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Chechen rebels - who fought their way into the neighboring Dagestan region, killing nine border guards - released a group of hostages, left a village they had occupied, and slipped away in the dark, authorities said Tuesday. At least six of the rebels were tracked down and killed by Russian forces, the Interfax news agency reported. Dagestani police officials initially said most of the dozens of rebels were surrounded in the tiny village of Galatli. But Dagestani Interior Ministry spokeswoman Anzhela Martirosova later said the gunmen left the village before dawn, leaving behind their 11 hostages - seven from Galatli...

<p>North Carolina Rep. Frank Ballance co-founded the John Hyman Foundation years ago when he served as a state senator. He helped direct millions in state money to the nonprofit organization. A federal grand jury continues to ask where did that money go and why?</p>

When I inaugurated the Carolina Journal Online "Tinfoil Hat Award" last week, I really expected to put some distance between announcements of its conspiracy-minded recipients. After all, each of the lucky honorees deserves plenty of time to bask in his or her own place in the sun -- or at least somewhere kind of hot -- before being supplanted by the next one. That was my intention, anyway, but U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance has made it simply impossible for me to follow through on it. In defending himself and his state-funded nonprofit organization Wednesday against swirling charges of mismanagement, conflict...

An attorney representing U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance said Tuesday that a federal grand jury is scheduled to hear evidence next week regarding a now-closed anti-drug foundation the congressman founded. Subpoenas have been issued to people who have received money from the John A. Hyman Memorial Youth Foundation, said Joseph B. Cheshire V of Raleigh. He said they have been told to appear before a federal grand jury Nov. 5. Cheshire did not identify who had received subpoenas. He said Ballance, a Warrenton Democrat, has not received one. Still, news of the subpoenas provided the latest evidence that a criminal investigation...

SOFIA, Sept 4 (AFP) - The self-declared commander of the banned Albanian Liberation Army (ANA), Avdil Jakupi, Thursday threatened to launch a separatist war in Macedonia in an interview with Bulgaria's bTV private television. "Macedonia cannot be a state because Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski is a criminal who is implicated in the murder of (slain Serbian prime minister Zoran) Djindjic", Jakupi told bTV by telephone. "Because of this we will rise up and start a war," the rebel, who is wanted by Macedonian police, added. "Macedonia must become a protectorate of Europe and the United States." ANA on Monday issued...

Posted on Tue, Sep. 02, 2003 Macedonian Troops, Rebels in Standoff GARENTINA KRAJA Associated Press SKOPJE, Macedonia - Macedonian authorities say they will not withdraw troops encircling a northern village until they capture a fugitive rebel leader - ignoring demands by a shadowy ethnic Albanian militant group to end the siege. Hundreds of ethnic Albanian villagers have fled from their homes in Vaksince since the operation began Sunday, fearing clashes similar to those that shook the tiny Balkan nation in 2001. The clashes between government forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents ended in a Western-brokered peace plan, but tensions persist. Troops...

The head of the Republican Party in Congressional District One called for the resignation of Halifax Community College President Ted Gasper this morning. GOP chairman Ed Wharton of Goldsboro cited reports in the conservative publication, the Carolina Journal, as the basis for the party's stand. This morning, the online version of the Carolina Journal, published by the John Locke Foundation, claimed that "Gasper used state resources to raise money for the congressional campaign of Rep. Frank Ballance of Warrenton ..." Attempts by the Daily Herald to contact Gasper and Ballance this morning were unsuccessful. In a letter to state Community...

Ten years after a foundation formed and chaired by U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance began to receive appropriations from the state of North Carolina, the congressman is scrambling to explain where all the money went. "I have accountants and lawyers trying to put all this stuff together," Ballance says. The questions surrounding the John Hyman Foundation have been multiplying since first raised in March by Hal Sharpe, the conservative editor of the Littleton Observer. Funded primarily by the state Department of Corrections to provide substance abuse treatment and prevention services to at-risk residents in Warren, Halifax and surrounding counties, the foundation...

RALEIGH—The Administrative Office of the Courts announced last week that it is terminating the Warren County Drug Treatment Court program, which relies on the services of the John Hyman Foundation, an organization based in Warrenton and chaired by U. S. Rep. Frank Ballance, D-1st. In addition, last week the state Division of Mental Health reprimanded the Hyman Foundation for violations of state law and “a pattern of noncompliance” with the foundation’s DWI program. “This is a shock. I can’t see why our clients should be punished because of mistakes the John Hyman Foundation may or may not have made,” Mary...

THE BALKANS: Radicals Reaching for Control in Kosovo May 16, 2003: The Albanian National Army (ANA) is actively recruiting members of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). A source in the ANA claimed that KPC members were already part of the ANA. The attempted railroad bridge bombing of April 11 involved a KPC member, who was killed in the explosion. The ANA now claims he was working for the ANA. The man “worked for the KPC by day and ANA by night.” These reports sound all too likely. This is one reason UNMIK has been clamping down on the KPC –continuing...

PRISTINA, Kosovo, Serbia -- The United Nations Mission in Kosovo has dropped programs to train Kosovo Protection Corps members outside the province after it was established that two members had been involved in mining the Kosovo Polje-Lesak railway line. UNMIK has financed the training of corps members in Germany, Turkey, South Africa and Albania since the beginning of last year. Two members of the Kosovo Protection Corps were killed while attempting to blow up the railway bridge. Both were also members of the Albanian National Army. Kosovo governor Michael Steiner has branded the Albanian National Army a terrorist organisation. The...

This is the first-ever April tropical storm. Records commenced in 1851. Post news articles, NHC bulletins, watches, warnings, hype, and speculation here. At this point, forecasts indicate that it will head east over the tropical Atlantic. Tropical storms rarely form in this part of the ocean even in the early season, which begins 1 June.

17 Apr 2003 14:26:26 GMT U.N. brands Kosovo rebels terrorists after attack By Shaban Buza PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, April 17 (Reuters) - Kosovo's U.N. governor took the unprecedented step of branding an Albanian rebel group a terrorist organisation on Thursday after it said it was behind a bomb attack on a railway in a Serb part of the province. The ruling by German diplomat Michael Steiner means that members of the Albanian National Army (ANA) can be jailed for up to 40 years. The move suggests that Western officials are starting to take ANA, which has been dismissed by...

SKOPJE, Aug 27 (AFP) - Albanian National Army (ANA) rebels have claimed responsibility for an attack which killed two Macedonian policemen and fed fears of unrest ahead of elections in less than three weeks, according to a statement Tuesday. A press release written in Albanian said ANA guerrillas had attacked the "Slavo-Macedonian police" shortly after midnight near Gostivar on Monday. The rebels appealed to the "Albanian youth involved in the so-called multi-ethnic police to leave that criminal police, take off the uniforms of the Slavo-Macedonian army and to join the ANA". The drive-by shooting in Gostivar, an ethnically mixed town...