Free Republic

<p>SOMERVILLE -- Pubs in this working-class city are in open rebellion against a seven-week-old smoking ban, after the Board of Aldermen passed a nonbinding resolution to postpone the policy until the statewide prohibition takes effect next summer.</p> <p>So far, the city's Board of Health is ignoring the political pressure, and its inspectors have discovered violations in three bars, a towing company, and a pizza parlor. At the pubs, ashtrays lined bars, and patrons openly flouted the ban.</p>

KARACHI - He was always considered extraordinary. He was an excellent pupil, a good cricketer, a natural student leader, and a popular teacher in the medical career that he chose to pursue. Then he decided on a radical change in direction. He would become a jihadi, undergo a six-month training program, and then die as a martyr in the Kashmir Valley. On the journey toward the ultimate sacrifice of his life, though, his views underwent another radical change, and what had appeared as reality became an illusion as the bitter realization hit home of how cheap life is in the...

Riga: Police in Latvia have detained 10 Pakistani citizens, fearing they might have been preparing a terrorist attack targetting the visiting Israeli basketball team, a police spokeswoman told AFP Tuesday. "Bearing in mind the likelihood of a terror attack and illegal immigration, the Security Police informed the state border guard and the 10 Pakistanis were detained on November 21," Kristine Apse-Krumina, an aide to the chief of the Security Police told AFP. She said authorities became suspicious after the 10 entered the Baltic state to participate in an international martial arts tournament, and only one took part. "We are carrying...

<p>ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Investigators uncovered a tattered Pakistani passport and the remains of a new victim amid the rubble of two synagogues attacked by suicide bombers over the weekend, Turkish authorities said yesterday.</p> <p>The body, discovered at the site of the first blast by an Israeli disaster team working with Turkish rescue workers, was identified by Israel Army Radio as that of Anna Rubinstein, 85. Her 8-year-old granddaughter was also killed in the attack, which occurred Saturday during Sabbath services.</p>

Alleged groper barred from T CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - With his wife sitting behind him in court, a 29-year-old Arlington father pleaded not guilty to charges that he groped women on the MBTA's Red Line. Sandeep Shivhare, who posted $1,000 cash bail, is scheduled to return to Middlesex Superior Court on Nov. 18. He is accused of fondling seven women as they rode the T from Alewife to Downtown Crossing.

KATHMANDU - Anyone going through literature put out by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) will understand that the ultimate aim of the "People's War", launched in early 1996, is to convert the Himalayan kingdom into a state run by the believers of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Their Internet web site places Prachanda, their supremo who goes with one name, on a par with Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. And the Nepali expression of the "Prachanda Path" is made to appear comparable to the Shining Path movement in Peru. Baburam Bhattarai, one of the leader's right-hand men, used to cite the...

Tipplers in Jammu and Kashmir risk losing their ears for drinking during Ramzan. That's what happened to Ghulam Rasool Lone, who was found to be indulging in liquor during the Muslim holy month of fasting. Late Sunday, a group of unidentified persons barged into Lone's house in Naidihal village near Bandipore town, 40 km from here, dragged him out and slashed both his ears. "He was taken some distance from his house. The attackers used a sharp instrument and chopped off his left earlobe while his right earlobe was partially knifed. He was profusely bleeding and unconscious when we shifted...

Kashmir has enjoyed a tourist surge this year, despite the on-going conflict in the region claimed by both India and Pakistan. Picking saffron (VOA photo - P. Nunan) The fields along the main highway outside Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar, are dotted with small purple and orange flowers - from which the spice saffron is harvested to use in cooking and in dyes. As laborers bend over baskets to pluck the blossoms, a handful of tourists gathers to take photos of the charming country scene. Jagdish Sathe, a civil servant from Bombay, brought his family to Kashmir. He says he is...

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – On a recent morning, Maj. Shawnna Paine and Capt. Kara Callaham took a rumble-tumble ride to a trio of villages to chat with local chiefs and win the war of hearts and minds. It's standard procedure for this Army civil-affairs unit, but there's a subtle feminine touch. Major Paine is a woman. So is Captain Callaham. So is the psychological operations Spc. Andrea Vivers, who hands out pro-government propaganda and Beanie Babies donated by an American Girl Scout troop. The conversation with Afghan villagers is neighborly, but the subtext is gently radical: I am woman - now,...

Can we win a war without acknowledging that we are at war. No, we cannot. The quandary in which coalition forces find themselves in Iraq today, is a proof that unless the enemy is totally subjugated, we cannot even pretend that the war is over. And the premature proclamation, "Mission Accomplished," on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, on May 1, 2003, only helped our adversaries. We must know that our enemy, has no scruples. It respects nothing and is totally ruthless. We can not overwhelm it by being scrupulous. We will have to rearrange our priorities by accepting that...

