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Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen won't let go of the mystery: Just where did the Cuban government get up to $3.9 billion it funneled through a Swiss bank over seven years. Was Havana simply, as it claims, banking its income from tourism and remittances that Cubans abroad send to their relatives on the island? Or was dirty money involved? Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-born Florida Republican, wants to know, and she has been badgering officials of the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and the U.S. Federal Reserve for answers. ''That's an awful lot of money,'' Ros-Lehtinen told The Herald. According to the latest answers...

Major Update Below!As I posted yesterday, there was a disturbing blurb in a NY Times article that indicated Faisal Shahzad, the now infamous Times Square Bomber, was under surveillance as a potential terrorist during the Bush administration. George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but...

Scientists stirred to ridicule ice age claims   19:00 15 April 04   NewScientist.com news service   Climate scientists have been stirred to ridicule claims in an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster that global warming could trigger a new ice age, a scenario also put forward in a controversial report to the US military.The $125-million epic, The Day After Tomorrow, opens worldwide in May. It will show Manhattan frozen solid after the warm ocean current known as the Gulf Stream shuts down.The movie's release will come soon after a report to the US Department of Defense (DoD) in February predicting that such a shutdown...

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way. On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy. The Cheney interview reflects a team of prosecutors and FBI agents trying to find out whether the leaks...

GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- A Jamaican man collapsed and died on a nonstop flight from Guyana to New York on Tuesday, airline officials said. Rupert Cameron, 33, was pronounced dead when North American Airlines Flight 92 from Georgetown arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport just before 2 p.m. EDT, said Jenny DeBarros, a spokeswoman for the Queens-based airline. Cameron had complained of feeling unwell and repeatedly asked for water. Several passengers, including a Guyanese doctor, administered CPR when he stopped breathing, DeBarros said. It was unclear when an autopsy would be performed. Authorities detained a Jamaican friend traveling with Cameron....

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (Reuters) -- An Iranian scholar who was abducted in Guyana last month in a case that baffled local police has been found dead with gunshot wounds to the head, police said on Wednesday. The body of Mohammad Hassan Ebrahimi, director of Guyana's International Islamic College for Advanced Studies, was discovered by local people late on Tuesday 45 miles (70 km) south of the capital, Georgetown. Ebrahimi, a well-known member of Guyana's Muslim community, was seized by two gunmen on April 2 in Georgetown as he left the college compound. Police spokesman John Sauers said the partly decomposed body...

Iran Sends Diplomatic Warning to US Over IraqIran said Sunday that it had sent a message of formal diplomatic warning to the United States about its actions in neighboring Iraq.'We have warned the Americans about Iraq,' Foriegn Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.Asefi did not comment on the content of the warning, but officials and religious leaders in Shiite Muslim Iran have expressed outrage in recent weeks about the presence of US led forces in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala. Asefi said that the diplomatic message was sent VIA the Swiss Embassy in...

Note: The following text is a quote: Swedish National Charged with Hacking and Theft of Trade Secrets Related to Alleged Computer Intrusions at NASA and Cisco Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka "Stakkato," 21, a Swedish national, was indicted today on intrusion and trade secret theft charges. The five-count indictment includes one intrusion count and two trade secret misappropriation counts involving Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco), of San Jose, Calif., which is a provider of computer network equipment and producer of Internet routers. According to the allegations in the indictment Pettersson intentionally committed an intrusion between May 12, 2004, and May 13, 2004,...

A federal judge in New York has ordered a Lebanese national transferred to Minneapolis to face two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. The U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis says Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi is charged with lying about his role in sending radio and communications equipment to Pakistan and elsewhere. He's also accused of lying about his role in helping another person illegally obtain a Massachusetts driver's license. That person was later convicted in Jordan in a bombing plot. The charges revealed Friday deal only with accusations of lying — not with the underlying crimes Elzahabi allegedly lied...

Mosul, Iraq Press, May 11, 2004 –Six people have died and many other are taken ill due to a disease whose symptoms doctors say resemble those caused by anthrax, according to hospital sources. The sources, refusing to be named, said doctors in the Republican Hospital, the largest medical center in northern Iraq, suspect that the victims were exposed to anthrax. They said a whole wing of the sprawling hospital has been cordoned off as doctors fear the disease might spread to other patients. The sources said the doctors suspect that a patient brought to hospital two weeks ago was the...

- Ahmed Khalifan Ghailani, a/k/a "Foopie," is a diminutive Tanzanian with an Uzbeki wife, six children and a deep hatred of America and Western culture in general. A devout Muslim who plays a mean game of soccer but never learned to drive a car, Ghailani is also believed to be a key al Qaeda player who U.S. agents think is involved in a percolating terror plot aimed at disrupting America's upcoming elections. He had a $25 million price on his head as the FBI's No. 7 most-wanted terrorist - the same amount as the bounty for the capture of Osama...

A civil servant and an MP's researcher have been found guilty of leaking a secret memo about talks between George Bush and Tony Blair. David Keogh, 50, from Northampton, has been found guilty of two offences under the Official Secrets Act. MP's researcher Leo O'Connor was found guilty of one Official Secrets offence. It recorded Oval Office talks between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about Iraq in 2004, the Old Bailey was told. Sentencing was adjourned for reports........

Two Israeli Men Could Face Deportation Two Israeli men could face deportation after leading Unicoi County authorities on a high-speed chase in a rented moving truck over the weekend. Shmuel Dahan is being held in the Unicoi County Jail on charges of reckless driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest. Almaliach Naor is jailed on charges of false identification. Unicoi County Sheriff Kent Harris said the two men will be turned over to Immigration and Naturalization Services, which he said placed a detainer warrant on the men. The chase began when Harris noticed a rental truck traveling up to 20...

My apologies in advance on this story; I just happened to catch this on several different newscasts a few minutes ago, and I am going by memory as best I can. Unicoi County (Tennessee) sheriffs arrested two Israeli men after a high-speed chase down mountain roads in this east Tennessee locale. While the sheriff was in pursuit, local witnesses noticed that materials were being thrown from the truck as it sped by, well over the posted speed limits. These witnesses were able to locate some of these items; one of which included a jug whose contents became "unusually hot" after...