Free Republic

Climate Threatens Egypt's TreasuresMalcolm Billings In Egypt The climate in the Nile valley used to be as dry as a bone, enabling remarkable preservation of ancient treasures. But archaeologists believe this is changing and objects and buildings that have survived for thousands of years are threatened with destruction. Malcolm Billings joined a group of Dutch archaeologists at an excavation in the desert at Saqqara, north of Cairo. The archaeologists took no chances on the perpendicular ladder inside the tomb shaft. I strapped on a harness and followed Dr Maartin Raven of Leiden Museum down to the main tomb chamber about...

Millions were in germ war testsMuch of Britain was exposed to bacteria sprayed in secret trials Antony Barnett, public affairs editor Sunday April 21, 2002The ObserverThe Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public. A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain's biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979. Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. While details of some...

Crystal Moonbeams A pair of Mexican miners stumble upon a room filled with what could be the world’s largest crystals . Deep below the surface of an isolated mountain range in Mexico sit two rooms of splendor: translucent crystals the length and girth of mature pine trees lie pitched atop one another, as though moonbeams suddenly took on weight and substance. In April 2000, brothers Eloy and Javier Delgado found what experts believe are the world’s largest crystals while blasting a new tunnel 1,000 feet down in the silver and lead Naica Mine of southern Chihuahua. Forty-year-old Eloy climbed through...

Freep this poll:cnn.comWill Yasser Arafat's call for a cease-fire end attacks on Israelis?It's on the main page just down a little and on the right side.

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - In the first major Inca find in four decades, Peruvian and British explorers say they have discovered a hidden city, perched on an Andean hilltop, that may have sheltered stalwarts of South America's legendary empire as they made a last stand against Spanish conquerors. Located on a narrow ridge around 11,000 feet up in Peru's windswept, southern Andes, the Inca citadel of Corihuayrachina is a mysterious gathering of religious platforms, funeral towers, and food storehouses. British scholar and guide Peter Frost told a news conference on Monday he first spotted the ruins in the rugged, isolated...

EDS NOTE: PICTURE MAY HAVE BEEN REVIEWED AS IT WAS SENT VIA MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS--U.S. Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit put on their gear in their barracks early Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001, at the U.S. Marines forward base in southern Afghanistan. The base is within striking distance of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. (AP Photo/Jim Hollander, POOL)

Kidnapped US couple still alive in Philippines, appeal for supplies ZAMBOANGA, Philippines, Nov 26 (AFP) A US Christian missionary couple held captive by Muslim Abu Sayyaf gunmen in the southern Philippines on Monday appealed for food supplies and said they were still being held in Basilan island's jungle-clad terrain. In a handwritten letter to the New Tribes Mission in Manila, Martin Burnham said he and his wife, Gracia, "really want to go home" to their children now in the care of their grandparents in Wichita, Kansas. "Communication with the outside (world) has become a problem. I don't need to tell ...

WASHINGTON (September 9) - Senior administration officials recommended to President George W. Bush on Friday at a White House meeting devoted to the Middle East that he meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat at the UN. This is an idea Arab allies like Saudi Arabia have pushed and that has been bandied about as a possibility for weeks. "It's not a formal decision, but it seems that's what they will do," said one diplomat briefed by administration officials about the possibility of a Bush-Arafat meeting. "If nothing too terrible happens before then, it will take place." Bush has so ...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said Monday it had shot a Jewish settler in the West Bank as an initial act of revenge for Israel's killing of its leader earlier in the day. A hospital spokeswoman said the motorist died from a bullet wound to the head after the afternoon shooting near the West Bank city of Nablus. A settler spokesman identified the man as Meir Lichsenberg, 38, from the settlement of Itamar. ``Our first and initial response to the assassination of our leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, by the terrorist (Israeli Prime Minister ...

