Free Republic

'Bin Laden ordered me to topple government' By Nick Squires in Sydney (Filed: 17/02/2006) Osama bin Laden ordered a Muslim convert to help prepare a terrorist attack to topple the Australian government, Victoria supreme court was told yesterday. Joseph Thomas, 32, a taxi driver who changed his name to Jihad, was told to act as a sleeper agent and spy on military installations, said Nicholas Robinson, prosecuting. The allegations were made on the first day of the trial of the man the media have nicknamed "Jihad Jack". He denies receiving money from al-Qa'eda in 2002 and 2003, providing the terrorist...

Air crew ordered not to wear crucifixes on flights to Saudi By Matt Barnwell (Filed: 09/01/2006) Air crew on the only British airline that flies to Saudi Arabia have been told not to wear crucifixes or St Christopher medals on flights there so as not to offend the country's Muslims. Stewardesses at BMI have also been told to cover themselves in the long abaya robes that Saudi women have to wear in public before they disembark in the capital Riyadh. In some instances, they are also advised to wear a headscarf. The airline insists that the rules are part of...

TORONTO (AP) - A suspected former Black Panther member accused of shooting a Chicago police officer more than 35 years ago was ordered extradited to the United States Friday. Court officials said Joseph Pannell, a former Toronto library worker who spent more than two decades living in Toronto, allegedly shot when he was 19 and a member of the black militant group. After the Toronto court ruling, Pannell's wife and four children stood in protest outside the downtown U.S. Consulate. "We all have bleeding hearts right now, but this is not over," said Pannell's wife, Natercia Coelho. She said they...

Release of Cisneros Report Ordered Bloomberg News Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A11 A federal appeals court ordered the release of a final report yesterday in a decade-long investigation of former Housing and Urban Development secretary Henry G. Cisneros. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in an order that the time has come for independent counsel David M. Barrett to end the inquiry, which has cost more than $21 million, government records show. **SNIP** The probe continued as Barrett sought to determine whether anyone in the Clinton administration obstructed his investigation of...

How Chirac 'ordered' his own secret, secret service By Henry Samuel in Paris (Filed: 06/10/2005) A former French secret agent has accused President Jacques Chirac of ordering him to run a private secret service to channel ransom money to hostage-takers in Lebanon and Bosnia. Jean-Charles Marchiani, 62, also a former MEP, made the claims at the start of his trial this week for allegedly receiving 1.3 million euros (£880,000) in kickbacks from military contractors. Jacques Chirac Investigators want to know why and how Marchiani amassed several million euros in his Swiss bank accounts. Prosecutors say some of the money came...

LOS ANGELES - Actor Tom Sizemore was ordered Friday to remain in a live-in drug rehabilitation program until he is sentenced in September for violating his probation on drug charges, his prosecutor said. Sizemore admitted to a series of violations, including falsifying his urine tests by using a prosthetic device and failing to submit to drug testing on eight occasions, said Deputy District Attorney Sean Carney. The actor was nearly a no-show in court, arriving several hours late for Friday's hearing. His attorney, Michael Rovell, said Sizemore had been in the rehabilitation facility since July 11 and requested Thursday that...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A Superior Court judge on Thursday kicked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's redistricting measure off the special election ballot, ruling that supporters violated California's constitution by using two versions of the initiative in the qualifying process. "The differences are not simply typographical errors," Judge Gail Ohanesian said. "They're not merely about the format of the measure. They are not simply technical. Instead they go to the substantive terms of the measure." The proposal, Proposition 77, is one of three initiatives that the Republican governor is supporting in the Nov. 8 special election. It would take the power to draw...

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai policemen with waistlines larger than 40 inches have been ordered to reduce their weight in order to look good when they direct traffic, the police department announced Tuesday. Recent medical examinations of 4,150 police officers in Bangkok found that 49 percent have high cholesterol and are overweight, which is "an obstacle" in directing traffic, said a statement from the Metropolitan Police Bureau. Eighty-eight of the overweight officers whose waistlines ranged between 40 and 49 inches were ordered to join the "Smart Police," a one-month weight-loss program. Participants will have to eat according to doctors' instructions and...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The head of the Los Angeles County health department was ordered to move his office into troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center by supervisors frustrated by continuing reports of deaths and poor patient care. "Park yourself there," Supervisor Gloria Molina directed Dr. Thomas Garthwaite during a contentious supervisors' meeting Tuesday. "Take your schedule. Tear it up and spend every moment that you're working for us working on solving the crisis," she said. Garthwaite said his department had taken disciplinary actions against hundreds of King/Drew employees. Supervisors also ordered the Department of Health Services to hire...

