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Singapore Surpasses U.S. As Top Tech Nation Forbes.com staff03.09.05, 9:45 AM ET NEW YORK - Singapore has displaced the United States as the top economy in information technology competitiveness, according to the World Economic Forum's latest annual Global Information Technology Report released today. The U.S. drops from first to fifth in the rankings, which measures the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology (ICT). Iceland, Finland and Denmark occupy positions two, three and four out of 104 countries surveyed, with Iceland achieving the most improvement among the top countries, moving up from tenth last...

Homosexual Pressure May Have Forced Target's Salvation Army Eviction By Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker December 15, 2004 (AgapePress) - Pro-family groups based in Washington, DC, and in Illinois say homosexuals are behind a new policy at Target stores that has resulted in banning Salvation Army kettle drive activities on the retail chain's premises nationwide. The familiar Salvation Army bell ringers and their red kettles have been barred from Target stores this Christmas season, and the official reason given by the retailer has to do with its policy prohibiting all nonprofit soliciting at Target locations. However, Bob Knight of the...

In House, a band of new rebels By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON - After dubbing President Bush's "open door" border policy a threat to national security, Rep. Tom Tancredo says, he got a call from Bush aide Karl Rove proposing that he never again "darken the doorstep of the White House." He's glad that the non-invite apparently didn't extend to the annual congressional Christmas party. "It means a lot to my wife," quips the third-term Colorado Republican, who attended the White House event Monday. There's no question that a public rift with...

N.B. court returns killer bike to owner Last Updated Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:56:39 EST SAINT JOHN, N.B. - A Saint John judge has ordered police to return a souped-up sport bike seized after a fatal crash, saying there's no evidence the owner knew the motorcycle would be used in a dangerous manner when he lent it to a friend. The ruling came despite the fact that the owner, Craig Duguay, told police he had ridden the $11,000 motorbike on a highway at more than 300 km/h on at least one occasion, and friends had videotaped him doing motorcycle stunts...

Powell's China Comments Anger Taiwanese Powell Angers Taiwanese Officials, Weighing in on Split With China and Suggesting Unification TAIPEI, Taiwan Oct 26, 2004 — Secretary of State Colin Powell has angered Taiwanese officials and lawmakers by making unusually strong comments denying that the island is an independent nation and suggesting Taiwan should unify with China. Washington usually avoids weighing in on the touchy split, which arose when Mao Zedong's communist army won control of the Chinese mainland in 1949 and anti-communist forces took refuge on Taiwan. But Powell waded into the unification question Monday in interviews with CNN and Hong...

Bush backs temporary work ID for immigrantsOK for jobs unfilled by Americans, he tells Hispanic audience The Associated Press Updated: 3:31 p.m. ET Oct. 22, 2004 WASHINGTON - President Bush, saying the United States should find a more humane way to treat immigrants, told a Spanish-language television network Thursday that he supports offering temporary cards to immigrants who want jobs that go unfilled by U.S. citizens. Bush said the card would provide legal status for undocumented immigrants or those who want to come to the United States to work. But he said he would not offer amnesty. "I recognize that...

Beslan militants were drug-dependent, forensic study shows By C.J. Chivers Monday, October 18, 2004 MOSCOW Forensic analysis of the remains of 31 militants who seized the public school in Beslan last month has determined that all of them were dependent on drugs, a senior law enforcement official said in a statement reported by Russian news agencies Sunday. Nikolai Shepel, the deputy prosecutor general of Russia's southern federal district, also said that blood tests had found very high levels of heroin and morphine among a majority of the attackers who died at the siege, "which indicates that they were long-term drug...

Google Founders on Hiring Trip to India Oct 13, 3:18 PM (ET) By S. SRINIVASAN BANGALORE, India (AP) - Google Inc. (GOOG) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said Wednesday that some new features on the world's top search engine and other services will come from its research center in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where they are on a hiring spree. "One approach we are taking is that Bangalore is where we run a mirror exactly of what we have in the United States in terms of development," Brin told reporters in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state....

Singer on no-fly list had ties to terrorist groups, U.S. official says BY SHANNON MCCAFFREY Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The former Cat Stevens was slated to be deported to England on Wednesday because of U.S. government concerns that the soft-rock singer turned Muslim activist has ties to terrorism. The "Peace Train" singer was placed on the no-fly list this summer after new intelligence showed Stevens - now known by his Muslim name Yusuf Islam - had "connections to groups involved in terrorist activities," said a U.S. government official speaking on condition of anonymity. A second senior U.S....

One little boy was shouting: 'Mama.' She couldn't hear him. She was dead Olga Craig (Filed: 09/05/2004) School Number 1 was the one place the parents of Beslan thought their children would be safe. At the end of the 53-hour terrorist siege it was a vision of hell with screaming victims and bloody corpses everywhere. Tom Parfitt, in Beslan, and Olga Craig report Crouched on the gymnasium floor, with his chin crushed down into his chest, 11-year-old Alan Tsgoeva could see from the corner of his eye the masked man's foot hovering above a pedal on the ground a few...

