An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.
The announcement comes days before Thursday’s U.N. deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment — which also can be used to create nuclear weapons — or face economic and political sanctions. Tehran has called the
U.N. Security Council resolution “illegal” and said it won’t stop enrichment as a precondition to negotiations.
Theoretically, such a flouting of UN Security Council demands would have consequences. Barring Israel acting alone, unlikely given that they’re otherwise occupied at the moment, there will be none. Indeed, aside from sanctions that will be impossible to enforce, the international community has few good options here.
Israel has thrown yet another wrench into the struggle to maintain a cease-fire with Hezbollah by insisting that UN peacekeepers patrol Lebanon’s border with Syria in addition to the border with Israel.
Israel is demanding that U.N. troops patrol the Syria-Lebanon border to prevent Hezbollah from receiving arms shipments. But even if Israel overcomes Syrian objections to the idea, policing the mostly mountainous frontier could prove nearly impossible.
The controversy has developed as the United Nations tries to muster enough peacekeepers to serve as a buffer force between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon’s south. Israel, which accuses Syria of supplying arms to Hezbollah, refuses to lift its sea and air blockade of Lebanon unless U.N. troops also deploy to the far larger Syria-Lebanon border.
It’s a tall order. Syria borders Lebanon both to its east and north, with four official crossings, including one on the road between Beirut and Damascus. But there are dozens of dirt tracks running between the countries through a mountain range, routes that have been used for centuries by smugglers and many of them able to carry modern-day vehicles.
It’s unclear, moreover, how much Hezbollah is in need of a weapons resupply. Although Israel said Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets into northern Israel during the 34-day war, the guerrillas were believed to have an arsenal of more than 12,000 of the weapons when the fighting started. There has also been wide speculation that the Syrian army left behind a huge weapons supply for Hezbollah as it withdrew from Lebanon in April 2005. Hezbollah draws primary backing from Syria and Iran, which established the guerrilla group and its political arm in the Bekaa Valley in 1982.
Syrian President President Bashar Assad on Thursday called Israel’s demand a “hostile” move aimed at damaging relations between the neighbors. He said it was unprecedented for international forces to police a border between two countries that have not been at war.
One understands Israel’s concern here, given that there is no denying that Syria and Iran are the chief backers of Hezbollah. Still, not only would such a patrol be unprecedented, as Assad rightly notes, but it was not part of the agreement to which Israel entered.
US scientists have found the first direct evidence of the existence of “dark matter”, a little-understood substance with a huge influence on gravity, the team’s leader said on Tuesday. Scientists still do not know what exactly dark matter is, but have theorised it must exist to account for the amount of gravity needed to hold the universe together. They estimate that the substance accounts for 80 to 90% of the matter in the universe. The more familiar kind of matter, which can be seen and felt, makes up the rest.
Now researchers led by University of Arizona astronomer Doug Clowe say they have evidence to back up their theories. Using orbiting telescopes, the researchers watched two giant gas clouds in outer space collide over a 100-hour period. As the clouds clashed, they said, the visible gas particles slowed, pulling away from the invisible dark matter particles. The researchers said they could detect the dark matter particles by their gravitational pull on the surrounding visible particles. “This is the first time we’ve been able to show that (dark matter) has to be out there, that you can’t explain it away,” Clowe said. “We haven’t actually been able to see the dark matter particles themselves, but what we have been able to do is … image the gravity that they’re generating.”
Some sceptics have argued that dark matter does not exist. They assert that scientists err in assuming that gravity exerts the same pull whether holding a plate on a table or influencing the travel of stars. Revising the laws of gravity at the interstellar scale would better explain the universe’s structure, they argue.
The latest research is scheduled to be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Lech Walesa said Tuesday he has quit the Solidarity trade union that he founded and which helped bring down communism in Eastern Europe. “I have given up my membership last year because Solidarity and I have gone separate ways,” he told The Associated Press.
[...]
The 62-year-old Nobel Peace laureate said he left after Solidarity members ignored his criticism of their supPOLport for the Law and Justice Party and its leaders, twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, during last fall’s election campaign. Lech Kaczynski won the presidency and Jaroslaw is now prime minister. “When my arguments were not reaching them, I gave instructions to terminate my membership,” Walesa said. “It is not over the Kaczynskis, but that was the last straw.” “I am not paying my fees any more,” he added.