Absent a further court order, Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will be removed on Friday, and she will starve -- painfully, many say -- to death. Doesn't it strike you as eerie that the court relied on the testimony of an "estranged" husband in making its decision? Doesn't it strike you as horrifying that Terri may very well want to live but they are going to cause her to die, not by removing a respirator, but a feeding tube? Do you really believe that Terri's husband, Michael, who is living with another woman with whom he sired two children, is refusing...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A leading fund-raiser for an Islamic charity with alleged links to the Palestinian militant group Hamas was ordered deported Tuesday. An immigration judge ruled that Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan, 44, should have known that his work for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development provided support for the group. "Our laws prohibit aliens who are living here as our guests to use this country as a base to advocate terrorism or raise money for terrorist causes," said John Salter, Los Angeles chief counsel for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The judge did not name a country...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - U.S. special operations forces accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq warned defense intelligence personnel not to talk about the alleged mistreatment they saw, according to a government memo to a top adviser of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In the memo written June 25 after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal had gone public, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency complained about the harassment of DIA personnel, including one case where special forces confiscated photos of a prisoner they had punched. Defense intelligence workers also had their e-mail messages monitored and were...

Slamming the state for failing to adequately monitor more than $100 million in grants that lawmakers doled out for pet projects in their districts, Controller Steve Westly on Tuesday ordered the withholding of $15 million that has not been spent. It is "almost impossible" to know whether the funds were misspent by the nonprofits and local governments that received them between 2000 and 2002, Westly said, because there were no clear guidelines for using the money in the first place. In many cases, there was little follow-up by the Department of Parks and Recreation, which disbursed and earmarked funds that...

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) repeatedly authorized U.S. fighters to shoot down hijacked airliners as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unfolded but his orders did not reach military pilots until the last of the four planes had already crashed, the commission investigating the terrorist attacks said Thursday. Cheney at one point believed incorrectly that his orders had resulted in the shoot-down of a couple aircraft. The commission's report documented a day of confusion and miscommunication at the White House, Pentagon (news - web sites), the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) and the North...

Two reporters ordered to erase tapes while covering Scalia speech By DENISE GRONES Associated Press Writer HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) -- Two reporters were ordered Wednesday to erase their tape recordings of a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school. Scalia has long barred television cameras from his speeches, but does not always forbid newspaper photographers and tape recorders. On Wednesday, he did not warn the audience at the high school that recording devices would be forbidden. During the speech, a woman identifying herself as a deputy federal marshal demanded that a reporter for The...

She may have been a neatnik in life, but the government thinks Moira Thoms has grown quite sloppy since her death. Although she succumbed to cancer three years ago, the Leeds City Council in Britain mailed Thoms a letter demanding she clean up her gravesite at Lawnswood Cemetery. She has exactly 14 days to remove two vases containing single white roses, reports the BBC. According to the strongly worded letter, the vases placed next to the memorial plaque constituted an "illegal memorial." "If they are not removed within this time we shall arrange for members of staff to remove them...

<p>WEST CHESTER, Pa. -- A judge handed down a novel sentence to a defendant with a lengthy rap sheet: He ordered him to read "To Kill a Mockingbird."</p> <p>Judge Juan Sanchez gave William Fowlkes, 46, of West Chester, his own copy of Harper Lee's classic novel and instructed him to read it and write an essay about how his "disgusting" behavior relates to the book.</p>

<p>A University of California-Berkeley student -- who spent nine days of anonymity in a San Jose jail as an act of civil disobedience -- was ordered Wednesday to pay restitution to a Sunnyvale company she had denounced as a war profiteer.</p>

The alleged masterminds of the terror attacks in Bali are vowing a new wave of attacks on America, as they proclaim terrorism is ordered by Allah. "We are going to destroy your countries all round the world," declared Imam Samudra, according to the Sydney Daily Telegraph. "Go to hell Bush, go to hell Tony Blair, go to hell Colin Powell and the alliance. Allah Akbar [God is great]," he shouted in English, as he gave the thumbs-down sign with his hands in cuffs. On the eve of their trial resuming in Bali, Samudra and co-conspirator Amrozi bin Nurhasyim were allowed...

<p>MANILA — The Philippine Supreme Court ordered the arrest yesterday of a wealthy Philippine lawmaker wanted by U.S. authorities for purportedly making illegal campaign contributions to former President Bill Clinton.</p> <p>Mark Jimenez, who ran a computer-parts business in the United States, was indicted in 1997 on 17 counts of illegally giving nearly $40,000 to Democratic Party candidates.</p>