Free Republic

TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that his country would not accept a UN Security Council resolution asking Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment work before August 31, the state television reported. "They cannot use a resolution to oppose us, and they should understand that Iranian people do not give in to language of force," Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling a huge crowd in Iran's northwest province of Ardebil. He said that he had received a phone call from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who urged Iran to respond to the six-nation package. "I told him Iran would be...

Released hostages 'refuse to help their rescuers' By Oliver Poole in Baghdad (Filed: 25/03/2006) The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages. The Canadians: Harmeet Sooden and Jim Loney Neither the men nor the Canadian group that sent them to Iraq have thanked the people who saved them in any of their public statements. One of them, Norman Kember, 74, a retired physics...

Hevron Jews Refuse Expulsion Orders 11:34 Jan 03, '06 / 3 Tevet 5766 By Hillel Fendel Dozens of Yassam policemen and soldiers arrived in the Jewish Quarter in Hevron, but failed in their mission of distributing expulsion orders to 11 Jewish families. Kol Rina News Agency reports that the police employed strong violence against civilians, including women and children, who came to protest the expulsion of the Jews from the Jewish-owned land. The police say they were pelted with eggs and paint. The area in question was emptied of its Jews during the Hevron massacre of 1929, when Arab mobs...

A Kalispell National Guard unit stepped in to make a fuel delivery in Iraq last week after a South Carolina Army Reserve unit refused the mission. Guard Maj. Scott Smith confirmed that the 639th Quartermaster Company of the Montana National Guard delivered the fuel after some South Carolina reservists made headlines by refusing the mission as too dangerous. Initial reports indicated another platoon of South Carolina's 343rd Quartermaster Company had filled in on the job. But National Guard officials in Helena and the wife of a Kalispell commander said the Montana contingent had actually tackled the convoy duty. "They [the...

French cinemas refuse to screen The Passion By Kim Willsher in Paris (Filed: 29/02/2004) French cinema chains are refusing to distribute or screen Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ because of fears that it will spark a new outbreak of anti-Semitism. France is the only European country where there is still no distribution deal for the film, which depicts the last days of Jesus Christ in graphic detail and is accused by critics of stoking anti-Jewish sentiment. The film was released in America last week but French distributors are wary of its impact on audiences and want...

Palestinian Aid Groups Refuse U.S. Money Tuesday January 6, 2004 1:01 AM By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH Associated Press Writer RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Palestinian aid groups have refused to accept money from the U.S. government because of a requirement they sign a pledge the money would not be used for terrorism, organizers said Monday. The U.S. Agency for International Development has given Palestinian groups $1.3 billion in the past decade and is a key source of funding for the cash-strapped organizations. But USAID enacted the anti-terrorism pledge requirement at the end of 2002 for new grants given worldwide. Specifically, USAID...

Kingdom Will Not Discuss Iraqi Debt Write-Off With Governing Council: Saud P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News Staff JEDDAH, 24 December 2003 — Saudi Arabia will not discuss any loan write-offs with Iraq’s interim US-appointed government, Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said yesterday. He said the Kingdom would wait until Iraq had an independent government before looking into the possibility of reducing the debt. “This (debt) has to be discussed with a government with total sovereignty, so... this issue is now premature,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying. “There is an international dialogue and we are willing to take...

IMMIGRANT RESEARCH Poor language skills and pride in national origin are two reasons why nearly eight million foreign residents eligible for U.S. citizenship have not applied, according to a study released Wednesday. Mexicans and Canadians are among the nationalities least likely to apply for citizenship, the report by the Washington-based Urban Institute found. Historically, there have been millions of immigrants with green cards who have not sought citizenship for various reasons, but this is the first time a study has focused on the issue. ''Despite rising naturalization rates, the pool of legal immigrants eligible to naturalize remains strikingly large,'' the...

Volcano neighbours refuse to move Sophie Arie in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio Sunday August 31, 2003 The Observer (UK) Peering into the crater of Mount Vesuvius, all looks calm. There are signs of the volcano's last convulsions - piles of ash, strange twisted layers of solidified lava - but not the slightest rumble. There has not been one for years. As the locals say: 'He is sleeping. He won't trouble us.' But experts are now warning that the slumbering mountain's next stirring could produce an even more devastating eruption than the one that buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculanaeum...

million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year By Brad Lemley Photography by Tony Law Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri, will no longer go to waste. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be carted to the first industrial-scale thermal depolymerization plant, recently completed in an adjacent lot, and be transformed into various useful products, including 600 barrels of light oil. In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really. "This is a solution to...

Members of the House-Senate panel probing intelligence breakdowns are refusing FBI requests that they take lie-detector tests to reveal the source of a leak about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I don't know who among us would take a lie-detector test," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "First of all, they're not even admissible in court, and second of all, the leadership [of both parties] have told us not to do that." The chairmen of the intelligence committees, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Rep. Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., asked the FBI to...