Walesa founded Solidarity in 1980 at the shipyards in Gdansk. It was a broad social movement made up of workers and intellectuals that opposed communism. Despite being forced underground in the harsh martial law crackdown begun in 1981, it persevered and eventually succeeded in helping to bring down the communist regime in 1989. Since then, it has become a trade union like any other, representing a range of workers. Although it has lost much of its original influence, it is the second-largest trade union in the country and its members are a visible presence during worker protests.
While I wouldn’t go as far as Bill Jempty and say “the Cold War may still be ongoing without him,” Walesa’s courageous stance against the Communists was one of many pivotal moments in the collapse of that system.
Troy Lee Gentry, a country singer who sings songs about what a real man he is, paid to kill a tame bear and film it to prentend that it was in the wild.
Troy Lee Gentry, of the country singing duo Montgomery Gentry, has been accused of killing a tame black bear that federal officials say he tagged as killed in the wild.
Gentry, 39, of Franklin, Tennessee, and Lee Marvin Greenly, 46, of Sandstone, appeared Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Raymond Erickson in connection with a sealed indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Minneapolis.
Authorities allege that Gentry purchased the bear from Greenly, a wildlife photographer and hunting guide, then killed it with a bow and arrow in an enclosed pen on Greenly’s property in October 2004. The government alleges that Gentry and Greenly tagged the bear with a Minnesota hunting license and registered the animal with the state Department of Natural Resources as a wild kill. Gentry allegedly paid about $4,650 for the bear, named Cubby. The bear’s death was videotaped, and the tape later edited so Gentry appeared to shoot the animal in a “fair chase” hunting situation, the government alleges.
The opening stanza is rather ironic in this context:
Put me on a mountain, way back in the back woods
Put me on a lake with a biggin’ on the line
Put me ’round a campfire cookin’ something I just cleaned
You do your thing, I’ll do mine
Although not as much as this one:
And I sure know the difference between wrong and right
You know, to me it’s all just common sense
A broken rule, a consequence
A Russian passenger jet carrying at least 170 people — including 45 children — crashed Tuesday in eastern Ukraine after sending a distress signal, killing all aboard, authorities said. A Russian news agency said officials had ruled out terrorism, but the cause of the crash was still unclear, with various officials citing turbulence, lightning and a fire on board.
The Pulkovo Airlines Tu-154 was en route from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg and disappeared from radar screens while flying over eastern Ukraine around 2:30 p.m., Russian and Ukrainian emergency officials said.
The plane’s tail section and other burning debris were found north of the city of Donetsk, about 400 miles east of Kiev, by residents about two hours after the distress signal was sent, said Mykhaylo Korsakov, spokesman for the Donetsk department of Emergency Situations Ministry.
Anatoly Simushin, deputy director of the St. Petersburg-based carrier that there were 170 people on board, including 45 children.
“Unfortunately, we believe that no one managed to survive,” Russian Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Irina Andriyanova said in televised comments.
CNN Breaking News: “Authorities arrest a suspect in Bangkok, Thailand, in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, two law enforcement officials confirm to CNN.”
A man arrested in Thailand is being held in connection with the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, U.S. law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Federal officials familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the man was being held in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges.
The girl was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family’s home in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 26, 1996.
Law enforcement officials from Boulder were flying to Bangkok to present Thai authorities with documents in the slaying of the 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant, officials in Washington said. They asked to remain anonymous pending an announcement in Colorado.
The girl’s parents, Patsy and John Ramsey, had been under an “umbrella of suspicion” in JonBenet’s death. The Ramseys said an intruder killed their daughter. A grand jury investigation in Boulder ended with no indictments, and no arrests had been made in the case. Patsy Ramsey died in July.
In 2003, U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes in Atlanta concluded that the evidence she reviewed suggested an intruder killed JonBenet. That opinion came with the judge’s decision to dismiss a libel and slander lawsuit against the Ramseys by a freelance journalist, who the Ramseys had named as a suspect in their daughter’s murder. The Boulder district attorney at the time said she agreed with Carnes’ declaration.
UPDATE: Blogswarm, activate.
AllahPundit: “Thailand. Sex charges. Gobsmackingly vile.“
LaShawn Barber: “Some people, including me, suspected that her mother, the late Patsy Ramsey, was involved with the killing. I’ll hold off making a statement until I get more info.” [A clear violation of the blogger code! - ed.]
UPDATE: The suspect, American John Mark Karr, has confessed.
The American suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case said publicly Thursday he was with the 6-year-old when she died and called her death “an accident,” a stunning admission that will help answer 10 years of questions in the unsolved murder case. “I was with JonBenet when she died,” John Mark Karr told reporters in Bangkok, visibly nervous and stuttering as he spoke. “Her death was an accident.”
