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sraeli officials reacted angrily Thursday night to a British decision to advise retailers and importers to distinguish on labels whether imported produce from the West Bank is being made in the settlements or by Palestinians. According to a statement released by the British Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, "Importers, retailers, NGOs and consumers have asked the Government for clarity over the precise origin of products from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs). The label 'West Bank' does not allow consumers to distinguish between goods originating from Palestinian producers and goods originating from illegal Israelisettlements."

Today Bibi Netanyahu played a brilliant move, in Yiddish its called Hey put tuchas offen tisch, literally, Hey put your "arse" on the table (put up or shut up). He offered a ten month freeze in settlement building in exchange for restarting the peace plans. I doubt very strongly the freeze will every happen. The truth is the real reason there is no peace is the Palestinians don't want peace. No other country in the world has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, we they given up areas of land three times the size of the State of...

US fury as Israel defies settlement freeze call An ultra-Orthodox Jew prays at sundown at the 'outpost' settlement of Givat Sefer, near Modi'in Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem Israeli plans to authorise the construction of hundreds of houses in the occupied West Bank sparked furious protests from American and Palestinian officials yesterday. In a nod to US requests to suspend all building work at Jewish settlements, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, is offering a freeze on construction at a later date — a peace gambit that did little to mollify those involved in the negotiations leading to a new Middle East...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu departed Monday afternoon for a four-day visit to Europe. He will meet with Special U.S. Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell on Wednesday in London to determine Israel's future construction policy in Judea and Samaria. While in London, he is scheduled to meet with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. From there he will fly to Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Sunday night, the Prime Minister assessed that talks with the Palestinian Authority will resume by the end of next month. During Netanyahu’s absence, Minister for Regional Development Silvan Shalom will stand in...

A settlement has been reached between Caltrans and the San Diego Minutemen that gives the anti-illegal-immigration activists what they were hoping for: the right to keep their Adopt-A-Highway sign on northbound Interstate 5, a cash payment, and litter cleanup on an additional stretch of the freeway. The settlement was reached Monday, according to federal court records. In ending the lawsuit the group filed last year, the state conceded that the San Diego Minutemen sign near the Border Patrol's San Clemente checkpoint will remain for the duration of a five-year permit, and that the group may continue to clean the highway...

ISRAEL and the United States have reached a deal allowing the Jewish state to build about 2500 housing units already under construction in West Bank settlements. But the United States dismissed the report in Maariv as "inaccurate". US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said "the bottom line" for President Barack Obama's administration has not changed, "that all parties in the region have to honour their obligations". He was referring to obligations laid out in the 2003 internationally-agreed roadmap for Palestinian-Israeli peace that calls for an Israeli settlement freeze.

According to the Israeli Newspaper Ha'Aretz, Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that President Obama is only picking a fight with Israel over the settlements in an attempt to win over the Arab world. Netanyahu's opinion is that, the Obama feels that an open and Nasty controversy with Israel would serve the Obama administration's main objective of improving U.S. relations with the Arab world. For the past two weeks Obama has bee overly hard on the Jewish State, ignoring previous agreements pushing for the end to settlements, even to the point of Making up evidence to prove his point. I am not...

Open Space Authority to Return Assessment Funds San Jose, CA, May 29, 2009 – Property owners who have property within the jurisdiction of the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority will soon be able to claim refunds of an assessment charged by the Authority on their real estate tax bills between 2002 and 2008. In 2001, the Authority approved a $20 annual assessment on single-family homes located within the Authority’s territory to help purchase and maintain open space and parkland. Higher amounts were charged for multi-family and commercial properties. The Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and...

A barrier threatening to delay or stop construction of the $420 million fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel between Orinda and Oakland was cleared Friday when Caltrans settled a lawsuit with Oakland and Berkeley neighborhood groups worried about noise and traffic from the project. Now the Highway 24 project to ease traffic congestion needs one more thing to begin: a state budget settlement to free up voter-approved state bond money for the extra bore. "This settlement is great news for drivers. We badly need this project to help us with this traffic bottleneck," said Amy Worth, an Orinda city councilwoman...

