IsraelNN.com) Jewish Leadership faction leader Moshe Feiglin is leading incumbent Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu by seven percentage points, according to a Likud party on-line poll two weeks before the leadership primaries.One reason for Feiglin's 47 percent backing may be that the link to the website was e-mailed to his supporters. Netanyahu won the support of 40 percent of the participants in the poll. World Likud chairman Danny Danon won only 13 percent of the votes. One of Netanyahu's backers said the election "will be a pointless circus" because his victory is certain.

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Prominent Lebanese lawmaker and leader of the country's Druze community, Walid Jumblatt on Tuesday blasted Hizballah preparations for another war with Israel. Hizballah is acting on behalf of the interests of Iran and Syria, charged Jumblatt in remarks carried by Lebanon's Al-Mustakbal daily newspaper. He sharply criticized Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah's constant public boasting about how his group has fully rearmed since last summer's war and can now strike any point in Israel. Despite the escalating rhetoric and the uneasiness of more moderate political figures in Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he remains convinced there will be no violent confrontation with Hizballah and Syria in the near future. “I truly believe that the coming summer and the following autumn will not be too hot. There is no room for exaggerating and creating an atmosphere that we are on the eve of war,” Olmert was quoted by The Associated Press as telling a group of graduating university students in Jerusalem. Olmert maintained that Israel is more than capable of decisively defeating its enemies, which his government failed to do in its last encounter with Hizballah.
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A power plant recently built near the Israeli town of Hadera has successfully managed to produce large amounts of electricity by processing cow manure. According to daily business newspaper Globes, the Tambour Hefer Ecology plant is using 600 tons of cow manure to produce up to 2 megawatts/hour of electricity, which is already being pumped into the national electrical grid. The plant was built after government regulators ordered dairy farms in the area to reduce pollutants produced by their 12,000 cows.
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Iranian intelligence is looking to recruit Israeli and Palestinian Arabs who are fluent in Hebrew, as tensions between Israel and the Islamic Republic continue to escalate. Iran plans to employ the Hebrew-speaking Arabs as intelligence agents within Israel, translators and authors of propaganda aimed at residents of the Jewish state, reported Israel's Ynet news portal. A young Israeli Arab woman studying dentistry in neighboring Jordan was recently arrested at a border crossing after security officials learned that she had been recruited by Hizballah agents on behalf of Iran. Meanwhile, Israel's Mossad spy agency on Tuesday published an ad in the country's largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, inviting Israelis who speak fluent Farsi to join its ranks. The Persian-speaking Mossad recruits would presumably be responsible for translating intercepted Iranian transmissions and materials published by the regime in Tehran.
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Iranian intelligence is looking to recruit Israeli and Palestinian Arabs who are fluent in Hebrew, as tensions between Israel and the Islamic Republic continue to escalate. Iran plans to employ the Hebrew-speaking Arabs as intelligence agents within Israel, translators and authors of propaganda aimed at residents of the Jewish state, reported Israel's Ynet news portal. A young Israeli Arab woman studying dentistry in neighboring Jordan was recently arrested at a border crossing after security officials learned that she had been recruited by Hizballah agents on behalf of Iran. Meanwhile, Israel's Mossad spy agency on Tuesday published an ad in the country's largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, inviting Israelis who speak fluent Farsi to join its ranks. The Persian-speaking Mossad recruits would presumably be responsible for translating intercepted Iranian transmissions and materials published by the regime in Tehran.
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It takes careful planning to lose a war in order to achieve your goals. That "planning" seems to be currently in formation for Israel by many interests, both in and out of Israel. Those in power have longed for the opportunity to fulfill years of thwarted yearning to transfer the Land G-d gave to the Jews over to the Muslim Arabs. For the conspirators, they assume certain benefits, which justify inevitable losses. The losses would be soldiers and civilians killed or maimed in the arranged transfer of the Land. They would be acceptable as expendable losses, particularly if they were religious settlers. The conspirators have demonstrated a consistent open doctrine of making Israel wholly secular on the theory that an un-Jewish State would be less offensive to the Arab Islamists. The benefits for the conspirators? They think they will be liked by the world if they de-Judaize their Jewish State. Each time they make the attempt such as the Oslo Accords and all those other misbegotten agreements that followed, the plan inevitably fails and hundreds to thousands of Jews are murdered and maimed for life. The fomenters of such catastrophes are never investigated, indicted, tried or sentenced to jail for ...   more »