Police said Karr, 41, admitted to the killing after he was arrested Wednesday at his downtown Bangkok apartment by Thai and American authorities. Karr will be taken to Colorado within the next week where he will face charges of murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, Ann Hurst, Department of Homeland Security attache at the American Embassy in Bangkok, said at a news conference in Bangkok.
Karr, speaking to reporters after the news conference, declined to say what his connection was to the Ramsey family or how long he had known JonBenet. Wearing a blue, short-sleeved shirt, he appeared ashen with an expressionless look on his face.
[...]
Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul said U.S. authorities informed Thai police on Aug. 11 that an arrest warrant had been issued for Karr on charges of premeditated murder. The warrant was sent to Thai police on Wednesday. At the press conference, Suwat said Karr insisted after his arrest that his crime was not first-degree murder. “He said it was second-degree murder. He said it was unintentional. He said he was in love with the child. She was a pageant queen,” Suwat said. The Thai officer quoted the suspect as saying he tried to kidnap JonBenet for a $118,000 ransom but that his plan went awry and he strangled her to death. Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet’s mother, reported finding a ransom note in the house demanding $118,000 for her daughter.
Hurst said Karr has been “very cooperative” with authorities and that he’s shown a “variety of emotions.” She said he has been a suspect “for a while” but wouldn’t specify how long. Suwat said Karr arrived in Bangkok on June 6 from Malaysia to look for a teaching job. It was not clear whether he had gotten a job, the police officer said.
Hizbullah will not hand over its weapons to the Lebanese government but rather refrain from exhibiting them publicly, according to a new compromise that is reportedly brewing between Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The UN cease-fire resolution specifically demands the demilitarization of the area south of the Litani river. The resolution was approved by the Lebanese cabinet.
In a televised address on Monday night, Nasrallah declared that now was not the time to debate the disarmament of his guerrilla fighters, saying the issue should be done in secret sessions of the government to avoid serving Israeli interests. “This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate,” he said. “It is wrong timing on the psychological and moral level particularly before the cease-fire,” he said in reference to calls from critics for the guerrillas to disarm.
According to Lebanon’s defense minister, Elias Murr, “There will be no other weapons or military presence other than the army” after Lebanese troops move south of the Litani. However, he then contradicted himself by saying the army would not ask Hizbullah to hand over its weapons.
Israel began slowly withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon on Tuesday and made plans to hand over its captured territory as hopes were raised that a U.N.-imposed cease-fire would stick, despite early tests on its first day.
Hezbollah guerrillas fired at least 10 rockets in southern Lebanon overnight, but none crossed the border into Israel. On Monday, at least six Hezbollah militiamen were killed by Israeli troops waiting for a peacekeeping force before beginning a full-scale withdrawal.
Lebanon was under intense international pressure to move its soldiers south into Hezbollah territory — a key element in the
U.N. Security Council plan to end the 34-day conflict that claimed more than 950 lives. Lebanon’s Defense Minister Elias Murr said the country’s contribution of 15,000 soldiers could be on the north side of the Litani River by the end of the week. But they still must cross the river and try to enact control over Hezbollah areas for the first time in decades.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli army said it planned to begin handing over some captured positions on Wednesday and hoped to complete the withdrawal from Lebanon by next week. The plan for handing over territory showed the complexity of the border zone: Israel would transfer it first to the U.N. force, which would then turn it over to Lebanese envoys. Israel’s military also made a first gesture at possible post-conflict negotiations. It said it could exchange 13 Hezbollah prisoners and the bodies of dozens of guerrillas for two Israeli soldiers whose capture in a cross-border raid July 12 touched off the fighting.
[...]
In northern Israel — hit by nearly 4,000 Hezbollah rockets — residents emerged from bomb shelters and slowly trickled back to their homes. A few sunbathers even lounged on the beach in Haifa, which was hard hit by the guerrilla attacks.
On Monday, both Israel and its main backer, the United States, portrayed Hezbollah as the loser — and by extension, its main backers, Iran and Syria. “There’s going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon,” Bush said. But Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, claimed a “strategic, historic victory.” Much of the Arab and Muslim worlds would agree. Hezbollah’s ability to withstand the vastly superior Israeli military — and hit back with deadly ambushes and cross-border rocket volleys — has given it heroic stature. In Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Assad said the region has changed “because of the achievements” of Hezbollah, and U.S.-supported political changes were “an illusion.”
