Book of Secret Files Reveals KGB Plans to Release Radioactive Material in Tokyo BayThe Soviet security service, the KGB, considered releasing radioactive material in Tokyo Bay in the late 1960s, which it hoped would be blamed on U.S. submarines and thereby damage Japanese-U.S. relations, according to The Mitrokhin Archive II, published by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin.
“The Mitrokhin Archive II” reveals several sabotage plans by KGB officers to sour relations between Tokyo and Washington, Japan Today wrote in a review on Tuesday. The book als... (more)
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China 'acts on forced abortions'Several Chinese health workers have reportedly been arrested or sacked over claims that they forced people to have abortions or sterilisations.
China's state-owned media said the abuses had come to light in Linyi city in the eastern province of Shandong.
US magazine Time said last week that some 7,000 people had been sterilised against their will in Shandong.
Human rights groups often accuse China of forcing sterilisations and abortions - a charge Bei... (more)
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R.I.P. Posse ComitatusIt was Representative Ron Paul of Texas who read into the Congressional Record on June 25, 1997—well before the malfeasance of George Bush, the Constitution-bashing Patriot Act, and the reckless so-called war on terror—the following: “In a police state the police are national, powerful, authoritarian. Inevitably, national governments yield to the temptation to use the military to do the heavy lifting…. [O]nce the military is used, however minor initially, the march towar... (more)
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Police forcibly break up Cindy Sheehan rallyThe New York City Police Department forcibly broke up this afternoon's rally for Cindy Sheehan, moving in as Cindy was speaking at about 3 p.m. in Union Square. The rally had been underway for about an hour, and was about to conclude as Cindy spoke following several other speakers, including a few who are traveling with her on her caravan.
As Cindy was speaking, a large platoon of police massed behind from the interior of the park, then formed a circle behind her, the speakers' ar... (more)
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Bush 41: I Still Like ClintonThirty-six hours after ex-president Bill Clinton bashed and trashed his son on everything from his handling of the Hurricane Katrina crisis to the Iraq war, former president George H.W. Bush says he still likes Clinton.
Appearing during commercial breaks on ABC's "Monday Night Football," the president's father was asked how he and Clinton managed to get along.
"I like him," Bush 41 said, despite the verbal thrashing Clinton administered to his son on ABC's "This Wee... (more)
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Government ministers 'knew of shoot-to-kill policy three years ago'Tony Blair and David Blunkett were told of a secret shift to a "shoot-to-kill" policy for suspected suicide bombers three years ago, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens said yesterday.
The tactic has come under fierce criticism after a Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead by police marksmen who were hunting the men behind the failed London bombings of 21 July.
Anger that Parliament was not told about the policy was fuell... (more)
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Westpac to look at fingerprint devicesBANK customers could soon be using special fingerprint devices to access their internet accounts in a bid to combat fraud.
The Westpac bank says it is considering a trial of the technology within the next 18 months to two years, with customers being issued "biometric" devices for their fingerprints to allow them to gain access to their accounts.
"We are only at the very early stages of having a look at that technology," Westpac head of media David Lording said.
... (more)
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Texas Department of Transportation Selects TransCore's eGo Plus Wireless RFID Communications Technology for Use In New Area Tolling Projects; TxTag Will Expand Interoperability Throughout the StateHARRISBURG, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 19, 2005--The Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) selects TransCore's eGo(R) Plus radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for use in the area's Central Texas Turnpike Program, a $2 billion transportation initiative. The multimillion-dollar contract allows for the initial release of 500,000 eGo Plus tags, branded locally as TxTag, with a total of 2 million tags over two years.
The Central Texas Turnpike Program was designed to... (more)
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Texas Civil Rights Review attacks Alex Jones, defends Plan of San Diego On Saturday Alex Jones, Director of the Texans For Freedom Group led a counter demonstration at the Texas United Latino Artists (TULA) march.
