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Sri Lanka Sank 6 N. Korean Ships Carrying Weapons between this Feb. and Oct. 12/14/2007 Sohn Ji-heun /begin my summary Six N. Korean ships were sunk by Sri Lankan Navy between Feb. 28 and late October of this year. They were shipping weapons for Tamil Tigers, which were designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. State Dept. Both N. Korean crews and Tamil terrorists were aboard the ships. They were all presumed to be killed. Sri Lankan Navy was able to sink them with the help of U.S., which passed on intelligence on the location of (N. Korean) ships in...

What Bush Was Really Asking Kim Jong-il On Oct. 9 last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned from a Middle East tour and relaxed in her apartment after dinner with friends. Rice has been the best-traveled secretary of state since Henry Kissinger, but reportedly doesn't enjoy travel very much. Around 9 p.m., Rice got a phone call from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns. He told her that the Chinese government had informed the U.S. Embassy in Beijing of North Korea's impending nuclear test. An hour later, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that North...

George W Bush makes plea to Kim Jong-Il By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:52am GMT 07/12/2007 Six years after branding North Korea as part of the "axis of evil", President George W Bush has made an unprecedented personal appeal to Kim Jong-Il, the North Korean leader, to disclose and disable his nuclear programme. The letter, on Dec 1, which the White House described as Mr Bush's first direct communication with Kim, came amid growing concern that Pyongyang will not meet a Dec 31 deadline to reveal all about its nuclear agenda, 15 months after it stunned the world...

LifeNews.com Note: Laura Echevarria is a LifeNews.com opinion columnist. She is the former Director of Media Relations and a spokesperson for the National Right to Life Committee and has been a radio announcer, freelance writer active in local politics.In 1996, Congressman Henry Hyde stood up before his colleagues to argue in favor of overriding President Bill Clinton’s veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Congressman Hyde’s skill as an orator rivaled the skills of any marksman or swordsman. His words and eloquence were reminiscent of another era of ideals and determination-- his speeches read like those of our founding...

Top US State Department negotiator Christopher Hill was spotted yesterday at Washington's Dulles International Airport by Japanese TV reporters and crews.When pressed, he indicated that he would be going to "one additional stop" on the way to China from Japan.Later it was confirmed he is going to Pyongyang, North Korea. He will meet his counterpart, Kim Gye Gwan, Kim Jong il's chief negotiator.He will apparantly be in the "Peoples Paradise" between 3-5 December, to work out details facilitating the removal of North Korea from the US Government's list of "Terrorist Countries", which is expected within the next few weeks...

The United States has stationed a diplomat in North Korea's capital to provide assistance to U.S. experts disabling the country's main nuclear facilities, the U.S. Embassy said Monday. -snip- To manage logistics, a State Department official has been based at a hotel in Pyongyang and will remain there only while the disablement work is going on, the embassy said.

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (CNN) -- Israel is "ready now for a deal," said an Israeli official attending Tuesday's U.S.-brokered Mideast summit aimed at laying the groundwork for future peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have "very good chemistry," the official said, adding that he is hopeful a document "will be finalized before we leave Washington Wednesday night." -snip-

It is fitting that Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of tomorrow’s so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women. Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Ms. Rice’s conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Hitler and Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia. This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease...

Remember Nancy Pelosi's spring break in Damascus? Condoleezza Rice apparently does not. When the House Speaker paid Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a call back in April, President Bush denounced her for sending "mixed signals" that "lead the Assad government to believe they are part of the mainstream of the international community, when in fact they are a state sponsor of terror." Today, said sponsor of terror will take its place at the table Ms. Rice has set for the Middle Eastern conference at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Only at Foggy Bottom would Syria's last-minute decision to go to...

BY CLIFFORD MAY As America's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was the White House's most effective defender. Now, as an ex-diplomat, he has become among the administration's toughest critics. But he critiques from the right, not the left, which probably explains why the elite media are not eager to focus on what he has to say. The son of a Baltimore firefighter who attended Yale Law School on scholarship, Bolton combines a combative nature with a keen intellect. He is a conservative without the prefix - neither neo-con (he's skeptical about nation-building and democracy promotion) nor paleo-con...