The sentiments could complicate any attempts to disarm or sideline the guerrillas — who also have 14 votes in Lebanon’s legislature and two in the Cabinet. Nasrallah drove home the point by deriding Lebanese officials who have urged Hezbollah to give up its weapons. “This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate,” he said.
The conflict left nearly 950 people dead — 791 in Lebanon and 155 on the Israeli side, according to official counts. An estimated 500,000 Israelis and about 1 million Lebanese, or a quarter of the population, had been displaced, government officials said.
Israeli soldiers killed six Hezbollah fighters in four skirmishes in Lebanon after the U.N.-imposed cease-fire took effect Monday, the army said. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he took sole responsibility for the offensive, and acknowledged “deficiencies” in the way the war was conducted. The developments came as Lebanese civilians defied an Israeli travel ban and streamed back to their homes in war-ravaged areas.
In an address to parliament, Olmert said the cease-fire agreement eliminated the “state within a state” run by Hezbollah and restored Lebanon’s sovereignty in the south. And Defense minister Amir Peretz said the war opened a window for negotiations with Lebanon and renewed talks with Palestinians. But many Israelis were upset by the high casualties during 34 days of fighting, and Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the opposition Likud Party, told lawmakers there were many failures in the war. Olmert said: “We will have to review ourselves in all the battles,” Olmert said. “We won’t sweep things under the carpet.” Anticipating that another war with Hezbollah may come in the future, he said Israel will learn the lessons of this war and “do better.”
“Deficiencies,” sadly, are part and parcel of even the most successful wars. Unfortunately, however, Olmert is deluding himself if he thinks he has actually eliminated Hezbollah as a “state within a state” in the south of Lebanon. Indeed, the war almost certainly increased Hezbollah’s power in the entirety of the country.
Israel intends to abide by the cease-fire when it takes effect on Monday morning, even though senior Israeli officials assume that Hizbullah will not honor it, officials close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday night. The officials said the working assumption at the Prime Minister’s Office was that Hizbullah would not honor the agreement and that the world would then comprehend Israel’s predicament more than ever. At press time, the Lebanese cabinet had not given final approval to the cease-fire. “When Hizbullah violates the cease-fire, the world will see who the aggressor is and will understand us,” a source close to Olmert said. “We will insist that the agreement be implemented. It’s a good agreement for Israel and Hizbullah’s opposition is proof.”
Or proof that they believe continued fighting would be in their interest? Either way, I suspect they’re right, at least in the longer term.
Lebanon’s UN ambassador bitterly slammed Israel’s month-long bombardment of his country ahead of a hard-won truce, and vowed that the treaty would be Israel’s last with any Middle East country. “Lebanon will be, I think, the last state to sign a peace treaty with Israel,” UN ambassador Nouhad Mahmoud told CNN television’s “Late Edition” program, without explaining the remark. He called the agreement a “crucial” test for all the parties involved. “Now it is the moment of truth for everyone, and we’ll see who will abide by the Security Council resolutions and who will not, so (what) we have this week is very crucial,” Mahmoud said.
The diplomat added that the 15,000 Lebanese soldiers to be dispatched to south Lebanon to help keep the peace alongside a similarly-sized international UN force “are not going to use force” to disarm the Hezbollah militia which has been battling Israel. “Hezbollah will just leave the area as armed elements as I understand it, and the Lebanese army will take over the whole region along with the United Nations forces,” he said
Of the UN cessation of hostilities agreement concluded Saturday after weeks of negotiation, he said “that could have happened through negotiation from the very first day, but the Israelis chose the escalation, and chose to have this war against Lebanon to destroy the whole country and to kill more than a thousand people,” he said. “That was their choice.”
This is likely just bluster stemming from frustration. Still, it’s not exactly clear what this means.
Staff Sgt. Uri Grossman, 20, the son of renowned novelist and peace activist David Grossman was killed Saturday in Lebanon, just days after his father made a public call for the government to halt its military operation and enter negotiations.
Uri Grossman, who served in an armored unit, was killed when his tank was hit by an anti-tank missile in southern Lebanon, the military said Sunday. The unit was taking part in Israel’s final push deep into Lebanon aimed at maximizing Israeli gains against Hezbollah before a UN-ordered cease-fire came into force early Monday.
Tearful friends and relatives began gathering Sunday morning at the Grossman home in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, and the news of his death spread swiftly around the neighborhood. But the army withheld publication of his name until relatives outside Israel were informed.
