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EUOBSERVER / FOCUS - Europeans are drinking more and more bottled water amid preoccupation with weight loss and cravings for emotional experiences like "naturalness," industry surveys show, but the water boom has an environmental cost and water marketing is not always what it seems. European consumers drank 50.3 billion litres of bottled water in 2006 according to figures from industry analysts Canadean and Zenith International, with average market growth of 3.3 percent a year since 2000. To put things into perspective, the volume is more than two times the water in Lake Buttermere in the UK's Lake District. ... Europe's...

The newly appointed CIA Director Porter Goss, believes that terrorists may bring urban warfare techniques learned in Iraq to our homeland. If he is right, we could have a whole new war on our hands. The prospect is indeed scary. The idea of terrorist cells operating clandestinely in the United States, quietly amassing handguns and assault rifles, and planning suicide shooting rampages in our malls, is right out of Tom Clancy’s most recent novel. If not for the fact that the 9/11 attacks were also foreshadowed in a Clancy novel, I would have given the idea no further thought. However,...

EUREKA, Nunavut Territory -- Scientists are peering into the clouds near the top of the world, trying to solve a mystery and learn something new about global warming. The mystery is the droplets of water in the clouds. With the North Pole just 685 miles away, they should be frozen, yet more of them are liquid than anyone expected. So the scientists working out of a converted blue cargo container are trying to determine whether the clouds are one of the causes - or effects - of Earth's warming atmosphere. "Much to our surprise, we found that Arctic clouds have...

Today's "New York Times" includes a story about the disclosure of a nuclear weapons "cookbook" in the huge stash of documents found in Saddam Hussein's intelligence archives and then posted on the internet archive run by the Director of National Intelligence.... Ed Morrissey of the "Captain's Quarters" blog today summarizes fascinating translations of numerous documents that point to, among other revelations, the Hussein regime's contacts with Al Qaeda. Compare the document referred to in that post to a statement this September by Sen. Rockefeller, ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that "No evidence was found of any meeting between...

If somehow a group of Britons from 100 years ago were brought to life and turned loose on the streets of modern London, they would barely recognize the place. The Britain of their day bursted with imperial pride—a sense that the empire was a gift to the world. Over the three centuries Britain built and sustained its globe-straddling kingdom, its extensive contact with all manner of foreign cultures was governed by a sense of duty, of mission. The British sought to strengthen the peoples of other races, religions and creeds with a specific, potent instrument: the civilizing influence of Britishness....

.., I interviewed Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), al-Qa'eda's main ally in the region, and the group on which western attention is focused in the hunt for culprits. ... Scott Atran: "What are the conditions for Islam to be strong?" Abu Bakar Bashir: "The infidel country must be visited and spied upon. If we don't come to them, they will persecute Islam. They will prevent non-Muslims converting." Atran: "What can the West, especially the US, do to make the world more peaceful?" Bashir: "They have to stop fighting Islam. That's impossible because it is...

Last month, American al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn issued a “convert-to-Islam-or-die message to U.S. President George W. Bush, Daniel Pipes, Michael Scheuer, Steve Emerson and Robert Spencer. This attempt at forced conversion to Islam followed the “conversion” at gunpoint of the two kidnapped Fox News reporters Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig. What exactly was the significance of these events? On the one hand, these attempts at forced conversion were in clear continuity with Islam’s long history of calling people to convert before waging war on them. But how exactly does this tradition and practise in Islam square with the Qur’an’s verse...

CNN is now polling with the question: "Should small planes routinely be allowed to fly directly over big cities?" Poll located on the right, almost at the bottom under QUICKVOTE. Presently, the results are running well in the NO column. Speak up or face more restrictions in aircraft operation.

The tragedy is that in Arab and Muslim countries a massacre is happening.... A genocide protected by a deception that is perhaps unparalleled in the history of mankind. A genocide that has no connection to Israel, to Zionism or to Jews. A genocide of mainly Arabs and Muslims, by Arabs and Muslims. Algeria: A few years after the establishment of the State of Israel, there began another war of independence. This time it was Algeria against France, between the years 1954-1962. The number of victims on the Muslim side is a subject for controversy. According to official sources in Algeria...

Political activist Rabbi Meir Kahane was murdered by an Egyptian-born al-Qaeda terrorist after he delivered a speech at a Manhattan event in 1990 ... Three years later, Kahane’s murderer helped lead the terror cell which attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. At the time, the theory that Kahane’s murder had been part of a terror conspiracy was discounted by federal investigators. But Detective John Molelli knew better, having been the first to find and examine the papers in Nuseir's rented house in Cliffside New Jersey . Molleli found and closely examined boxes of notebooks and other papers written in...