U.S. Diplomat Is Residing in North Korean Capital, Chosun Says By Heejin Koo Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. diplomat has been residing in North Korea since mid-November, acting as a liaison between the governments of Washington and Pyongyang, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing an unidentified official in Washington.The presence of the unidentified U.S. envoy, who is staying at the Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang, is an indication of improved relations between the two nations since North Korea pledged to disable its Yongbyon nuclear plant by the end of this year, the Seoul-based daily said. The U.S. plans...

Give Japan Its Due Carl Delfeld, Chartwell Advisor 11.20.07, 6:20 PM ET As part of a deal with North Korea in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks, President Bush has decided to take North Korea off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror.This decision was made over the strong protests of Japan, primarily because of North Korea’s stonewalling on providing Japan with any information on a score of its citizens kidnapped by North Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the abductees were schoolchildren on their way home from school. Sure sounds like terror to me. Meanwhile, North Korea...

U.S. to Strike N.Korea Off Terror List Under 'Secret Deal' The U.S. in a closed-doors deal on Oct. 3 agreed to strike North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and suspend the Trading with the Enemy Act by year's end provided North Korea disables its nuclear facilities by then, a senior South Korean official says. The official told Korean reporters in Washington last week the Oct. 3 deal “includes a list of facilities North Korea agreed to disable. It also includes what the other five nations agreed to do, including the issues of striking North Korea from...

AL ASAD, Iraq (Oct. 22, 2007) -- A lot of families have traditions, something that is passed down from generation to generation. For some, its opening presents on Christmas Eve. For others, it is passing the reins of the company business on to the kids. For one family, it is serving in the military. The Flaherty family, from Sewell, N.J., have three generations of serving in the military. Members of two generations were able to spend a day together in Al Asad, Sept. 18, after almost a year apart. Cpl. Shannon Flaherty, an avionics technician with Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron...

Deathbed conversions are sometimes better than no conversions at all, but they're always bought at a discount. President Bush scoffed at the global-warming panic early in his first term. "I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt American workers," he said in November 2001. When he met Gerhard Schroeder, the German chancellor, about that time, he stood his ground in the face of typically heavy-handed Teutonic persuasion. "We agreed on practically everything," Mr. Schroeder said, "except the Kyoto Protocol." The president is still singing to an uncertain score, but he's not nearly as adamant as...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2007 – Marine Gen. Peter Pace will leave behind a lasting legacy of professionalism and commitment to the troops when he retires Oct. 1, his senior enlisted advisor and self-described “battle buddy” told American Forces Press Service today. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey, his senior enlisted advisor, shake hands with Marines from the 6th Provisional Security Company at Camp Lemonier, Dijbouti, during an Aug. 14, 2007, visit. Gainey said Pace has always kept troops’ welfare at heart while serving as the top U.S....

"Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, was about to give a lecture Tuesday afternoon, At Carnegie Mellon, however, Dr. Pausch's speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life."

The death of Dr. D. James Kennedy is yet another reminder of what the hymn writer Isaac Watts saw when he wrote that "time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away." Dr. Kennedy died Wednesday morning at his home in Ft. Lauderdale. He had been out of the public eye since suffering a significant cardiac arrest last December 28. James Kennedy founded the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in 1959, the year I was born. Within just a few short years the church became one of the nation's largest Presbyterian congregations. Along the way he established a host...

The Washington Post scorned President Truman as a “spoilsman” who “underestimated the people’s intelligence.” New York Times columnist James Reston wrote off President Eisenhower as “a tired man in a period of turbulence.” At the end of President Reagan’s second term, the New York Times dismissed him as “simplistic” and a “lazy and inattentive man.” These harsh judgments, made in the moment, have not weathered well over time. Fortunately, while contemporary observers have a habit of getting presidents wrong, history tends to be more accurate. So how might history view the 43rd president? I can hardly be considered an objective...

SEOUL (AFP) — North Korea said Monday that the United States has decided to remove it from a list of states sponsoring terrorism -- a crucial step towards the normalisation of relations between the two countries. The US decision came at a weekend meeting between the chief nuclear negotiators of the two countries in Geneva, a foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency. "Both sides discussed the issue of taking practical measures to neutralise the existing nuclear facilities in the DPRK (North Korea) within this year and agreed on them," the spokesman said. "In return for this...