David Grossman, whose novels and political essays have been translated into 20 languages, is an outspoken advocate of conciliation with the Arabs and of ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. But, like most Israelis, he supported Israel’s retaliation when Hezbollah fighters attacked an army patrol inside Israel on July 12 and unleashed a barrage of rockets on civilians in the north. By Thursday he said the war had gone on long enough. The turning point came the previous day when the government approved a plan to launch an 11th-hour campaign meant to inflict a devastating blow to Hezbollah. In a joint news conference with fellow novelists Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, Grossman denounced the plan as dangerous and counterproductive. “Out of concern for the future of Israel and our place here, the fighting should be stopped now, to give a chance to negotiations,” he said. Grossman urged Israel to accept a proposal by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora - which later formed the core of the UN resolution for ending the conflict - calling for the deployment of Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon with the help of an international force that would end Hezbollah’s control over the area. “This solution is the victory that Israel wanted,” Grossman said. He warned that stepping up the offensive could trigger the collapse of Siniora’s government and the strengthening of Hezbollah - the very force Israel set out to destroy. “It’s still possible to prevent it,” Grossman said. “This is the last moment.”
Grossman, an Israeli-born son of a refugee from Nazi Europe, has written critically acclaimed novels about the Holocaust and about political and social injustice. In 1987, he wrote “The Yellow Wind,” a sympathetic look at Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, a rare attitude at the time that made him a spokesman for Israel’s peace camp.
Israel halted its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas as a U.N.-imposed cease-fire went into effect Monday after a month of warfare that killed more than 900 people, devastated much of south Lebanon and forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters. A half hour after the cease-fire took hold, Israeli warplanes — a regular fixture in Lebanese skies during the monthlong war — were absent across huge swaths of the country, including the Bekaa Valley, where airstrikes hit about an hour before.
Thousands of cars packed with luggage and some with mattresses strapped to the roof jammed the bombed-out Zahrani highway linking the southern cities of Nabatiyeh, Tyre and Sidon, as Lebanese troops scrambled to repair roads in time for the deluge of refugees returning home. Hundreds of refugees camped out in a Beirut park packed up their belongings to return to the city’s southern suburbs.
There were no immediate reports of Hezbollah rockets being fired into Israel, a day after it fired more than 250 rockets, the worst daily barrage since fighting started July 12.
Some exhausted Israeli forces pulled out of southern Lebanon early Monday, but were being replaced by fresh troops, and the army said there will be no immediate withdrawal from positions seized in the last few days. The army said in a statement the military was told not to initiate any action after 8 a.m. (1 a.m. EST) Monday, but “the forces will do everything to prevent being hit.”
We shall see how well this holds; it would only take a couple rockets fired by a Hezbollah splinter cell to crank it back up.
Arab countries criticized a U.N. Security Council resolution for not clearly labeling Israel the main aggressor in the conflict with Hezbollah, but expressed cautious hopes that an end to the monthlong conflict could be nearing.
Eyptian President Hosni Mubarak was to meet Sunday with the foreign minister of Iran — Hezbollah’s top ally — to stress that the region could not bear any more tension and push for the implementation of the U.N. resolution, a state-run Egyptian newspaper reported Saturday. The meeting comes a day before the cease-fire is to take effect at 8 a.m. Beirut time Monday (1 a.m. EDT).
The Arab League criticized the U.N. Security Council for not labeling Israel as the main aggressor, but said the peace plan was the best option to halt fighting that has claimed nearly 900 lives. “The resolution is the best that can be achieved in the mean time under the unbalanced international equation,” said Ahmed bin Heli, the league’s assistant secretary-general.
Qatar, the only Arab League member on the 15-nation Security Council, voted in favor of the resolution, which passed unanimously Friday.
Obviously, since the United States has veto power in the Security Council, the resolution was not going to label Israel as the aggressor. Overall, it is difficult to see the resolution as anything but a win for the Arabs. Not only do they get Israel to cease bombing operations but a UN peacekeeping force in the south of Lebanon gives that state’s government a chance to exert full sovereignty over the country.
Israel is willing to discuss a possible release of Hizbollah prisoners in exchange for freeing two Israeli soldiers abducted by Lebanese guerrillas last month, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Sunday.
[...]
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he will not negotiate to free the soldiers Hizbollah captured in a July 12 cross-border raid, but Israel has traded prisoners for its own captives in the past. “Israel has done, is doing and will do all it is able to do in order to effect the return home of the sons,” Olmert told his cabinet at the outset of its weekly session on Sunday. Israel Radio quoted Olmert as telling ministers he would name a senior official to deal with the issue and “a tremendous struggle is being waged to free them.”
