Gil Hoffman
The Israeli government and politicians sent mixed messages on Thursday regarding plans by former US president Jimmy Carter to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus next week.
On the one hand, senior Israeli diplomatic officials in Jerusalem said they were "outraged" at Carter's decision. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have declined to meet with him when he visits Israel, citing "scheduling conflicts," while sources close to Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said he was refusing to see Carter because of the Mashaal meeting.
But President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Shas chairman Eli Yishai and Israel Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman have all agreed to meet with Carter.
The former president, who brokered the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt, has been persona non grata for many Israelis since he published his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in late 2006.
Carter will arrive Sunday afternoon and meet with Peres that evening. On Monday, he will visit Sderot, meet with Barak and speak at an event sponsored by Ha'aretz's business Web site. On Tuesday he will convene with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. On Wednesday, he will meet with Yishai and Lieberman before traveling ...   more »

The U.S. Navy says one of its ships encountered a small Iranian high-speed boat in the central Persian Gulf. The Navy says the boat stayed away after the ship fired a flare.
Two other similar Iranian boats in the area did not approach as closely.
The USS Typhoon tried unsuccessfully to establish radio contact with the Iranian boat after it came within an estimated 200 yards of the Typhoon on Thursday, outside Iranian territorial waters. A Navy official says the ship then fired the flare and continued on its way northward without incident.
The official said Friday that the Iranian boats did not appear to have been armed.
It was at least the second U.S. Navy encounter with an aggressive Iranian high-speed boat this year. In January, Iranian boats made what the Navy called provocative moves near a U.S. ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Original Source
   more »

Two Palestinian employees detained mere days before they planned to lace food at Ramat Gan grill bar with tasteless, odorless toxin
Efrat Weiss
The thwarting of an alarming terror plot was cleared for publication on Thursday, almost three weeks after a joint Shin Bet and police operation led to the arrest of two Palestinian employees of the 'Grill Express' restaurant in Ramat Gan.
Terror in the Sky  
Shin Bet fears attack on Israeli plane  / Alex Fishman   
Number of security guards on flights boosted, helicopters escort takeoffs and arrivals in several airports worldwide for fear of missile launching. Defense source: Threat concrete and we are doing everything possible     
The men, Eihab Abu Rial and Anas Salum, both 21-year-old residents of the West Bank city of Nablus, had planned to lace dishes served at the establishment with a powerful toxin without odor or taste, in the hopes of killing as many patrons as possible.  
The two did not have working permits and were residing in Israel illegally. While in Nablus, they had been recruited to the al-Aqsa Martyr's Bridges, the military wing of Fatah, under the guidance and funding of Hizbullah.  
The men were arrested by ...   more »

by Ezra HaLevi
(IsraelNN.com) The Western Wall has been deemed too controversial a place for US President George W. Bush to visit. He is opting instead for Masada – where Jewish rebels committed mass suicide.
Bush will be visiting Israel as part of Israel’s 60th Independence Day celebrations. His visit will be 60 hours long. In addition to addressing the Knesset, Bush is reportedly searching for a symbolic location to visit, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as his tour guide.
People of all races and faiths flock to the Western Wall to pray to the G-d of Israel
Flash 90
Haaretz reported that Bush’s aids were leaning toward the Masada fortress. The site was where Jews held out against the Roman army, but were eventually beaten and committed suicide rather than face the humiliation and torture of captivity. Haaretz mentioned the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, the Golan Heights and the Western Wall, explicitly, as places deemed too controversial for Bush to visit.

