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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- An early morning missile test over a remote part of New Mexico is expected to produce a contrail that will be visible across the Southwest on Thursday, and authorities says they're preparing for a flood of phone calls and emails from curious onlookers. The unarmed Juno target missile will be launched between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. MST from an old military depot in western New Mexico. The destination is White Sands Missile Range, some 215 miles away. On its way to White Sands, the missile will drop a booster into a safety zone on private and national...

More than 100,000 people took to the streets Saturday to protest the spiraling costs of living in Israel. Marches and rallies took place in eleven cities across the country, with the largest ones taking place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva and Haifa. The protesters chanted "the people demand social justice" and "we want justice, not charity." The biggest protest was in Tel Aviv, where tens of thousands march from HaBima Square to the Tel Aviv Museum. "We are very happy to see the Israeli people go out into the streets," said Yonatan Levy, one of the organizers. "We were...

International political group Hizb ut-Tahrir (logo at left) will be hosting a “Khilafah Conference” in the United Kingdom on July 9th, one that will promote the ideas of a world governed by Islamic law. Now the group just announced that it will host yet another one of those conferences in the Netherlands on July 3rd. (Snip) Though many scoffed at the possibility of a caliphate, it seems that there are many radicals pushing for such a thing. The organization behind the conference, Hizb ut-Tahrir — meaning “Party of Liberation” — is an international political group that seeks to bring about

It is the sacred cow of Canadian politics, and those in power who think they will tinker with it do so at their peril. For while the Canada Health Act—the legislation that provides universal health care for all its citizens—is revered by Canadians, paradoxically it is also heavily criticized, as each new survey shows. The term “crisis” tends to be overused today, but when applied to any medical or health report, people do take notice, as when it was recently estimated that some 5 million Canadians—about 850,000 of whom live in Ontario—do not have a family doctor. One quarter of...

FORT HUACHUCA — There is one thing Command Sgt. Maj. Gerry Wykoff is thankful for, and that is Dr. Seuss never wrote an Army Field Manual. As it is, his children’s books are full of tongue twisters, as the senior noncommissioned officer for the Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca found out Monday when he read Seuss’ “The Sleep Book,” to fourth-grade students of Janet Josa’s class at General Myer Elementary School. For many young school students, the Dr. Seuss books are today’s “See Spot Run” that older generations remember from their days in the lower grades of elementary education. Nationwide,...

The Beatles are about to become radio stars in a whole new way. NASA on Monday will broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star. This first-ever beaming of a radio song by the space agency directly into deep space is nostalgia-driven. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of NASA. "Send my love to the aliens," Paul McCartney told NASA through a Beatles historian. "All the best, Paul." The song, written by McCartney...

High temps cut swath across U.S. MONTGOMERY, Ala., Aug. 23 (UPI) -- High temperatures cut a swath across the United States Thursday from the deep South to Ohio. In Alabama, where temperatures have topped 100 degrees for 14 days so far in August, at least 12 deaths have been blamed on the heat, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. "Because of the extreme heat Alabama is still suffering from, I am afraid that we will have even more heat-related deaths reported to us before the state cools down this fall," Dr. Jim McVay of the Alabama Public Health Service said. Six of...

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2007 – Thousands of school children, community leaders, church members and volunteers throughout the nation are preparing to remember those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, and to honor military veterans past and present. In cities, schoolrooms, church halls and community centers, they’re respectfully organizing plans and identifying routes for their 2007 America Supports You Freedom Walks. “America Supports You Freedom Walks have become a new national tradition,” said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. “It is important for people to participate so we never forget what happened to our...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11, 2006 – The leader of the nation's largest veterans organization will lead hundreds of veterans on a motorcycle caravan across five states next week to raise scholarship money for children of U.S. military personnel killed on duty since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. American Legion National Commander Tom Bock will be joined by members of the American Legion Riders and hundreds of military veterans who love motorcycles and their commitment to service. He will lead them on the American Legacy Run beginning in Indianapolis and running through five states to the 88th Annual National American...

A Mesa man has admitted in federal court that he tried to smuggle an illegal immigrant from Iran across the U.S.-Mexico border. FBI agents arrested Zeayadali Malhamdary and raided his tailor shop May 26 after an undercover investigation found he tried to obtain Mexican visas for Iranians so they could fly into Mexico and then cross the border. Malhamdary has admitted to friends he crossed the Mexico border illegally in 1998 to escape religious persecution in Iran, whose official religion is the Shiite branch of Islam. He was granted refugee status in February 1999. Under Monday's plea deal, sentencing will...

