Free Republic

Oh my God! I can't get into e-bay! It's the end of the world as we know it! (And you read it here FIRST!)

A tip-off to the United States has revealed that the on-line application system introduced by the Embassy recently has become a victim of internet fraud. The tip-off also revealed that some unscrupulous people are cashing in on the ignorance of prospective travellers and charging them between 200 and 250 dollars to book appointments for them online. Speaking in an interview, the public affairs officer of the US embassy in Accra, Susan Parker Burns, said the online system was rather meant to remove the usual inconveniences to prospective travellers who could now sit in the comfort of their homes and offices...

Mexico said it was working to improve security in the border region but suggested the U.S. State Department had overreacted by renewing a warning to U.S. travelers about drug violence in northern Mexico. As with the original travel advisory, the repeat warning on Tuesday angered Mexicans. The update blamed the continuing violence in Mexican border cities on turf battles between drug gangs but noted that was in part the result of Mexico's success in locking up cartel leaders. "Imprecisions and generalizations that hurt the spirit of cooperation in law enforcement and the fight against organized crime should be avoided," the...

Teach Respect?By Warren Throckmorton (04/12/05) Well, soon schools will be taking another well deserved break from academics and plunge headlong into political advocacy. Yes, Virginia there is a Day of Silence and it is coming to a school near you. The DOS is an advocacy day sponsored by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network. According to GLSEN’s website, the DOS will occur on April 13 and involve 4,000 schools and 450,000 students and teachers. During the school day, those participating will refuse to speak, even during class. Students hand out cards calling attention to what GLSEN calls “the bias and...

FAA licensed 5 arrested at TIMCO 3-24-05 By Taft Wireback, Staff Writer News & Record GREENSBORO -- Five of those arrested on immigration charges at TIMCO two weeks ago had high-level repair licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is investigating how they qualified for licensing tests, the agency said Wednesday. FAA administrators are looking into documents used by the five in seeking the right to test for Airframe and Powerplant certification, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. The A&P license allows mechanics to work on the more complex parts of a plane. "To our knowledge, they all passed the written,...

Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS Software's creator disputes book's description of it being a 'rip-off' A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history -- the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance -- has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public trial. Tim Paterson, the programmer widely credited for the software that became Microsoft's landmark operating system, MS-DOS, filed a defamation suit this week against prominent historian and author Harold Evans and the publishers of his book, "They Made America," released last year. At issue is...

A new chain letter is being forwarded by e-mail claiming that Microsoft and AOL have joined in a beta-test of a new e-mail tracking system that will track all forwarded mail.  The supposed intent is to find a way to cut down on spam and viruses.  It also promises to pay thousands of dollars to all participants in the beta-test during the 30 day trial.   Now get this - it was forwarded to me by a former software tech who should have known better.  There's no way to track forwarded e-mails.   How lame is this.  Some people will fall for...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

John Bolton, the State Department's top international security official, will leave the post in the second Bush administration and be replaced by an arms control specialist at the National Security Council, a senior U.S. official said Friday. Bolton, who promoted programs to slow the spread of sophisticated weapons technology around the world, has served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the four years of the first Bush administration. Meanwhile, an administration official said that Nicholas Burns, U.S. ambassador to NATO, is slated for the State Department's third-ranking position, under secretary for political affairs. Burns, a...

Backed with federal money, a Boston-based task force is being launched to counter the spread of human trafficking in the region, including, according to some accounts, street gangs pressing 13-year-olds into prostitution.      ``To me,'' said the American Anti-Slavery Group's Liora Kasten, human trafficking ``is one of the most atrocious things you can do. It's not just taking someone's life away from them, it's dehumanizing to the point that they don't even feel like people anymore.      ``And that can be worse than killing someone.''      The growing slave trade is an international blight with a local impact. As demonstrated by the plights...

Special Report: US State Dept., CIA War Against Pentagon Breaks Into the Open With Profound Impact on Strategic Policy Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor. Senior bureaucrats in the US Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have begun bringing their "war" with the Department of Defense into the open, strenuously advising foreign leaders to avoid meetings with key US Defense officials. This was particularly evident during the visit of some 12 African leaders to Washington, DC, for the June 24-26, 2003, Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) conclave. At least one visiting African head-of-state was told by a...