While the media is busy focusing on the troubling story of the two American soldiers detained at Guantanamo Bay for alleged espionage, both of whom had Syrian connections, another Syria story has passed them by. The names of Ahmad al Halabi, an American of Syrian descent, and Captain James Yee, a convert to Islam who spent four years in Damascus before returning to active service are now well known. But the name of Nizar Nayouf, a Syrian journalist and human rights activist that was detained last week by French police in Paris will most probably stay anonymous. Nayouf's only crime...

<p>Her daughter married the man convicted of killing him.</p> <p>"He's been my tornado," JoAnn Pimentel said. "He landed in my family and destroyed everything."</p> <p>On Tuesday, Danny Cannon, 24, was sentenced to seven years in state prison on manslaughter charges in the death almost a year ago of Richard Pimentel. Seated with Cannon's family was Danee Pimentel, 27, who, the day before, was Cannon's bride in a jailhouse ceremony.</p>

The coverage of Islamic fundamentalism by journalists and other media people have made me ask a number of fundamental questions about those who make up journalism. My foray into journalism has been through freelance. I have published now for well over four years, from opinions to letters. While I have been successful in publishing in some journals, I have also seen myself rebuffed, time and again, by others. Journalism, although important, is not a field that attracts the smartest -- the social status and financial rewards are not those associated with upper echelons of a society. The preparation that goes...

SALEM - He was the quiet, well-groomed man in the suit, who kept to himself in this neighborhood nestled at the edge of a bustling college, where almost everybody seemed to be from somewhere else and nobody stood out. But yesterday, a different Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was on display, this time in a federal court, where he appeared in jeans and an orange golf shirt, accused of possessing classified information he allegedly acquired at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he worked as a civilian translator. Just what route the Egyptian-born Mehalba, 31, took after his days...

The failed state of Post Soviet Afghanistan proved to be a heaven for the radical Islamists. They consolidated their advances made during the "Jihad" against Communist infidels and prepared for a long war against the non-Wahhabi world. The jihad in Afghanistan had also contributed in the Palestinization of the Muslim world. The Arabs under the command of Osama bin Laden used the gathering of international jihadists to spread their anti-Semitism. By the time Soviets decided to leave Afghanistan, a unique nation of jihadi Islamists was ready to fight Judeo-Christian world any where in the world. What they needed now was...

IYADH, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 18 — The last few American combat troops pulled out of the Prince Sultan Air Base here earlier this month, officially closing the Persian Gulf headquarters used by the Air Force during both Iraq wars and concluding a nearly 13-year run of extensive United States military operations in Saudi Arabia. The withdrawal signaled the end of a long strategic arrangement, mutually beneficial until it fell victim to tensions resulting from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, in which 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Since then, the countries' fragile diplomatic relations have...

Tue September 16, 2003 10:54 AM ET SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim separatist guerrillas in Indian Kashmir beheaded two people, one of them a teacher, Tuesday in the latest violence in the disputed Himalayan region, police said. The teacher was abducted in the Anantnag district, south of Kashmir's main city Srinagar, and later beheaded because the rebels suspected he was an informer for the security forces, a police spokesman said. A villager in a neighboring district was beheaded by militants also because he was suspected of being an informer, he said. About a dozen Muslim rebel groups have been...

Militants strike at crowded Lalchowk Girl student killed, 20 wounded in blast Excelsior Special Correspondent SRINAGAR, Sept 11: Even after Hizbul Mujahideen has been publicly apologetic over the September 6th Fruit Mandi blast, in which 7 civilians had been left dead and 32 injured, militants today struck on another crowded spot in this capital city. An unidentified militant lobbed a hand grenade toward a BSF pillbox in Lalchowk, which went off, resulting in the death of a girl student and injuries to 20 others. At 1300 hours, an unidentified militant tossed a hand grenade in the direction of a BSF...

REJOICING AT US SUFFERINGS IN IRAQ by B. Raman "The US will never forgive those who rejoice at its sufferings." 2. So said President George Bush while addressing officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on September 10, 2003. 3. Is he aware how the community of retired officers of the Pakistani Armed Forces has been rejoicing at the difficulties encountered by the American soldiers in Iraq and at their sufferings and appealing to the Pakistanis to rush to Iraq to make it what Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 to Osama bin Laden, in Al Qaeda, has called the...

Thirty-five years ago, in September 1968, when the Research and Analysis Wing was founded with Rameshwar Nath Kao at its helm, then prime minister Indira Gandhi asked him to cultivate Israel's Mossad. She believed relations between the two intelligence agencies was necessary to monitor developments that could threaten India and Israel. The efficient spymaster he was, Kao established a clandestine relationship with Mossad. In the 1950s, New Delhi had permitted Tel Aviv to establish a consulate in Mumbai. But full-fledged diplomatic relations with Israel were discouraged because India supported the Palestinian cause; having an Israeli embassy in New Delhi, various...