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NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, April 4, 2006 – Preliminary hearings began here today for an Afghan man accused of working as a translator and accountant for al Qaeda in Afghanistan and involvement in a grenade attack that injured three journalists in March 2002. Abdul Zahir appeared in court wearing a dress shirt and khaki pants and talked and laughed with his translator and military attorney before proceedings began. An issue arose immediately when the presiding officer found out that written charges had been submitted to Zahir in English, Arabic and Pashtu, but Zahir's native language is Farsi. Marine Col....

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2006 – Afghan National Police and coalition forces detained four members of the Taliban in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, Feb. 5, officials reported today. The detainees were transported to the Ghazni detention center for questioning, a coalition leader said. "This was a joint operation between the ANP, coalition forces and the Afghan people," said Army Col. Pat Donahue, commander of coalition forces in the country's eastern region. "We were able to apprehend these four based on information given to us from the provincial coordination center in Ghazni." The center in Ghazni proved to be even more valuable than...

FORT LEE, Va. (Army News Service, Dec. 15, 2005) – Students of Advanced Individual Training at Fort Lee’s Quartermaster School will begin carrying weapons with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, starting Jan. 15. The weapons immersion program being implemented by the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade at Fort Lee is designed to better prepare Soldiers for future deployments, officials said. A number of other Army schools began weapons immersion earlier this year for AIT students, an Army Training and Doctrine Command spokesman said. The TRADOC plan was to begin with combat-arms branches last spring and have all AIT...

With lawn chairs, binoculars and water bottles in tow, civilian volunteers will begin patrolling California's southern border today with hopes of drawing further attention to illegal immigration. But their arrival is being met by serious opposition. Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a civilian border watch group that began patrolling the Arizona/Mexico border in April, announced Friday the expansion of the controversial project to California and New Mexico as well as three states along the northern U.S. border with Canada. "In the name of public safety and national security something needs to be done," Simcox said, speaking...

WASHINGTON - Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts will begin the day after Labor Day, but Senate Democrats said Friday the White House will have to release more documents to ensure he's wearing a justice's black robes before the new term begins in October. "There is no reason why the date cannot be met, but we need the full cooperation of the administration," said top Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. President Bush officially nominated Roberts as the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on Friday, and Senate Republicans later announced that confirmation hearings would...

Scientists to begin study of ancient skeleton over Indian protest By William McCall ASSOCIATED PRESS 2:05 p.m. June 28, 2005 PORTLAND, Ore. – After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week. A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider. Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had...

Time has run out to stop conceal carry permits from coming to Saint Louis City and Saint Louis County. The excuse that there is no funding to cover the costs is no longer valid. Tuesday, Missouri senators gave final approval to a bill that passed in the house in March. Now a spokesman for Governor Matt Blunt says it's not a matter of if he will sign this new bill, but when. It will becomes law immediately. The conceal-carry law has resulted in a barrage of opinions from gun owners and those against guns getting in more hands. Despite his...

MANILA (AFP) - Nearly one thousand American and Filipino soldiers on Sunday began joint military exercises aimed at improving cooperation against terrorist and other attacks. The two-week exercises are to be held in military camps in Luzon. Some 300 US troops and 650 Filipino soldiers are taking part. The maneuvers are aimed at improving joint planning and enhancing capabilities "against armed attacks, including threats from terrorist groups, as well as readiness to respond to natural disasters," the US embassy said. The Philippines is a US ally in its global war on terrorism, and small numbers of US military advisers have...

Pro-Life Leaders Seek Face to Face Meeting with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Begin Dialogue about Abortion and Abstinence Tue Feb 8,10:12 AM ET To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, 202-547-1735 or 540-538-4741 (cell) News Advisory: The Christian Defense Coalition will hold a news conference on Wednesday, Feb. 9, at 11 a.m., outside of the Russell Office Building on the corner of Constitution and 1st St. NE. The group will then go to Sen. Clinton's office to schedule a meeting and present the senator with a letter discussing reasons why a...

Right on CampusThroughout 2003 and into 2004, a surge of protests roiled American campuses. You probably think the kids were agitating against war in Iraq, right? Well, no. Students at UCLA, Michigan and many other schools were sponsoring bake sales to protest . . . affirmative action. For white students and faculty, a cookie cost (depending on the school) $1; blacks and Hispanics could buy one for a lot less. The principle, the protesters observed, was just that governing university admission practices: rewarding people differently based on race. Indignant school officials charged the bake-sale organizers with "creating a hostile climate" for minority students,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites) will bring top figures of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s ousted regime to court next week for the first time since they appeared before a judge five months ago, and formal indictments could be issued next month. Many have been in custody for more than a year and have not met with lawyers, prompting Saddam's attorneys to cry foul. The regime figures face charges for crimes allegedly committed during the 35-year Baath Party dictatorship, including war crimes, mass killings and the suppression of the 1991 Shiite rebellion. Saddam, who was...

