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This is the funniest video I have seen in a very long time. Jeff Dunham is a very talented ventriloquist. ENJOY! If this is a duplicate post, please remove.

<p>For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.</p>

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

August 7, 2004THE OVERVIEWBin Laden Sent Suspect to U.S., Officials Say By DOUGLAS JEHL and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM ASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - American intelligence officials now believe that Issa al-Hindi, the alleged Qaeda operative now in British custody, was dispatched to the United States in early 2001 by the mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot at the direction of Osama bin Laden to case potential targets in New York City, senior government officials said Friday. The officials said that Mr. Hindi was the same person as the figure identified in the Sept. 11 commission report as Issa al-Britani. The...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

IN a small flat in Damascus, a young man in jeans and T-shirt draws frequently on a Gauloises cigarette as he describes how he dressed his brother in a suicide belt and watched him blow up some American soldiers at a drinks stall in Iraq. The young man calls himself Ahmed. He is 23 and he has a degree in chemistry. He knows all about explosives. Last year, he says coolly, he took 15kg of TNT, packed it into pouches with some nails and strapped the bomb to his 19-year-old brother’s waist. There was never any doubt that it would...

Investigators used a ruse to question a man later charged with aiding terrorists, an FBI agent testified Tuesday at a hearing over admissibility of the conversation and a search of the defendant's luggage. FBI agent Michael Scherck said he and another law enforcement officer approached Ehsanul Sadequee as he got off a flight from Atlanta to New York on Aug. 18, 2005, and told him they wanted to talk to him about passenger complaints that he had acted suspiciously on the plane. Scherck said that in fact there were no complaints, but investigators wanted biographical information from Sadequee as part...

LONDON, Sept 7: A Briton released from Pakistan after more than a year in custody was arrested minutes after his plane touched down at London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday, police said. Rangzieb Ahmed arrived around 1:30pm at the airport aboard a scheduled flight from Islamabad. Armed police waiting for Ahmed boarded the plane as soon as its doors opened, pulling the bearded 32-year-old from the aircraft in handcuffs. Greater Manchester Police, which made the arrest, said he was being held under Britain’s terrorism laws. Rangzieb Ahmed was arrested Aug 25, 2006, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province for alleged links...

Perrysburg, Ohio - From Interstate 75, the sight is striking: A gleaming white mosque with twin minarets in the classical Islamic style rises out of the Ohio countryside. A visit to the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo during Friday prayers offers another remarkable scene. Inside the mosque's domed prayer hall, as light streams through stained-glass windows inscribed with attributes of God and verses from the Koran, men and women gather to pray alongside each other, with a low partition in between. In most mosques, women pray either behind the men, separated by a curtain or enclosure, or in another room....

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) -- A suspect in the failed terror attack on Scotland's busiest airport was unlikely to survive his severe burn injuries, a doctor who treated him said Tuesday. An off-duty officer uses a fire extinguisher on s an occupant of the Glasgow attack car. Khalid Ahmed, 27, is in a Scottish hospital with burns suffered after allegedly crashing a Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow airport a day after police found two unexploded car bombs in central London. "The prognosis is not good and he is not likely to survive," a member of the medical team that treated him...

2 Cousins Nabbed on Terror Charges Wednesday February 21, 2007 10:16 PM By MIKE ROBINSON Associated Press Writer CHICAGO (AP) - Two cousins were arrested Wednesday on charges of conspiring to commit ``jihad'' terrorist acts against Americans overseas, including U.S. military forces in Iraq. Zubair A. Ahmed, 27, of suburban North Chicago, and Khaleel Ahmed, 26, of Chicago, were arrested after a grand jury in Cleveland returned an indictment charging them and three other men who already had been facing terrorism charges. The indictment alleged that the conspiracy included finding fresh recruits to wage ``violent jihad'' against Americans and locating...

Copyrighted. Please go to www.newsnet5.com/news/11085316/detail.html for story.

CHICAGO - Two Chicago-area cousins were arrested Wednesday on federal charges out of Cleveland accusing them of conspiring to wage holy war against Americans overseas, including U.S. military forces in Iraq. Zubair A. Ahmed, 27, of suburban North Chicago, and Khaleel Ahmed, 26, of Chicago, were accused along with three other men from the Toledo, Ohio, area who already had been under indictment on charges of plotting acts of terrorism against Americans overseas. The fresh indictment returned by a grand jury in Cleveland added the two Chicago-area men to the roster of defendants and brought additional charges against the three...

excerptIbrahim Ahmed NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Muslim cab driver who is being charged with attempted homicide after he allegedly tried to run over two college students after a religion dispute stole the cab he was driving and was pocketing the fares, the owner of the cab company told FOX News. Ibrahim Ahmed, a 37-year-old Sunni Muslim from Somalia, tried to run over two college students near Vanderbilt University early Sunday morning after getting into the argument, police said. Ahmed picked up the two fares — college students visiting Nashville from Ohio — near the Vanderbilt campus, according to the incident...

