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BART's political efforts on a seismic repair bond are a major focus of a federal political corruption probe into Sen. Don Perata and his associates. In a Nov. 8 subpoena, the U.S. District Court ordered BART to hand over records relating to the work of Perata, his children and their companies. The subpoena also names Perata's college roommate Timothy Staples, Oakland lobbyist Lily Hu, political consultant Sandra Polka and their firms. The federal grand jury wants to know about direct or indirect payments to them. The subpoena highlights 26 BART checks to Hu's political consulting firm Lily Hu & Associates...

Osama bin Laden tried to purchase the world's largest pearl, the Pearl of Allah, as a gift to Saddam Hussein "to unite the Arab cultures," and Hussein was prepared to accept, according to the pearl's owner.

Rain has my DirecTV reception coming & going, so I thought I'd check for future showings & pass the results along. Sun Oct 24 08:00pm EDT Mon Oct 25 02:00am EDT Mon Oct 25 08:00am EDT Mon Oct 25 02:00pm EDT Tue Oct 26 08:00pm EDT Wed Oct 27 02:00am EDT Wed Oct 27 08:00am EDT Wed Oct 27 02:00pm EDT

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israel is holding 25 U.N. employees in the Palestinian West Bank or Gaza but has not charged any with a crime or even told the United Nations (news - web sites) of their detention, U.N. officials said on Wednesday. The officials spoke a day after an Israeli officer in Jerusalem said Israel had arrested 13 employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and planned to indict them for "suspected links to terrorism." Israel linked the U.N. employees to "terrorism" shortly after backing away from an accusation that Palestinian militants transported a rocket to be...

Iraq's Ties to al Qaeda ..."But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants." ... ..."When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq."...

From yesterday's news October 5, 2004: Half Of Insurgents Captured At Samara Were Africans Special to The World Tribune.Com Tuesday, October 5, 2004 BAGHDAD – The U.S. military has established that Al Qaida-aligned insurgents from North Africa have played a leading role in the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Officials said about half of the insurgents captured in Samara last week were nationals from Arab states in North Africa. They said an initial interrogation has determined that the insurgents arrived from such countries as Egypt, Sudan and Tunisia. About 150 insurgents were said to have been killed in the combination of...

TRAIL OF TERROR Secret intelligence memo links Saddam, bin Laden Relationship involved training in WMD, financial support for 9-11 hijacker Atta Posted: November 15, 2003 8:00 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, as well as financial and logistical support, and may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks. That's the assessment of a 16-page top secret government memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee, reports the Weekly Standard. The memo,...

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"There's no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi," a U.S. official said on Tuesday about the CIA findings. But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the report, which was a mix of new information and a look at some older information, did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions. "To suggest the case is closed on this would not be correct," the official said in confirming an ABC News story about the CIA report that the network said was delivered to the White House last week. ABC quoted an unnamed...

FBI Warns Of Possible Terror Link To Storage Units Ohio Storage Facilities Have Been Alerted POSTED: 7:39 am EDT August 13, 2004 UPDATED: 9:35 am EDT August 13, 2004 COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The FBI is taking an interest in public storage facilities across Ohio, NBC 4's Elizabeth Scarborough reported. Self-storage units have already been searched in Toledo, and alerts have gone out in several cities, including Columbus, Scarborough reported. Managers of self-storage units in the Columbus area say that in the past two weeks, they've received warnings from several different agencies, including the FBI, to be on the lookout for...

Gulf War illness link to brain damage By Oliver Poole (Filed: 04/08/2004) A scientist whose findings have been supported by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday detailed how some Gulf War veterans complaining of post-conflict illnesses had been found to have brain damage. Robert Haley, from the University of Texas, told the independent Gulf War Illnesses inquiry in London that his findings were the first sign of physical injury associated with the syndrome. Robert Haley His conclusions - which he suggests are due to low-level exposure to nerve agents - paves the way for a medical test which would...

BOSTON - As a U.S. senator for nearly two decades, John Kerry will be a familiar figure to the 4,300 Democrats who gather in his hometown this week to make him their party's presidential nominee. Kerry's challenge at the Democratic National Convention opening Monday is to introduce himself in a more personal way to the millions of Americans who say they still don't know him - and to many more who, having heard or seen him, aren't yet sold on his candidacy. Despite months of intense campaigning and a burst of primary wins over Democratic rivals, Kerry, 60, remains something...

In 1999, Saddam Hussein apparently invited Osama bin Laden to move to Iraq. In 2000, Iran reportedly "made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al-Qaida." The Sept. 11 Commission Report says bin Laden rebuffed them - more from expedience than conviction. There were other times when he found friends in both places. The 10 commissioners found plenty of contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq, and with Iran. They found no evidence directly tying either government to Sept. 11. Bin Laden met a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Laden wanted...

Scientists find genetic link to bad behaviour By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 20/07/2004) The throw of the genetic dice helps to determine whether you see the world with pent up anger or placidly turn the other cheek, a study suggests. Researchers have found evidence that some people inherit a genetic make-up that makes them more prone to aggression and violence. However, the "bad behaviour gene" is activated only if people were neglected or abused as children, scientists say. The findings add to the growing evidence that the "nature versus nuture" debate is far too simplistic. Behaviour is actually influenced...

AMONG the various rationales the Bush administration has given for invading Iraq 16 months ago, the most compelling to the American people was always the claim of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida. The September11 attacks left Americans angry, frightened, and ready for justified revenge. If Saddam was in league with the al-Qa'ida terrorists who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks and a bad guy to begin with, surely it made eminent sense to take him out. As one White House adviser recently told The New York Times: "If you discount the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida, then...

In speeches, briefings, interviews and an online chat, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others used the events surrounding this week's handover of political autonomy in Iraq to rebuild their case that Iraq is experiencing a "historic transformation" and Americans are safer as a result. Returning to the main justification for the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in an interview released by the Pentagon, said forbidden chemical weapons were found in Iraq in recent days. Rumsfeld said the Polish defense minister told him this week "that his troops in Iraq had recently come...

Al Qaeda militants who kidnapped and killed American engineer Paul Johnson said Sunday on an Islamist Web site that sympathetic Saudi security forces aided their kidnapping operation with police uniforms and vehicles.

Update: Reporter Who Documented bin Laden-Saddam Ties Now at CBS      Update: A June 17 CyberAlert item about how in 1999 then-ABC News reporter Sheila MacVicar recited ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, noted that “a short time” after that story aired she “jumped to CNN, and I believe she has recently departed from CNN.” Indeed, MacVicar is now a London-based correspondent for CBS News, and on Thursday’s CBS Evening News she filed the story on the plight of kidnaped American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.      As of Thursday night, however, there’s no MacVicar under “M” in...

Terrorism: "Panel Says No Signs Of Iraq, Al-Qaida Link." That Reuters headline bears a striking similarity to many others that led the world's front pages on Thursday.But that headline, and those like it, are wrong. They are at best lazy and intentionally misleading, and at worst, politically malicious — a cheap swipe at President Bush.It's hard to know where to begin. Because the ties between Iraq's Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida are so numerous, it seems silly to dispute it at this point.Bush on Thursday made the most basic case: "This administration never said that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated between...