Free Republic

20 reporters enter Taliban-controlled Afghanistan TOWR KHAM, Oct. 14 Kyodo - Some 20 foreign journalists, including one from Kyodo News, on Saturday entered the Afghan side of Towr Kham, a town on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, for the first time since the U.S.-led air strikes started last Sunday. After Afghanistan's ruling Taliban issued visas to the group, which includes CNN staff, the reporters entered the Afghan side of the town through Peshawar, Pakistan, at night, when a bus they and two Taliban officials were riding in crossed the border. The Taliban, which have imposed strict restrictions on foreign ...

A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima denounce U.S sub-critical nuclear test A leader of an organization of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima has denounced U.S. plans to conduct a sub-critical nuclear test as intolerable. @ Mr. Sunao Tsuboi said on Tuesday that terrorists' acts of indiscriminate murder can never be permitted. But he said it is evident that the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly show that nuclear weapons kill huge numbers of people at random. On Monday, the U.S. Energy Department announced that a sub-critical nuclear test will be conducted on Wednesday at a site in the state of Nevada. U.S. ...

WASHINGTON, May 29, 2001 -- Chinese officials have agreed to return the damaged Navy EP-3 plane they've held on Hainan Island since April 1 -- in pieces. The Navy surveillance plane collided in mid-air with a Chinese fighter April 1 (March 31 in the United States) and made an emergency landing on Hainan shortly after. U.S. officials had sought to repair the plane on Hainan and fly it home, but the Chinese rejected the idea. Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told reporters May 29 that disassembling the plane would be more costly and time-consuming than repairing it and ...

NEW YORK -- The U.N. oversight committee that booted the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission is trying to ban several private human rights advocacy groups from participation in the United Nations. Those targeted include Freedom House, the Baptist World Alliance, the Simon Weisenthal Center and the Family Research Council. "First, they silenced the United States´ voice on the human rights commission. Now, they are going after U.S.-based human rights advocacy groups," said Freedom House President Adrian Karatnycky. The effort is being orchestrated in a 19-nation subcommittee of the 54-nation U.N. Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc), which ...

TALLAHASSEE - Governor Jeb Bush expressed his support for the comprehensive election reform measure that was passed by the Legislature today. The legislation is based on recommendations made by the Governor's bipartisan Select Task Force on Election Procedures, Standards and Technology, and has been a top priority for the Governor this session. "Working with the Legislature in passing election reform, we have ensured that Florida voters will have a world class voting system. I want to thank Senators Lisa Carlton (R-Osprey) and Bill Posey (R-Rockledge) and Representatives Dudley Goodlette (R-Naples) and Johnnie Byrd, Jr. (R-Plant City) for their leadership in ...

ADVISORY 01-009 Citing recent events between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC), malicious hackers have escalated web page defacements over the Internet. This communication is to advise network administrators of the potential for increased hacker activity directed at U.S. systems during the period of April 30, 2001 to May 7, 2001. Chinese hackers have publicly discussed increasing their activity during this period, which coincides with dates of historic significance in the PRC: May 1 is May Day; May 4 is Youth Day; and, May 7 is the anniversary of the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy ...

Taiwanese newspaper Taipei Times published recently details of a new war plan prepared by the Bush administration and due to be presented to the Congress in July this year. Quoting Bruce Blair, President of the Center for Defense Information, the newspaper claims U.S. strategic concerns are being currently shifted from Russia and Europe to China.'There has been an adverse trend in US-China relations that is actually reflected in the nuclear war planning process in the United States', Mr. Blair says. The new plan foresees a massive American nuclear attack against a large number of Chinese targets. In 1998, Washington approved ...

Russia signed an agreement with North Korea on Friday to upgrade weapons supplied to the isolated communist state during the Soviet era, the RIA news agency said. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who signed the deal for Russia, told RIA he did not expect the agreement to harm Moscow's relations with South Korea, which is still technically at war with North Korea. "Russia's main aim is successful negotiations between North and South Korea," RIA quoted him as saying. The deal, officially called a "framework agreement" on cooperation in the defence industry and military equipment, was the focal point of ...

SINGAPORE (AP) - Civil rights activists in Singapore attracted more than a thousand people Saturday to a pro-democracy rally - the first event of its kind to take place in the tightly controlled city-state. The rally is to show support and raise funds for the country's most prominent opposition politician, Joshua ``J.B.J.'' Jeyaretnam, who faces ouster from Parliament. At least 1,000 people were at the opening of the rally at a Singapore sports stadium, but hundreds more arrived as the night went on, in an open show of support for the opposition unprecedented in Singapore's 35 years of independence. Police ...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Denise Rich says she contributed generously to Democrats because she wanted to support her country, and she did nothing wrong in helping her ex-husband get a presidential pardon. ''I feel that what I did is right, and I would do it again,'' she said in an interview on the ABC News program ''20/20.'' Rich also denied she ever had a sexual relationship with President Clinton, who pardoned her ex-husband, Marc Rich, in January. ''I never had a sexual relationship or anything that's improper, any kind of relationship that would be improper with President Clinton,'' Rich ...

