Free Republic

Iran claims it has foiled al-Qaeda strike plans PARISA HAFEZI IRAN has foiled a number of attacks which al-Qaeda had been planning to carry out on its soil, a senior government official has claimed. "Their [al-Qaeda’s] plans for a wide range of terrorist acts inside Iran were neutralised by our intelligence organisations," the Iranian news agency, IRNA, quoted Hassan Rohani, the secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council, as saying. Mr Rohani gave no details of the planned attacks or whether any al-Qaeda members linked to them were arrested. Although a staunch political enemy of Washington, Iran condemned the...

IDF expands humanitarian officers program By JOEL LEYDEN It's 2 p.m. at the Kalandia checkpost on a boiling summer's day. A long, crowded line of Palestinians wait to enter Ramallah. Young Israeli combat soldiers are positioned in front of them, standing behind grey concrete barriers and above on a dusty hilltop sweating inside guard towers. The 18-year-old troops appear ready for anything. They have been trained for terrorism and war and keep a watchful eye out for the unusual. It could be a car with a sniper, a young boy holding a package or a women suicide bomber just waiting...

US raises Afghanistan aid (Filed: 02/08/2003) Washington seeks security and stability, writes Ahmed Rashid in Kabul The Bush administration is to more than double its aid to Afghanistan and expand its attempts at nation-building in an effort to save President Hamid Karzai. Elections are due to be held in Afghanistan next June, a few months before the US presidential poll, and Washington is keen to secure Mr Karzai's re-election and be able to present Afghanistan as a foreign policy success. In the next few weeks America will announce new aid of more than £600 million for reconstruction and security. Next...

18:45 Palestinian FM Nabil Sha`ath meets with Chinese officials in Beijing, announces China to give PA $3.5 million in aid

Mahboba Rawi has done her maths. She reckons the $4000 she takes to Afghanistan today will feed, clothe and educate 50 children and their widowed mothers for two months. So she will take to the streets of Kabul, where the war-widowed mothers send children as young as three to work, and try to get the children to go to school. Ms Rawi will go with the children to the mothers, to explain her plan: " 'We will give you money so your child will not have to work - if the child goes to school. When the school principal signs...

NOTE: I received this today from a close family member (it was forwarded to me). I blanked out with "XXX" or "<>" place names and covered individuals' names as well to keep this private and not compromise anything (sorry for the diminished 'human feel' this creates). It sounds like it may be helpful to pressure some of these orginizations to 'get something done other than studies/meetings' and/or look at the 'adoption' program... Hi XXX, Well, another busy day gone by. Almost everyone who was here when I arrived has gone home and we have a new but much smaller team...

Powdered milk and a Golani Brigade private. Those were two things that helped me see the real Israel, the Israel beyond the heavy screen of leftist, rightist, and Islamist propaganda that is the staple of the public discourse in most Third World (and many First World) countries. Especially so in the world’s second biggest Muslim country, Bangladesh, which I called home. In 1989, right after high school, my buddies and I went through a male-bonding kind of a vacation that took us overland from Bangladesh into the vast expanses of India and then Pakistan. The first stop was that great...

Five days before the war began in Iraq, as President Bush prepared to raise the terrorism threat level to orange, a top White House counterterrorism adviser unlocked the steel door to his office, an intelligence vault secured by an electronic keypad, a combination lock and an alarm. He sat down and turned to his inbox. "Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.

Iran 'seeking covert nuclear aid' By Colin Joyce and Anton La Guardia (Filed: 12/06/2003) Iranian nuclear experts made three secret visits to North Korea earlier this year, possibly to consult on ways to fool international inspectors, a Japanese newspaper said yesterday. The claim came as the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, issued a warning that Iran was making swift progress in attempts to build a nuclear bomb.Quoting an unnamed "Korean peninsula source" Sankei, a respected national daily, said two Iranian experts visited Pyongyang in March, staying for several days, with further visits in April and May. The report suggested that...

<p>The governments of Mexico and the United States are launching a new coordinated effort to curb this year's record pace of illegal immigrants dying in the Arizona deserts. Two coordinated border missions, "Operation Desert Safeguard" in the United States and "Operaciûn Salvamiento" (Operation Safety) in Mexico aim to crack down on human smuggling networks and deter immigrants from making the illegal - and often deadly - trek.</p>

Aid workers under attack from militia in 'killing fields' By Adrian Blomfield in Bunia (Filed: 04/06/2003) Militia controlling the Congolese town of Bunia have attacked humanitarian workers and raped members of their families in the last few days and continue to execute members of other tribes during the night. At least five local aid workers have been badly beaten in their homes and a United Nations controlled refugee camp in recent days. UPC leader Lubanga The UN peacekeeping mission in Bunia said the militia were targeting humanitarian workers, the only people with large amounts of money in the pillaged town....