ATHENS - Despite violence between the Israeli government and Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, sober analysts of the Middle East still bet against a wider Arab-Israeli war. Faced with growing popular Arab and Islamic anger, governments hold back. Some are fearful of breaking their peace treaties with Israel (Egypt, Jordan). Some may feel militarily too weak (Syria) or are too involved with Israel's main ally, the United States, in oil, investment, and business (Saudi Arabia and its Arab Gulf neighbors). Or they are avowed adversaries of Israel, but too distant geographically to fight (Iran, Pakistan). Nevertheless, ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) has said that Israel had ``some justification'' when it deliberately killed Palestinians thought to be planning bombings. In remarks that contradict State Department policy on the attacks, Cheney told Fox News on Thursday. ``If you've got an organization that has plotted or is plotting some kind of suicide bomber attack, for example, and they (the Israelis) have hard evidence of who it is and where they're located, I think there's some justification in their trying to protect themselves by preempting.'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher repeated on Thursday ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on Friday Washington would consider helping observe a Middle East cooling-off period envisaged in a U.S.-brokered peace plan, if Israelis and Palestinians agreed. ``Remember, there's a six-week cooling period at the very beginning of (the plan sketched out by former U.S. Senator George) Mitchell and it might be very useful to have monitors. The United States would at that point consider how best we could participate in that, if at all,'' Powell told a news conference. But he added: ``No mechanism has yet been established and no ...

Saddam Hussein Calls Upon Arab Nations to Aim Their Weapons at Israel (IsraelNationalNews.com) Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein called upon Arab leaders to aim their weapons at Israel “to liberate Palestine” if necessary. Hussein stated that the Jewish squatters would have to be removed by force if there was no other alternative. He also called upon Arab nations to “return Palestinian lands,” adding Iraq would be willing to do whatever necessary to assist.

1July: According to DEBKAfile’s sources in Washington and Jerusalem, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has effectively renounced wholesale military moves against Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Talk of operational plans for opening two broad military fronts – from Gaza to Hebron and from Bethlehem to Jenin – was no more than a smokescreen for concealing negotiations on the new understanding. By accepting its terms, Ariel Sharon becomes the first Israeli prime minister to cede Israel’s right to address its political and security problems with the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority to armed international observers posted inside the country. For ...

What Are Iraq’s Military Moves About? A DEBKAfile Exclusive 28 June: While defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer wages his crusade against the outposts Jewish settlers planted at the Palestinians’ favorite ambush sites against West Bank highway traffic, Israeli security authorities anxiously try to puzzle out the purpose of the latest Iraqi military moves in the Western Desert. Since Monday, June 25, according to DEBKAfile ’s military sources, Iraqi fighter squadron, elite Hamurabi armored division and presidential guard command elements, together with the commands of some forward intelligence units, began a slow march westward. They moved out of bases at Al ...

In 1983, Ariel Sharon's political career seemed to be over. The war in Lebanon had divided Israel. An Israeli commission had concluded that the general should never again serve as the country's defense minister. His popularity was at an all-time low and he was persona non grata with the U.S. government. Today, at 73, Sharon is prime minister and enjoys a nearly 70 percent approval rating in recent polls. Indeed, senior U.S. officials are quick to praise Sharon's performance, citing the restraint he has shown and his willingness to sign on to the recent U.S.-brokered cease-fire. Last week, as Sharon ...

More Syrian Tanks And Vehicles Leave Lebanon CHTAURA, Lebanon (Reuters) - Syria moved more tanks and armored vehicles from Beirut across the Syrian-Lebanese border early on Saturday, cutting its military presence in Lebanon in a sudden and unexpected redeployment. But the question remained as to how much Damascus, the key political and military power broker in Lebanon, had loosened its 26-year-old stranglehold on its smaller neighbor. Witnesses saw more than 25 Syrian tanks and armored personnel carriers and vehicles rolling through the eastern Lebanese town of Chtaura, heading toward the Lebanese-Syrian border after midnight on Friday. One witness told Reuters ...

Jordan Dissolves Parliament to Avert Spread of Intifada 16 June: DEBKAfile’s sources in Amman report that the decree issued today by King Abdullah dissolving the country’s bicameral parliament blocked a motion by the Palestinian dominated Islamic movement on the Ibrahim Ghosheh affair. A debate would have split the house and aggravated domestic Jordanian-Palestinian frictions already provoked by the Palestinian confrontation against Israel. The lower house has 80 elected legislators while the 40-house Senate is appointed by the monarch. Last week, the Amman police used considerable force to quell a violent pro-intifada Palestinian rally, leaving many demonstrators wounded. The four-day impasse ...

BEIJING, May 29 (AFP) - China said Tuesday the United States should learn a lesson from the crisis over the stranded US spy plane, as the two sides reached an agreement to airlift the plane off Hainan island. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao confirmed a US announcement Monday that China would allow the EP-3 Aries surveillance aircraft to leave on board a giant Ukrainian-built Antonov 124 cargo plane. However, he declined to give a timeframe for the removal of the plane, which has been sitting on the tarmac at Lingshui airbase on Hainan since making an emergency landing on April ...