The Western Wall, also called the Kotel ("wall" in Hebrew) or Wailing Wall, is the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. The mount itself is occupied by two Muslim structures and Jewish ...   more »

Researchers at the National Museum of Natural History, Paris were thrilled to finally confirm that a slab of Lebanese limestone depicts the body of a snake with two legs.
Researchers at the European Light Source (ESRF) in Grenoble, France used a high-powered super camera to validate their suspicions about the fossilized reptile.
Alexandra Houssaye, from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, said that the X-ray technique is useful because it allows researchers to get an in-depth glimpse of the inner structure of the creature without damaging the specimen.
"We were sure he had two legs but it was great to see it, and we hope to find other characteristics that we couldn't see on the other limb," said Houssaye.
Known as Eupodophis descouensi, the reptile is 33 inches long and comes from the Late Cretaceous, about 92 million years ago.
“It’s very rare,” Houssaye said of the specimen. “There are only five or six species known, and there are only three species with a leg preserved. So, it’s very unique.”
Although part of the vertebral column is absent and the tail has become detached and positioned near the head, the fibula, tibia and femur are unmistakable. Its hind limb ...   more »

Teacher thinks it's his job to get class to change personal beliefs
A community college in New York has been presented with a demand letter from the American Center for Law and Justice to halt a professor's classroom practices that allegedly have damaged at least one student – so far.
The letter from the ACLJ targets Suffolk County Community College and will be the prelude to a federal lawsuit if the issue isn't resolved, the organization said.
At issue is a professor's demand that students "change their own personal viewpoints or state that they are unsure of whether their own personal beliefs are correct" on religious issues, according to the letter.
That is an expression of hostility to religion, the letter explains.
The ACLJ said it is representing Gina DeLuca, a student who has been punished with lower grades and has been labeled "closed-minded" by a professor, who remained unidentified in the letter, because he demands that students acknowledge the possibility that God does not exist in order to participate in his philosophy class, which is required for graduation.
"The ACLJ has sent a letter demanding that the school end its discriminatory actions against DeLuca or face a federal lawsuit," ...   more »

By Susan Jones
"Good parents in California could be jailed," unless they rise up and oppose a bill intended to ban the spanking of children, a conservative group is warning.
The bill, AB 2943, is scheduled for a vote on Tuesday, April 15, and the Campaign for Children and Families is urging Californians to speak against the measure at a hearing preceding the vote.
"AB 2943 would label good, loving parents -- who occasionally use a little paddle, a ruler, a little stick, or a brush to correct their youngster's misbehavior -- as official "child abusers" in the eyes of the law," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.
The bill is a repeat of legislation introduced last year by Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber. "The vast majority of child abuse victims and fatalities are young children," Lieber said when she first introduced her Child Abuse And Infant/Toddler Protection Bill. "Too often the abuse begins as some form of 'discipline.' Existing law is clearly not doing enough to protect the youngest, smallest, most vulnerable members of our society."
The bill targets people who "willfully" inflict "unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering" on a child.
The bill says ...   more »

A Capital City With The Devil in the Details?
By Dan Morse
Presidential candidate John McCain keeps calling Washington the city of Satan. Turns out he's not alone.
"McCain was right," said David Bay, speaking by phone from Lexington, S.C., where as director of Cutting Edge Ministries he has long asserted that Washington's streets are positioned to usher in Lucifer as "the ultimate master of Government Center."
"You will need to have your maps o Washington, D.C., opened in front of you as we proceed," reads a treatise on the subject posted on Bay's Internet site.
Using Dupont and Logan circles as northern points, Bay instructs, you can trace various interlocking streets to form a demonic pentagram, one that bores directly into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
"It must be true, it's on the Internet," Larraine Wolman, a British tourist, said in perfect deadpan while gazing at the White House just before midnight recently.
She agreed to review Bay's map. Could she feel Satan?
No.
Wolman and her three British companions turned to walk back to their quarters at the Mayflower Hotel. This reporter followed, determining what they knew about the place. They knew that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer had ...   more »