Facing Allegations He Led a Massacre, Kerrey Quickly Got Control of the Story The former Senator scoops New York Times writer who spent two years tracking the war story through strategic outreach to two reporters who traveled with him to Vietnam in '91 -- one says call 'surprised' him. Facing a story that threatens his reputation as a war hero and his viability as a potential presidential candidate, Bob Kerrey played the spin game with exceptional skill this week, and in the process scooped two years of reporting that was about to appear in the New York Times Sunday Magazine ...

BEIJING (AP) -- Authorities have detained two men for posting articles on the Internet promoting political reform in China, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said Thursday. Lu Xinhua of central Wuhan city was arrested March 11 and charged April 20 with ''incitement to subvert state sovereignty,'' according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Lu posted articles on the Internet promoting democracy in China and documenting alleged human rights abuses by the Chinese government, the information center said. In a separate case, authorities secretly tried an economist April 3 in the northern city of Cangzhou for ...

BEIJING (AP) -- Police shot and killed at least two people in a dawn raid meant to force destitute residents of a farm village in southern China to pay an agricultural tax, people in neighboring villages said Friday. Police sealed off Yunxing village in Jiangxi province after the attack by some 600 officers Sunday, said residents interviewed by phone from Beijing. Villagers who had tried to keep police out by blocking a road with an iron gate fought back with shovels, sticks and other improvised weapons, said a resident of nearby Xidan, who gave only his surname, Wu. He said ...

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan has decided to give former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui a visa to receive medical treatment despite strong opposition from China, news media reported Friday. Foreign Minister Yohei Kono -- who was against issuing the visa because of concern that it would anger China -- acquiesced to repeated demands by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori that Lee be allowed to come to Japan on humanitarian grounds, the reports said. The visit has been heavily opposed by Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a wayward province and opposes any move by Taipei to enhance its diplomatic profile. Lee will be ...

On the United States military reconnaissance aircraft collision destroys the side military airplane event and other correlation question China and America both countries hold negotiations The New China News Agency Beijing on April 19th the news basis both sides related forgiveness, Chinese and American both countries destroyed the side military airplane event and other correlation questions from April 18th to 19th in Beijing on the United States military reconnaissance aircraft collision hold the negotiations. Center side delegation regimental commander, Ministry of Foreign Affairs North America big ocean continent Si Director Lu Shu Min points out in the negotiations, the American ...

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's lower house of Parliament on Wednesday ratified a treaty allowing other countries to fly surveillance flights over its territory -- a pact that aimed at preventing confrontations like the recent U.S.-Chinese standoff over a spy plane. The treaty was approved in the 450-member State Duma lower house, said Sergei Butin, a spokesman for the international relations committee. It now goes to the Federation Council, the upper house of Parliament. Failure to ratify the treaty by Russia and Belarus has kept the pact, signed in 1992, from going into effect. Belarus has said it will wait ...

The reputed Russian scientist Valentin Danilov has been arrested and charged with espionage in Krasnoyarsk, the Russian Federal Security Service reported on Wednesday. Investigators allege the scientist provided China with top-secret information on space research. Valentin Danilov, the director of the Thermo-Physics Center at Krasnoyarsk State Technical University, has been in detention at the Krasnoyarsk region’s FSB department since February 16th. However, the news of Danilov’s arrest emerged only after his colleagues, led by Academician Kirill Alexandrov, addressed the region’s chief prosecutor Ivan Borisenko with an open letter, in which they demand that all the charges against Valentin Danilov ...

China backed themselves into a corner with all the tribute to their pilot. The Chinese now can't admit to their public that their pilot flew with reckless abandon, even if the video showes he did fly recklessly. So breaking off talks is their only move.What is next for the Red Vampire ,by refusing to have talks. A walk through these six steps is next :1. The destroyer decision2.No deal with other high performance weapons3.A worsened political atmosphere4.Observance of the 1979 stipulation method of completly providing for Taiwans defense.5.Weak Bilateral relations6.The unknown future

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Thailand plans to execute drug offenders every week, starting Wednesday, in a bid to deter traffickers. ''From now on we will conduct weekly executions against drugs offenders,'' Interior Minister Purachai Piemsomboon said Wednesday. ''We are executing convicted narcotics offenders quickly to send a clear signal to drug traffickers that this government is serious about taking tough action against them,'' he said. Executions are carried out by firing squads in Thailand. There are 19 prisoners on death row in Thailand, all of them at Bangkwang prison. Eleven were convicted of trafficking in methamphetamines, three of whom ...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson grandson imperial jade seal makes an apology the letter on the American government for the Chinese people answers reporter the questions -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New China net 2001.04.11 19:55:45 New China net news according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs website report Question: The after collision machine event has, center the side continuously persists lets the American perspective make the apology, but the now American perspective only is expresses deeply the apology, center the side allows the beautiful aircraft crew on the decision to leave the country. Center side whether did make the compromise in this ...