KABUL, Afghanistan - The 18,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan (news - web sites) have begun a new offensive to hunt Taliban and al-Qaida militants through the country's harsh winter, aiming to sap their strength ahead of planned spring elections, the American military said Saturday. Operation Lightning Freedom was initiated after Tuesday's inauguration of Hamid Karzai as the country's first democratically elected president, Maj. Mark McCann said. "It's going on throughout the country of Afghanistan. It's designed basically to search out and destroy the remaining remnants of Taliban forces who traditionally we believe go to ground during the winter months,"...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Children begin United Nations conference on the environment NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Mimicking a chimpanzee's shriek to the cheers and laughter of children from around the world, primate researcher Jane Goodall Tuesday opened the United Nations-sponsored Tunza International Children's Conference on the Environment. The four-day conference brings together 450 children from 50 countries to talk about environmental issues and the many small ways that children can work for environmental causes. At the end of the conference, the children will vote on resolutions that will be passed on to the United Nations' Environment Programme for possible consideration by the UN. "Not...

'I don't know who taught him to fly, but they didn't tell him to check the gas'. A 25-year-old man is facing several charges after his plane, reported stolen from an airfield in Maine, crashed into a Montérégie field yesterday morning. The man, a Livingston, Me., resident, suffered only minor injuries in the accident. He had been flying a Cessna without a pilot's licence or flight training, said Constable Manon Gaignard of the Sûreté du Québec. For unknown reasons, the man left a private airport, near Turner, Me., about 6:30 a.m., running out of gas three hours later above St....

Twenty-five years ago, the leaders of Israel and Egypt – Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat – signed a treaty that ended decades of warfare. The treaty and its implementation are far from perfect, but the framework of peace has been preserved despite differences between Cairo and Jerusalem. Advertisement In the intervening decades, a great deal has been written about this singular accomplishment. Unfortunately, some of these accounts are misleading or based on myths. As a result, the "Camp David formula," to which former president Jimmy Carter attributes the success of the negotiations, is often seen as the key to a...

It was an exquisite June morning. Sun shafted on the upper reaches of the Western Wall, enhancing its luminous cinnamon hue and brightening its bouquets of caper bushes that sprouted from high crevices. Kvittelech – those ubiquitous snippets of scribble stuffed into cracks and chinks and bearing the petitions of the pious – profiled the Wall's lower tiers, most of whose immense antique blocks looked almost fresh from the quarry. A crowd of black-clad worshipers, Hawaiian-topped tourists, and a host of other sundry onlookers gawked at the sudden appearance of the prime minister emerging from a gray Chevrolet, ringed by...

George Woodrow Carter Posted: November 12, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Reading President Bush's address to the National Endowment for Democracy, one wonders: Have the neocons captured him totally? For, though he is being hailed as Reagan's true heir, Bush has begun to sound like a clone of Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter. Foreign policy is, in Walter Lippman's phrase, the "Shield of the Republic." Its purpose: protect our independence and freedom. "We do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy," said John Quincy Adams. Traditional conservatives believe in the Eisenhower formula of Peace...

The occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Camp David Agreement furnished a fresh opportunity for the critics of prime minister Menachem Begin to lambaste him once again (see The Jerusalem Post, September 18). Foremost among these critics is US president Jimmy Carter, who repeated the canard that Begin had promised him Israel would suspend its settlement policy in the territories for the duration of the autonomy talks. The claim was, from the very beginning, patently preposterous. To assume that Begin, at a closed meeting attended only by Carter and one or two others, would blithely abandon the goal of...

Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer, ran an austere White House. Consonant with his innate Calvinistic intuitions, he cast himself in the role of citizen-president. He banned Hail to the Chief, slashed the entertainment budget, sold the presidential yacht, pruned the limousine fleet, and generally rid his mansion of foppery, artifice, and pretentiousness. He even carried his own bag. So when he welcomed prime minister Menachem Begin to the White House in July 1977 with a flamboyant ceremony fit for a king - replete with a 19-gun salute, a march-past of all the armed services, and a choreographed parade of the Army...