A Muslim electronics engineer who developed five patents for IBM claims the computer maker fired him because of his religion and that managers at the company mocked him for refusing to eat during the Ramadan fast and once told him to ignore Islamic law and clean a knife that had been used to cut pork.
Mahmoud Mousa, who calls himself a "Jordanian Muslim American," was employed at IBM's microelectronics plant in Burlington, Vt., from June 2003 to Decemb... (more)
A senior official in the Somali government's new Ministry of the Interior told ABC News government forces had recovered "dozens of foreign passports," including several American passports, on the bodies of al Qaeda fighters killed in combat between forces affiliated with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Ethiopian forces in Somalia.
According to the same source, most of the foreign passports were Sudanese, Pakistani and Yemeni, but several American, British and Australian pass... (more)
A lawyer whose client is on trial for having "militia" weaponry says he'll ask questions and raise arguments about the 2nd Amendment, and then let the judge rule whether or not the Bill of Rights can be discussed in a federal courtroom these days.
A federal prosecutor in the Arkansas case against Hollis Wayne Fincher, 60, who's accused of having homemade and unregistered machine guns, has asked the judge to censor those arguments.
At least a dozen motorists who used cash to pay their parking tickets to Hudson, Ohio police have been ripped off. Police dispatcher Russell D. McCormick, 37, was arrested yesterday for allegedly stealing $1400 in motorist payments over two years.
The scheme unraveled last week when a man outraged over an unjust $5 parking ticket came to the department to contest the citation. Hudson Police Lieutenant Kevin May became suspicious when he could not find any record that the man had e... (more)
Outgoing Ohio Governor Bob Taft (R) on Friday vetoed a measure that would have effectively banned speed cameras and restricted the use of red light cameras. For weeks, Taft had been besieged by local jurisdictions urging the veto -- including Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Springfield and Toledo. Each was desperate to save programs that had brought in millions in revenue.
"I can discern no strong public policy that warrants this sweeping preemption of local control over o... (more)
(CBS) For many people there's only one real reason to drink diet soda.
"Because it's got no calories and, yeah, you try to watch your weight," says Raymond Tomczak.
But, as The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay reports, some experts are now saying diet soda may be doing the exact opposite: making them gain weight.
Epidemiologist Sharon Fowler, from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, presented research data on ... (more)
Her name is Ashley X, and she is the little girl who will never grow up.
Until New Year’s Day, not even her first name was known. Ashley was a faceless case study, cited in a paper by two doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital as they outlined a treatment so radical that it brought with it allegations of “eugenics”, of creating a 21st-century Frankenstein’s monster, of maiming a child for the sake of convenience.
The reason for the controversy is this: three years a... (more)
Companies that do not keep close tabs on PDAs, instant message conversations and other forms of electronic data may soon be in for a nasty surprise, should they find themselves in court. As of December 1, 2006, new guidelines, called the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, go into effect. The rules, set by the U.S. Supreme Court, expand the types of electronically stored information that companies could be required to produce in a lawsuit.
That means companies will now be on the hoo... (more)
Is John “Keating Five” McCain sincerely clueless? Or is he simply a politician playing a cynical numbers game with Iraq and thus eventually condemning to certain death more troops that should be here at home, protecting our borders?
McCain told General John Abizaid he didn’t understand why the United States cannot “control” al-Anbar province and was flummoxed the general would suggest the “mission” is to train Iraqis to fight the “insurgency,” actually a popular resistance ... (more)
British soldiers filmed beating-up Iraqi rioters minutes after a mortar attack inside their camp are to escape prosecution. Army prosecutors have deci... (more)
First Lt. Ehren Watada, a 28-year-old Hawaii native, is the first commissioned officer in the U.S. to publicly refuse deployment to
Iraq. He announced last June his decision not to deploy on the grounds the war is illegal.
Lt. Watada was based at Fort Lewis, Washington, with the Army's 3rd (Stryker) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. He has remained on base, thus avoiding charges of desertion.
He does, however, face one count of "missing troop movement" and four... (more)
Evidence has emerged that the execution of Saddam Hussein was purposefully allowed to descend into chaos as senior American and Iraqi officials carefully staged managed a situation whereby Shi'ite militias were able to infiltrate the chamber and actually carry out the deed themselves.
Reuters today reported that Iraqi officials acknowledged that the... (more)
A new nationwide poll reveals that four in ten Americans predict the U.S. will go to war with Iran in 2007 as a second aircraft carrier is deployed to the Gulf, putting 5,000 more U.S. sailors in the region, bringing the total to 16,000 in a clear escalation towards a military air strike on the country.
A survey by Ipsos divulges that 40% of Americans think it "likely" that the U.S. will become involved militarily with Iran this year, 11% more tha... (more)
How many people who aren't news junkies know that Madrid Airport was bombed on Saturday? Relatively few I would venture, and that's because major western governments and their media mouthpieces don't hype terror unless Muslims are behind it.
I personally only caught the story a couple of days after it happened on an obscure channel on UK digital satellite called Euro News. Operatives of the Basque separatist organization ETA packed 800kg of explosives in a... (more)
The grief-stricken fiancee of a soldier killed in Iraq angrily accused Tony Blair of lying about the bloody conflict.
Rebecca Barnes, also a serving soldier in Iraq who recently shook hands with the Prime Minister on a visit to British troops, broke ranks to speak out about Tony Blair's deceit after her fiancee, Sergeant Graham Hesketh died in a roadside bomb.
Just two days earlier, the sergeant had been looking forward to the couple's forthcoming wedding, when he s... (more)
In what appears to be a military shakeup surrounding Iraq, President Bush has replaced both the top US general in the Middle East and the top general in Iraq, ABC NEWS is reporting on air.
Admiral William J. Fallon will replace Gen. John Abizaid, US commander in the Middle East, who announced his retirement in December and was expected to leave the post in March. Abizaid was a critic of Bush's efforts to add more troops to Iraq, but the circumstances of his early departure are unc... (more)
The goverment's case against a US citizen accused of plotting a "dirty bomb" attack will be largely based on the defendant's own words, according to an article in Thursday's New York Times.
Prosecutors "will rely largely on wiretapped conversations" when it puts Jose Padilla and two others "on trial as a 'North American support cell' that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist 'global jihad,'" Deborah Sontag writes.
It's put-up-or-shut-up time for the feds in the case of Jose Padilla, the alleged al-Qaeda terrorist and U.S. citizen who was held held in shackles as an enemy combatant without any criminal charges, although the government once tried to claim he was involved in a dirty bomb plot.
What's he now accused of doing, after years of harsh imprisonment?
Not much, according to the New York Times. This is from tomorrow's newspaper:
On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 -- 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.
Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than duri... (more)
Something funny has been happening to the CCTV cameras in our neighbourhood. They have started growing ears. Not real ones - at least not yet - but audio functions enabling them to "hear" what is happening around them as well as see. At the moment the experiment is confined to six cameras operating in the Soho area of Westminster, London, which has a high concentration of clubs and bars. An advanced wireless network which the council is building relays the information to a monitoring centre. If ... (more)
