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Iran announced Saturday the successful test flight of a rocket capable of propelling satellites into space, three months after launching a satellite with the help of Russia. The United States has repeatedly voiced concern that such launches could boost Iran's ballistic missile technology, extending to the potential delivery of nuclear warheads. But Iran insists it is not seeking nuclear weapons and that its satellite and rocket launches are for civil or defensive purposes only. State television reported the "successful suborbital launch of the satellite launcher named Ghaem-100". "The flight test of this launcher using the Rafe solid-fuel vehicle has been...

In Portland, Oregon.

For centuries, popular culture has treated Satan as God's nemesis – an angel consumed by pride and cast out of heaven to run his own evil empire. But Henry Ansgar Kelly says poor Satan has gotten a bad rap. For decades he has pleaded the devil's case, arguing that Satan is simply one of God's celestial agents with the dirty job of gauging humanity's virtue. While that job has made Satan cynical and jaded over time, Dr. Kelly said, it doesn't make him the mastermind of evil. "Christian tradition has laid a lot of blame on Satan for things they're...

STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In fact, those dopes can kill you! Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center. The author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly...

http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

According to the speaker of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, 79-year-old Cuban President Fidel Castro is "very alive and very alert" after undergoing surgery and ceding power, at least temporarily, to his 75-year-old brother Raul. Alcaron told the radio program Democracy Now: " I met with him personally Monday before the announcement was issued, and … Tuesday I was in communication with him also. He is perfectly conscious, very good speech as always. We talked for over a half an hour on many things going on in the world, the impact that the announcement has had. … Of course, he...

The American Left as "crisis cult" Clinical psychologist Robert Godwin proposes an interesting framework for understanding the increasingly bizarre behavior of the American Left at his very interesting website One Cosmos. Drawing on the work of psychoanalytic anthropologist Weston LaBarre, he posits that the left has become a “crisis cult” such as are found in societies whose bedrock assumptions break down in the face of the superior strength of foreign cultures impinging on their territory. Probably the most famous of the crisis cults are the cargo cults which developed in Melanesia. The Cargo Cults believe that manufactured western goods (‘cargo’)...

North calls alert, U.S. and Korea plan 5-way talks July 19, 2006 ¤Ñ North Korea has ordered wartime mobilization preparation for its soldiers and citizens, a senior intelligence official said yesterday. The order was delivered to military and civilian leaders just after midnight Sunday, four hours before the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the North's arms and missile programs. President Roh Moo-hyun convened a meeting of his security officials today to discuss that mobilization order and other issues stemming from the UN resolution. The order, which was not broadcast by radio or television, was the first in...

Fellow TravelersBy David HorowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | July 18, 2006 It is in the nature of Stalinism for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying – and not only to others but first of all to themselves – a fundamental part of their lives. It is always a mistake to assume that Stalinists do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically. For their loyalty is to something other than the truth....

Newcomers to Hell's Kitchen, who pay top dollar to live in the hot neighborhood, are having a devil of a time dealing with a resurgence in some of the area's longtime inhabitants - prostitutes. The in-your-face, scantily clad night crawlers, who for years discreetly plied their wares from pimp-owned cars, are back to their pre-Giuliani days of streetwalking, traffic-stopping parades in front of flesh-hungry motorists, according to residents and community leaders. The Post recently spotted about a dozen of the hard-working, high-heeled hookers strutting up and down West 47th and 48th streets between Ninth and 11th avenues - not far...

"?DEAR MARGO: I am a 38-year-old successful female who is emotionally and financially secure. I have been told that I am very attractive and intimidate men. I would like to get married but am thought to be too independent"

/begin my translation N. Korea Holds onto  Chinese Trains Bringing Aids Japanese Media, "(N. Koreans) say that trains are part of the aid package." [2006-07-04] Outdated N. Korean trains N. Korea refuses to return (Chinese) trains which brought aid supplies from China, even after the supplies were unloaded, leaving Chinese authorities increasingly frustrated, it has been revealed. Quoting sources inside China, Jiji Press of Japan reported in its July 4th dispatch,  "China is sending materials and goods to N. Korea, but, in recent days, N. Korea frequently refuses to return these trains, raising frustration of Chinese authorities." According to Jiji, the sources speculated, "N....

