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KISMAYO, Somalia (AFP) – No luxury cruise but a ticket to jihad was the prize for the winners of a team quiz organised by Somalia's insurgent Shebab group during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. "The reason the young men were rewarded with weapons is to encourage them to participate in the ongoing holy war against the enemies of Allah in Somalia," Sheikh Abdullahi Alhaq said at a ceremony late Friday. The radio-broadcast quiz organised by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab organisation in the southern Somali city of Kismayo lasted throughout Ramadan, which ended last month. Five neighbourhoods of the port city...

Lifestyles of the hip and famous keep on rolling for the world-champion Chula Vista Park View Little Leaguers. The boys were bused to Burbank yesterday for an appearance last night on “The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.” Never mind that most of the 12- and 13-year-olds didn't know Conan O'Brien from Conan the Barbarian. “Nope,” said Park View second baseman Bulla Graft. “Never heard of him.” After O'Brien's monologue and Sandra Bullock's appearance to promote her new movie, up to the stage stepped all 12 players, wearing baby-blue T-shirts and gray baseball pants — and earning the audience's hearty applause.

General Motors (GM) has agreed to finance private equity firm Platinum Equity’s buyout of Delphi Corp. GM will provide more than $2 billion to Platinum Equity for purchasing most of the assets of Delphi.Troy, Michigan-based Delphi, which has been operating under ban kruptcy protection, is a former GM subsidiary and the auto-maker’s largest supplier. Under the deal, Platinum Equity will acquire most of Delphi's global operations, including its Troy headquarters. GM is also acquiring some troubled assets of Delphi. Further, the company is providing $250 million to help Delphi emerge from bankruptcy protection....

[image of letter] A mysterious Hollywood blog announced this week that it was in possession of a leaked letter that prematurely announced the winners of tonight’s Oscars. To see the letter and the list of winners click the image above, or click here. The blog has suddenly been taken down, which makes some insiders believe the leak may be true. “The document,” Academy spokesperson Leslie Unger said, “is a complete fraud.” It’s only appropriate that an industry that blurs the line between reality and fantasy should have a controversy like this. We’ll all know in a few hours who’s telling...

Friends, Americans, conservatives; lend me your ears. I come to praise George W. Bush, not to bury him; I'll leave that to our famously unbiased media. *snip* We can also be pretty certain that his departure will not feature the ransacking of the Oval Office and Air Force One, or the sophomoric removal of the "O's" from White House keyboards. If, as has been the case for his entire presidency, he is true to his word, he will be as magnanimous to his successor as he was to his predecessor; notwithstanding the disrespect he received at the hands of both.

CML Studios Carlos Leon, 25 www.cmlstudios.net North Hollywood, Calif. Carlos Leon is a media mogul in the making. With $25,000 in savings, and no outside financing, he managed to expand the multimedia business he started in a room in his parent's mobile home into a full-service production company with such clients as Warner Bros., VH1, Sirius, and MTV3. Leon, who earned a bachelor's degree in film from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., says the business—which includes a 1,500 square-foot production studio that he built from scratch with help from friends. Up next: Leon is starting an online TV...

Here is a local news report on the rally held by John McCain and Sarah Palin in Cedarburg, Wisconsin today, September 5, 2008. The reporter says State Troopers estimate that a crowd of 20,000-30,0000 turned out to greet them, far more than the expected 5-10,000. . . . (see video at link)

- In Sweden that is. All the same, if various experts are right, the Nordic countries are not only the richest part of the world, but also global leaders in the domain of QUALITY of life. Therefore, living in this part of Stockholm is probably as good as life gets, or? The article: "The Stockholm suburb of Danderyd is the best municipality in which to live, according to a new ranking by the magazine Fokus. Lund and nearby Lomma in southern Sweden follow closely behind. Ljusnarsberg municipality in the Bergslagen region of central Sweden ended up in last place. The...

Big Brown looks like a Tripe Crown cinch. He wasn't even challenged today. This horse is a monster. Visions of Secretariat.

Judging by his agile performance at Tuesday's Iraq hearings, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) now is opting for the famous George Aiken formula from Vietnam days: Declare victory and get out. Or, rather, as an update on the late Vermont Republican's 1966 idea, Obama would declare the situation in Iraq "manageable" and drastically reduce American forces -- possibly, he suggested, to just 30,000. Of the three presidential candidates displaying their intellectual wares in questioning Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Obama surely was the most subtle and shrewd. He also gave a bit of a hint of...

