Free Republic

Qatar pledged $100 million in humanitarian assistance Saturday to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina, heading a list of more than a dozen countries joining an outpouring of support. They added to the more than 50 countries who had made pledges by the end of the day Friday. ``In these difficult circumstances, the people and the government of the state of Qatar would like to assure the people of the United States of its support and desire to assist the people in the affected area along the United States Gulf Coast,'' said a statement from the oil-rich Persian Gulf state's...

In an accelerating drive, more than 50 countries have pledged money or other assistance to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina. Cuba and Venezuela have offered to help despite differences with Washington. Oil giant Saudi Arabia and small countries like Sri Lanka and Dominica are among the nations making pledges. "I hope that will remind Americans that we are all part of the same community," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday as offers kept pouring in. None has been turned down, Rice said at a news conference, disputing a report from Moscow that a Russian offer had been rejected....

AMONG the Wayampi Indians it is not uncommon for children to give birth at 10 and become grandparents in their twenties. They hunt and fish in red loincloths. Their favourite food is smoked alligator. They are also among Europe’s most civic-minded citizens. Britain has the Pitcairn islands and the Dutch have West Indian Curaçao, but these cannot compete with the impressive French portfolio of dominions around the globe from the Pacific to the Amazon jungle. Their 1.4m voters could swing the result in the closely fought May 29 French referendum on the European Union’s constitution and determine the future of...

There have been huge disastrous floods in Guyana and the nation is openly appealing for help from the American military. This may seem like an old story, but it's not. I hope we help Guyana. There are good reasons, and it's in everyone's interest. The tsunami relief effort got word to the world that when you are in deep trouble, America is the one, the only one, you can reliably turn to. Swift efficient help to impossible areas, soldiers who are friendly and compassionate, soldiers who won't shake you down, soldiers who will treat you with dignity and help you...

Suquamish -- She left behind what she could -- a name, a city, a marriage. Other things -- the newspaper articles, photos and, oddly, a candle blessed by the man before he was a demon -- she neatly labeled and filed away. That's how a legal secretary defeats chaos. The rest of the baggage resisted abandonment. It wouldn't be organized and layered into boxes. Guilt is as tenacious as a shadow, as slowly corrosive as salt air. The former Joyce Shaw didn't know this when she fled Jim Jones' Peoples Temple in 1976. She's learned it since. Yesterday, on the...

Soldier Who Lost Right Leg to Roadside Bomb in Iraq War Sworn in As U.S. CitizenWhen a roadside bomb exploded beside him in Iraq, Army Staff Sgt. Hilbert Caesar lost his right leg serving the country he had adopted as a boy. On Tuesday, the United States officially adopted him. Using a cane, Caesar rose gingerly to take the oath of citizenship along with 33 others from 27 countries, including two other Iraq war veterans. Each new citizen was given a certificate and a small American flag. Caesar said the ceremony, presided over by Eduardo Aguirre, head of the U.S....

Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama are on alert for the possible entry of suspected terrorist Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, after Honduran authorities warned that the 29-year old suspect, referred to by law enforcement sources as "the next Mohammed Atta," may be seeking to cross into one of the countries. Costa Rica is bordered on the north by Nicaragua and on the south by Panama. Shukrijumah, who is considered one of the FBI's "top 5" terrorist concerns, allegedly was spotted in Honduras on May 27 at a Tegucigalpa Internet cafe. "We found out that this man was in Tegucigalpa at the...

Four Trinidadians have said US authorities questioned them about their contact with a suspected al-Qaeda operative after he visited T&T in 2001. Adnan G El Shukrijumah was named when US attorney general John Ashcroft warned of intelligence showing al-Qaeda plans for an attack against the United States. Large photos of El Shukrijumah and six others were displayed at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday. The Saudi native visited Trinidad for six days in May 2001 and stayed with Zainool Ali, who lives in Chaguanas. Ali and three others were questioned by US authorities in late 2003, they told AP....

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (Reuters) -- An Iranian scholar who was abducted in Guyana last month in a case that baffled local police has been found dead with gunshot wounds to the head, police said on Wednesday. The body of Mohammad Hassan Ebrahimi, director of Guyana's International Islamic College for Advanced Studies, was discovered by local people late on Tuesday 45 miles (70 km) south of the capital, Georgetown. Ebrahimi, a well-known member of Guyana's Muslim community, was seized by two gunmen on April 2 in Georgetown as he left the college compound. Police spokesman John Sauers said the partly decomposed body...

GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- A Jamaican man collapsed and died on a nonstop flight from Guyana to New York on Tuesday, airline officials said. Rupert Cameron, 33, was pronounced dead when North American Airlines Flight 92 from Georgetown arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport just before 2 p.m. EDT, said Jenny DeBarros, a spokeswoman for the Queens-based airline. Cameron had complained of feeling unwell and repeatedly asked for water. Several passengers, including a Guyanese doctor, administered CPR when he stopped breathing, DeBarros said. It was unclear when an autopsy would be performed. Authorities detained a Jamaican friend traveling with Cameron....

<p>WASHINGTON - It was both an auspicious and ominous way to begin the week: Auspicious because of President George Bush's resolute demand that Saddam Hussein and his sons leave Iraq. There were also ominous noises from his predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton, who bared not only his antagonism to the president but his horror at envisioning a strong America.</p>

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- Twenty years after the world was shocked by the mass murder-suicide in the supposedly utopian community known as Jonestown, the questions linger: How and why did 913 people die? Some believe answers may lie in more than 5,000 pages of information the U.S. government has kept secret.</p>

They left California in search of a Promised Land of socialism, equality and fulfillment – a utopia that they would carve out in a jungle wilderness in South America. Instead, they found death. On Nov. 18, 1978, the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project in Guyana, better known as Jonestown, became the site of one of the worst mass deaths in the history of religious movements. Out of a population of roughly 1,000 in the wilderness near the Venezuelan border, more than 900 men, women and children died, most from a grape-flavored vat of cyanide punch. Much more. Two of those faces...

BOSTON -- The FBI has issued an alert, asking the public to be on the lookout for four Middle Eastern men the agency wants for questioning on terrorist matters and they may be in New England. The FBI in Portland, Maine has alerted State Police that a witness may have seen two men who resembled the wanted men in that area. The witness spotted them in Naples, Maine, just northwest of Portland, last Sunday around 4 p.m. They were heading south on Route 302. The witness told police the two men were driving a late-model, slate-gray BMW with Massachusetts plates....