Free Republic

BRITAIN’S military role in Afghanistan is expanding to a Balkans-scale operation, with about 6,400 personnel from all three Services committed to offensive or peacekeeping tasks. The announcement yesterday came one month after Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, agreed that the Services were stretched to the limit. It will ensure that British troops will be operating in a peacekeeping or fighting role until at least July. Britain’s membership of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was supposed to be completed by the end of April, but is now to continue until the end of June, with the 1st Battalion Royal Anglian...

Black children are being treated unfairly in schools, with higher levels of expulsion and poor exam grades, a special conference in London is being told.  The event, aimed at finding ways to improve the performance of black pupils, is being organised and chaired by Labour MP Diane Abbott.  As it got under way on Saturday, she said the "massive turnout" showed how concerned black parents were at the way schools were "failing" their children. There are concerns that children from certain ethnic groups are falling behind in the transition from primary to secondary education.  Ms Abbott says parents, teachers and...

6 Muslim American teenagers who had flown to UK to study Islam sparked a terror scare at Birmingham International Airport in the last week of February this year. The Muslim students, aged between 17 and 18, from New Jersey, arrived for their visit to the Al-Hirah College in the Balsall Heath area of the city on 24th February. They were refused entry by suspicious immigration officials and put on the next flight home, but a Continental Airlines pilot then refused to take off with them on board. In the confusion, police boarded the plane and arrested the six students. A...

TONY BLAIR faced the prospect of a confrontation with France at today's European Union summit in Barcelona after it emerged that he wanted to give America a veto over any EU military action.A leaked Ministry of Defence briefing confirmed that the Government would block any attempt by Brussels to use the European rapid reaction force without American approval.The tough line is seen as a reassertion of the Prime Minister's pledge that the European Defence and Security Policy launched in December will not undermine the role of Nato.The disclosure, which came as Mr Blair arrived at the summit, will infuriate France,...

Feroz Abbasi is among five Britons held at Camp X-Ray A British al-Qaeda terror suspect has lost a High Court battle against the UK Government over the conditions of his detention by the US at Camp X-Ray. Feroz Abbasi, 22, from Croydon in south London, has been held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since January. Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Mr Abbasi, had called for the UK Government to bring an end to his "unlawful conditions" of detention. Mr Fitzgerald also represents Mr Abbasi's mother Zumrati Juma. And he told Mr Justice Richards she was seeking a...

Harare - Fearing economic collapse and new curbs on civic freedoms, some members of Zimbabwe's business and intellectual elite say they will seek greener pastures following the re-election of President Robert Mugabe. "I've already packed my bags," said a sociologist at the University of Zimbabwe. "Unless you have serious masochist tendencies, it is impossible to stay in a country ruled by a regime ready to sacrifice a whole population to remain in power," said the professor, who asked not to be named. A sociology student at the university who identified himself only as Tonderai said he had begun applying for...

BRITAIN has been asked to join the second phase of the war on terror by offering intelligence training and equipment to Georgia, where al-Qaeda terrorists are believed to be hiding in the notorious Pankisi Gorge. As the first elements of a US special forces contingent of 150 troops arrives in Georgia today to begin anti-terrorist training, the country’s security chief is in London seeking British assistance. After talks in Washington, Valeri Khaburdzania, Georgia’s State Security Minister, arrived in Britain for meetings this week with officials from MI6 and MI5. Whitehall sources confirmed that the talks were taking place but refused...

Scientists today cleared the way for a softening of the law on cannabis, declaring that the drug "is not associated with major health problems for the individual or society". The Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs found that while cannabis smokers can become dependent, the drug is not as addictive as tobacco or alcohol. Although cannabis may pose risks for people with heart problems, or for schizophrenics, the dangers are not so great as in the case of other drugs such as amphetamine, say the scientists. In healthy young people, cannabis is even said to have a similar...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A top editor who was fired from the New York Post last month has filed a federal complaint accusing the newspaper of discriminating against women and Americans in its selection of senior news executives. Maralyn Matlick, who as Sunday editor was the Post's highest-ranking female editorial staff member, said she was ousted because management wanted to promote British or Australian males, rather than Americans and women. In a complaint filed on Tuesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Matlick sought reinstatement, back pay and compensatory and punitive damages. quot;This is a very unfortunate thing and not...

PEOPLE who accuse the BBC of quot;dumbing downquot; are mainly middle class, middle aged, white southerners who want to quot;hijackquot; the corporation's output, its chairman, Gavyn Davies, said yesterday.Mr Davies said those who claimed that the intellectual ambition of BBC programmes was falling were largely those who already quot;get more out of the licence fee than they put into itquot;.The quot;dumbing downquot; charge, levelled in particular at BBC1, was a quot;respectable way of trying to hijack even more of the BBC's services for themselvesquot;, he told a meeting of politicians and media industry leaders.Mr Davies, a former Goldman Sachs economist...

