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CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona said on Thursday he was "in love" with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom he admires for his left-wing political policies. "I like women, but I've fallen in love with Chavez," Argentina's former World Cup winning captain told reporters after having lunch with the Venezuelan leader at the presidential palace. The two embraced afterward. The 44-year-old soccer celebrity, considered one of the greatest players of all time, is also an ardent admirer of Fidel Castro, the Communist President of Cuba where Maradona has lived since 2000 while fighting cocaine addiction.

Domestic Hypocrisy: Martha Stewart’s “Apprentice” Lie March 16, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel Amidst the Second Coming of Martha Stewart, the Domestic Diva told another big lie. But not a single member of the pandering media has taken note. Remember the empathetic Martha’s exhortations from prison about poor treatment of convicts when they’re released from prison? Stewart decried the lack of employment for convicts. No-one will hire them, she complained. No-one, including Martha. Even before she was released from Camp Cupcake in Alderson, West Virginia, Stewart’s production partner, reality TV king Mark Burnett, was holding auditions for Martha’s version of “The...

MALIBU, Calif. - Just off the Pacific Coast Highway, where the Santa Monica Mountains tower over the ocean, some of Hollywood's biggest stars have settled into a slice of heaven. Steven Spielberg. Danny DeVito. Goldie Hawn. Over the years, they have joined the lucky few who call Broad Beach home. Their front yards open onto a mile-long, sandy stretch of California coastline. They spent millions to get here, and they'd like to be left alone. Alan Latteri didn't spend a dime, and nobody's heard of him. But he figures he has as much right to the sand, surf and...

SEATTLE -- The parents of a 23-year-old activist killed while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home is suing Caterpillar Inc., the company that made the bulldozer that ran over her. The federal lawsuit, which lawyers said would be filed here Tuesday, alleges that Caterpillar violated international and state law by providing specially designed bulldozers to Israeli Defense Forces that it knew would be used to demolish homes and endanger people. Rachel Corrie, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, was standing in front of a home in a refugee camp in Rafah, near the Egyptian...

HAVANA -- About 200 intellectuals, activists and artists from Latin America and elsewhere issued a letter Monday urging the top United Nations human rights watchdog to side with Cuba in an expected battle over the communist country's rights record. A U.S.-backed resolution to condemn the island's record is usually presented at every spring meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which this year was to open Monday and run through April 22. No resolution targeting the island has emerged this year, but Cuba expects such a proposal will be presented and considered in mid-April. Last year's resolution passed...

About 200 intellectuals, activists and artists from Latin America and the United States issued a letter Monday urging the top United Nations human rights watchdog to choose Cuba's side in an expected battle over the communist country's rights record. A U.S.-backed resolution to condemn the island's record is usually presented at every spring meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which this year was to open Monday and run through April 22. No resolution targeting the island has emerged this year. But Cuba expects such a proposal will be presented and considered in mid-April. "We urge the governments...

'These are Canada's children' The international tug-of war over the three England girls stretches into today after a handover to their mother is again put off. LONDON FREE PRESS March 14, 2005 - Front Page PATRICK MALONEY, Free Press Reporter CHATHAM -- The trans-Atlantic tug-of-war over three Chatham girls has stretched improbably into today, offering their father a new chance to quash their court-ordered return to Britain. Leah, 10, Hannah, 7, and Nicola England, 5, are Canadian-born and have lived here all their lives, except during 2003-04 when their now-estranged parents were working in the United Kingdom. The girls say...

A video camera, which is supposed to be monitored by two guards in a command post, shows the two arriving in the holding area between two courtrooms, according to a law enforcement official who viewed the tape. The video shows Hall guiding Nichols, whose hands are still handcuffed behind his back, face-first into one of two open cells. Hall releases one cuff and turns Nichols around to unhook the remaining cuff, which is dangling from his wrist. She uncuffs him so he can change from a jail jumpsuit into street clothes. The muscular, 33-year-old Nichols then lunges at Hall, knocking...

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -A full-page ad taken out by 200 University of Colorado faculty members calls for the school to drop inquiry into the writings of professor Ward Churchill. Gov. Bill Owens and others have called for the firing of Churchill, a tenured professor, because of his comparison of Sept. 11 victims to Nazis. The faculty members paid for the ad to run Monday in The Boulder Daily Camera. It says the review of the professor, expected to complete by the middle of March, should be stopped immediately. The ad says the inquiry is the result of political pressure and...

