Free Republic

U.S. warns of financial sanctions over security fence By Ze'ev Schiff The U.S. State Department has prepared a proposal, awaiting the approval of President George W. Bush, that calls for cuts in loan guarantees to Israel matching its outlays for the construction of the security fence east of the Green Line. The proposal also calls for cuts in the loan guarantees matching the sums spent by Israel on bypass roads in the West Bank, because the State Department views the roads as an effort at establishing facts on the ground while the two sides are negotiating within the parameters of...

U.S. Eases Demand for Palestinians to Curb Militants By STEVEN R. WEISMAN ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The Bush administration has backed away from demands that the Palestinian Authority dismantle militant groups immediately, concerned that the authority's security forces are too weak at this point to carry out a speedy crackdown, administration officials said today. The officials said that as a result of the changed thinking about Palestinian abilities, they had come to accept the cease-fire that the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, negotiated last month with Hamas and other Palestinian groups. In June, when the cease-fire was negotiated, it was...

US bans WorldCom from new govt contracts Thursday July 31, 7:58 pm ET By Jeremy Pelofsky and Jessica Hall WASHINGTON/PHILADELPHIA, July 31 (Reuters) - WorldCom Inc. suffered another blow on Thursday after a U.S. agency said the bankrupt telephone company could no longer compete for new U.S. government contracts after finding it lacked proper internal controls and business ethics. The General Services Administration said it would review whether the temporary ban on WorldCom, which is embroiled in an $11 billion accounting scandal, should be extended for up to three years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of...

HundaTrend 2003 Hunda Suicide Belt Standard (shown) Deluxe model with the Big Key Sneak Peek 2008 Hunda A Palestinian boy holding an AK-47 Wed. during a Fatah military drill for youngsters in Gaza. (Reuters)

Calgary man held in Lebanese jail Calgary - An Alberta man is being held in a Lebanese jail without having been formally charged with a crime, and his friends are worried. Bruce Balfour, 52, was arrested in Beirut three weeks ago, after entering the country as part of a project to reforest the mountain areas with cedar trees. Fred van Vliet says family and friends received a fax from Balfour 11 days into his dentention. In the fax, Balfour writes that he was detained because the airport computer showed he'd once been to Israel. He also says the fax was...

<p>July 28, 2003 -- Sen. Charles Schumer and Sept. 11 families yesterday called on President Bush to demand that Saudi Arabia's rulers turn over a shadowy man who allegedly had advance knowledge of the terror plot.</p> <p>The mysterious role of Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi is said to be detailed in the 28 classified, blanked-out pages of the Senate's Sept. 11 report, which reportedly spell out possible links between high-level Saudis and associates of the hijackers.</p>

Two-year old Khalil Shehada plays with a real gun as Palestinians mark the first anniversary of his uncle, military leader Sheik Salah Shehada's assassination, in Gaza city, Friday, July 25, 2003. Arabic writing on headband reads Arabic ' No God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah, Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigade, military wing of Hamas'. An Israeli warplane blew up the house of Sheik Salah Shehada, founder of the military wing of the Islamic group Hamas in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) Tuesday July 23, 2002. On the photo Sheik Salah Shehada, left. (AP Photo/...

Holding severed head in place, he defied death IANS AGRA: A 28-year-old carrier van driver's head nearly got chopped off in a road accident. Weeks later he is alive, thanks to sheer grit. His head almost severed, blood oozing and eyes popping out, Balram was in a dazed state when the accident took place on July 5 in Fatehabad in Uttar Pradesh. He, however, kept his head attached to his body with some cloth. When no one came to help him, he drove his own vehicle for 30 km to reach a nursing home in Agra. Doctors there found the...

Rape (and Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad By NEELA BANERJEE BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 15 — In her loose black dress, gold hairband and purple flip-flops, Sanariya hops from seat to seat in her living room like any lively 9-year-old. She likes to read. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up, and she says Michael, her white teddy bear, will be her assistant. But at night, the memory of being raped by a stranger seven weeks ago pulls her into its undertow. She grows feverish and has nightmares, her 28-year-old sister, Fatin, said. She cries, "Let me go!"...

