Troops at Girit outpost: We were ordered to shoot to killSoldiers and officers at the Girit outpost in the Gaza Strip claim to have received orders that at night, they were always to shoot to kill - even though this violated the official rules of engagement in Gaza, according to a High Court of Justice ruling that ordered the army to open an investigation into the issue.
The decision, issued in response to a petition by the family of Iman al-Hams, a 13-year-old girl who was killed by soldiers at the outpost in October 2004, was handed d... (more)
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Dallas Based Food Chain To Accept Mexican PesosStarting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos.
Restaurant experts and economists said they knew of no other food chain with locations so far from the Mexican border offering such a service.
"We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., said Friday.
"We know they come back [from ... (more)
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City Hall pushed to buy $1.5m system to track gunshots Boston city councilors, law enforcement officials, and community leaders are pressing City Hall to come up with $1.5 million to buy a promising acoustic gunshot-detection system.
The sensor system could blanket a 5.6-square-mile swath of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods -- the source of 80 to 85 percent of calls citywide reporting shots fired -- and give officers a jump on arresting suspects, improve police response time to 911 calls, and possibly reduce firearm violence, ... (more)
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UK Government Manipulating 9/11 Petition Data? It appears the British Government are removing names and web sites from an on line petition calling for further investigation into the events of 9/11, posted on Tony Blair’s’ web site.
The petition http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/9-11-Truth is attracting attention from 9/11 skeptics in the UK and currently contains 289 signatures.
A member of RINF signed t... (more)
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Death in HadithaU.S. Marines gunned down five unarmed Iraqis who stumbled onto the scene of a 2005 roadside bombing in Haditha, Iraq, according to eyewitness accounts that are part of a lengthy investigative report obtained by The Washington Post.
Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad's leader, shot the men one by one after Marines ordered them out of a white taxi in the moments following the explosion, which killed one Marine and injured two others, witnesses told investigators. Another Marine... (more)
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Iraqi Girl tells of US Attack in Haditha Ten-year-old Iman Walid witnessed the killing of seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November. The interview with Iman was filmed exclusively for ITV News by Ali Hamdani,our Iraqi video diarist.
... (more)
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Feds pushing for Internet recordsMINNEAPOLIS — The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.
For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.
The idea is to help law enforcement track down child pornographers. But some see it as another step toward total surveil... (more)
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Rumsfeld Filled His Pockets with Pyongyang's Nuclear LootIt's a well-known fact--oft detailed in this column--that the boys in the Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their proclivity--their apparently uncontrollable craving--for stuffing their trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis is going at the moment.
That's why it came as no surprise to read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the development of t... (more)
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Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on IranISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a for... (more)
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Peanuts Kill More Americans Than TerroristsThe menace of global terrorism has been labeled the greatest threat to western civilization since communism and yet swimming pools, peanuts and lost deer kill more Americans every single year. Why are our governments facilitating the terrorist's agenda by hyping a peril that simply doesn't exist?
The number of Americans killed as a result of international terrorism since the 1960's gives us a benchmark from which we can correctly identify and target other ... (more)
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U.S.-Mexico Pact Revealed: Billions to Non-citizensWASHINGTON -- As a result of lawsuits, the U.S. government released this week the actual U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement, an understanding signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004 that would funnel billions of Social Security funds to Mexican citizens.
TREA Senior Citizens League, a Washington-based nonpartisan seniors group, announced this week that after Freedom of Information Act lawsuits it filed against the government, it ha... (more)
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Government Documents Are Declassified in Name OnlyStarting in the new year, the government declassified 270 million pages of FBI files -- but if you tried to access them, you'd have been told that none of them are available, and won't be, maybe for years.
On December 31 at midnight, hundreds of millions of pages of secret government documents were automatically declassified -- the result of President Bush's Executive Order on Declassification, which covers all national security documents 25 years old or older.
They... (more)
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Bush defends mail access lawWASHINGTON -- The White House on Thursday defended a policy that allows the government to open mail without a warrant, despite criticism that the crime-fighting tactic might lead to privacy breaches.
Bush administration and U.S. Postal Service officials said citizens' mail remains constitutionally protected from unreasonable search and seizure. But White House spokesman Tony Snow said the government needs the power to inspect mail in emergencies.
The mail controvers... (more)
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Army asks dead to sign up for another hitchWASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.