In a locally-notorious case of Second Amendment rights violation, the City of Norfolk, Virginia, has thrown in the towel and agreed to pay a settlement of $15,000 to activist Chet Szymecki of Yorktown.

FRANKFURT, Germany – Siemens AG — rocked by a series of corruption cases that has cost the company both prestige and money — agreed Monday to pay more than $1 billion in fines in Germany and the U.S. as it moved a step forward in closing a dark chapter in its history. Munich-based Siemens agreed to pay more than $800 million in fines to settle long-standing corruption charges in the United States and another 395 million euros ($533.6 million) to European authorities. The announcements of the amounts of both fines came Monday. Siemens, which makes products ranging from wind turbines...

My syndicated column today expands on yesterday’s eHarmony post (link). As I note, eHarmony will be forking over $5,000 to the gay plaintiff and $50,000 to New Jersey’s Civil Rights office. Here’s the entire settlement the company agreed to, via onlinedatingmagazine. There’s more on the class-action lawsuit against eHarmony proceeding in California here. And Jacob Sullum weighs in. *** The eHarmony shakedown by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2008 Congratulations, tolerance mau-mauers: Your shakedown of a Christian-targeted dating website worked. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the inalienable “right” to hook up with same-sex partners on eHarmony. What a landmark...

NEW YORK (Legal Newsline)- Pfizer Inc. has settled with 34 state attorneys general over complaints that the pharmaceutical company illegally marketed its Bextra and Celebrex medications. Pfizer has agreed to pay a $60 million settlement to resolve the enforcement action against it and its subsidiary, Pharmacia, Inc. Celebrex and Bextra are Cox-2 inhibitors, were illegally marketed to treat acute surgical pain, while the medications were only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat common pain and inflammation.

Prehistoric settlement found in Qatar 6/23/2008 2:25:18 DOHA • A prehistoric settlement in what is now Qatar may confirm alternative theories on how early humans emigrated from the African continent, a report in a Danish newspaper said. Danish archaeologists have uncovered a settlement they believe may be over 700,000 years old, making it the oldest organised human community ever found, reported Berlingske Tidende newspaper. Eight dwellings in the desert region of Qatar indicate that an early human species crossed what is now the Red Sea to leave their origins in Africa, according to the scientists. There is still uncertainty within...

Unique Dutch settlement discovered from Bronze Age May 23, 2008, 8:52 GMT Amsterdam - Archaeologists have found a settlement dating back to the Bronze Age just north of Eindhoven, a city in the southern Netherlands, Dutch archaeologist Nico Arts told Dutch media Friday. The discovery was made during preparations for the building of a highway junction at Ekkersrijt, north of Eindhoven. The settlement may be the largest ever discovered in the Netherlands, and is definitely the largest settlement ever found in the southern Netherlands. Bronze Age settlements (1500-850 BC) have also been discovered in the province of Drenthe in the...

Egypt's Earliest Agricultural Settlement UnearthedA fragment of a bangle made of a shell found only at the Red Sea suggests possible trade links with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. (Credit: Copyright UC Regents) ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) — Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings. The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible...

Dana Point (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) -- In one of the biggest legal settlements in Orange County history, the city of Dana Point has agreed to pay a total of more than $49 million dollars to two women who were made quadriplegics when they were hit by a car while jogging along Pacific Coast Highway. The deal was announced just before the lawsuit brought by 35-year-old Stacy Neria and 42-year-old Carol Daniel (shown on KNX main page) -- both mothers of three who live in San Clemente -- was set to go to trial on Tuesday. They had alleged that the...

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the City of Detroit will drop an appeal of a $6.5-million judgement in the whistleblower lawsuit and settle another case before it goes to trial.

