Free Republic

Unions for engineers and conductors threaten a boycott of the tests that the agency and Amtrak, which takes over operation of the regional rail system July 1, plan to require. Engineers and conductors on Southern California's commuter rail service are threatening an en masse boycott of new personality-profiling tests required as a result of the 2008 Chatsworth disaster. The dispute sets up a potentially major labor-management clash just as the five-county Metrolink system is shifting to a new contractor to provide crews for trains that have nearly 1 million boardings a month. The screening tests, frequently used by corporate managers...

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia is working to uproot militant Islamic ideas but officials and moderate clerics say they face a long struggle, while also coping with setbacks such as anger over cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Mohammad. In November, Indonesian police discovered videos showing three young suicide bombers using Islam to justify attacks on restaurants in Bali that killed 20 people the previous month. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the videos showed radical ideas had penetrated deep into Indonesia's Muslim community. He ordered Muslim clerics who had been reluctant to criticize militancy to speak up. Three months later, a team...