SEATAC, Wash. - As the sun dipped low in the sky last Sunday and his plane began its descent, Eugene Nelson had a sinking feeling that something was wrong. He'd been in the air for hours, much longer than his business flight from Hong Kong to Taiwan should have taken. Then the airliner flashed a map of his flight's path on a video screen, and it hit him. Instead of descending toward the island off China's eastern coast, the next stop on the Intel Corp. engineer's itinerary would be the remote city of Taiyuan, an industrial center deep within China....

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2006 – U.S. officials are sure Iran is conducting intelligence operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the commander of U.S. Central Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. "There's no doubt that there's Iranian intelligence activity throughout Iraq," Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said. "There's no doubt that there's Iranian intelligence activity in Afghanistan." Abizaid said Iranian activity in Iraq and Afghanistan is particularly troubling because Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad "is very ideological (and) has made an awful lot of threats" against the United States, Israel, and Europe. The general said improvised explosive device components manufactured...

Investigating canals across time, from spaceUr takes a step back to see ancient networks By Alvin Powell Harvard News Office Jason Ur: 'If you press your nose against a Monet, all you see is a blur. If you take a few steps back, you see lilies, you see bridges. For this reason, remote sensing data is really irreplaceable.' (Staff photos Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office) < The view from space of an ancient canal network is recasting archaeologists' understanding of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and of the farming economy that supported it at its height of power almost 3,000 years...

II MEF CG, wife participate in Read Across AmericaSubmitted by: II Marine Expeditionary ForceStory Identification #: 200632151833Story by Sgt. Tracee L. Jackson MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.-- (March 2, 2006) -- The commanding general of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. James F. Amos, and his wife, Bonnie, participated in the Read Across America program at Jefferson Primary School here March 2. According to Jeanette Martinez, a coordinator for the event, the program is designed to show the importance of reading to school-aged children. Guest readers, including senators, commanders, doctors, and other high-profile professionals have visited all...

2/8/2006 - LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- Meaghan Ababa is now resting comfortably at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles thanks to the medical personnel of the 59th Medical Wing. Her doctors say it is “a miracle” considering the arduous journey the 7-year-old Hawaiian girl just completed. The journey began at the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu Feb. 3. Doctors there had placed Meaghan, whose heart was failing, on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine. The machine was doing all the work for Meaghan’s heart and lungs. The problem: Doctors at Kapiolani were...

A U.S. lawmaker says elements of the war on terror are now spilling across the nation's southwestern border, and that colleagues he's spoken to who have seen the problem first-hand, as he has, say they felt safer "during trips to Iraq than they would have in a pickup truck on our southern border." Rep. John A. Culberson, R-Texas, also says there has been an increase in apprehensions of so-called "special interest aliens," or SIAs – aliens from countries where al-Qaida is known to be in operation – along the U.S.-Mexico border, and that American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are...

SEVRAN, France — By dusk Friday, the streets of Sevran were deserted. Inside high-rise apartments and stone cottages here on the outskirts of Paris, residents waited for the explosions and sirens to begin. "Last night I thought I was in Baghdad, not somewhere in France," said Nabila Chaibi, a 22-year-old sales clerk, her angular face swathed in a white head scarf. Her eyes displayed the fatigue of a sleepless night.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he was open to across-the-board spending cuts in the federal budget to help pay for hurricane assistance. In a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, Bush also said he was working with congressional Republicans on a plan for pushing "significant reductions in mandatory and discretionary spending." Some Republican conservatives have been outraged at the level of federal spending under the Bush administration and projections of up to $200 billion to help rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

SAN DIEGO (AP) - David Smith Sr. holds a world record for the longest distance traveled by a human fired from a cannon. On Saturday, he plans to add to his list of cannonball coups by shooting across the U.S-Mexico border. The feat is the brainchild of Venezuelan artist Javier Tellez and is part of a series of public art projects in the two border cities. Smith will be shot from a popular beach in Tijuana, Mexico, over a rusty, corrugated metal fence into Border Field State Park in San Diego. David Smith Jr., also an accomplished human cannonball, said...

Bedouin wanders across Biblical manuscript Fragments of a Biblical manuscript dating back to the last Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 135 AD Judaea, have been uncovered near the Dead Sea. After four decades with a dearth of new finds, archaeologists had resigned themselves to believing the desert caves in the modern-day West Bank had already yielded all their secrets from the Roman era. "It's simply sensational, a dream come true," archaeology professor Hanan Eshel, a Biblical specialist at Israel's Bar Ilan University, said. For the past 20 years, he has scoured the Judaean desert around the Dead Sea, overturning...