Another “think tank,” this one called the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), has come out for total civilian disarmament and repeal of the Second Amendment. What’s new about that? ISPU is openly pro-Muslim, and the ISPU writer is a criminal defense attorney who argues for repealing parts of the Bill of Rights. You can read the whole article, entitled “In the Fight Against Terrorism, Some Rights Must Be Repealed,” by Junaid Afeef, on the ISPU website: http://www.ispu.us/pages/articles/2914/articleDetailPB.html A JPFO supporter sent us the link, and we did read the article, looking for: a. Inaccurate “facts” b. Missing data...

A chance arrest in the city of Rotterdam and tapped telephone conversations were both key factors behind the move to the heightened terrorist alert that has been in place in the Netherlands since 9 July. On Wednesday, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that a 17-year-old Dutch Muslim youth had been arrested on 30 June on suspicion of involvement in a raid on a supermarket. A subsequent search of his home allegedly led to the discovery of a number of items which, while they had nothing to do with "ordinary" crime, could be connected with...

Six of the 11 Egyptian students, gone AWOL are now in custody, according to Fox News. One was reportedly "lost" in Minnesota, two surrendered to authorities in New Jersey and another two were thought to have been apprehended in New York. 1. IBRAHIM, EL SAYED AHMED ELSAYED; DOB OF 4/29/1986, PASSPORT 954757 2. EL DESSOUKI, ESLAM IBRAHIM MOHAMED; DOB OF 02/21/1985, PASSPORT 1002756 3. EL BAHNASAWI, ALAA ABD EL FATTAH ALI; DOB OF 04/02/1986, PASSPORT 934679 4. ABD ALLA, MOHAMED RAGAB MOHAMED; DOB OF 02/15/1984, PASSPORT 860972 5. EL LAKET, AHMED REFAAT SAAD EL MOGHAZI; DOB OF 09/01/1986, PASSPORT 943306...

Ceuta, Spain, Jul 25 (EFE).- A Spaniard held for two years without charge by the United States at its prison camp in Guantanamo denounced terrorism here Tuesday, while saying he was unjustly jailed, that mistreatment harmed his eyesight and that he intends to sue President George W. Bush for millions of dollars. Hamed Abderraman Ahmed, who was absolved by the Spanish judicial system in June of allegedly having links to Al Qaeda, discussed his capture in Afghanistan and his confinement at the U.S. military prison in far eastern Cuba. Ahmed was captured in Afghanistan and transferred to U.S. Army custody...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A military investigation into allegations that U.S. troops intentionally killed Iraqi civilians in a March raid in Ishaqi, a village north of Baghdad, has cleared the troops of misconduct, the military said Friday — despite dramatic video footage of slain children. Meanwhile, a lawyer representing families of some of the two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by U.S. Marines in the western town of Haditha on Nov. 19 said three or four Marines carried out the shootings while 20 more waited outside the homes. He also said victims' relatives turned down a request by U.S. investigators...

Two Atlanta-area men met with Islamic extremists in Toronto, where they discussed "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike," according to an FBI affidavit made public Friday. Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee -- U.S. citizens from the Atlanta area -- met with at least three other targets of FBI terrorism investigations during a trip to Toronto last month, according to the affidavit. The affidavit said the men discussed attacks against oil refineries and military bases. They also planned to travel to Pakistan for military training at a terrorist camp, which authorities said the 21-year-old...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A lead FBI agent on Tuesday linked two local Muslim clerics to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, contending the two were planning to set up a school near Lodi that would breed anti-American terrorism. The agent testified that Lodi clerics Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammed Adil Khan were prepared to relay information on terrorist plots from sources close to bin Laden. The allegations were dismissed by Ahmed's lawyer, who said the FBI and federal prosecutors have "made the whole thing up." The striking allegations came during an immigration hearing for Ahmed at which Immigration Judge Anthony Murry...

Unbeknownst to most Americans, federal prosecutors opened their case recently in the terrorism trial of a young American who studied under two Taliban-tied imams in California and whose grandfather was Pakistan’s minister of religion in the 1980’s. The trial of Hamid Hayat, 23, is not taking place in the dark of night nor in a military tribunal from which the media is barred. It is in an open California courtroom, the very kind that has been overrun for trials of the likes of Scott Peterson and O.J. Simpson. Yet in the month of February, the New York Times had exactly...