Haaretz said Israel would negotiate the release of the troops and that in exchange Israel would be ready to free several Lebanese prisoners and about 20 other Hizbollah men it has captured during its current offensive in Lebanon.
One certainly hopes Haaretz has it wrong here. For one thing, as anyone who has taken an elementary economics course knows, rewarding behavior yields more of it. If terrorists can get 30-40 people released for every Israeli they kidnap, they’ll happily kidnap more Israelis. Moreover, Israel has launched two major military actions, in both Gaza and Lebanon, rather than negotiate for the return of hostages. It would be perverse irony, indeed, were they to negotiate after causing so much death and destruction.
AP has compiled a useful list of What’s allowed on planes, what’s not? in the aftermath of the foiled plot to blow up several planes en route to the United States from the United Kingdom.
The government’s ban on liquids and gels in airliner passenger cabins is confusing travelers. Further complicating matters is a carry-on ban on some trans-Atlantic flights.
The restrictions are part of tighter airline security ordered by U.S. and British governments in the wake of a foiled terror plot involving liquid explosives.
The new policies aren’t always clear or consistent.
For example, carry-on baggage — including most purses and laptop computers — is banned on all flights from Britain and on some flights from the U.S. to Britain. British Airways bans carry-on baggage from the U.S. to the U.K., but U.S. airlines do not.
British authorities require passengers to taste baby formula or milk at checkpoints, but U.S. officials only want to look at it.
It is unclear whether some items, such as liquid eyeliner, are considered to be a liquid or gel. The Transportation Security Administration advises travelers to check such items.
“Leave the Chanel and the high-priced stuff in checked baggage,” said British Airways spokesman John Lampl.
Laptops, iPods and cell phones are banned from the passenger cabin on all flights to the U.S. from Britain and on British Airways flights from the U.S. to the U.K. Travelers can carry a crossword puzzle that fits into a pocket, plus a pencil or pen. But newspapers will not be allowed, Lampl said.
To help security officials move people through security as quickly as possible, TSA chief Kip Hawley offers some simple advice:
“Declutter your bag.”
Since announcing what’s allowed in passenger cabins, the TSA has clarified some of its policies.
Liquids or gels not allowed in passenger cabins:
_Beverages
_Shampoo
_Suntan lotion
_Creams
_Toothpaste
_Hair gel
The TSA permits:
_Baby formula, which must be presented for inspection at the checkpoint
_Prescription medicines that match the passenger’s name
_Essential nonprescription medicines, such as insulin
_Electronic items such as laptops, CD players and iPods; British Airways flights to Britain do not allow them.
British Airways PLC, the largest carrier between Britain and the United States, offers these guidelines for carry-on items.
Allowed in the cabins:
_Pocket-size wallets and pocket-size purses, such as money, credit cards and identity cards
_Travel documents essential for the journey such as passports and tickets
_Prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (for example, a diabetic kit), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic
_Spectacles and sunglasses, without cases
_Contact lens holders, without bottles of solution
_Female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed, including tampons, pads, towels and wipes
_Unboxed tissues and handkerchiefs
_Keys, but no electrical key fobs.
For those carrying an infant on a British Airways flight, the following are allowed:
_Baby food and milk, but the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger
_Sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, such as diapers, wipes, creams and diaper disposal bags.
Not allowed:
_Handbags
_Cosmetics, including lipstick
_All electronic items
_Newspapers (British Airways has them on board for passengers)
Israel has announced it will end its war in Lebanon early Monday morning.
Israel will halt its war in Lebanon at 7 a.m. Monday (midnight EDT Sunday night), a senior Israeli government official said Saturday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter. Israel’s Cabinet was to endorse the U.N. cease-fire resolution later Sunday.
Israeli helicopters, meanwhile, flew hundreds of commandos into the Hezbollah heartland, and some army units reached the Litani River on Saturday as both sides indicated they would accept the U.N. cease-fire plan to stop heavy fighting still raging in southern Lebanon.
It’s a very eerie thing to both announce a specific endpoint for a war and continue the killing in the nonce. This isn’t a criticism of Israel, just an observation on the nature of things.
