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<p>Cops have launched an investigation into a series of mysterious assaults on crippled astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. The probe reportedly began after the author of the best seller "A Brief History of Time" was left stranded in his wheelchair in the garden of his country home last summer on the hottest day of the year.</p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Do my eyes deceive me? The morning after Super Tuesday expired with a burst of fireworks enhaloing the hunk of granite that is John Kerry's head, Sen. Hillary Clinton -- still the most popular Democrat in the country -- pops up at Washington's Mayflower Hotel to give a major speech on trade and manufacturing, two burning issues during the Democrats' primary season. What can this mean? Several weeks back, as Kerry emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, that veteran Clinton-watcher with the keen eye for political machinations, Dick Morris, announced that Hillary had become a...

WASHINGTON - David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor's investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer. Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be Lockheed Martin's new general counsel. Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame's name was leaked in 2003 and...

Last Friday FBI agents raided the homes of far left activists in Chicago and Minneapolis who are linked to the FARC and Islamic radicals as part of a terrorism investigation. The home of radical Hatem Abudayyeh in Chicago was raided in the terror sweep. The AP reported on the raid in Chicago. FBI agents in Chicago took a laptop and documents from the home of a Palestinian-American anti-war activist in an attempt to silence his advocacy, an attorney said Sunday. The FBI on Friday searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago, including the home of Hatem Abudayyeh, who is the...

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan24) – Amb. Kenneth Ward strongly criticized Iran and Russia on Thursday for maintaining chemical weapons programs, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention to which they are both signatories. Ward, the US Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), addressing that organization, cited Iran and Russia for their own chemical weapons programs. He also criticized their support for Damascus, which, he said, is “enabling Syria’s chemical weapons use by shielding the Assad regime from consequences in international fora.” Turning to Iran, Ward explained that the US “has had longstanding concerns that [it]...

Do Senate President Robert Travaglini (D-East Boston) and his Democratic Senate colleagues even have a copy of the Massachusetts Constitution? They probably figure they don't need the 227-year-old document since it's easier to make up the rules as they go along. It's now up to the Supreme Judicial Court to remind them of their constitutional duty to properly set a special election date to fill the seat of Sen. Cheryl Jacques (D-Needham). Notice, by the way, we didn't refer to the former Sen. Jacques or the recently retired Sen. Jacques. Jacques is still the senator of the Norfolk, Bristol and...

Syrian Accountability Act to Combat Terrorism By Jim Hauser Talon News December 18, 2003WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last week, President Bush signed into law H.R. 1828, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003. The legislation calls on the president to impose sanctions on Syria to discourage support for international terrorist groups and the occupation of Lebanon.The bill demands that Syria end support for terrorism; halt the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) along with medium- and long-range missiles; and withdraw the roughly 20,000 troops it has deployed in Lebanon.It also calls on Syria to "enter into...

<p>During the muslim holy month of Ramadan, three senior Qaeda representatives allegedly held a secret meeting in Afghanistan with two top Taliban commanders.</p> <p>AT THAT MEETING, according to Taliban sources, Osama bin Laden’s men officially broke some bad news to emissaries from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the elusive leader of Afghanistan’s ousted fundamentalist regime. Their message: Al Qaeda would be diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq. Al Qaeda also planned to reduce by half its $3 million monthly contribution to Afghan jihadi outfits.</p>

Was Plane That Vanished From Angola the Same One That Crashed off Benin on Christmas Day? ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writ By Nafi Diouf and Published: Jan 2, 2004 DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June - a...

Hide in Plane Sight Family of Possible 727 Pilot: "He Is Not a Terrorist" W A S H I N G T O N, June 18 - While international authorities continue their search for a missing jetliner, fearful that it could be used in a terror attack, the family of the American believed to have been piloting the aircraft worries about his fate. Workers at Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as a Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off - without permission. The plane - which ABCNEWS has learned was refitted to haul...

Mzoudi was a liaison to al Qaeda, witness said. A man claiming to be a former Iranian spy testified Friday that Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second man to be tried for an alleged role in the Sept. 11 attacks, was involved in the preparations to hit the World Trade Center. The witness, who goes by the alias Hamid Reza Zakeri, took the stand at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg and claimed that Mzoudi, was "responsible for part of the organization" of the suicide attacks that destroyed the twin towers in New York and damaged the Pentagon. Zakeri testified Mzoudi...

