Syrian President Bashar Assad, who in recent months has mixed comments about peace with threats of war, intended with his speech to the Syrian parliament on Tuesday to push off the dangers of a war this summer, according to in-depth evaluations of his speech in Jerusalem. According to these government assessments, performed on Wednesday, although Assad was intentionally vague, it was clear that he wanted to send a message that there was no threat of a war with Israel in the short term. Another point that emerged clearly from the speech, according to the assessments, was that it came in response to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's interview last week with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station, in which he called for direct negotiations. While ruling out such talks, Assad - according to these assessments - offered three options to kicking off negotiations, and in so doing demonstrated some flexibility. The first option is an Israeli announcement that it would agree to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights; the second option is that Israel provide "certain guarantees," such as the pledge allegedly given by prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to Assad's father, Hafez Assad, in which he supposedly unofficially gave his word ...   more »

Foreign ministry spokesman reports contact with Syria through Turkish, European, American mediators; Damascus yet to respond seriously to peace overtures by IsraelIsrael and Syria have been in contact through third parties for “some time,” but the mediators have been unable to get the two sides to resume peace talks, an Israeli official said Wednesday. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Turkey, European countries and US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have relayed messages to Syria. He said Syria has not responded seriously to the Israeli overtures and accused Damascus of exploiting the talks to improve ties with the  
In parliament speech following his reelection, Syrian president says, 'Israelis must remember that the cost of peace is lower than all wars. But if they are only sending messengers to us, this is not serious. They must provide us with guarantees that all of the Golan will be returned'   
"Different parties have been used to send messages. This is not new. It has been going on for quite some time," Regev said. The problem is not the lack of good people offering their good offices. The problem appears to be with the policy goals of the regime in Damascus." "While it is ...   more »

By DALE GAVLAK 
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Archaeologists called Tuesday for urgent steps to safeguard Petra, the ancient rose-red rock city recently picked as one of the new seven wonders of the world, saying an increase in visitors could damage it unless protective measures were taken.
"Choosing Petra as a world wonder has made the public even more aware of the need to conserve this unique heritage that we have," said Khairieh Amr, a senior archaeologist with Jordan's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. But Amr warned that Petra and other archaeological sites in the region could suffer because of a "building boom that is taking place" to expand tourist facilities. Fawwaz Khreisheh, head of the Department of Antiquities, which oversees and maintains the country's archaeological sites, said he was "very optimistic" the Cabinet would soon "give the green light" for a bylaw mandating a strategy to safeguard Petra. "We are hoping within this month or by August, the bylaw will be approved and we'll proceed with Petra Action Plan," Khreisheh told The Associated Press. Petra, whose popularity soared after the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," is known for its dramatic tombs and temple facades carved by Nabataean Arab ...   more »

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev are warning residents of Israel to prepare for a major earthquake that could damage one out of every six buildings in Jerusalem that date to the nation's founding.
The last significant quake to strike the region hit in the northern Dead Sea area on July 11, 1927, and left almost 300 people dead. Now Dr. Ron Avni, who specializes in the study of quakes, said statistically another earthquake would be expected in 2011, 84 years after the previous one.
But he is urging caution – and preparedness – even now.  
"The 80-year birthday of the last earthquake brings us into a new period called 'the range of statistical error,'" he said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. "[From] what we know regarding the previous destructive earthquake, the time that another destructive earthquake will return, like what occurred in 1927, is about 100 years."
The last major quake hit 6.25 on the Richter scale, and killed victims both inside what now is Israel and across the Jordan River.
Researchers at the university say about 17 percent of Jerusalem's buildings built around the time of the founding of the nation likely would be damaged, ...   more »

Psalms 2:1-6
1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. 5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. In recent weeks, debate in our country has rightly focused on the situation in Iraq -- yet Iraq is not the only pivotal matter in the Middle East. More than five years ago, I became the first American President to call for the creation of a Palestinian state. In the Rose Garden, I said that Palestinians should not have to live in poverty and occupation. I said that the Israelis should not have to live in terror and violence. And I laid out a new vision for the future -- two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side ...   more »