As regular readers know, I was an MLRS (rocket artillery) platoon leader during Desert Storm. We got word late the evening of February 27 that the war would end at noon local time the next day. Obviously, we were ecstatic. Around nine the next morning, though, we were ordered to prepare for one last fire mission, which would have lobbed hundreds of additional rounds–each containing 744 dual purposes improved conventional munition mini-grenades–onto unspecified targets. Given that we’d already won the war, it struck me as macabre, indeed. Thankfully, for reasons I do not know until this day, the mission was called off.
A joint U.S.-French effort to pass a resolution calling for an end of hostilities in Lebanon was unanimously approved Friday by the U.N. Security Council:
The Security Council agreed unanimously on Friday on a measure calling for a full cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, deploying 30,000 Lebanese and United Nations forces in southern Lebanon and calling upon Israel to withdraw its forces “in parallel.”
After rejecting earlier versions, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel accepted the resolution. But, under a deal an Israeli official said was approved by the United States, Mr. Olmert will wait until Sunday to obtain his cabinet’s approval. Until then, he will expand his monthlong military campaign against the Hezbollah militia and its rocket arsenal.
Mr. Olmert’s decision to accept the draft and yet continue with a stepped-up military offensive capped an evening of diplomatic brinksmanship and political gamesmanship that may help him deflect criticism of his handling of the war, castigated as tentative by the opposition and some in his own party.
Secretary General Kofi Annan said he would be in touch with the Lebanese and Israeli governments this weekend to determine when the full cessation of hostilities would take effect.
As for Bernstein’s other complaints about the resolution, one suspects that the implementation of this ceasefire in its entirety–like most–will be problematic. However, the force to be deployed in southern Lebanon will be much larger, have a more substantial mandate, and be staffed by credibly neutral (if not pro-Israeli) forces from countries unlikely to collaborate with Hezbollah to launch further attacks. Given the precarious position of the Israeli government, and the general ineffectiveness of the current campaign in undermining Hezbollah’s operational capacity, this ceasefire is probably the best and most realistic option for Israel at this time.
Update: Bernstein disputes my characterization of this paragraph as calling for Hezbollah to release the soldiers it abducted, the action which sparked the conflict:
Emphasizing the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers[.]
I admit it’s written in bureaucratese, but I’m curious what other plausible interpretation this paragraph can have. And, no, I’m not in the mood to drag out my international organizations law casebook (which I think is in a box in my office downtown anyway).
Israel began an expanded ground offensive Friday in southern Lebanon after expressing dissatisfaction over an emerging cease-fire deal, government officials said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz decided to expand the offensive after meeting for four hours. Peretz instructed the military to launch the offensive, officials said.
Olmert’s spokesman, Asaf Shariv, told The Associated Press that the expanded incursion had already begun. An emerging cease-fire deal being worked out by the U.N. Security Council fails to meet Israel’s basic requirements, such as stationing robust international combat troops in southern Lebanon once Israel withdraws, Shariv said. “Yesterday we were very optimistic, but they (the Security Council) took the wrong turn,” Shariv said.
The government is implementing Wednesday’s Cabinet decision granting the army permission to carry out a massive ground offensive “to deal with the Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon, from which barrages of missiles continue to be launched against the Israeli civilian population,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
Variations of this headline have been running at YahooNews for two weeks. It’s difficult to know when there is actually an expansion of the ground offensive vice simply a lack of cycling of the stories.
A federal appeals court Friday upheld the constitutionality of the city’s random police inspections of subway riders’ bags. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which argued that the searches were ineffective and an unprecedented intrusion into privacy.
The appeals court ruled that a lower court judge properly concluded the program put in place in July 2005 after the deadly London subway bombings was a reasonably effective deterrent and that the intrusion on riders’ privacy was minimal. It was proper for Judge Richard M. Berman to conclude that preventing a terrorist attack on the subway was important enough to subject subway riders to random searches, the court wrote. The ruling noted that the system had been targeted, unsuccessfully, at least twice in the last nine years and that it was “unsurprising and undisputed that terrorists view it as a prime target.”
From a precedent standpoint, this is no doubt correct. Given the terrorist threat, the searches are “reasonable” and people can simply not ride the subway if they do not wish to consent. However, I would argue that “random” searches actually are unreasonable, in that there is zero reasonable suspicion that random non-Muslims are going to blow up the subway.
Mike Douglas, who drew on his affable personality and singing talent during 21 years as a talk show host, died Friday on his 81st birthday, his wife said. He died at 5:30 a.m. in a Palm Beach Gardens hospital, said his wife, Genevieve Douglas. She wasn’t sure of the cause, but said he had been admitted Thursday. Douglas became dehydrated on the golf course a few weeks ago and had been treated on and off since. “He was coming along fine, we thought. It was really a shock,” she said. “We never anticipated this to happen.”