The new face of identity protection: You Trying to remember dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords and credit card numbers may not be necessary for much longer, thanks to a University of Houston professor and his team. Taking a radically new approach, UH Eckhard Pfeiffer Professor Ioannis Kakadiaris and his Computational Biomedicine Lab (CBL) developed the URxD face recognition software that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person’s face to create a unique identifier, a biometric. Shown in government testing to be tops in its field, URxD can be used for everything from gaining access to secure facilities to authorizing credit card purchases. The identification procedure is as effortless as taking a photograph. URxD leads the pack for 3D face recognition solutions based on the face’s shape, according to the results of the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT 2006). The National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted the rigorous testing for FRVT 2006, which was sponsored by several U.S. government agencies. FRVT 2006 is the first independent performance benchmark for 3-D face recognition technology. “Accuracy is the name of the game in 3-D face recognition,” Kakadiaris said. “What makes our system so accurate is the strength of the variables ...   more »

By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM 
Sulaiman Al-Rajhi is a reclusive Saudi octogenarian with a personal fortune of $12 billion and his own Islamic bank with 500 branches in Saudi Arabia and a few more around the Muslim world. According to the CIA, Mr. Rajhi's organizations have acted as conduits, financiers, and facilitators for a wide variety of Islamic terror groups — from Al Qaeda to Hamas — for about 20 years now.On Thursday, their nefarious activities were detailed in a landmark investigation by the Wall Street Journal. The next day, a front page article in the New York Times focused on more of Saudi Arabia's wicked activities, quoting senior American officials expressing "frustration with the Saudi government" and accusing it of both "significant efforts to undermine the Iraqi government" and "obstructing a number of other American foreign policy initiatives."Then, lo and behold: Over the weekend, the Bush administration announced that it will ask Congress for permission to sell billions of dollars of "advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters, and new naval vessels" to that very same Saudi Arabia.Incoherent Middle East policy is an established hallmark of this administration, but continuing to coddle the very same guys who are arming jihadist Islam ...   more »

A new movie set to be released this Friday will feature the Ten Commandments from the Bible in a very unflattering way.
Winona Ryder's character flirts with a ventriloquist doll she has fallen in love in 'The Ten,' releasing this Friday.”The Ten,” written by the same director of Wet Hot American Summer, is a compilation of ten different stories, each depicting one of the ancient commandments given to Moses by God.Christians have expressed their concern about the film and how it degrades and insults God and His laws. Many critics, however, believe the movie will have little influence.“The Ten Commandments have been a cornerstone of our society for nearly one hundred years,” explained “The Ten” director David Wain on the film’s website. “If you've ever taken a Sunday off, or if you've ever stopped yourself from murdering someone, then you yourself have been following the Ten Commandments without even knowing it.”The film has a number of stars in it including Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, Gretchen Mol, Winona Ryder, Oliver Platt and Jessica Alba. Each of them either stars or plays minor roles in each of the short scripts. Each uses the Bible to create a foundation for an often inappropriate ...   more »

JERUSALEM (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will begin laying the ground for a Mideast peace conference in a visit to Israel on Wednesday, hoping to push Israelis and Palestinians closer to renewing talks.
Building on warming ties between Israel and moderate Arab countries, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said Wednesday that Israel hopes "many Arab countries will attend this international meeting, including Saudi Arabia."
The statement came in reaction to an announcement Wednesday by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal that his country would seriously consider attending the gathering if invited. Speaking at a press conference with Rice and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Saud said his government would "look very closely and very hard at attending" if the conference dealt with "issues of real substance, not form."
A meeting between Israeli and Saudi representatives would be a major diplomatic breakthrough. Though Israel and Saudi Arabia are both U.S. allies, representatives of the countries have never officially met and Saudi Arabia has never recognized the Jewish state.
At a press conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Jerusalem later Wednesday, Rice said she was "encouraged by the attitude that I have seen here among ...   more »

