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As oil prices creep back above $100 a barrel, Senate Democrats are dusting off a plan first unveiled in 2008 to take away federal leases from oil companies that rent federal land but don’t use it for drilling and exploration. The revived bill, which is co-sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Bill Nelson of Florida and Charles Schumer of New York, would charge oil companies an extra fee on every acre they are not using for energy production and would force companies to show that they are actively seeking energy sources in the area.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai police said on Tuesday they had detained 169 North Koreans in a raid on a house in a Bangkok suburb after neighbors became suspicious of the number of people in it. "This is the biggest single arrest of North Koreans" in Thailand, Police Major General Pramoj Pathumwong told Reuters. The North Koreans, mostly women and children, had entered Thailand illegally and were staying in the house with 16 compatriots who had travel documents from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, police said. The 16 had been due to leave on Tuesday night for South Korea,...

BAGHDAD - Iraqi and US forces detained 143 suspected insurgents, taking the number of people rounded up in a two-day offensive in western Baghdad to 428, the military said Tuesday. Operation Squeeze Play, the largest ever joint Iraqi-US campaign in Baghdad, was launched late Sunday to catch suspected militants responsible for attacking the Abu Ghraib US-detention facility and the road linking downtown to the international airport. “Abu Ghraib has been a trafficking area for former Baath Party terrorists and the (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi terrorist network between Baghdad and (western city of) Fallujah,” a military statement said. Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi heads the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops detained almost 300 suspected insurgents overnight in the largest joint U.S.-Iraqi military offensive to date, the military said Monday. Also, a car bomb detonated outside a popular Baghdad restaurant, killing at least three people and injuring more than 70, hospital officials said. The Baghdad offensive, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, came as the American military announced that five U.S. soldiers were killed in northern Iraq on Sunday — four in separate roadside bomb attacks and one in a vehicle accident. Two carloads of gunmen killed Maj. Gen. Wael al-Rubaei, a top...

Chinese Army Smuggling Into the U.S. - Chinese Army Smuggling Into the U.S. In early 2000, the U.S. Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service executed a successful undercover operation. "Squeeze Play" was designed to break up an Asian people-smuggling ring. The INS operation also uncovered the fact that the Chinese government was directly involved. In the end, six individuals, including a Chinese general, were indicted by a U.S. grand jury formed in Detroit. The indictment of Chinese Gen. Fhang Wei included videotaped evidence taken by a Canadian undercover operative who managed to penetrate the smuggling ring. For the...