(CNSNews.com) - Fourteen miles from the U.S. Capitol, a basement-run organization with alleged ties to Hamas and al Qaeda is a crucial link in the planning of any future terrorist attacks against the United States, according to several terrorism experts who analyzed documents and other information obtained in a CNSNews.com investigation. The United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), based in Springfield, Va., is publicly identified as a Muslim think tank but has multiple ties to the terrorism underworld, according to the CNSNews.com sources, who are both inside and outside government. "UASR is a front organization for a terrorist group,"...

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CAIR FILES FOIA REQUEST ON SECRET WIRETAPS Request seeks legal basis for President Bush’s orders, list of those targeted A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today announced the filing of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all government records relating to President Bush’s post-9/11 executive orders authorizing electronic surveillance of Americans and others in the United States without first obtaining court approval, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Media reports indicate that in some cases, the secret surveillance program intercepted...

MILAN - Playing an Internet video one evening last year, an Egyptian radical living in Milan reveled as the head of an American, Nicholas Berg, was sawed off by his Iraqi captors. Yahia Ragheh, foreground, and Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed being led into a Milan court last month, charged with ties to a terror network. "Go to hell, enemy of God!" shouted the man, Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, as Mr. Berg's screams were broadcast. "Kill him! Kill him! Yes, like that! Cut his throat properly. Cut his head off! If I had been there, I would have burned him to...

Five Egyptians yesterday were nabbed in a New Jersey apartment with New York subway maps, a video of Big Apple landmarks and $8,000 in cash after a tipster told cops one was related to infamous 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. But police said the men — all illegal immigrants working "menial" jobs — did not appear to be part of any terror cell, although they had not yet fully explained why they had the items in the Newark home. One of the men was identified as Ahmed Mohamed Atta, 30. But there is no indication he is related to the fiend...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A Pakistani cleric facing deportation was accused Friday during an immigration hearing of trying to incite followers to defend Osama bin Laden and kill Americans. Shabbir Ahmed, 39, seeking bail on a charge of overstaying his visa to head a Lodi mosque in the Central Valley, denied that he had made any speech against the United States. During the same hearing, a government attorney said another Lodi imam being held on immigration charges once had close ties to the Taliban. Justice Department attorney Paul Nishiie argued against releasing Ahmed on bail, saying he was linked to...

The Iraqi government has announced that it has arrested two senior members of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq operating in the northern city of Mosul. The government said the two men were arrested on June 19 and were candidates to replace al-Qaeda's leader in Mosul who had been captured on June 14. They two men were identified as Salim Mohammed Ahmed, also known as Abu Nabhan, and Mohammed Thaer Ibrahim, also known as Abu Sarhan. "The two terrorists surrendered without resistance," the announcement said. It offered no other details about the arrests other than to say they were the result...

In an official statement, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan stated that Hamas associates that deal with politics "may be members of organizations, but are not terrorists, versus terrorists, people who have blood on their hands."[1] Is this distinction enough to convince us that Hamas only makes wine and honey and provides social welfare? And does the Bush administration not know what Hamas really is?Hamas is the Arabic acronym for "The Islamic Resistance Movement" (Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya) and connotes heat, zeal and passion for a cause, the cause here being the destruction of Israel. Hamas was legally registered in Israel in...

Federal officials believe they have broken up an al Qaeda terror cell operating in Lodi and have arrested two men and detained two others as part of a wide-ranging investigation, authorities said Tuesday. One of the men arrested, 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, is accused in a federal criminal complaint of training in an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan to learn “how to kill Americans” and then lying to FBI agents about it. His training included explosives and weapons instruction and using photographs of President Bush as targets, court documents indicate. More:http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/v-print/story/13022958p-13869232c.html

Will the Real News Fabricator Please Stand Up? May 19, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel The Detroit News and its star reporter, David Shepardson, got caught with their pants down. They ran a fake story. But no-one noticed. No-one, except me—which lead to Detroit News Editor and Publisher Mark Silverman and his minions racing to hush the story and bury it, looking for some silent way to cover-up their very large, very exposed rears. They printed Shepardson’s phony story about a terrorist, and I exposed it, last week. Shepardson ran with it, without even a modicum of fact-checking (easily done with...