The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.
"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' familie... (more)
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Can the U.S. Legally Kill Iraqi Children?This is from a Seattle Times editorial six years ago. For ten years I have wanted to ask one very basic question: Not were the sanctions barbaric. But were the sanctions legal? Could the U.S cause the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children every month for years and do so legally?
I will finally get a chance to ask this of the U.S. Supreme Court in a petition I'll file this month.
I need to show what deaths occurred and why: UNICEF reported "there would have been half... (more)
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Bill O'Reilly's Conflict of InterestOn Friday's edition of The O'Reilly Factor, during a Talking Points Memo on Iraq, host Bill O'Reilly mentioned a company called Stratfor. He cited a report that Stratfor had produced that he claimed contradicted statements made by NBC's Tom Brokaw about the aftermath of the execution of Saddam Hussein. However, O'Reilly did not bother to disclose to his viewers that he has an ongoing business connection with Stratfor.
BILL O'REILLY: "Next week President Bush will announce his plan... (more)
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Warbloggers refuse to admit their errors in making fraud allegations against APMany right-wing warbloggers, who for six weeks have been accusing the Associated Press of manufacturing a police source in Baghdad in order to spread insurgent-friendly "propaganda," now steadfastly refuse to concede their mistakes in the wake the January 4 news that the police source in question, Jamil Hussein, does exist and has been identified by the Iraqi government.
Instead, warbloggers insist the confirmation of Huss... (more)
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AP's Iraqi Source Is Real: Now What Do Conservative Bloggers Say? NEW YORK As reported elsewhere on this late this afternoon, Iraq's Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military -- and mocked by conservative bloggers in the U.S. -- is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.
Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employe... (more)
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AP's Editor Criticizes Those Who Questioned Iraq SourceNEW YORK Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on Friday criticized those who questioned the existence of an AP Iraq source, who was proven this week to be real, saying the scrutiny has now endangered the man's life.
"I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story," Carroll told E&P, referring to Jamil Hussein, an Iraq police captain. "AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories abo... (more)
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Arms deal investigators probe BAE payments to South AfricanThe Serious Fraud Office is investigating "substantial payments" made by BAE Systems to a senior South African defence ministry official who had influence over a £1.5bn contract won by the arms company to supply planes at nearly twice the price of a rival bidder.
Last night it emerged that South Africa's organised crime unit, the Scorpions, was handling a "mutual legal assistance" request from the SFO to investigate the financial accounts of Fana Hlongw... (more)
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'My crime was to protest at Israeli assassinations'They said they wanted to teach her to be a "good Jew" as she sat with her arms handcuffed to the legs of her chair for 16 hours a day.
But if Tali Fahima was not prepared to be a good Jew then Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service, was determined to put her in jail for as long as possible regardless of what she did.
Ms Fahima, 30, was released from jail on Wednesday after serving almost 30 months in jail for travelling to the West Bank, meeting an enemy agent and tra... (more)
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Schools would set own policy on searching students under legislationA federal bill would require school boards to establish a policy allowing teachers to search students they suspect of carrying drugs or weapons.
The Student and Teacher Safety Act passed the House on a voice vote in the fall, but the American Civil Liberties Union and National School Boards Association oppose the bill, which they say violates students' civil rights.
The most vocal critics of the proposal have called it a "strip search bill."
Lawmakers... (more)
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Tijuana police force ordered to turn in guns TIJUANA – The city's entire 2,300-member municipal police force has been ordered to turn in its weapons, leaving doubt Thursday about who would be patrolling this city of more than 1.5 million residents.
The surprise directive from Mexico's Defense Secretariat comes a day after President Felipe Calderon ordered Operation Tijuana, a major offensive against organized crime in the city. More than 3,000 soldiers and federal agents are being sent to the city with the aim of tack... (more)
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DHS to Boost 6 Cities' Share of Anti-Terror FundsChastened by complaints about poor federal cooperation and by controversy over its slashing of aid to New York and Washington last year, the Department of Homeland Security will reserve about $100 million of the $747 million it will dole out to U.S. cities this year to pay for police counterterrorism operations in six metropolitan areas, officials said yesterday.
In announcing changes in style and substance to the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) program... (more)
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IBM Worker Says He Was Fired For Being A Muslim 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)
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American Passports Found on Bodies of Al Qaeda Fighters in SomaliaA 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)
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