London, Dec 28. (PTI): Libyan leader Maommar Gadhafi, who recently abandoned his country's weapons of mass destruction programme, had armed al-Qaeda terror network with germ bombs, a report claimed today. Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa told British secret service agency Mi5 that tens of thousands of weapons had been produced at 10 secret sites in the country, the Sunday Express said. Kusa has named 500 al-Qaeda terrorists in Britain and the information he gave is being checked, it said. Libya was closer than Syria, Iran and Iraq to producing a nuclear bomb but last week Gadhafi surrendered his weapons of...

Less than 48 hours after he was taken into custody, U.S. military officials say that Saddam Hussein's capture has already produced an "intelligence windfall" of new information on Iraq's insurgent movement. Speaking to reporters Monday morning, Brig. Gen. Mark Hurtling said, "Intelligence stemming from Saddam's arrest has led soldiers to capture several other top regime figures and uncover rebel cells in Baghdad." The new information came from a briefcase of documents that the deposed Iraqi dictator was reportedly carrying when he was caught, according to MSNBC. Hurtling told reporters that, based on the find, U.S. officials now believe Saddam was...

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told US interrogators the meeting never happened, according to US officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the US in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. US officials caution that Ani may have been lying...

The Governor of the state, Jay Nixon, has declared a state of emergency and plans to mobilize the National Guard in anticipation of an imminent grand jury announcement on the Michael Brown case. Tensions are high in the area, as residents, businesses and police brace themselves for another round of rioting in the mainly black suburb of St. Louis. Their fears are well founded, as seasoned protest organizers are currently training activists to close in on and “shut down” the business district of nearby Clayton on the first business day after the grand jury goes public. Michael McPhearson The key...

The following are excerpts from the televised confessions of Muayed Al-Nasseri, who commanded Saddam Hussein's "the Army of Muhammad" throughout 2004. The confessions were aired by the Iraqi TV channel that operated from the UAE, Al-Fayhaa TV, on January 14, 2005. Interrogator: What is your name? Muayed Al-Nasseri: Colonel Muayed Yassin 'Aziz 'Abd Al-Razaq Al-Nasseri, commander of the Army of Muhammad, one of the resistance factions in Iraq. The Army of Muhammad was founded by Saddam Hussein after the fall of the regime, on April 9, 2003. At first, Yasser Al-Shab'awi was put in charge, until his captured in July...

Swiss hold 8 over Saudi suicide bombs Alison Langley in Zurich, and Brian Whitaker Saturday January 10, 2004 The Guardian The Swiss authorities have arrested eight people in connection with suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia. The arrests on Thursday were part of a national operation by 100 police officers who raided homes in Geneva, Bern, Zurich, Vaud and Aargau and questioned about 20 suspects. Those arrested are suspected of providing logistical support for a series of attacks by Islamic militants on housing compounds in Riyadh last May which killed 35 people, including nine assailants. Officials said all the suspects were...

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A Moroccan accused of helping the September 11 suicide hijackers received training in encryption techniques at an al Qaeda camp in Iran in 1997, an Iranian defector said on Friday. But his testimony to a German court was promptly undercut by comments from Germany's intelligence services, who questioned his credibility and said his evidence was worth very little. Hamid Reza Zakeri, the cover name of a man who says he worked in Iranian intelligence and defected in 2001, was testifying toward the end of Germany's second major trial of suspected members of al Qaeda's Hamburg cell....

Middle Eastern hatreds poison left-wing political life 18.11.2003By CATHERINE FIELD Herald correspondent PARIS - Once they squabbled over who was pro-Soviet and who was not. Now, French leftwingers are split just as deeply by a new wedge: Islam. One of the biggest leftwing conferences in years, the European Social Forum (ESF), gathering tens of thousands of people, ended in bitter discord at the weekend over a speaking invitation to a leading Muslim intellectual accused by Jewish groups of anti-Semitism. Several political parties boycotted his appearance, which was loudly applauded by an audience of a thousand. Some political leaders attended reluctantly;...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - An American wanted for allegedly training with the "Lackawanna Six" at an al-Qaida camp was among the 23 men who tunneled out of a Yemeni prison last week, the FBI confirmed Friday. Authorities earlier said they believed Jaber Elbaneh, 39, was probably among the escapees, but were not certain because of conflicting information, including a posting by the international police organization Interpol that pictured Elbaneh but described someone else. Elbaneh is charged in Buffalo with providing material support to al-Qaida by attending the al-Farooq training camp run by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan months before the Sept....