Senator Edward Kennedy has proposed adding hate crimes legislation to the defense spending bill, according to WorldNetDaily. The proposal is clearly manipulative, since President Bush wants to pass defense appropriations, but has threatened to veto a hate-crimes bill that would make sexual orientation a federally protected category.
In general, hate crimes legislation is bad law, simply because it requires law enforcement officials to read minds. Law enforcement should punish people for the crime committed, not for the real or perceived "hate" behind the crime. (Violent crimes, after all, are rarely committed out of love for the victim.) Whether a man is beaten and robbed because he is white, or black, or Jewish, or Christian, or gay, or wears glasses, or wears Adidas instead of Nikes, he is still the victim of a crime. There are already laws against violent crimes. Those should be enforced. But our thoughts - whether righteous or evil - remain free.
Ex-Gay Discrimination:
There is another aspect to the issue of discrimination, however;  ex-gays.  In order to gain acceptance, homosexual activists have worked hard to train Americans to believe that same-sex attraction is inbred and genetic. After all, many homosexuals have struggled against their same-sex attractions ...   more »

By KATHERINE SHRADER
 
(AP) Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell speaks at the DNI Open Source Conference ,...
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Al-Qaida is using its growing strength in Pakistan and Iraq to plot attacks on U.S. soil, heightening the terror threat facing the United States over the next few years, intelligence agencies concluded in a report unveiled Tuesday.
At the same time, the intelligence analysts worry that international cooperation against terrorism will be hard to sustain as memories of Sept. 11 fade and nations' views diverge on what the real threat is.
In the National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush and other top policymakers, analysts laid out a range of dangers - from al-Qaida to Lebanese Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups - that pose a "persistent and evolving threat" to the country over the next three years.
The findings focused most heavily on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, which was judged to remain the most serious threat to the United States. The group's affiliate in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could do just that, the report concluded. Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to attack the United States in a ...   more »

CBNNews.com - More than 3,000 Christians from across the United States are in the nation's capital this week to show their support for Israel.
Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United For Israel, warns that radical Islam poses a grave threat to Israel's existence.
Hagee says Iran's president should be taken seriously when he says Israel should be wiped off the map.
"There's a new Hitler in the Middle East, and he fully intends to put together a nuclear weapon for a nuclear holocaust against the Jewish people, Hagee said. "Ahmanadinejad is a religious fanatic. He believes that if he can start a world war, that the Islamic messiah will reappear and produce a global sharia."
On Wednesday, the CUI group will head to Capitol Hill to ask lawmakers to continue to support Israel.
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Christians in Iraq, including converts from Islam and people involved in mixed-faith marriages, are being crucified by Muslim terrorists, according to a Dutch member of Parliament studying the war-torn country.
Several Iraqi Christians "are nailed to a cross and their arms are tied up with ropes. The ropes are put on fire," Joel Voordewind told BosNewsLife, an online news agency focusing on Christians and Jews in difficult circumstances.
According to the site, Voordewind described how a person, who "survived" a crucifixion, "even showed holes in his hands," apparently from nails.
Voordewind said victims of the crucifixions are "in most cases Christian converts who abandoned Islam or people who, religiously speaking, are involved in mixed marriages."
He did not specify how many Christians have been crucified in recent weeks and months, as an official report is expected soon. Voordewind is slated to present his findings to Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen within the next few days.
The report comes as thousands of Christians are said to be fleeing Iraq due to ongoing threats and violence against them. Just yesterday, over 80 people were killed in bomb blasts in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Most of the casualties resulted ...   more »

By E. Thomas Wood
Nashville's Cumberland House Publishing is facing a lawsuit from an author described in the legal filing as a "respected factual reporter of the Islamofascist terrorist threat to the United States."
Pennsylvania writer Paul L. Williams has sued after the local publisher backed away from his claims, made in a book it had brought out last year, that terrorists bent on carrying out an "American Hiroshima" have stolen 180 pounds of nuclear material from a Canadian university.
McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, has sued Williams for libel, seeking the equivalent of $1.9 million in damages. The dispute arose last year after the publication of Williams' book The Dunces of Doomsday: 10 Blunders That Gave Rise to Radical Islam, Terrorist Regimes, and the Threat of an American Hiroshima.
The book asserts that McMaster, which has a number of faculty members of Egyptian origin, was so lax in its security procedures that it let members of Al Qaeda enroll under fictitious names and carry off radioactive material from a university facility that housed a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor. A lawyer for the school said the claims are "on a par with UFO reports and JFK conspiracy theories," and the ...   more »