American Hand in Ukraine Election Draws Calls for Investigations Ukrainian media reports o­n Friday quoted U.S. Congressman Ron E. Paul as saying at the House of Representatives' committee o­n international relations that Yushchenko's election campaign has been partially financed by the U.S. government.

Report: 'White Man' Training Al Qaida in Wilderness Camp Near Kenya Al Qaida linked Islamic terrorists have set up training camp in southern Somalia, near the Kenyan border, according to eyewitness reports in the local press.The camp is said to employ turban-wearing sentries armed with AK-47 rifles.The Islamists at the camp are being trained with the help of a 'white man sporting a thick mustache' and believed to be of Eastern European extraction. _Full Text, subscribers

Gang Member Admits Role in 2001 Va. Slaying By Tom Jackman Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 10, 2004; Page B01 A Salvadoran gang member admitted yesterday in a Fairfax County courtroom that he led the gang rape of a Falls Church area woman in the summer of 2001, then kicked her in the neck with such force that it killed her. Oscar Omar Ramos Hernandez, 26, pleaded guilty to capital murder, abduction and rape and signed a plea agreement to serve three consecutive life sentences. Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen H. MacKay said she would probably accept the...

The past couple weeks have seen a swirl of anonymous allegations of supposed spying and espionage, including implications that the Pentagon civilian staff might be teeming with double agents for the Jewish state. Thing is, almost none of it is true. Beyond mishandling of classified documents—not an inconsequential offense, to be sure—every other accusation leveled by unnamed State Department and intelligence officials appears part of a carefully calculated campaign to question the loyalty of several Pentagon civilian employees by name, as well as a much larger group by implication. According to someone with intimate knowledge of the draft presidential directive...

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic survived an apparent assassination attempt when a car repeatedly tried to crash into his motorcade, his press office said Wednesday. The incident occurred late Tuesday in downtown Belgrade when a black Audi "tried several times to crash" into Tadic's car but was cut off by another vehicle from Tadic's security, the office said. Tadic was unhurt in the incident, and the Audi fled the scene in Belgrade's plush Dedinje district after the security car rammed into it, the office added. The office said Tadic's security team noticed that the car was...

At the heart of a dispute over legislative intelligence reform are confidential meetings between the defense secretary and the CIA director during which they decided where to point spy satellites.     Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet, and their staffs, talked frequently about where to position satellites that relay overhead images and overheard conversations during the war on terror. [snip] The procedure for "tasking intelligence assets," as the discussion is called, is spelled out in the 1947 National Security Act. Amended numerous times since then, the act details the working relationship between the CIA director...

MIDDLE EAST REPORT Nightmare at Foggy Bottom: Arabists panicked at prospect of Rice's appointments U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns stands in front of a picture of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on Nov. 21. Colin Powell has long operated on the principle, "Don't rock the boat." It was his credo at the State Department where he usually sidestepped appointments and diplomacy. But Powell is gone, to be replaced by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Foggy Bottom is scared. Nowhere is the fear more palpable than in the department's Near...

Bush administration officials who figured Colin Powell might soldier on awhile obviously weren't aware of a retirement party the secretary of state attended several months ago. "This has been the worst time in my life," Powell confided to a Pentagon general during the otherwise festive occasion. It was a breathtaking admission from a man who gave his nation nearly 40 years as a soldier, statesman and racial trailblazer - and a damning commentary on his frustration with the intramural ideological warfare of the Bush administration. Powell tangled frequently with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld but considered Vice President Dick Cheney,...

When Secretary of State Colin Powell announced his resignation on Monday, he had already been "politely" encouraged to leave his post by President Bush, according to NBC News. "Powell was going to leave but he was not necessarily going to leave right away, particularly with what's happening in the Middle East," the network's Andrea Mitchell reported Tuesday morning. "He was prepared to stay for a few more months. And that was politely not accepted," she claimed. "They needed Powell in 2000, they thought, in order to get elected," Mitchell explained to radio host Don Imus. "They've now been re-elected and...