2007-08-17 19:38Sardinia's Phoenician settlement New digs on western coast may unearth ancient Othoca (ANSA) - Oristano, August 17 - An ancient Phoenician colony on the western coast of Sardinia may soon yield some of its long-buried secrets during new excavations. Othoca, founded by the Phoenicians some 2,600 years ago, partly evolved into the modern-day town of Santa Giusta but most remnants of the original settlement lie buried under a thick layer of mud at the bottom of a large lake. Experts believe the lake, separated from the sea by a narrow bridge of land, was once the port of Othoca,...

An archaeological study and colonial documents indicate that "Henries Towne" has been found. Construction crews are rebuilding the buildings and fort that made up the colonial village of Henrytowne. (Joe Fudge, Daily Press) Fort Story archaeologists and Virginia officials are building an early colonial town site believed to be Henrytowne, which was founded in 1609 about five miles west of Fort Story in Virginia Beach. Donald Proffett works on the palisade wall. (Joe Fudge, Daily Press) FORT STORY -- Army scientists sifting through a 52-year-old archaeological study and a small but compelling stream of early colonial records have identified a...

8,400-year old settlement unearthed in Ýzmir’s Ulucak Tumulus Monday, September 25, 2006 ÝZMÝR - Turkish Daily News A team of archaeologists working at the Ulucak tumulus, located in Ýzmir's Kemalpaþa district, have unearthed a Neolithic settlement area dating back some 8,400 years, an archaeologist announced last week. Archaeologist Fulya Dedeoðlu of Ege University told the Doðan News Agency that excavations had been under way in the area since 1995. She said they believed their latest discovery could be the oldest settlement dating from the Neolithic period unearthed to date and added that further excavations on the lower levels could reveal...

Archaeologists discover more than 70 ancient settlement areas in Yozgat Thursday, August 24, 2006 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Archaeologists working at the ancient settlement of Tavium located in what is today Yozgat have discovered more than 70 previously unknown ancient settlements in the area. The Central Anatolian province, mostly famous for the Chalcolithic Period discoveries at its Aliþar Tumulus and the Hittite era artifacts at Kerkenes, is likely to hold much more archaeological wealth than previously believed, and archaeologists say the new studies will shed more light on history. Austrian archaeologist Professor Karl Strobel, who is currently heading surveys...

WASHINGTON - American Indians suing the government over billions of dollars in lost royalties say they are contemplating an offer by members of Congress to resolve their lawsuit for $8 billion. The offer is considerably lower than the $27.5 billion plaintiffs offered to settle for a year ago. But plaintiffs say they are considering it seriously, bringing them closer than ever to ending the lawsuit, which has bogged down the Interior and Justice departments for 10 years. "Eight billion dollars is something I wish was higher, but I'm glad they were able to bring something forward that was equitable," the...

SACRAMENTO - California will have to revamp the way it incarcerates juvenile offenders by using smaller and more modern lockups to replace the warehouse-style prisons it currently uses, according to a court-mandated report from the state corrections department. The report marks a compromise between the state and a nonprofit legal center and is the latest indication of how attempts to solve systematic problems in the state's corrections department will end up costing California taxpayers. The state already faces hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs to reform its adult prison system and the way it manages inmate health care....

OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGY UNEARTHS SAXON SETTLEMENT IN SOUTHAMPTON by Roz Tappenden 24/03/2006 Excavated 19th century cellar. © Oxford Archaeology An archaeological dig in Southampton’s medieval city centre has unearthed Saxon structural remains and a WWII pharmacy. Archaeologists were called in last November to investigate the 0.5-hectare site in the centre of bustling Southampton after an evaluation by the City Council. The plot, between the city’s High Street and French Street has been earmarked for redevelopment, but the discovery of medieval vaults and structural remains dating from the late Saxon period prompted developers, Linden Homes, to delay building work while investigations take...