The links between Nick Berg and Zacarias Moussaoui, once described as the 20th hijacker of 9/11, opened now room for new speculations, if there are deeper ties between the OKC Bombing'95 and 9/11, than thought before. Apparently Berg knew also Moussaoui's roomates. One of them was Mujahid Menepta, who is connected to both 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 OKC bombing. But Menepta wasn't arrested in Summer 2001, when Moussaoui got caught. The FBI waited until after Sep11th.Why?Berg, Moussaoui and the OK bombing tieshttp://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=269 By Ewing20012004/5/24 On May 18th, 2004, according to Newsmax, Nick Berg's family insisted that...

A KEY al-Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the shoe bomber Richard Reid and one of the September 11 hijackers helped to kidnap five British children from their Norwich home and take them to Libya, a court was told yesterday. Djamel Beghal, 39, is serving ten years in a French prison for plotting a suicide attack on the US Embassy in Paris and was described as so dangerous that even other al-Qaeda members thought him beyond the pale. While he was living in Leicester in the late 1990s Beghal, an Algerian, met Azzedin Journazi, from Libya, at a city mosque and...

A Yemeni immigrant who was discharged from the U.S. Air Force after expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attacks faces trial next week on accusations of lying to land a job as an airport screener. Sadeq Naji Ahmed, 25, a former airman at Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Fla., faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of making false statements on a questionnaire to get a job with the Transportation Security Administration at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

South African woman deported after crossing into U.S. from Mexico HOUSTON (AP) — A South African woman whose arrest heightened fears that terrorists were slipping across the U.S.-Mexico border was deported Tuesday. Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed, 49, was turned over to authorities in South Africa when she arrived, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said. She is barred from returning to the United States for 10 years. Ahmed was convicted of illegal entry into the United States, making false statements to federal authorities and misuse of an altered South African passport. She was sentenced Dec. 7 to the time she was...

More signs of Syria turn up in Iraq The Iraqi ambassador to Syria tells the Monitor that photos of high-ranking Syrian officials were found in Fallujah. By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor DAMASCUS, SYRIA - When US troops stormed the rebel-held city of Fallujah last month, they uncovered photos of senior Syrian officials that have further strained the already tense relations between Syria and Iraq, according to the Iraqi ambassador to Syria.Several captured insurgents were found in possession of the photographs, confirmation, according to Iraqi officials, that some elements in the Syrian regime - perhaps...

THE FACTS surrounding Ahmed Abu Ali's detention and possible torture in Saudi Arabia remain shrouded in diplomatic and law enforcement secrecy. Caution, therefore, is certainly in order in assessing the U.S. government's role in the arrest a year and a half ago of this American citizen and in his detention without charge or access to counsel ever since. But as U.S. District Judge John D. Bates put it last week in a compelling opinion on the case, Mr. Abu Ali's lawyers "have not only alleged, but have presented some unrebutted evidence, that [his] detention is at the behest and ongoing...

MADRID: A key suspect in the March 11 Madrid train bombings, Rabei Ousmane Sayed Ahmed, appeared before a Spanish judge yesterday after being extradited from Italy. Italian authorities acceded to a Spanish request made last Friday that Ahmed, alias "Mohammed the Egyptian", be temporarily handed over for questioning over the blasts that killed 191 people and injured 1900 in Spain's worst terrorist attack. He will be questioned for at least six months. Spanish authorities will then return him to Italy, where he is under investigation for links to Muslim militant groups in Europe. Italian authorities seized Ahmed, 27, in Milan...

Editor's note: Readers may also be interested in Moderate Islam or Fata Morgana? and freemuslims.org Speaks Out.There is good news to report: The idea that "militant Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution" is finding greater acceptance over time. But there is also bad news, namely growing confusion over who really is a moderate Muslim. This means that the ideological side of the war on terror is making some, but only limited, progress.The good news: Anti-Islamist Muslims have found their voice since September 11. Their numbers include distinguished academics such as Azar Nafisi (Johns Hopkins), Ahmed al-Rahim (formerly...

Six charged with supplying fake ids to immigrants This story ran on nwitimes.com on Wednesday, October 20, 2004 12:44 PM CDT CHICAGO (AP) -- Six men of Middle Eastern descent from the Chicago area were charged with helping illegal immigrants trying to conceal their legal status obtain fraudulent Social Security cards and Illinois driver's licenses, prosecutors said. Hundreds of people used addresses associated with the defendants to secure the fake documents, according to a criminal complaint made public Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Naser Kawash, 38, allegedly made thousands of dollars for helping as many as 900 foreign nationals from...

