By Bob UnruhTour guides at the American birthplace of Jamestown, Va., are being prevented from explaining Christian history and are under orders to refer to items such as the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer only as "religious" in nature. That according to California pastor and researcher Todd DuBord who says he was stunned on a recent tour of the historic town when "our guide responded to our inquiry by saying that she was 'unable to speak about the plaques. We are only allowed to say they are religious plaques.'" Jamestown is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year. When the issue arose, DuBord's group was in the heart of the community which had been established in 1607 – 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Mass. – to make money for the Virginia Company and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ on orders from the newly crowned King James I. "While the tour guides at the Jamestown Settlement and Museum were cordial and informative on many points, we were all caught off guard by their unwillingness (yes, unwillingness) to discuss Jamestown's religious roots. As one of the tour guides was leading us through the very heart of the replica ...   more »

by Hana Levi Julian(IsraelNN.com) A record number of Jews converting to Islam last year prompted the Shas Knesset faction Tuesday to propose a bill that would jail missionaries who proselytize to individuals in Israel.
Hareidi-religious Sephardic party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef urged Shas faction leader MK Yaakov Margi to propose the expansion of the current law against missionary activity after learning that a record number of Jews converted to Islam last year.
The existing law mandates six months’ imprisonment for those who attempt to persuade Israeli minors to leave their faith or who perform a conversion ceremony on the children and teens.
The current legislation also imposes a five-year jail term and/or a fine on anyone who offers money or other goods to persuade an individual under age 18 to convert to another faith.
It does not, however, outlaw missionizing towards adults, a deficiency that would be corrected by the new law.
Climbing Numbers of Jews Abandoning Judaism
Some 70 Jews left the faith of their fathers to join the Muslim community, up from 33 converts to Islam in 2005 and 27 such conversions in 2004. The number of Muslims who convert to Judaism was dramatically lower, with only ...   more »

By Danny Rubinstein  
If we examine the headlines in the Palestinian media in recent years, there is hardly any doubt that Jerusalem is the key issue on the agenda. Sometimes there's talk of restrictions on Muslims worshiping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque; sometimes there's talk of the purchase of more Arab houses by associations of religious settlers. And at the end of last week there were more reports of Muslim protests against the work at the Mugrabi Bridge, and violent demonstrations at the Qalandiya checkpoint in northern Jerusalem as well as at the crossing point to Bethlehem in the south.
Newspaper photos showed agile young men climbing the ("racist," in the Palestinian version) separation wall and flying a Palestinian flag on it.
From the Palestinian perspective, it would appear, the main problem is not recognition of Israel, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the violence and the terror or even the problem of the refugees and the right of return. The problem is Jerusalem. Just as the State of Israel would not be able to exist if the right of the 1948 refugees to return were to be recognized, it can be said that a Palestinian state could not ...   more »

Source: CNS News
Mar 14, 2007
Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval has denounced the much-touted Saudi peace plan as an attempt to get Israel to commit suicide.
The plan, which will be featured at an Arab League summit in Riyadh later this month and has been the focus of recent visits to the region by senior US officials, demands the following of Israel:
A full withdrawal from every inch of Judea and Samaria;
The surrender of the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the Old City, Temple Mount and Western Wall;
A full withdrawal from every inch of the Golan Heights;
Conferring citizenship on millions of foreign-born Arabs who, with the full backing of the international community, claim to be "Palestinian refugees."
In return, the Arab states promise to make peace with what would no longer be the Jewish state.
Shoval noted that the demands on Israel contained in the Saudi plan are actually presented as preconditions for peace, effectively making the initiative a "recipe for the destruction of Israel" that is not up for negotiation.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni continue to talk of the Saudi plan as a positive development ...   more »

Israeli officials expressed disappointment Wednesday that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana backed a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights following talks in Damascus with Syrian leaders, rather than publicly calling Syria to task for supporting terrorism.
But, the officials said, Solana's remarks did not signify a significant change in EU policy, since the EU has backed a return of the Golan to Syria for years.
Nevertheless, one official said, "This is not the message that Syria needed to hear at this time. Syria needed to hear that it must stop supporting terrorism, stop trying to undermine the government in Lebanon, stop supporting Hizbullah and Iran."
Solana, the official said, went to Damascus with a number of "benchmarks," and Israel had hoped Solana would put Syria "in its place."
Solana's words on the Golan, the official said, were certainly not what Israel wanted to hear. "We are interested in working for your country to return to itself the territories that were captured in [the 1967 war]," Solana said at a press conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem after meeting with President Bashar Assad.
Solana's remarks prompted strong reactions from MKs. "There is no chance Israel will retreat from ...   more »

