Free Republic

However, in an unusual move late Thursday, multiple IDF sources rejected UNRWA’s claims and characterized them as outright falsehoods when reached by the Washington Free Beacon. “For two days we were trying to move people out of that school in particular and the Beit Hanoun area in general,” said an IDF official who was involved in the interactions between the IDF, UNRWA, and International Red Cross (ICRC) leading up to the incident. The official continued: “This morning we sought a cease-fire in the area and a humanitarian evacuation of civilians, but Hamas refused—because they wanted to keep civilians in the...

Geneva (AFP) - Last year tied for the sixth-hottest on record, confirming that Earth's climate system is in the grip of warming that will affect generations to come, the UN's weather agency said Wednesday. "This is confirmation of the trend of global warming of the planet," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) chief Michel Jarraud told AFP. Last year equalled 2007 as the sixth-warmest year since reliable records began in 1850, with a global land and ocean surface temperature that was 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1961-1990 average, the WMO said in a statement. Last year equalled 2007 as...

TORONTO -- 21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations' Nobel-winning climate bible earned an F on a report card released today. Forty citizen auditors from 12 countries examined 18,500 sources cited in the report – finding 5,600 to be not peer-reviewed.  Contrary to statements by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the celebrated 2007 report does not rely solely on research published in reputable scientific journals. It also cites press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, student theses, newsletters, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called "grey literature." "We've been...

As Washington officials questioned the reliability of an Iraqi official who reported that 377 tons of explosives went missing after the war, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged yesterday that his agency is in no position to know what exactly happened. IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei confirmed in an interview yesterday that the sole source for the story that dominated the news last week was a letter sent to the agency on October 10 from an Iraqi official, Mohammed Abbas. "All we know (is that) the Iraqis reported to us the material is missing," Mr. ElBaradei told The...