MADRID A Saudi cleric funneled money to an Egyptian suspected of being one of the masterminds of the Madrid train bombings in March, Spanish and Italian newspapers reported Thursday. The Egyptian suspect, Rabei Osman Ahmed, arrested in Milan in June on a request from the Spanish authorities, identified Sheik Salman al-Awdah, a former university professor in Saudi Arabia, as his financier while he was living in Spain between 2001 and 2003, El Mundo of Spain and Corriere della Sera of Italy said in a joint report. The March 11 train bombings killed 191 people and have been attributed to Islamic...

A South African woman whose arrest raised fears of terrorists crossing into Texas from Mexico pleaded guilty today to illegal entry, lying to a federal agent and using an altered passport. Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed, 48, of Johannesburg pleaded guilty to all three charges before U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt. She admitted to Hoyt that she had ripped three pages out of her passport. Ahmed faces a maximum of 15 years, six months in prison and $750,000 in fines at her sentencing, scheduled for Jan. 10. Her arrest July 19 at the McAllen -Miller International Airport prompted several public officials...

CAIRO (AP)--Saudi police reportedly arrested the kingdom's most wanted terrorist on Thursday, according to pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Arabiya. The Saudi-owned station reported late Thursday that police captured Faris Ahmed Jamaan Al Showeel al-Zahrani in Abha, a town 800 kilometers southwest of the capital, Riyadh. According to the Cable News Network, the Saudi Interior Ministry said an operation targeting the man was still going on. Saudi authorities released a list of 26 most wanted terrorists following a series of bombings in Riyadh on May 12, 2003, that killed 26 people. On Nov. 8, another suicide attack on a Riyadh...

August 2, 2004 -- The stunning new terror alerts emerge as federal investigators hunt for possible al Qaeda connections to a globe-hopping Pakistani woman who sneaked across the Rio Grande into Texas last month and was headed for New York. Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed, 48, is being held by U.S. marshals near the Mexican border while federal prosecutors prepare a case against her of illegal entry. Ahmed was stopped July 19 in McAllen, Texas, while trying to board a flight at a small international airport near the Mexican border with an American Airlines ticket to JFK Airport. Suspicious Border Patrol...

Al-Qaida Suspect Arrested in Texas Updated: Wednesday, Jul. 28, 2004 - 1:00 PM By J.J. Green FederalNewsRadio.com A South African woman picked up in Texas almost 10 days ago may turn out to be a key, high-level al-Qaida operative. Her name is Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. She was stopped at McAllen Miller International Airport on July 19 headed to New York. Eddie Flores of the U.S. Border Patrol office in McAllen, Texas tells FederalNewsRadio.com that a review of her papers raised some concerns. "In looking at her documents, they did not find any entry documents in her passport where she...

Democratic Delegate Has Terror Ties | By Debbie Schlussel John Kerry is trying to show he’s "tough on terrorism." But with delegates like Ismael Ahmed, it’s a tough sell. Ahmed, a Michigan delegate to this week’s Democratic National Convention, is a long-time Democratic activist and a repeat delegate. But the Democrats aren’t touting him to the media. In fact, the only place you’ll read about Ahmed’s delegate credentials is on Al-Jazeerah’s website. In this first Presidential nominating convention since 9/11, Ahmed’s presence at the convention and his views are more disturbing than ever.

MCALLEN, Texas -- NEWSCHANNEL 5 confirms that the name of a South African woman taken into custody while trying to board an airplane in McAllen last week appears on an FBI watch list. A senior Homeland Security official confirmed that 48-year-old Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed is a “person of interest.” This information follows on the heels of Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas) telling NEWSCHANNEL 5 Wednesday in Brownsville that Ahmed is “on a list of persons (investigators) wanted to talk to and possibly on a list of terrorists.”

A series of truces agreed on last month, encompassing Mr Sadr's stronghold in al-Thoura, Baghdad's eastern slum, as well as the Shia holy cities and other towns further south, are still holding. His own home turf in the capital has been more peaceful than it has been for months. Former fighters are now being paid to collect rubbish, plant trees, direct traffic and help the Iraqi police. The new government has promised to pay for a new sewage system so that the slum detritus will no longer flow past Baghdad's grimmest tenements. Outside the city, the clergy behind Mr...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gunmen angry over Yasser Arafat's overhaul of his security forces burned down Palestinian Authority offices in Gaza on Sunday. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat met with his prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, to discuss the political crisis that erupted over continuing violence in Gaza and Qureia's attempt to resign as head of the Palestinian government. "I totally reject your resignation and consider it nonexistent," Arafat told Qureia at a meeting Sunday, according to Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat. Qureia told his Cabinet on Saturday he was firm in his decision to quit. Dozens of...