Douglas’ afternoon show, which aired from 1961 to 1982, featured his ballad and big-band singing style, other musicians, comedians, sports figures and political personalities, including seven former, sitting or future presidents. “People still believe ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ was a talk show, and I never correct them, but I don’t think so,” Douglas said in his 1999 memoir, “I’ll Be Right Back: Memories of TV’s Greatest Talk Show.” “It was really a music show, with a whole lot of talk and laughter in between numbers.”
[...]
Douglas was among the “early settlers” in daytime talk shows, said Robert Thompson, a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “Mike Douglas was an old-fashioned traditionalist, holding down the fort while the culture was changing,” Thompson said. “He was always the very friendly talk show host, nice to everybody. He would lean toward his guest as if he really cared. He owned that territory.”
Hosts Phil Donahue, Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin also found success about the same time. Douglas said in his book that people often confused him with Griffin, another singer of Irish heritage. (Douglas was born Michael Delaney Dowd Jr. in Chicago, Illinois.)
Douglas fondly recalled when Tiger Woods, who as a preschooler was already drawing attention, appeared on the same 1978 show as Bob Hope, an avid golfer. “I don’t know what kind of drugs they’ve got this kid on,” Hope quipped, “but I want some.”
Douglas was genial most of the time — he was nicknamed “the Cary Grant of the coffee break,” according to Allmusic.com — but confided in his memoir that his composure was sorely tested one week in 1972 when former Beatle John Lennon and wife, Yoko Ono, were his unlikely guest hosts. One of the guest celebrities they selected was well-known anti-war activist Jerry Rubin. “He just got on my nerves. It sounded like this guy hated the president, the Congress, everyone in business, the military, all police and just about everything America stands for,” Douglas said. He recalled becoming confrontational with Rubin. But Lennon “picked up the mantle of Kind and Gentle Host, and he did it quite well, reinterpreting Jerry’s comments to take some of the sting out and adding a little humor to keep things cool,” Douglas said.
Douglas also had a number of hit singles, first with Kay Kyser’s big band — he was a featured performer on the radio and eventual television program, “Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge” — and later on his own. “The Men in My Little Girl’s Life” hit the top 10 in 1966.
I recall the show during its final years, when I was a young teenager. I remember an episode where hard rocker Ted Nugent was the guest and how well he and Douglas got along. Looking back, that’s rather remarkable considering the divergence of their musical styles. But I think they had mutual respect for each other’s work ethic and the tribulations of the lifestyle.
A man aboard a Qatari Airways flight fought with flight attendants Thursday, prompting the pilot to return to Amman, but the incident was not a hijacking attempt, a government spokesman said. Initial reports from airport security officials and a Qatari Airlines spokesman said the man, identified as an Eritrean, tried to force his way into the cockpit carrying a canister that the officials said contained a liquid.
But Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh told The Associated Press that it “was a quarrel and not a hijacking attempt” and that the liquid was medicine. The man had tried to go to a bathroom 10 minutes after the flight took off from Amman for the Qatari capital, Doha, Judeh said. When the attendants told the passenger he could not leave his seat yet, he pushed an attendant to the ground before others restrained him, Judeh said. The pilot returned the plane to Amman, where the man was detained.
Given that the airline industry is in a frenzy over this morning’s foiled attempt to stage a mega-9/11 in the UK, this was bad timing. Still, the combination of a bad stomach, a language barrier, and inflexible airline regulations is a bad one.
Mom’s dieting habits can have a bad influence on the children. Some research indicates youngsters learn attitudes about dieting through observation. For some youngsters, that might mean an unhealthy fixation on body image, experts warn. “It’s like trying on Mom’s high heels. They’re trying on their diets, too,” said Carolyn Costin, spokeswoman for the National Eating Disorder Association.
As obesity rates climb among children, health officials are warning parents about the dangers of junk food and lack of exercise. Yet few speak about parents who meticulously count every calorie that crosses their lips. That type of obsession can be just as destructive and eventually teaches kids to weigh their self-worth on the scale, said Christine Gerbstadt, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.
While fathers also play a crucial a role in shaping children’s attitudes about food, research has focused primarily on women and their daughters, since females are more likely to diet and worry about body image.
Of course, being grossly overweight also sets a rather bad example for one’s kids. . . .
An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.