Maureen Spillane, an executive at a shoe and handbag maker in New York, always thought a $100,000 salary equaled serious success. Like many professional people, however, when she finally broke the barrier, she was a bit deflated to learn that it was hardly salvation. It still took her several years of "hoarding away" and avoiding standard Manhattan indulgences - fancy food, fancy clothing - in order to afford a down payment on a one-bedroom fixer-upper on the Upper West Side. "It's not the big shiny number that you think about when you first get out of college," said Ms. Spillane,...

NEW YORK Bill Moyers has apologized to former U.S. Interior Secretary James Watt for referencing a quote, which has been wrongly attributed to Watt for years, during a speech Moyers gave last December upon receiving an award from Harvard Medical School. The text of the speech has since appeared in several newspapers and on numerous Web sites. "I said I had made a mistake in quoting him without checking with him," Moyers told E&P today. "I should have done my homework." Moyers, a well-known journalist and recently departed host of NOW on PBS, said he phoned Watt yesterday and faxed...

The Republican Party is being "dictated to by a coalition of ideological extremists," a former Bush administration Cabinet official says in a new book that blames President Bush and his top political strategist for failing to bring more "blue states" into the Republican column in November.     Christie Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who resigned her post as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in May 2003, says Mr. Bush and adviser Karl Rove were wrong in their strategy of boosting turnout among the party's voting base of political "extremists" on the right, including evangelical Christians. In...

Glamorous turn their minds to poverty By Annabel Crabb London January 23, 2005 Angelina Jolie is on the list. So are America's best-known Bills: Clinton and Gates. Bono wouldn't miss it; neither would Richard Gere. Or Sharon Stone. Yes folks: it's the World Economic Forum, assembling this week in the postcard-perfect alpine resort town of Davos, Switzerland, to bend the greatest minds of our generation to solving global problems. The World Economic Forum, or Davos as it is casually termed, was established in 1971 by the dashing Swiss academic Klaus Schwab to bring together the energies of business and politics...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) The Rev. Jesse Jackson celebrated his election-themed 63rd birthday party at a swank hotel, surrounded by California Democratic leaders and celebrity activists. ``It is, at once, my 63rd birthday and it is also mobilizing friends for a 19-day countdown to the Nov. 2 election,'' he said at a news conference before Thursday's party at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Jackson, who is president of the Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, urged people to get out and work ``to stop the schemes of voter suppression,'' referring to allegations by federal civil rights monitors that the ballots of black Florida voters...

Exposing the liberal media bias. Excerpts not allowed but follow link below for article.

Fight over $60k "medical treatments" with tainted L.A. detox doc SEPTEMBER 14--A business associate of rock star Scott Stapp, the Creed frontman, claims that the singer failed to reimburse him $60,000 paid to a controversial Beverly Hills doctor known for his unorthodox drug detox treatments. In a lawsuit filed this month in Florida's Orange County Circuit Court, Jeffrey Cameron contends that he paid Dr. David Kipper "for certain medical treatments received" by Stapp during a three-month period in mid-2002. Cameron, who works for Stapp's management company, does not further describe those treatments in his complaint and he declined to provide...

Strippers and pole dancers should be banned from performing in stretch limousines, according to a British report. Councillors from the mountainous Welsh county of Gwynedd said many limousine hire companies were providing the erotic dancers as entertainment for clients, but in-car striptease was an "inappropriate" activity. "Lately, stretch limousines have been used more and more," said the report, released on Tuesday. "Some operators are providing entertainment to clients within the vehicle which may involve inappropriate activities such as lap dancing, giving rise to concerns about indecency." The new proposals recommend a blanket ban on striptease, lap dancing, pole dancing and...

You can post right on the website of this anti Bush tour. http://actforvictory.org/act.php/blog/archive/act_hear/#comments

Among Boston's Southies, feelings of betrayal run deep BOSTON - The Gate of Heaven church has been a landmark in the working-class Irish neighborhood of South Boston since 1863, and you can't blame a St. Louisan, accustomed to the intermingling of faith and politics, for wondering what kind of message would be coming from the pulpit on the morning before the Democratic convention was to begin. . . . . . . . From the Civil War days on, this was traditionally a Democratic stronghold - Roman Catholic, working class and pro-union. The meteor that changed the world struck...

<p>THE anti-fur folk at PETA may have a new target: Sen. Hillary Clinton.</p> <p>On Dec. 24, the Times' Boldfaced Names column reported that Manhattan furrier Peter Duffy "told us he had just finished a mink coat for Hillary Rodham Clinton."</p>