Vladimir Putin's chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev is set for a landslide victory in Russia's presidential election, according to an exit poll and early results. First official results from the Central Election Commission showed Mr Medvedev was leading with more than 64% of the votes after ballots from 16% of polling stations had been counted. Sky's Moscow correspondent Alex Rossi said: "As election dramas go, this was never going to be nail-biting - it was not going to be a cliff-hanger. "We all knew Dmitry Medvedev would romp home to victory against the three non-competitors he's been lined up against. Essentially...

After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday. Now that he's won, Leyde, a 26-year-old member of the Washington National Guard, says he's still going to volunteer to go back to Iraq for a third tour and won't spend any of the money in the meantime. Leyde was driving near his home in Mead, Washington when he stopped at a store on the side of the road and bought a ticket. "I decided to walk into a local Zip Trip. I got a Coke and beef jerky and walked...

No, seriously, we really are.By Christopher Cook We Republicans and conservatives have been nervous of late, and rightly so. First, we had the prospect of Hillary Rodham Clinton, which was unnerving enough. But then, something worse came along: Barack Obama. Barack Obama is as much of a leftist as HRC, if not more of one. He's as much of a statist as she is.*But he's more personable, more popular, more friendly, more affable. At least with HRC, we could run against her baggage as well as her positions. We could count on the American people seeing her generally distasteful persona...

Most people who run for president, by definition, lose. And most of those unsuccessful candidates depart the presidential contest with their reputations and their influence diminished. Republican Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor — whose chances of winning his party's nomination are closer to none than to slim — will be a conspicuous exception. He will leave the race more popular and more influential than he entered it and with the real potential of becoming the most important evangelical leader in American political life. Religious and cultural conservatives have been both the foundation and the foot soldiers in recent national...

**EXCERPT** Super Tuesday's over and there were no absolute winners - until Mitt Romney dropped out of the race. Nonetheless, even before Romney withdrew and McCain, in effect, became his party's nominee, we might as well have canceled the rest of the primaries and caucuses, since the media had already decided that this year's standard bearers would be John McCain and Barack Obama. Yes, somewhere along the line, the role of the media has changed from reporting on the primaries to deciding the primaries. They pick their favorites, they give them preferential treatment, they tear down their opponents, and they...

(NOTE: From FRC action E-MAIL; link is to their home page. I've broken it into paragraphs, and added emphasis): Washington is reeling from last night's Iowa caucuses. A loud and clear message was delivered, but whether it will be heard is yet to be seen. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee's huge victory can be attributed to two primary reasons. First, he is real and his style reflects it. He is engaging and he talks with people, not at them. He is a great campaigner; he is the communicator in this presidential election cycle. Second, evangelicals, dispirited by Republican indifference...

Peterson has conceded to Republican Greg Ballard in Indianapolis! BIGGEST UPSET IN INDIANA POLITICAL HISTORY! Carrying down into a LARGE majority of Republicans on the City-County Council! THIS IS A BIG WIN! Democrats can probably kiss Julia Carson's Congressional seat G'bye next year because of it!

HERE WE WERE on Wednesday, a nation of political junkies gathered around our televisions to watch the candidates debate each other one last time, and we had as a moderator one Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register. I don't mean to go all East-coast-elitist on you; I'm sure there are people in Iowa who could capably moderate a presidential debate. Unfortunately, and obviously, Carolyn Washburn is not one of them. The bulk of the post-debate analysis will probably focus on how maladroit Washburn was at the job. She did the impossible--she moderated the last Iowa debate between...

First, let me say that this was by far the worst debate yet. The questions were not only skewed to the left, not only almost entirely neglected foreign policy, but they were so broad as to allow the candidates to fall back on talking points. Also, there was no room for back and forth between the candidates. Absolutely awful. With that said, Fred Thompson was the only candidate who stood out. He was funny, charming, and peppy. Here was a guy who wasn't afraid to speak hard truths, and who displayed knowledge of the policy issues--especially on entitlements. But the...

Saying I hated this debate is like saying George Soros can spare some change. The retired brigadier general who was on Hillary’s gay and lesbian steering committee was bad. This one was… egregious. Appalling. Extraordinarily frustrating. Alternately an uncontrolled circus and a banal snore-fest. Some of the questions were extraordinarily stupid – “is it more important to have a nominee that is socially conservative or fiscally conservative? What New Year’s resolution would you recommend for one of your rivals?” And what was with the video snippets of each candidate? What, each guy is going to get too much time with...