [MENL] -- U.S. and Israeli military commanders are studying the massive search-and-destroy operation for Palestinian insurgents in the West Bank. The examination involves the Israeli Defense Forces and the U.S. Marine Corps. The marines want to learn from the Israeli experience in urban warfare. The focus of the joint effort was a review of Israel's capture of the Palestinian refugee camp outside the West Bank city of Jenin. The three-day battle left 23 Israelis and more than 50 Palestinians dead. The military talks took place in both Israel and the United States....

With a pair of thunderous nighttime explosions, the IDF on Saturday destroyed the hulking Palestinian municipal and security headquarters in Hebron. Mystery surrounded the fate of about a dozen armed Palestinians that Israel said were holed up inside. The two controlled explosions ended the four-day siege and left mounds of smoldering rubble where the four-story building had stood on a hilltop overlooking Hebron. IDF soldiers moved through the debris Saturday looking for bodies, but as of Saturday afternoon, had found only weapons and ammunition, military sources said. About a dozen soldiers walked through the rubble and guarded the site, while...

Baby Bomber Picture 'Joke' The Palestinian family who photographed their baby dressed up as a suicide bomber has told Sky News it was a joke.The Israeli Defence Forces found the photo during a search of a Palestinian militant's home in Hebron. The child was pictured wearing a belt of fake explosives and bullets. PropagandaBut the family told Sky's Andrew Wilson the picture was "just a joke"."The photograph was taken some time ago at a party when someone dressed up the cutest baby as a suicide bomber," one relative said.The picture went around the world and became a symbol of...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the government can seek the death penalty for a former Detroit gang leader who contended prosecutors inordinately targeted minorities with capital punishment.</p> <p>Justices, in an unsigned opinion, said lower courts were wrong to let John Bass, who is black, try to force prosecutors to turn over information about how they handle death cases.</p>

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<p>KALKASKA, Mich. (AP) -- A Kalkaska hunter was convicted of violating a law intended to keep animal rights advocates from harassing hunters.</p> <p>Virgil Jason Deater, 81, of Kalkaska, was convicted by a jury Thursday on one count of interfering with another person's hunt. He was acquitted of another count of the same charge.</p>

Can Eating Hamburgers Actually Lower Your Cholesterol? Email story to a friend Is fast food a personal vice for you? If so, we've got good news. Scientists have discovered a way to cut your cholesterol, but not cut out your hamburger eating. Their research shows that adding soy to hamburger meat can actually reduce your cholesterol significantly. College students who ate a hamburger with soy once a day saw their cholesterol drop by an average of 10%.

Sergio Dorantes for The New York Times Cindy Chan checks lingerie in Merida at the kind of plant that is being replaced by high-tech ones like PCC Airfoils. MÉRIDA, Mexico — The numbers add up to doom for cheap labor, one of Mexico's most marketable commodities since World War II. In the last two years, some 280,000 jobs have vanished with the closure of more than 350 maquiladoras, the foreign-owned assembly plants that manufacture for export everything from blue jeans to blenders, televisions to toys. So Mexico has embarked an effort to attract a new kind of maquiladora, one...

Al Gore Buys House in Belle Meade Email story to a friend Al Gore is coming back to his roots; he and Tipper just bought a new house in Nashville. It's in the Belle Meade area, and records show the Gores paid over two-million dollars for the white frame colonial-style home on two acres. Since Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election, the Gores have split their time between the family farm 40 miles east of Nashville and a home in Arlington, Virginia.

<p>SACRAMENTO - After years of parrying domestic attacks for his prodigious fundraising, Gov. Gray Davis has now become the novel target of an international dispute that could cost the country $1 billion -- and even undermine California's environmental laws.</p> <p>A special global trade panel is weighing a precedent-setting proposition: Did Davis break international law by banning MTBE after accepting legal campaign donations from a company pushing an alternate gasoline additive?</p>

The Hardening of Muhammad From Mecca to Medina (By R.E. Burns, Grad. Dip. Islamic Studies) “He was as thirty men” (Hadith Bukhari, Vol 1, Book 5, No. 268) Some Muslims dispute the validity of the Hadith. Their noble Prophet (pbuh) could not have done the things attributed to him and so they must be wrong. (For example in Bukhari, Book 8, 82:794 he ordered that 8 men have their arms and legs cut off and their eyes put out.) But an examination of the Qur'an, especially the chronological translation of Rodwell, shows a change in personality with time. The Psychological...

DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe met with Democratic Party leaders last week to address eroding support from Jewish voters, who, in increasing numbers, recognize that the strongest and most loyal defenders of Israel are Christian conservatives. McAuliffe's party of emotions, atheism and name-calling is having an alarming time validating its purpose and is at risk of losing a substantial portion of a voting bloc it has always counted on. Like Bela Lugosi following a bad hangover, Democratic strategists are witnessing the switch of American Jewish voters to the GOP, a situation they once thought, by definition, impossible. Democratic and liberal propaganda...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Saudi Arabia is said to be seeking weapons of mass destruction. U.S. officials said Riyad has been seeking intermediate-range missiles as well as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons from Islamic allies. They said China and Pakistan have been the most prominent suppliers in the Saudi effort. The Saudi effort was reported in a recent hearing by a House subcommittee. Rep. Benjamin Gilman, chairman of the House Middle East and South Asia subcommittee said Riyad has attempted to obtain WMD from China. Gilman suggested that the effort is continuing. "In the past, it has attempted to procure weapons...

June 26, 2002 Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States;World Reaction is Mixed by Rahul Mahajan Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat stunned the world yesterday by demanding that the United States hold democratic elections for a new Chief Executive before it attempts to continue in its role as broker between Israel and Palestine. "Mr. Bush is tainted by his association with Jim-Crow-style selective disenfranchisement and executive strong-arm tactics in a southeastern province controlled by his brother," said Mr. Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections in the West Bank and Gaza, declared to...

Cocaine and heroin powder are cheaper and more abundant on the U.S. side of the border than on the Mexican side, which is leading to an increase in people from Mexico crossing over the border to buy the drugs in El Paso, according to an Office of National Drug Control Policy report. Assistants of John Walters, the new director of the federal office, distributed the reports on drug trends for Texas while Walters was in El Paso this week. The June 2002 report includes a profile of El Paso County, with information about local trends. It includes the surprising statement...

An open letter to President Bush You may consider signing an open letter to President Bush thanking him for his leadership on tax relief and the war on terrorism. The letter is sponsored by Ray Krul and the Association of Concerned Taxpayers, which represents some 20,000 members nationwide. You can see it at: www.thankyoupresbush.com 

Vintage poster in Yao photo provides history lesson By JONATHAN FEIGEN Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle China's past raged threateningly from the framed poster, rifles at the ready, angry anti-American slogans almost screaming their call to arms. China's future, wearing a Nike basketball T-shirt, perhaps appropriately waved goodbye. Yao Ming might not have even noticed the poster above a doorway in the CNN-Beijing offices Wednesday night, the night the Rockets made him the first pick of the NBA draft. But there he was, pictured across the top of the sports page of Thursday's Chronicle facing the Cultural Revolution emotions that had...