Free Republic

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Shi'ite Muslim cleric who has challenged Iran's system of clerical rule was arrested on Sunday after his supporters clashed with police outside his house in the Iranian capital, Iranian news agencies reported. Ayatollah Mohammad Kazemeini Boroujerdi was detained with several supporters, Iran's student news agency ISNA quoted the deputy governor of Tehran, Abdollah Rowshan, as saying. The Iranian authorities are wary of any challenge, particularly from top clerics, to the system of clerical rule that was established after the 1979 Islamic revolution by revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

*snip* PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, you just listen to me. You ask the questions, and I'm going to answer. You have asked questions in a hostile, combative, and even disrespectful tone, but I ... and you have never been able to combat the facts I have given you. Now, you listen to this. The other thing Ralph Nader says is that, you know, he's pure as Caesar's wife on the environment. *snip*

(9/05/06 - MEXICO CITY, Mexico) - The president of Mexico's top electoral court recommended Tuesday that the full tribunal uphold the slim lead of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon. The recommendation must still be approved, but Leonel Castillo suggested that the seven magistrates certify a final vote count showing Calderon with a 233,831-vote lead out of 41.6 million cast. That would trim Calderon's earlier lead of 240,000. Such a decision has been widely expected, and the leftist rival candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador already has vowed to ignore the ruling, which comes after weeks of legal challenges and protests and...

With the United Nations deadline for Iran to comply with its demand to halt the nuclear fuel cycle or face punitive measures due to expire on Thursday, Iran's nuclear row has reached a critical threshold, given Tehran's comprehensive and conciliatory response to the package of incentives by the UN's five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany. Calling Iran's right to produce nuclear fuel one of the country's "strategic objectives", chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has at the same time gone out of his way to reassure the international community that his country's willingness to negotiate is serious and...

SANTA CLARITA -- A brush fire erupted Monday in semi-rural northern Los Angeles County as hot and windy weather made conditions dangerous. The blaze was reported at 10:41 a.m. in Placerita Canyon and the initial estimate of five acres was quickly outdated. "It's bigger than that," said county fire Inspector Ed Lozano. The fire was moving from light grasses into medium brush, and five fire engines were requested for structure protection in the area, an eastern area of the city of Santa Clarita adjacent to the Angeles National Forest.

HAVANA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - For hundreds of thousands of poor people from the Andes to the Himalayas, the legacy of Cuba's ailing communist leader Fidel Castro will be not revolutionary war but eyesight. For decades, the now ailing Castro, who temporarily handed over power to his brother Raul on Monday, prescribed armed revolution to cure the Third World's ills. But more recently he has preferred to export doctors to treat poor people in the undeveloped world. The programs have expanded rapidly thanks to financial support from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, leader of the world's eighth-largest oil producer and Castro's...

Two rockets fired from Lebanon hit central Haifa; Katyusha rockets hit Nahariya, Safed and Carmiel By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service Two rockets slammed into the northern port city of Haifa on Thursday evening. The rockets hit the Stella Maris area near French Carmel. There were no reported casualties. Hezbollah denied firing the rockets at Haifa Thursday evening, after a day in which a woman in Nahariya was killed and another 120 people were wounded when scores of Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah guerillas rained down across northern Israel. Following the attack on Haifa, the IDF Home Front...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - One of Mogadishu's last warlords holding out against powerful Islamists surrendered after losing most of his territory in two days of fighting that killed more than 140 people, militia sources said on Tuesday. "It has become necessary to surrender and give peace a chance," a militiaman loyal to warlord Abdi Awale Qaybdiid told Reuters. Qaybdiid is the last of an alliance of U.S.-backed warlords who called themselves an anti-terrorism group. He kept fighting after the Islamists routed the other warlords and seized the Somali capital last month. Displaying weapons seized from Qaybdiid, the Islamists said their victory...

An increasingly powerful Islamic militia rolled through its newly captured territory and installed a religious court in one town Wednesday as the remnants of a U.S.-backed alliance of warlords desperately tried to regroup. The Islamic Courts Union, which has alleged links to al-Qaida, controls the Somali capital and surrounding areas after defeating the secular warlord alliance in weeks of battles that killed at least 330 people - many of them civilians caught in the crossfire. Militiamen toting heavy machine guns installed an Islamic court in Balad, about 20 miles from the capital. Chanting residents said that an Islamic state would...