Archaeologists unearth 9,000-year-old settlement in Seydiþedir Thursday, March 16, 2006 As a result of four years of painstaking excavation, a settlement dating back 9,000 years was discovered in central Anatolia. The tumulus is unique for the region as it is surrounded by walls ANKARA - Turkish Daily News A settlement dating back 9,000 years was discovered during archaeological excavations in Seydiþehir, a district of the central Anatolian province of Konya. Following a visit to Gökhüyük, where the settlement was unearthed, Konya's Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Abdüssettar Yarar told the Anatolia news agency that excavations have been conducted for the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ameriquest Mortgage Co. said on Monday it agreed to pay $325 million in the second largest U.S. consumer lending settlement to clear up claims that its lending practices abused customers in 49 U.S. states. A two-year investigation found that salespeople at the company concealed interest rate and loan costs, pressured appraisers to inflate values of borrowers' homes, and used other high-pressure tactics to close deals, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office said in a statement on Monday. The agreement requires Ameriquest, one of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders to people with poor credit, to pay...

A Minoan settlement after destruction by earthquakesDig at Fournoi Afiatis on Karpathos uncovers ancient buildings A view of the flat area with the roof knocked down by the earthquake, along with part of the supporting wall and the adjoining wall. By Iota Sykka - Kathimerini Earthquakes were responsible for the destruction of a Minoan settlement on the island of Karpathos. That was the conclusion drawn following excavations conducted last year at Fournoi Afiatis on Karpathos under the direction of Manolis Melas, a professor of archaeology. The dig was part of a research program by the Dimokritio University of Thrace. The...

IDF Attempts to Destroy Homes in Gush Etzion 'Settlement Bloc' 12:54 Jan 11, '06 / 11 Tevet 5766 By Ezra HaLevi Without warning, a small community in the consensus region of Gush Etzion has become the center of the government's demolition efforts. Demolition forces face unexpected opposition. Residents of the community of Sde Boaz, twenty minutes south of Jerusalem, received less that 24 hours' notice that the Civil Administration, on orders from the government, planned to destroy a newly built house, the foundations of a large home and a large stable that were built over the summer. Border police, accompanied...

America Online Inc. agreed to pay customers as much as $25 million to settle claims that it wrongly billed them for some online services and products. America Online, part of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company, charged customers for services and products such as an AOL Desk Planner without consumers' consent, plaintiffs in several proposed class-action lawsuits claimed. The plaintiffs also said AOL billed customers for accounts after they tried to cancel them.

Judging by press coverage, the greatest political fund-raising scandal since George Washington bought barrels of whiskey for voters in 1789, is the Abramoff Affair. But it’s not the biggest such scandal in history. It’s not even the biggest this week. I sing you a song of three scandals. One involves some 200 Members of Congress and Jack Abramoff. The second involves Al Sharpton. The largest involves Hillary Clinton. Democrat mouthpieces (excuse me, strategists) like Bob Beckel are trying to hang Abramoff around the necks of the Republicans. The mantra is, “21 of the 23 Members of Congress who accepted Abramoff...

Netflix Class Action Lawsuit Settlement Update: Frank Chavez, the person named in the lawsuit, is getting $2,000, and the lawyers are taking in about $2.5 million for "...fees and costs" (I should have gone to law school). You can read the proposed settlement notice here. If you were a paying Netflix subscriber before January 15th you may be eligible for a free, one-month upgrade in service (an additional DVD out at a time), pending approval from the court.

In 2000, Locke Liddell & Sapp, the Texas legal firm of which Harriet Miers was then co-manager, paid out $22 million to settle out-of-court with investors, many of whom had been defrauded of their life savings in the Austin Forex International currency-trading Ponzi scheme run by former Texas football star Russell Erxleben. Locke Liddell agreed to pay the $22 million restitution to investors because legal representation the firm provided Erxleben figured prominently in the perpetration of the fraud itself. Michael Shaunessy, the Austin attorney who represented the investors in the Locke Liddell settlement, told WND that Erxleben's Ponzi scheme defrauded...