EU foreign policy chief says EU wants to help Syria regain territory captured by Israel in 1967, urges Syria to help ease tension in Lebanon, Iraq
The European Union supports Syria's goal of regaining the occupied Golan Heights from Israel, the EU foreign policy chief said after meeting President Bashar Assad on Wednesday.
"We would like to work as much as possible to see your country Syria recuperate the territory taken in 1967," Javier Solana told a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem.
Syria has made it clear that its cooperation to help end violence in Iraq was tied to Western, especially US, backing for its peaceful campaign to regain the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied during the Middle East war four decades ago.
Israel annexed the territory in 1981.
Solana urged Syria to do more to help ease tensions in Lebanon and Iraq during the visit that ended a two-year freeze on high-level EU contacts with Damascus.
Before his meeting with Assad,Solana called on senior Syrian officials to crack down on alleged smuggling of arms across the border into Lebanon and contribute to stabilizing Iraq, EU diplomats said.
"The message of Solana is that this can be ...   more »

Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent.
One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
Though the Yellowstone system is active and expected to eventually blow its top, scientists don't think it will erupt any time soon.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.
Yet significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range of mountains, in a total surprise, is getting shorter.
The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Solid Earth, suggest that a slow and gradual movement of a volcano over time can shape a landscape more than a violent eruption.
For the past 17 years, researchers used Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites to monitor the horizontal and vertical motion of the Yellowstone caldera — a huge volcanic crater formed by a super-eruption more than 600,000 years ago.
The movement of the caldera indicates what's going on underground where magma, or molten rock, is stored for the next eruption.
When magma builds ...   more »

Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
J. Craig Anderson, Tribune
It’s not just paranoia. You are being watched. The period following Sept. 11, 2001, has been a technological Renaissance Era for agencies and companies that monitor, track and record the activities of everyday people.
By comparison, the legal system charged with regulating these new surveillance systems is still in the Dark Ages, critics say, with technology outpacing lawmakers every step of the way.
Low-cost digital video cameras, Internet monitoring software and myriad consumer tracking systems that convert behavior into data have raised new questions about how far a society should be allowed to go in scrutinizing its members.
In short, when innocuous surveillance becomes ubiquitous, does that make it insidious?
Police organizations stress the benefit of increased surveillance in solving crimes, but others say the loss of privacy to law-abiding citizens has been too great.
“Do we want to live in a place where every move, every action, every thought, perhaps, is monitored and regulated?” said Torin Monahan, an Arizona State University professor researching the effects of surveillance on communities. “Do we want to live in a society that is totally devoid of trust?”
THE SURVEILLANCE AGE
Take a ...   more »

By Ryan Jones
An Iranian defense official who reportedly defected to the West last week may be in possession of evidence that could be used justify military action against Iran.
Former Iranian deputy defense minister Ali Rez Asgari was secreted away from Turkey to an undisclosed location in Europe by Western officials.
This after he informed American officials several weeks earlier that he wished to defect and provide assistance in bringing down those running his country.
According to a London-based Arabic newspaper, Asgari was in possession of documents definitively linking the Iranian regime to the actions of Lebanon's Hizb'allah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the two main insurgency forces in Iraq - the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps.
Asgari was also well acquainted with Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as Tehran's preparations for possible military conflict with the US.
If the evidence - particularly regarding Iran's role in Iraq's instability - is verifiable, it could be enough to prompt Washington to begin putting war preparations in motion.
Original Source

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Americans can have a direct role in winning the war on terrorism by shutting down the flow of cash to terror-supporting nations through their investment decisions, according to an initiative presented in Washington.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, says many Americans have been horrified to learn their money is being invested in publicly traded companies that do business with U.S.-designated state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, Sudan, Syria and North Korea.
"For too long, far too many Americans have felt powerless in the face of the terrorists who are determined to hurt this country and other freedom-loving people," Gaffney said a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington.
Gaffney said some of the ways American citizens are financing terror are personal investments, public pension funds, mutual funds, college endowments and life insurance portfolios.
A study issued by Gaffney's group two years ago showed about 100 of the leading American public pension funds had $188 billion invested in companies that partner with terrorist-sponsoring regimes. The study, "The Terrorism Investments of the 50 States", indicated approximately $73 billion of that total was flowing to American enemies.
A new poll by Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research ...   more »

Tehran has lost contact with a senior Iranian officer serving in Iraq, according to London-based Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat. Iranian source speculates that he may have been taken into custody by Americans
Roee Nahmias
Iranian Disappears  
‘Iranian general defected with classified documents’ / Roee Nahmias  
Former colleague says Ali Rez Asgari left Turkey with documents, maps that shed light on Revolutionary Guards' links to Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad; defector was privy to confidential information regarding Iran’s plans in case of conflict with US, he adds 
Three weeks ago the Iranian armed forces command in Teheran lost contact with a senior officer who had been serving in Iraq with the al-Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to a senior Iranian official cited in the Wednesday edition of the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.
The Iranian source said that it is still unclear why contact with the officer, Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, was lost. "It is possible that the American forces in Iraq arrested him along with a group of 13 Iranian military and intelligence officials," he said, adding that this is just one of the scenarios being investigated by Tehran.  
Former Iranian defense minister's fate still ...   more »