Eight times humans came to try to live in Britain and on at least seven occasions they failed - beaten back by freezing conditions. Scientists think they can now write a reasonably comprehensive history of the occupation of these isles. It stretches from 700,000 years ago and the first known settlers at Pakefield in Suffolk, through to the most recent incomers just 12,000 years or so ago. The evidence comes from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project.... Scientists now think there were seven gaps in the occupation story - times when there was probably no human settlement of any...

The future of the US's much-hyped, $815m Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) platform is in serious doubt after a raft of sceptics expressed doubts that the sea monster could ever effectively operate in its intended final mooring off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The SBX - designed to detect incoming ICBMs - is currently wallowing in Hawaii after repairs necessitated by a light battering it received during its first ocean voyage from the Gulf of Mexico, Defencetech reports. Its eventual home is described by the Chicago Tribune as "unforgiving [stretch] of the Bering Sea where winter weather can be so violent that the...

NATIONAL SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY New Hires Data Has Potential for Updating Addresses of Convicted Sex Offenders ... To help track the location of sex offenders, law enforcement officials have turned to other sources of information, such as state departments of motor vehicles and commercial databases. Previous GAO work suggests that the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH) has been useful for the purposes of verifying eligibility for federal benefit programs and collecting debt owed to the federal government, and is a timely source of information.4 The NDNH is a database maintained by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) within...

Oklahoma’s Golden Opportunity With gasoline prices exceeding $3 per gallon throughout much of the United States, motorists are feeling a considerable amount of pain at the pump. Many elected officials are feeling pressure from their constituents to “do something”... “Doing something” in this case usually means railing against the evils of “Big Oil.” Of course, worldwide supply and demand are the primary determinants of gasoline prices, but that does not stop the wild allegations — often centered on accusations of “price gouging” — against oil companies every time they raise prices or announce a quarterly profit. Accusations of gouging then...

Far too many people in the public eye mischaracterize the acts of terrorists and other villains as inconsistent with “mainstream” Islam, as a “corruption of the faith.” While this belief is comforting, especially to those who know, work with, or must obtain cooperation from non-violent Muslims, it is historically and theologically ignorant. ... Ignoring the expected outpouring of complaints from apologists for jihad terror who cynically decried (for example here and here), any“Islamic” references, or other less pressing semantic concerns ( “Islamism” versus “Islamic fascism”), the Washington Times editorial, indirectly, raises this critical question: just what comprises “mainstream” Islam (“of...

dtjohnson writes "Amazon.com has applied for a patent to create an online customer database which would allegedly contain 'massive amounts of intimate information about its millions of shoppers, including their religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity and income.' From the article: "The database, which would combine information disclosed voluntarily by customers with facts gleaned from public databases, conceivably would give Amazon a larger or more detailed profile of its customers than any other retailer. Does this cross the privacy line or is it just reasonable data gathering to make retail sales more responsive to customer needs?"

July, 30, 2006 Ahmadinejad's World In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small plastic key would be hung around each of the children's necks. It was supposed to open for them the gates to paradise. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela'at, "we had child-volunteers:...

Hundreds pay respects to Ta Mok In a traditional Buddhist funeral ceremony, incense was burned and prayers recited over Ta Mok's body, which was daubed with white powder. The ceremony took place in Ta Mok's former stronghold of Anlong Veng, in the north of Cambodia. Ta Mok, who died on Friday, was the regime's military commander and linked to many atrocities of the 1970s. About 1.7 million people died under the Khmer Rouge, through a combination of starvation, disease and execution. Ta Mok was the only Khmer Rouge leader who refused to bargain with authorities following the collapse of the...

Last Tango In Paris Posted 7/18/2006 Eurosclerosis: For those seeking an elegant and romantic milieu, France has long been a favorite destination. Recently, however, it's become more of a departure point for a certain class of Frenchmen: millionaires. According to French government data, at least one millionaire on the average leaves France every day. It's not that they're finding other places more charming than their native terroir. No, it's that France punishes its wealthiest with burdensome tax rates that sometimes reach as high as 72%. Many of those leaving aren't just the nouveau riche. Even some old-line families who have...

...Slowing the spread of one of the nation's most prevalent STDs among college students — the human papilloma virus, or HPV — requires knowing how the virus is prevented. That has been somewhat of a mystery — until now. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that consistent condom use can prevent the spread of HPV in up to 70 percent of cases, giving Innis and other health educators better proof that condoms can prevent HPV, helping to dispel any myths that they are not effective....