SAN DIEGO – The City Council unanimously agreed Tuesday to begin the process of negotiating a possible settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged violations of federal securities laws. The city is being investigated by the SEC and other agencies for errors and omissions discovered in its financial disclosures to potential investors related to the debt-ridden pension system and wastewater rates. A settlement with the SEC would not protect individuals under investigation for alleged wrongdoing, but would shield the city from prosecution, city officials said. City Attorney Michael Aguirre said the vote "reflects a real change on the...

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 04:50 IST JNW HEADLINE NEWS Has Washington guaranteed the settlement blocs? By Ryan Jones September 13th, 2005 For more than a year Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Israelis his plan to uproot the Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria had won Israel unprecedented support from Washington to retain sovereignty over major Jewish settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria. As proof Sharon pointed to an April 2004 letter from US President George W. Bush, in which the American stated it would be unrealistic to expect an Israeli withdrawal to its 1949 borders. But ever since then, US...

It had all the trappings of a male bastion - racy pinups on the walls, stacks of porno magazines and videos in the lounge, even a female blowup doll. But this was no college frat house. It was the office of a Bergen County government agency, according to a lawsuit filed by a female employee. From the bulletin board to computer desktops, offensive pictures and raunchy conduct by workers at the county's Mosquito Control Division in Paramus created a hostile work environment, entomologist Julee Mark alleged. And that was not the worst of it, according to the suit. Employees and...

When reading some of the more right-leaning, pro-Israeli pundits, one would be led to believe that Israel is a nation completely divided over Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement plan,” whereby the Jewish state withdraws from Gaza and some of the West Bank in return for Palestinian promises of “peace.” I share the concerns of the anti-disengagement camp, but do not accept the premise of some of their lot that Israel is on the brink of “civil war.” Just looking at opinion polls of Israelis, one can see that there is momentum for the disengagement plan. The Tel Aviv University Peace Index of...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Home loan lender Ameriquest Mortgage Co. has agreed to pay as much as $50 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleges it cheated thousands of borrowers in four states, including California, a newspaper reported Tuesday. In a related matter, the Orange County-based company also was questioned by attorneys general and regulators in 25 states about its lending practices, including how loan terms are verbally described to borrowers, the Los Angeles Times said. Ameriquest, which lends to people with spotty credit and modest incomes, has been dogged by consumer complaints and lawsuits in about 20 states...

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D88OTL0O0.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down Burst.com, Microsoft reach tentative deal By FOSTER KLUG MAR. 11 12:51 P.M. ET A California software company suing Microsoft for allegedly stealing its multimedia streaming software said on its Web site that it has reached a tentative settlement with the world's largest software company. The agreement between Burst.com and Microsoft Corp. should be completed within a week, Burst said in an announcement on its Web site. Stacy Drake, a Microsoft spokeswoman, declined to provide specific details until the agreement was finalized, other than to say the companies had "reached a settlement in principle which resolves all the issues between...

BETHANY — After more than two years behind bars, recovering narcotics addict Kathleen White figured she’d paid her debt to society. She was wrong. In early January, White received an unexpected correspondence from the state Department of Administrative Services: an itemized bill for $67,165, which the Department of Correction says was the cost of her incarcerations. "I’d heard about that, but I didn’t think they’d do it to anyone who didn’t win the lottery," White said ruefully during an interview at her mother’s home in Bethany. "How dare (they) charge me to be treated like a dog?" White, 36, served...

American Legion National Commander Thomas Cadmus recently called on government officials to "stand up to the ACLU," fueling a firestorm of protest against fanatical in terrorem litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Boy Scouts, the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial and every public expression of America's religious history and heritage. The call from the Legion's top official came in a blistering public denunciation of the Defense Department announcement that it would order military units worldwide not to sponsor Boy Scout troops, a partial surrender to an ACLU lawsuit filed in Illinois in 1999. Cadmus asked publicly, "What are...

