The desert kingdom supplies the cash and the killersNick Fielding and Sarah Baxter, Washington
It was an occasion for tears and celebration as the Knights of Martyrdom proclaimed on video: “Our brother Turki fell during the rays of dawn, covered in blood after he was hit by the bullets of the infidels, following in the path of his brother.” The flowery language could not disguise the brutal truth that a Saudi family had lost two sons fighting for Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The elder brother, Khaled, had been a deputy commander of a crack jihadist “special forces” unit. After his “glorious” death, Turki took his place.
“He was deeply affected by the martyrdom of his brother,” the Knights said. “He became more ambitious and more passionate about defending the land of Islam and dying as a martyr, like his brother.”
Turki’s fervent wish was granted earlier this year, but another Saudi national who travelled to Iraq had second thoughts. He was a graduate from a respectable family of teachers and professors who was recruited in a Saudi Arabian mosque and sent to Iraq with $1,000 in travel expenses and the telephone number of a smuggler who could get him across the ...   more »

Netanyahu: The Jewish State is the front line of the Christian West. As soon as Islam has broken through the Jewish front line in the Middle East, it will conquer the West. Israel is the Christian West’s security wall.
By Aviel Schneider
US President George Bush’s recent warning of a possible third world war in connection with Iran’s atomic program caused worldwide unrest. Only a few months earlier, Israel’s former Mossad chief, Ephraim HaLevy, also warned of a looming outbreak of a third world war.
In Europe politicians barely give credence to the threat of a World War III and say instead that “rhetoric,” such as HaLevy’s comments, endangers a peace process. Meanwhile, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls UN sanctions against his country useless.
“The resolution of the UN Security Council is not worth the paper on which it is printed,” Ahmadinejad shouted on the Iranian TV while publicizing that his country is capable of firing 11,000 rockets per minute on Israel.
Israeli politicians and scientists warn that a world war in the atomic age would spell the end of mankind. Israeli combat jets had bombed a Syrian atomic reactor, whose construction began three years ago with the help of ...   more »

17P/Holmes has unexpectedly brightened, now visible to the naked eye
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that has unexpectedl brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.
Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.
The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter.
The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.
"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."
Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.
A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said. ...   more »

212 out of 765 processing employees infected – company says HIV-privacy laws nix screening 
Alabama health officials have identified 212 workers who have tested positive for tuberculosis at a single poultry plant owned by one of the largest processors in the U.S.
In two batteries of skin tests last month, given to 765 fresh processing employees at the Decatur, Ala., plant owned by Wayne Farms LLC by the State Department of Public Health's Tuberculosis Control Division, 28 percent were found to be infected, including one with active tuberculosis disease, which is contagious. Doctors have yet to evaluate X-rays for 165 current workers who tested positive to determine if any more are contagious.
The testing was prompted by an earlier active TB case – a former Wayne Farms worker.
Both employees with active TB are Hispanics born in countries where the disease is prevalent, heath officials said.
When the disease is latent, those with TB are not contagious, but the TB bacteria remains in the body for life unless it is treated. Once it becomes active it may cause permanent damage to the lungs and other organs and the airborne bacteria is easily spread by coughing, laughing or even talking. According ...   more »

By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.
“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.
Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.
“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”
As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.
The technology is ...   more »

By Con Coughlin
Soaring oil prices have made the country a power again - but its ruler's grip on politics, the media and economy has sinister implications for democracy. Con Coughlin reports from Moscow   
Standing in the shadow of the Lubyanka, the notorious former KGB headquarters in central Moscow, a small group of elderly women are gathered around a large slab of granite that commemorates one of the darkest episodes in Russia's history.
The slab was taken from one of the Solovetsky punishment camps near Archangel on the White Sea, which formed what the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn described as the Gulag Archipelago, where the victims of Stalin's terror were sent to their deaths in their tens of thousands.
It has been placed outside the Lubyanka as a memorial to the millions of victims of state persecution and repression during the Soviet era. A neighbouring monument to Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Bolshevik founder of the KGB, was unceremoniously torn down by an angry crowd of Muscovites shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s: all that now remains is a well-cut grass mound.
Wearing faded headscarves and threadbare coats to protect themselves from the bitter cold, the ...   more »

By Ingrid Melander Reuters - Sunday, November 4 08:06 pmBRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will seek to collect personal data on air passengers travelling to or from the 27-nation bloc and store them for 13 years, under draft anti-terrorism proposals to be unveiled on Tuesday.
The bloc's executive Commission will tell EU states they need to collect 19 pieces of personal data on international air travellers including phone number, e-mail address, payment details and travel agent, a draft seen by Reuters shows.
The plan mirrors a scheme put in place by the United States to collect Passenger Name Record (PNR) information after the 9/11 attacks.
"The availability of PNR data ... is necessary for the purpose of preventing and fighting terrorist offences and organised crime," the draft says.
Airlines would need to send the information to the first EU state where a plane is to land, the draft shows.
A Commission official said the system would not burden air carriers as they already collect such data for commercial purposes. "It is nothing new to information they already collect -- no new burdens on that," the official told Reuters.
The official said the draft was not final and elements suc ...   more »