McLEAN, Va. — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff strongly backed a program Wednesday that would ease airport security for passengers who pass voluntary background checks to show they aren’t terrorists. (more…)

Experimental tests are conducted in developing countries on sick and vulnerable children under the guise of free and ethical treatments sanctioned by the FDA and complicit medical institutions.

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How can we have a real discussion about Mideast peace if speaking honestly about Israel is out of bounds?

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More broadly, the shooting underscores two fundamentally different views of the uneasy truce that has held in southern Lebanon for the past two weeks. Secretary General Kofi Annan cited numbers from the United Nations forces on Tuesday indicating that Israel had violated the cease-fire nearly 70 times, while Hezbollah had done so only 4 times. But the Israelis do not believe there is a cease-fire to violate. “We are at a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, not a cease-fire,” Ms. Eisin said. She added that Israel had the explicit right to self-defense under United Nations Resolution 1701, which does not use the term cease-fire.

That difference is apparent every day across southern Lebanon. Israeli tanks crisscross the dry brown hills, shooting into the fields and smashing up houses and stone walls. Teams of Israeli soldiers have planted their nation’s flag atop bluffs here and sometimes detained Lebanese men, releasing them days later. No one seems to know where the mobile Israeli units are based, or how to avoid them.

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From WRH:

But people who questioned whether flouride in the water supply was safe were portrayed as kooks in the media.

Read the AMA’s letter

Iran warned major oil-consuming nations Saturday that the imposition of UN sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment would lead to a rise in oil prices, Iranian news agencies reported. (more…)

The United States said on Friday it was consulting European governments about possible sanctions against Iran for intransigence over its nuclear programme, but the EU signalled it wanted to see more dialogue with Tehran. (more…)

FBI evidence that helped convict Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols went on display Friday at the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, even as a congressman and others continue to raise questions about the 1995 explosion that killed 168 people.
The display includes items ranging from mangled pieces of the truck used in the explosion to the automatic Glock handgun taken from McVeigh when he was arrested by a state trooper 90 miles from the bombing site. (more…)

British Airways said Thursday that it would sponsor a new biometric screening system this autumn at Terminal 7 of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, enabling potentially thousands of trans- Atlantic travelers to significantly shorten their wait at security checkpoints. (more…)

ABC will air a “docudrama” next weekend called “The Path to 9/11? which blames President Clinton for the 9/11 attacks while praising President Bush. (more…)

Outed CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband, Bush critic Joseph Wilson, plan to go ahead with a lawsuit against close associates of President George W Bush despite a startling new revelation about the source of the leak that blew Ms Plame’s cover, one of her lawyers has said.

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The U.S. Transportation Department’s inspector general has urged the FAA to consider disciplining two executives who failed to correct false information provided to the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks, the New York Times reported on Saturday. (more…)

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN BORDER — The al-Qaida terror camps are gone from Afghanistan, but the enigma of Osama bin Laden still hangs over these lawless borderlands where tens of thousands of U.S. and Pakistani troops have spent nearly five years searching for him.

Villagers say the CIA missed by only a few miles when it targeted bin Laden’s top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, with a missile strike in January. Then in May, U.S. Special Forces arrested one of al-Zawahri’s closest aides, suggesting the trail has not gone entirely cold. (more…)

Before 2001, no steel-framed building in history had ever collapsed from fire — on 9/11, three did. In December 2001, the Pentagon released a videotape of Osama bin Laden claiming responsibility for 9/11 — but the man in the tape looked nothing like the al-Qaida leader and was wearing a gold ring, which is forbidden in Islam. (more…)