AT least 10,000 farmers will be forced to transport millions of tons of manure across many miles of urban and rural England because of the Government's implementation of an European Union directive on fertiliser. The Country Land and Business Association and the National Farmers' Union wrote yesterday to Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, to warn her against extending the amount of the country protected as a nitrate-vulnerable zone - intended to reduce pollution of drinking water, rivers, streams and coastal water - from eight per cent to either 80 or 100 per cent of the total area of England. Because...

Elizabeth of Englands (50th Aniiversary) Jubilee Year is now being troubled by an American. Her Majesty just acquired an unwanted and unacknowledged first cousin. Michael Thornton Duchess of York biographer informs me.Elizabeth Kelman, 67-year -old missus of American pathologist Dr. Edward Kelman of Maryville Tenn. (where??!), and mother of five sons, is claiming she's the stolen child of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Says she was born June 3, 1934. In England. Two years before the abdication and three years to the very day Eddie married the Amercian dutchess and they became the wandering unemployed Duke and Dutchess of Windsor.

BRITISH security officials are looking into suspicions that a crack sniper who killed 10 Israeli soldiers and civilians on the West Bank a week ago might be an IRA gunman. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, has asked European and American security agencies if they can help to identify the killer, who shot dead seven soldiers and three civilians in 25 minutes using 25 bullets from a bolt-action rifle. The sniper was hidden in trees on a hill overlooking an army checkpoint near the Jewish settlement of Ofra. When he fled, he left behind his weapon, which is standard IRA practice....

LONDON (AP) - A senior minister denied media reports Saturday that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government was divided over whether to back possible U.S. military action against Iraq. Britain has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the war on terrorism, but news reports have said Blair's increasingly hardline stance on Iraq has split the Cabinet and prompted senior ministers to threaten to resign. ``Reports of a Cabinet split on this are in fact completely wrong,'' Labor Party chairman Charles Clarke told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Saturday. More than 60 legislators have signed a motion expressing worry...

The Prince of Wales has said the Commonwealth deserves quot;contemptquot; if it does not stand up for liberal democracy and human rights, it has been reported. According to the Sunday Times, the prince said the organisation was quot;drinking in the last chance saloonquot;. He said the election and how Zimbabwe was treated by the Commonwealth was quot;the biggest test since it had been createdquot;. But the organisation was quot;failing the test and this was causing long-term damage to its credibilityquot;. The prince spoke after Commonwealth leaders agreed not to take punitive action against Zimbabwe in the run-up to this weekend's...

<p>European elites witnessing the unilateral exercise of U.S. power in Afghanistan, the Philippines and now Georgia resemble the ex-smoker in a room with someone who still smokes. It reminds them, sometimes intolerably, of what they once were. For obvious historical reasons, Europeans, particularly Continentals, have bad memories of unilaterally exercised power and have long since concluded that the best way to contain war is the multilateral way.</p>

Britain considers joint invasion plan America has asked Britain to draw up plans for 25,000 of this country's troops to join a US task force to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In a move which reveals advanced US plans for the next phase of its war on terror, Government departments are considering the plans ahead of Vice-President Dick Cheney's meeting with the Prime Minister tomorrow. Cheney will come to London armed with fresh evidence against the Iraqi dictator, and will tell Tony Blair that United Nations inspections of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons may not be enough to head off a...

Government targets mean bunions get treated before cancer, says top surgeonBy Joe Murphy and Lorraine Fraser (Filed: 10/03/2002) A SENIOR NHS consultant has accused the Government of forcing doctors to treat patients with minor problems such as bunions before those with more serious illnesses like cancer in order to meet targets for waiting lists.Richard Rawlins, an orthopaedic surgeon and chairman of the Eastern Region Consultants' and Specialists' Committee, said pressure on consultants to meet official targets was stretching surgical ethics to the limit.In a letter to Sir Peter Morris, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England,...

BRITISH special forces have joined the bloody battle to flush out and destroy hundreds of al-Qa'eda and Taliban fighters making a last stand in fortified mountain cave complexes in eastern Afghanistan.The Pentagon confirmed for the first time yesterday that British troops were part of the 3,000-strong Allied and Afghan forces engaged in the largest land battle of the war. nbsp; Battle ready: Royal Marines are waiting onboard HMS Ocean off the coast of Pakistan Special Air Service and Special Boat Service troops stationed in Afghanistan were called in after the death early last week of eight American soldiers in the...

LEADERS of an allegedly moderate Muslim organisation with close links to the Prince of Wales and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, have distributed literature on behalf of Osama bin Laden.Inayat Bunglawala, a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain, circulated material written by bin Laden, whom he regarded as a quot;freedom fighterquot;, to hundreds of Muslims in Britain last year.He sent the material before last September's attacks on the World Trade Centre, but after bin Laden had masterminded the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead.Mr Bunglawala, the organisation's media director, last...