The demonstration was not against TULA per se, many of the organizers and groups participating in the TULA parade are not racist and are simply celebrating their heritage. However, some of the groups participating, like MECHA and La Raza, are overtly racist and Alex set out to expose this to the media.
The MECHA, motto is, &ld... (more)
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Carry on KillingNow at midnight all the agents, and the superhuman crew,
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do - Bob Dylan
Damn the blind eyes of anyone who still can't see after Basra.
How it began:
"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they we... (more) uk-basra.jpg
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FLASHBACK: The Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG): "Launch Secret Operations Aimed At 'Stimulating Reactions' Among Terrorists"Donald Rumsfeld's plan to fight terror is to create a lot more of it. In an L.A. Times column (registration required), military analyst William Arkin describes the Pentagon's plan to create an elite secret army, equipped with a vast array of equipment and resources, using "aggressive new 'off-the-books' tactics." He calls it, "the largest expansion of covert action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era.".
... (more)
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NY Times Journalist Kidnapped And Murdered In Basra By Men Claiming To Be Police OfficersNew York, September 19, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the separate kidnapping and murder of two Iraqi journalists in the past two days.
Fakher Haider of the New York Times was seized on Sunday night from his home in the al-Asmaey neighborhood of the southern city of Basra by several men claiming to be police officers. His body was found on Monday in the southwestern Al-Kiblah neighborhood with at least one gunshot to the head, according to his famil... (more)
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British Soldiers Free Two From Basra JailBASRA, Iraq (AP) - In a major show of force, British soldiers used tanks to break down the walls of the central jail in this southern city late Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.
About 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled as British commandos stormed inside and rescued their comrades, said Aquil Jabbar, an Iraqi television cameraman who lives across the street from the jail. Earlier Monday, demon... (more)
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British vehicles crash into Basra jailTensions between British forces and Shi'ites in southern Iraq are at a dangerous and chaotic low after British armoured forces smashed down a jail wall and freed two British undercover soldiers who had been arrested by Iraqi police.
Iraqi authorities in the southern oil city of Basra claimed that British armoured vehicles demolished part of its main jail and snatched the two men - thought to be commandos in Arab clothing who allegedly fired on Iraqi police officers.
... (more)
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Shiite Militia, British Soldiers ClashBAGHDAD, Iraq -- Violent street clashes erupted Monday between Shiite militia and British soldiers in the southern city of Basra, after British tanks stormed a local jail where two of their troops were being held.
The daylong violence in Iraq's second-largest city raised troubling questions about the relationship between British forces in charge of security and their Iraqi counterparts, in what once was considered a relatively safe area of the country.
The clashes, ... (more)
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Iran blamed as militias step up Basra violenceTHE violence that erupted on the streets of Basra yesterday was the result of a simmering struggle between British forces and the increasingly powerful Shia Muslim militias active in southern Iraq.
Attention has been focused on the Sunni Muslim insurgency against US-led forces further north, yet the British have been facing a sharp rise in attacks from an increasingly sophisticated and deadly foe.
There are strong suspicions that the bloodshed is being orchestrated ... (more)
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Iraqi prison stormed by British tanks and helicoptersBritish forces in tanks and helicopters stormed an Iraqi jail tonight to rescue two service personnel who were arrested after allegedly shooting dead a local policeman and wounding another, the governor of Basra said.
The two men had been taken to the Basra jail after violence erupted earlier today in the southern Iraqi city.
Photographs of the two – thought to be special forces officers – were taken and released to the media, showing them bandaged and b... (more)
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Who's Blowing Up Iraq? New evidence that bombs are being planted by British"The Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES." Washington Post, Ellen Knickmeyer, 9-20-05; "British Smash into Jail to Free Two Detained Soldiers"
In more than two years since the United States initiated hostilities against Iraq, there has never been a positive identificatio... (more)
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The occupation forces are the real perpetrators of bomb attacks in Iraq?Iran’s top military commander accused the United States and Israel of planning the non-stop bomb attacks that killed thousands of civilians in Iraq.