Arafat and Abbas Agree on Roles in the Peace Effort By JAMES BENNET ERUSALEM, July 14 — Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, worked out a power-sharing agreement tonight that guarantees Mr. Arafat continued influence over negotiations with Israel and over Palestinian security forces, Palestinian officials said. The agreement, which put to rest a threat by Mr. Abbas to resign, came as Israeli officials were stepping up their campaign to sideline Mr. Arafat, asserting that the peace effort could not succeed as long as he retained any authority. Mr. Abbas made his threat on July 7, after...

Straw to Sharon: Britain will continue contact with Arafat By Aluf Benn and Sharon Sadeh, Haaretz Correspondents LONDON - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Monday that Britain would continue to work with Yasser Arafat, despite Sharon's contention that Arafat should be removed from power, a British official said. In a meeting aimed at improving strained ties between the allies, the two men also discussed the implementation of the U.S.-backed road map toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the cases of three Britons killed or injured in Israel, the official said on condition of anonymity....

Bus Driver Snared in Prostitution Sting By Associated Press July 13, 2003, 12:03 PM EDT CICERO, Ill. -- A Chicago bus driver's unscheduled stop in suburban Cicero is proving very costly. The Chicago Transit Authority had to shell out more than $1,200 to get the bus back after the driver pulled over Friday night, allegedly to connect with a woman he thought was a prostitute. She was actually a Cicero police officer. The driver was arrested and other officers impounded the bus. Transit officials said the driver was a part-timer, and if the allegations against him are true he will...

On 02 July 2003, the National Security Agency (NSA) released additional information relative to the 08 June 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty. This release includes three audio recordings, transcripts (in English), three follow-up reports, and a U.S. Cryptologic History Report entitled "Attack on a Sigint Collector, the U.S.S. Liberty." The recordings are in Hebrew and contain time counts in English that were added by the intercept operator. The follow-up reports are summaries of the three transcripts with non-substantive chatter omitted and a compiled report that summarizes the activity and contains the text of the transcripts. The U.S. Cryptologic History...

U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by America's National Security Agency support Israel's version of a long-festering controversy between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel has always said it had no idea the ship was American, but conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel propagandists still claim Israel sank the ship in the full knowledge that it was American. The documents, originally defined as top secret, were made public by...

Don't condemn Israel to India's fate M.D. Nalapat Jun. 22, 2003 On August 15, 1947, India became free. But the day before, nearly a third of the country had been cut away from it to form Pakistan. Since 1948 Pakistan has conducted a continuous war with India, from overt conventional assault as in 1948, 1965 and 1971, to the covert war that has engulfed Kashmir since 1989. The bigger neighbor has exhibited all the hesitation and restraint typical of a democracy, while Pakistan, where the army has been in effective control since the first declaration of martial law in 1958,...

<p>LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) --National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the Palestinian Authority and Israel must work as partners to thwart the cycle of violence erupting in Jerusalem and Gaza and vowed that "there is not going to be any pass for Palestinian leadership in fighting terror."</p>

Pat Robertson on the 700 Club moments ago called Bush's Middle East policy Duplicitous and Hypocritical towards Israel. Without the primary help Robertson gave Bush, McCain would be President. Is Pat Robertson a Bush hater?

WASHINGTON, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Two reports released today provide proof that executives and others at MCI/WorldCom committed acts of fraud and deception that are sufficient to exclude the company from receiving new government contracts. The reports come on top of calls from Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) to investigate why the government has failed to stop using taxpayer dollars to do business with the company. "While the evidence continues to mount against MCI, the government keeps on rewarding the company with new contracts," CAGW President Tom Schatz said. "MCI committed...

<p>When decimal trading was introduced in the stock market two years ago, it was widely touted as a benefit to mutual fund investors, who would benefit from the smaller price increments.</p> <p>Now the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is questioning whether the system might be unduly raising trading costs.</p>

A Slice of America: Judaism Among Non-Jews By DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN David Haase observes more Jewish customs than most American Jews: he attends a Conservative synagogue, keeps kosher, sends his children to Jewish day school and fasts on Yom Kippur. Mr. Haase, who lives in Brooklyn, describes himself as observant in his Jewish practice. Yet he is not actually Jewish. Raised in a family of religious German Lutherans — his grandfather and great-grandfather were ministers — he married a Jewish woman and committed to raising a Jewish family. In the process, he has become deeply involved himself. "Much to my...