Toy Guns Pulled From Costume Shop Shelves Thousands of toy guns that were for sale in costume and novelty shops in New York state have been removed as part of a settlement between the state attorney general's office and two national wholesalers, the New York Times reported Dec. 20.Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had accused the wholesalers of distributing 12,000 toy guns in 2001 in violation of a state law which previously had applied only to retailers. New York State bans the sale of toy guns in stores unless they have a permanent orange stripe running down both sides of...

U.S. agrees to Nazi "gold train" settlement By Michael Christie Tuesday December 21, 2:30 AM MIAMI (Reuters) - The U.S. government has agreed to settle a lawsuit with tens of thousands of Hungarian Holocaust survivors over a trainload of gold, jewelry and other property seized by the U.S. Army at the end of World War Two, lawyers said on Monday. The agreement over 24 boxcars filled with $50 million to $200 million worth of art and household goods stolen by the Nazis and then confiscated by the United States still has to be worked out in detail, a lawyer for...

Time Warner Settles AOL Charges Time Warner Agrees to Pay More Than $500 Million to Settle Criminal, Civil Allegations Time Warner Inc. has agreed to pay more than $500 million to settle wide-ranging criminal and civil allegations that its America Online division improperly pumped up revenue and engaged in other unlawful practices before and after the two companies merged in 2001. Time Warner had set aside roughly that amount to cover the estimated costs of resolving both Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission charges stemming from an array of practices by Dulles-based AOL, the one-time Internet juggernaut. A $210...

Portland is set to approve payment of $300,000 to 12 people who claimed police used excessive force during two anti-war marches in March 2003 and during President Bush's visit to Portland in August 2002. A federal judge spent at least five months mediating the claims, and the City Council is set to approve the settlement Wednesday. Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuits that the city, Mayor Vera Katz, then-police Chief Mark Kroeker and several officers violated their rights to free speech and free assembly. They said they were doused by pepper spray at close range and that police fired rubber stingballs...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea (search) said Saturday that it was "quite possible" to settle the international standoff over its nuclear weapons program if the United States allows for the existence of the communist regime.

"I think it's very important for our friends, the Israelis, to have a peaceful Palestinian state living on their border. And it's very important for the Palestinian people to have a peaceful, hopeful future." So spoke President Bush just two days after his re-election, just exactly as news reports were leaking Yasser Arafat's demise.The combination of Mr. Bush's stunning new mandate and Mr. Arafat's near-death condition will lead, I predict, to a quick revival of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy after months of relative doldrums and to massive dangers to Israel.The doldrums will cease because the Bush administration views Mr. Arafat as the...

Traces of an ancient settlement found on the dry bottom of the Aral Kyzylorda. November 5. KAZINFORM. The scientists of the Institute of Archeology named after Alkey Margulan found some traces of an ancient town on the dry bottom of the Aral Sea. The area of the town amounts to about 6 ha and goes back to the 13-14 centuries, i.e. the epoch of the Golden Horde. As a result of archeological researches there have also been found the relics of different workshops, windmills and storehouses for ceramic articles and the burial ground where the noble representatives of that...

Bill O'Reilly settled a sexual harassment lawsuit by his former producer last night, ending what he called a "brutal ordeal" without an apology. The Fox News talk show host also agreed to drop his extortion suit against Andrea Mackris and her attorney, Benedict Morelli, according to a statement by O'Reilly's lawyer. The deal likely involves payment of millions of dollars to Mackris, since the two sides were discussing an offer of well over $2 million when negotiations broke down, say sources close to O'Reilly. Both parties agreed to keep the details confidential, according to the statement. O'Reilly told viewers, in...

The world has decided that the territories are beyond the pale for the Jews. In a crash course on Jewish literacy, dealing with the Pale of Settlement published by Aish.com we learn "From 1791 until 1915, the Jews living in Eastern Europe were confined by the Czars of Russia -- starting with Catherine the Great -- to an area known as the "Pale of Settlement" (meaning "borders of settlement"). "Jews were specifically expelled from Moscow and St. Petersburg and forced into the Pale. Later they were also expelled from rural areas within the Pale and forced to live only in...