LIMA, PERU – Peruvian voters elected leftist leader Alan García to a five-year term on Sunday, returning the former president to office 16 years after his first stint. It is a tough defeat for Ollanta Humala, the populist candidate who won the first round less than two months ago. But it is also a blow to Venezuelan leader and US nemesis Hugo Chávez, who openly backed Mr. Humala. In his election-night address, Mr. García said the result is "a defeat for the expansionist efforts of [Mr. Chávez]. Peru's democracy said 'no' to him." García's "rhetorical challenges to Hugo Chávez are...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. military probe has exonerated U.S. troops in the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the town of Ishaqi in March, finding American forces followed standard procedures and committed no misconduct, defense officials said on Friday. Police in the town, 60 miles north of Baghdad, have said six adults and five children were shot dead in a U.S. military raid on a home on March 15. But the U.S. military maintained that there were four dead in the incident, including a guerrilla, two women and a child, and they died after troops were fired upon from the...

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela is buying helicopters, boats and military transport planes in defense deals worth about $2.7 billion, modernizing its military as tensions grow between leftist President Hugo Chavez and the United States. Flush with oil profits but blocked from buying U.S. arms, Chavez is increasingly looking to countries like Russia and Spain as suppliers. A cargo ship carrying 30,000 Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles is headed to Venezuela with the first shipment of an order totaling 100,000 guns to arrive by year's end. The military is looking to buy more submarines, and Chavez is planning an even bigger deal...

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya wants to work with the United States to spread democracy around the world after Washington restored full diplomatic ties with Tripoli, the head of Libya's de facto single ruling party said on Monday. "We encourage America on the path of cooperation and we hope we will cooperate together through cultural debate to spread democracy around the world together," Mustapha Zaidi, the top official of Libya's Revolutionary Committees, said. Libya and the United States have not had full ties for more than 25 years, but relations swiftly improved after Libya decided in December 2003 to give up...

So Mexicans, and not just those in the US, are going to boycott the US on May 1. This is supported by several governments inside Mexico, although not at the federal level. It looks to me like they want a trade war. Bad move, considering they're possibly the most dependent people on Earth outside of the Palestinians. However, if they're choosing to bite the hand that feeds we can teach them that the hand bites back. BOYCOTT MEXICO! If you have been considering travel in Mexico, I urge you to reconsider. Tourism is Mexicos third largest source of income after...

NEW YORK - Banned by Comedy Central from showing an image of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the creators of "South Park" skewered their own network for hypocrisy in the cartoon's most recent episode. The comedy — in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians — instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag. In an elaborately constructed two-part episode of their Peabody Award-winning cartoon, "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper's publishing of caricatures of Muhammad. Muslims consider any physical...

Slightly more than 100 people marched for immigration reform through Downtown Pittsburgh this morning.

Supporters of President Hugo Chavez threw eggs, fruit and vegetables at the U.S. ambassador's car Friday, and a group of motorcyclists chased his convoy for miles, at times pounding on the vehicles, a U.S. Embassy official said. No one was hurt. Embassy spokesman Brian Penn said Venezuelan police escorts did not intervene as the car carrying Ambassador William Brownfield was pounded and pelted. "We're being attacked by groups of motorcyclists while we're traveling in an embassy car," Penn told The Associated Press by cell phone shortly before the motorcycles stopped chasing the four-car convoy. "It's a very violent demonstration by...

By The Associated Press Most people in the United States think illegal immigration is a serious problem. A solid majority oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become legal workers or citizens. Some findings in recent polling: _ Some 59 percent say they oppose allowing illegal immigrants to apply for legal, temporary-worker status, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found. _ More than six in 10, 62 percent, say they oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Nine in 10 in that poll say they consider immigration to be a...

TORONTO, Canada (The Catholic Register) – Quaker and Christian Peacemaker Teams leader Tom Fox was remembered by Christians and Muslims together at a Mass in a Baghdad Roman Catholic parish March 12, the Sunday after his body was found. *snip* "We observed the human-rights abuses of the American armed forces and the chaos that the people were living through. And this time, with the kidnapping and the ultimate death of Tom Fox, I started to realize that we had shifted from being observers to being actual participants, victims, whatever you like."