Free Republic

JERUSALEM — The Mossad, Israel's spy agency, this week brought home to her final rest one of its legendary female operatives, Sylvia Raphael. Only now is it being revealed that she was one of the secret agents who penetrated the PLO bases in Jordan and Lebanon four decades ago when a little-known gang leader named Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) was beginning his terrorist attacks. Her story reads like . . . well, like a spy novel. Raphael was born in 1937 in South Africa to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother. That made her non-Jewish, technically . ....

<p>WASHINGTON — A senior Defense official placed under investigation by the FBI (news - web sites) on allegations that he tried to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts toward friends has been removed from office, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials confirmed Friday.</p>

Is British National Gallery's New Raphael a Fake? Feb.20, 2004 LONDON (Reuters) - A Raphael painting bought by Britain's National Gallery this month for $41.7 million is a fake, a U.S. art professor says. The gallery secured the "Madonna of the Pinks," which it called the most significant Old Master in any British collection, after a fight to keep it in the country. But James Beck, Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York and the President of ArtWatch International, told Friday's edition of the Times the gallery had paid "a record price for a fake." "They haven't...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) --  Sally Jessy Raphael's daytime talk show, the longest-running of its genre, has been canceled after nearly two decades on the air.</p> <p>Her show had sunk to ninth in the ratings among talk shows, after being third only to Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer three years ago.</p>