Brigadier General Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), told a gathering of senior officials, that the U.S. needs those attacks to justify the continuation of its military presence in Iraq.
“The Americans blame weak and feeble groups in Iraq f... (more)
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Iraqi Police Detain Two British Soldiers in Basra: Car Packed With ExplosivesBAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police detained two British soldiers in civilian clothes in the southern city Basra for firing on a police station on Monday, police said.
"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.
The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosive... (more)
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Potential Bush-CIA crisisGeorge Tenet is not going to let himself become the fall guy for the September 11 intelligence failures, according to a former intelligence officer and a source friendly to Mr. Tenet.
A scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson criticized the former CIA director and a score of other agency personnel for their failure to develop a strategy against al Qaeda. The report, delivered to Congress this week, recommends punitive sanctions for Mr. Tenet, former Deputy Director... (more)
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Merkel aides admit plagiarising Reagan speechGermany's conservative leader Angela Merkel faced acute embarrassment last night after aides admitted that she had plagiarised a speech used by Ronald Reagan in a 1980 US presidential debate for her own television election duel with Gerhard Schröder, the Social Democratic chancellor.
Some 21 million Germans watched on Sunday night as Mrs Merkel and Mr Schröder slugged it out in their only live TV debate of Germany's election campaign.
Yesterday, though, Ms... (more)
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While You Were Watching Katrina: House Republicans derail probes of Plame affairRepublicans on three separate congressional committees this week derailed three formal "resolutions of inquiry" by Democrats that would have required the Bush administration to turn over sensitive information and records relating to the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Had the resolutions of inquiry been adopted, they would have led to the first independent congressional inquiries of the Plame affair, and perhaps even the public testimony of senior Bush administration aides su... (more)
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Bush aide arrested on corruption chargesWASHINGTON, D.C. - The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested Monday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption investigation related to Abramoff's dealings with the government.
The complaint filed by the FBI alleges that David Safavian, 38, a White House official involved unti... (more)
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Arrest ties Pyongyang to counterfeit $100 billsNorth Korea's government is producing high-quality counterfeit $100 bills and is working with criminal groups in China to sell the fake U.S. money internationally, U.S. officials say.
Some details of the production of what federal officials call "supernotes" were disclosed after arrests last month in several U.S. cities of people linked to a major Asian crime ring trafficking in fake money, arms, drugs and cigarettes.
A senior Bush administration official sa... (more)
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Video shows London bombers staged practice runThe suicide bombers who carried out a devastating attack on London's transit system on July 7 staged a practice run just nine days before the bombings, police say.
The four members of the terrorist cell travelled from the northern city of Leeds and visited their targets on the capital's transit system.
Detectives managed to retrace their movements by studying tens of thousands of hours of CCTV footage.
The visit "might suggest the suspects were carry... (more)
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'Let 10-year-old read Bible at recess': Student's attorneys ask for immediate order from courtAttorneys for a 10-year-old student asked a federal court yesterday to order a Tennessee school district to allow him to read and study the Bible during recess.
Luke Whitson and his parents, represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, claim Principal Cathy Summa at Karns Elementary School in the Knox County district violated constitutional rights by stopping a playground Bible study.
Attorneys with ADF filed a lawsuit in June after Whitson and his parents were unable... (more)
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Journalist Murdered in Basra, 68th Killed in Iraq Since Start of WarSept. 19 - Reporters Without Borders voiced outrage today at the murder of Fakher Haydar Al-Tamimi, an Iraqi journalist who worked for several foreign news media including the New York Times. He was kidnapped and then shot in the head today in the southern city of Basra.
"We are very concerned about security in Basra, as two journalists have been killed there within two months," the press freedom organisation said. "It is becoming increasingly more difficult and dangerous for the ... (more)
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