Still On the Waterfront: Long plagued by Johnny Friendlys, dockworkers fight to take back a mob-infested union by Tom Robbins June 27th, 2006 12:21 PM Just south of the Statue of Liberty, the huge white shipping cranes of New Jersey's container terminals arch into the sky. Even in the summer haze, the cranes still dominate the horizon. Their 200-foot-tall white hoists slant up and east, offering a kind of silent salute to the torch clenched in the statue's upraised arm. Most of New York's shipping is conducted on the Jersey side of the harbor now. More than $130 billion in...

New York police said they had nabbed 13 flashers and gropers in a recent sting operation on the city subway system that used undercover policewomen as bait. "We hope there'll be deterrent value for potential perpetrators who recognise their victim may be a police officer," said Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne. The two-day sting mission, dubbed "Operation Exposure," was actually carried out in May in response to increased complaints from women commuters of men behaving lewdly on the subway network. The sting involved a number of female police officers who posed as businesswomen and rode the trains during rush hour. The...

Liberals like to claim that GW Bush is trapped in a quagmire in Iraq. However, when it comes to being captive to irrational thinking, no one can top liberals. Consider, please, the liberal position on several current issues and the quagmire such thinking produces: *Rising gasoline prices are devastating to working Americans,but protecting obscure organisms at the bottom of the food chain is of greater concern. Which is why drilling for oil & adding refining capacity are unacceptable. * Large profits are obscenely un-American, except when it comes to George Soros, Oprah Winfrey and other liberals. *Illegal aliens deserve driver’s...

At long last, there's good news in the fight against "jackpot justice" tort claims and the nefarious law firms that file them. In courts and legislatures across the country, fraudulent lawsuits are being exposed, and the abusive tort lawyers that file them are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Most notable is the recent indictment of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, the nation's most notorious class-action law firm. For four decades, Milberg Weiss has filed hundreds of dubious class-action lawsuits and wrung billions of dollars from terrified companies. Now, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted...

Two grandparents in Lake County, Fla., were arrested for allegedly offering a hit man $100 to kill their three grandchildren, daughter-in-law and the family's pet dog, according to Local 6 News.

Time: if you oppose illegal immigration, you might be a Nazi, or a Klansman, or maybe even a member of the Minutemen. And to think Kaus thought the media was going to line up with the Senate against the House. You’re too young to be so cynical, Mickey. A quick check of the Time archives reveals no mentions whatsoever of “MEChA,” let alone the fact that the lieutenant governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles once belonged to the organization. If you can find any, let me know and I’ll update here. Meanwhile, it’s a very special edition...

In these last days, the Bible says it will be a time of mass hybridization and the mixture and corruption of human DNA by fallen angels, also known as "Aliens." The government is and has been, conditioning the existence of aliens through Hollywood, science fiction, cartoons, and other sources. However, they are not telling you the whole truth. These Aliens are not ascended masters, or enlightened ones, or beings from galaxies millions of miles away, nor are they our forefathers or original creators. They are fallen angels who were kicked out of heaven for their rebellion against the headship...

Dressing like your daughter doesn’t make you look hotter—just stupider. Creepy futurist/author Douglas Coupland once wrote that in the 1960s, everyone dressed as if they were 35 years old—but that by the ’90s, that age had dipped to 25. Alarmingly, it didn’t stop there, and one wonders if Coupland—were he not currently embroiled in increasingly weird artistic pursuits—might not notice that in the few years since he made his point, masses of adults have taken to dressing like 15-year-olds: a trend that, if it continues, should by the 2010s center on sippy cups and purple overalls. Men get partial credit...