Obama imagines things.
by John McCormack
In an interview with GQ last week, Karl Rove accused Barack Obama of falsely writing in The Audacity of Hope that "'people like . . . Karl Rove say we are a Christian nation.'"
"I did not say that. I confronted him about it. At the White House," Rove told GQ. Asked how Obama responded, Rove replied: "Well, first he denied that I was in the book! And then he denied that it said that I said that it was a Christian nation. And then when I pulled out the thing [he had a copy of the offensive page with him] and showed it to him, he sort of blah-blah-blah-blah-blah- blah-blah."
Did Obama libel Rove? The Obama campaign did not respond to an email requesting comment. In the offending passage from The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote, "But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power, for Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, the fiery rhetoric was more than a matter of campaign strategy. They were true believers who meant what they said, whether it was 'No new taxes' or 'We are a Christian ...   more »

Crist intends to sign the bill, which allows weapons to be in locked cars.
John Kennedy
Tallahassee Bureau Chief
About 500,000 Floridians with concealed-weapons permits will soon be able to carry guns to work as long as they keep them in their cars.
The Florida Legislature handed a major election-year victory to the National Rifle Association on Wednesday when the Senate approved legislation (CS/HB 503) barring employers from banning guns on their property, provided that employees and customers with the weapons have concealed-weapons permits and leave the guns locked in their cars.
Voting 26-13, the Senate split along party lines -- just as the House did a week earlier in approving the proposal. Democrats sided with business groups that fiercely opposed the change. Republicans voted with the NRA.
Republican Gov. Charlie Crist said he has no problem signing the measure into law.
"The Second Amendment is very important," Crist said of the constitutional right to bear arms. "I understand there are competing interests; there always are in this process. But people being protected is most important to me."
Wednesday's vote caps a three-year effort by the NRA to win passage of a guns-at-work bill. Its campaign included deluging lawmakers with ...   more »

Bob Egelko,
 The state Supreme Court dealt a final blow Wednesday to San Francisco's voter-approved ban on handguns, rejecting the city's appeal of a lower-court ruling that sharply limited the ability of localities to regulate firearms.
The court's unanimous order was a victory for the National Rifle Association, which sued on behalf of gun owners, advocates and dealers a day after the measure passed with 58 percent of the vote in November 2005. The initiative has never taken effect.
The ordinance, Proposition H, would have forbidden San Francisco residents to possess handguns, exempting only law enforcement officers and others who needed guns for professional purposes. It would have also prohibited the manufacture, sale or distribution of any type of firearms or ammunition in San Francisco.
Lower courts ruled that the measure interfered with a statewide system of gun regulation, which bars certain types of weapons and allows others. The rulings did not address the scope of the constitutional right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, the focus of a pending U.S. Supreme Court case involving a handgun ban in Washington, D.C.
The state courts recognized that "law-abiding citizens are part of the solution, not part of the problem of ...   more »

Up to 4.3 billion barrels in Bakken shale, some in industry skeptical
BISMARCK, N.D. - The government estimated Thursday that up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology.
The U.S. Geological Survey called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface. Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.
North Dakota's entire oil production hit 137,000 barrels a day in January, the latest figures available. Industry officials believe the state's record production of 148,500 barrels a day, set in 1984, will be surpassed this year.
Donald Kessel, vice president of Houston-based Murex Petroleum Corp., said he believes the Geological Survey's assessment of how much oil can be recovered in the Bakken may be high.
"That's a lot of zeros," Kessel said Thursday.
Kessel said his company was the ...   more »

The Bush administration is likely to move its research on one of the most contagious animal diseases from an isolated island laboratory to the U.S. mainland near herds of livestock, raising concerns about a catastrophic outbreak.
Skeptical Democrats in Congress are demanding to see internal documents they believe highlight the risks and consequences of the decision. An epidemic of the disease, foot and mouth, which only affects animals, could devastate the livestock industry.
One such government report, produced last year and already turned over to lawmakers by the Homeland Security Department, combined commercial satellite images and federal farm data to show the proximity to livestock herds of locations that have been considered for the new lab. "Would an accidental laboratory release at these locations have the potential to affect nearby livestock?" asked the nine-page document. It did not directly answer the question.
Click here to discuss this story.
A simulated outbreak of the disease — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the ...   more »