Russia's Putin Orders Crackdown After School Siege Sept. 4, 2004 — By Richard Ayton and Oliver Bullough BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin ordered a crackdown in southern Russia after a school siege killed at least 250, and warned Chechen sympathizers on Saturday they would be seen as "accomplices of terrorism." The Kremlin leader paid a lightning early morning visit to the traumatized North Ossetia region close to Chechnya where the two-day hostage drama at the school ended on Friday in bloody mayhem with Russian forces battling Chechen militants. "One of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to...

RUSSIA'S NIGHTMARE TWO DAYS OF SHEER TERROR By PAUL THOMPSON and JAMES CLENCH THE full horror inflicted on hostages inside the sweltering school gym was revealed by shellshocked survivors last night. For two days 1,200 children and adults stared death in the face after being herded into the gym by terrorists. First, the captors planted two big bombs in the basketball hoops, then trailed cables to smaller devices around the building. Windows were smashed out to restrict the effect of any knockout gas, which was used to end the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. And male hostages were regularly put...

Rescued Mother Tells of Three Days in Hell Sep 3, 5:15 PM (ET) By MIKE ECKEL BESLAN, Russia (AP) - Holding up the corpse of a man just shot dead in front of hundreds of hostages at a Russian school, the rebel - his pockets stuffed with ammunition and grenades - warned: "If a child utters even a sound, we'll kill another one." When children fainted from lack of sleep, food and water, their masked and camouflaged captors simply sneered. In the intolerable heat of the gym, adults implored children to drink their own urine. Hours after escaping alive, a...

Al-Sadr linked to mass killings By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published September 1, 2004 A U.S. military intelligence report says that followers of radical Shi'ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr imprisoned, killed and mutilated Iraqis who opposed his insurrection. American intelligence officers are now investigating in the town of Najaf, the site of Sheik al-Sadr's bloody standoff with coalition forces. A U.S. military officer told The Washington Times that the command recently acquired photos of 15 to 20 mutilated bodies that appear to be Iraqis lying in a courtyard. A written U.S. intelligence report, a copy of which was obtained...

Atkins diet makes women infertile, interferes with genetic imprinting 29 Jun 2004 If you are a woman and you are on the Atkins diet, you may have a problem if you want to start a family, say scientists. A high protein diet could be make it more difficult for a women to conceive. Scientists at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine, Englewood, USA, have come to this tentative conclusion after carrying out a study on mice. Dr. David Garner, lead researcher, said "Although our investigations were conducted in mice, our data may have implications for diet and reproduction in humans."...

Unions Press for Sanctions Against China By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON - Organized labor asked the Bush administration on Tuesday to impose economic sanctions on China because of the country's alleged violations of worker rights. The request — in a petition filed with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick — represented the latest effort by American unions to highlight what they see as unfair trade practices that have led to a record $124 billion U.S. trade deficit with China last year and the loss of thousands of U.S. factory jobs. The petition, filed by the AFL-CIO on behalf of...

Business leaders don't like 'outsourcing' either By Keith Koffler, CongressDaily Business officials leading a new coalition to combat efforts to prevent companies from moving some operations overseas know they have a public relations problem, and they are preparing to act. "Outsourcing" has become a national dirty word. And, just as they partially succeeded in converting "fast track" to "trade promotion authority," corporate leaders are about to try to strike outsourcing from the lexicon. The coalition is now rallying around "worldwide sourcing" as a less provocative term for the movement of jobs around the globe. The change is part of a...

Early makeup kit may confirm biblical story Excavation: Israeli archaeologists find 2,500- year-old accessories, which likely belonged to Jews who returned from exile in Babylon. Associated Press February 23, 2004 JERUSALEM -- Israeli archaeologists excavating caves near the Dead Sea discovered jewelry, a makeup kit and a small mirror -- 2,500-year-old fashion accessories for women. The trove apparently belonged to Jews who returned from exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C., said Tsvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. "This find is very rare. Both for the richness of the find and for that period,...

As jobs vanish, U.S. is an agricultural colony By Pat Buchanan Sen. John Edwards did not win Wisconsin, but he closed a huge gap with John Kerry with astonishing speed in the final week. The issue propelling Edwards was jobs, the lost jobs under George Bush, and Edwards' attribution of blame for the losses on NAFTA and the trade deals for which John Kerry voted in Congress. Edwards has plugged into an issue that could cost Bush his presidency. Indeed, Kerry's sudden conversion into fiery critic of trade deals for which he himself voted suggests that he senses not only...

White House Backs Off Job-Growth Forecast By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON - The White House backed away Wednesday from its own prediction that the economy will add 2.6 million new jobs before the end of this year, saying the forecast was the work of number-crunchers and that President Bush (news - web sites) was not a statistician. Bush, himself, stopped short of echoing the prediction. "I think the economy's growing, and I think it's going to get stronger," said Bush, the nation's first MBA president. He said he was pleased that 366,000 new jobs have been added...