Geldof's praise for the US is criticised by aid agencies By Raymond Whitaker 29 May 2003 Heedless of the dismay caused to international aid agencies by his support for Washington's Africa policies, Bob Geldof heaped more praise on the Bush administration yesterday.The Live Aid founder, who is visiting Ethiopia for the first time in nearly 20 years to highlight the danger of another famine, hailed President George Bush's signature on a $15bn (£9bn) plan to fight Aids in Africa and the Caribbean, saying: "That is extremely radical and welcoming ... and will take the fight against Aids to new heights."...

Washington will give Jordan $700 million to compensate its ally for losses caused by the war in neighbouring Iraq, Jordanian officials said yesterday. They said US Secretary of State Colin Powell, expected later yesterday in Amman on the third leg of a Middle East tour, would sign a document transferring the funds in a ceremony today before heading to Saudi Arabia. "This aid is a sign of appreciation for our role and to minimise the impact of the Iraq war on the Jordanian economy," said one official. The kingdom estimates the war in Iraq cost its aid-dependent economy millions of...

Reports of garbage not being picked up and police officers refusing to go to work for fear of running into thugs are rampant in Iraq these days along with the incessant reports of Iraqi protesters railing against the United States and the coalition forces for not having a fully functioning government and public services established just weeks after the most successful military campaign in the history of the world. So, what needs to be said about this? How about shut the hell up and get your butts back to work! There are a few things that the Iraqi people have...

Wounded girl moves Fort Benning soldier BY S. THORNE HARPER Staff Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq -Staff Sgt. James Mattwig has seen too many children wounded by war, but there was one little girl he couldn't shake from his mind, and he couldn't sleep Saturday night.Mattwig, 31, a D-Troop scout with the 3rd Infantry's 3rd Brigade from Fort Benning, had escorted civil affairs officers earlier that day to conduct war-damage assessments inside Baghdad.That's when he saw 3-year-old Aya.She could see him with only her right eye; an oversized patch covered her other one. Her parents explained that an artillery round about two...

TOKYO — Japan has started considering providing economic and food assistance to North Korea even before normalizing bilateral relations in the event the reclusive country agrees to abandon its suspected nuclear development program, Japanese government sources said Friday. Although Japan and North Korea agreed in a summit last September that such aid would come after the establishment of diplomatic ties, the government decided to rethink the matter in light of upcoming multilateral talks on the North Korean nuclear standoff. The United States, North Korea and China are to launch multilateral talks next week in Beijing to discuss the impasse, initially...

British Aid Plane Prevented from Entering Iraq $-17-2003, Reuters By Kate Holton LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. forces have refused a Save the Children plane permission to land in northern Iraq to deliver aid, breaching the Geneva Convention and "costing children their lives," the British aid agency said on Thursday. Save the Children said in a statement it had been trying for more than a week to land a plane in Arbil carrying enough medical supplies to treat 40,000 people and emergency feeding kits for malnourished children. A U.S. official told the charity no aid flights would be allowed until the...

Freed aid workers tell of prison torture By Kim Sengupta 13 April 2003 Two members of Médecins Sans Frontières have returned to Baghdad after being arrested and held for eight days by Iraqi secret police, accused of being spies. François Callas and Ibrahim Younous were kept in some of the regime's most notorious prisons before being dumped on the streets in the city of Ramadi, in western Iraq, on Friday evening. The two men were among dozens of foreigners who were picked up by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, in the dying days of Saddam Hussein's regime and then...

Whatever “vital” role the United Nations plays in reconstructing Iraq when the war ends, one thing is certain: the international body will first have to feed much of the country’s 27m people AFP EVEN before coalition forces invaded Iraq three weeks ago, some 60% of the country’s population of 27m depended on aid under the oil-for-food programme administered by the United Nations. When hostilities broke out, the UN pulled its staff out of the country. Since then, the supply of food and other essentials has dried up. The Iraqi regime has refused to let all but a handful of aid...

Aid arrives at Baghdad airport From correspondents in Washington April 10, 2003 AIRCRAFT have delivered aid supplies to Baghdad international airport, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said. "Planes are already landing at the Baghdad airport. They're already going in," he said today. Dismissing claims of a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, the defence secretary added: "The humanitarian problem occurred under the Saddam Hussein regime for decades. "What's happening now is that humanitarian assistance is coming in. "That doesn't mean that the situation is worse, it means that it's better