European and Asian stock markets plummeted Wednesday, mirroring heavy losses the previous day in New York, on mounting fears that weakness in the US housing sector could infect the world economy.
In London, Frankfurt and Paris the main share indices were down almost 2.0 percent nearing the half-way stage. 
The yen meanwhile hit a four-month high against the dollar and oil traded close to an all-time peak in New York as investors exited risky investments and turned to safe-havens, dealers said.
Wall Street took a pounding Tuesday, with its three main markets closing down more than 1.0 percent as news of spreading troubles in the US mortgage sector prompted investors to bank profits.
Japanese stocks slumped by more than two percent on Wednesday, with the Nikkei-225 index ending below 17,000 points for the first time in more than four months.
Economists said there were growing jitters about the potential fallout from problems in US subprime lending sector, where mortgages are provided to people with questionable credit histories.
Analysts are concerned that growing mortgage defaults will hurt banks and finance companies enough to curb the availability of credit on which the economy feeds.
That, in turn, could affect private equity groups ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Aug 01, 2007
The United States of America Tuesday put its official stamp on the Saudi Arabian plan that calls for Israel's surrender for all time of the land returned to Jewish rule in 1967.
According to a report in Haaretz, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote her signature alongside those of Egypt, Jordan and six Persian Gulf states endorsing the 2002 plan as a foundation for Middle East peace.
With the move, the Bush administration gave Israel yet another shove down the road towards completing its severance from its biblical heartland and the cradle of Jewish nationhood.
The Saudi Plan offers full normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights.
(Gaza was included in the original draft, but Israel in 2005 already abandoned that strip of land to the Palestinian Arabs who, instead of starting to build themselves a state there, turned it into a haven for terrorists and a launching pad for increased terrorism.)
Rice's signature moved her country a few steps nearer to Saudi Arabia and the Arab world, and a few steps further away from Israel.
On Monday evening, upon ...   more »

Two major arms sales were announced over the weekend. First, the US announced that it is planning to sell Saudi Arabia $20 billion in advanced weapons systems, including Joint Direct Attack Munition kits or JDAMs that are capable of transforming regular gravitational bombs into precision-guided "smart" weapons.
Largely in an attempt to neutralize Congressional opposition to the proposed sale, the Bush administration also announced that it plans to increase annual military assistance to Israel by some 25 percent next year and that it hopes that next year's increase in assistance will be maintained by the next administration.
The second arms sale was the reported Russian agreement to sell Iran 250 advanced long-ranged Sukhoi-30 fighter jets and aerial fuel tankers capable of extending the jets' range by thousands of kilometers. Russia's massive armament of Iran in this and in previous sales over the past two years make clear that from Russia's perspective, all threats to US interests, including Shi'ite expansionism, work to Moscow's advantage.
ON THE face of it, these contrasting US and Russian announcements seem to signal that geopolitics have reverted to the Cold War model of two superpowers competing for global power by, among other things, assisting their proxies ...   more »

Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen
When is a Christian radio station not a Christian radio station? For the hour or so a day that it must air the views of other faiths to satisfy the CRTC's "balance" policy.
"It's ridiculous," says Bob Du Broy, vice-president of Ottawa's CHRI Christian music station. "It's like asking a rock station to play an hour of classical music." CHRI's announcers also find themselves in the bizarre situation of working for a Christian station without being able to talk much about Christianity for fear of triggering the "balance" issue.
Because CHRI 99.1 FM plays mostly music, its requirements for offsetting Christian proselytizing have been minimal at just over 30 minutes a week.
But now Mr. Du Broy wants to start a new Christian station, WORD FM, aimed at the growing radio audience older than 45, many of whom want Christian programming, but not the racket of rock music.
It would offer more than two-thirds spoken-word broadcasting with programs such as Billy Graham's Hour of Decision and James Dobson's Focus Weekend.
Religious music needn't be offset with other faiths, but the broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, does require that spoken-word programming offer differing ...   more »

by: Brian Flynn
I have had many questions regarding the Harry Potter books. Many of the critiques I have read are coming from Christian groups stating that is Satan’s book and it will destroy children’s minds. Although I agree with some of the criticisms that this is a book that introduces witchcraft to children like no other, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will become witches and disavow their Christian faith.
However, keep in mind that children have not yet formulated clearly their faith or the concepts of absolute truth like adults. I have read letters from parents stating that they have read the Harry Potter books with their children and have not noticed any negative effects that would undermine their faith. My question would be, how do they know? These concepts and ideas may not come to fruition for years.
When I was introduced to Tarot cards and Quija boards in my pre-teen years I would have said that they had no negative effect on me. In fact, I thought they were fun. But they introduced me to a concept that contacting spirits was okay and that the spirits were friendly. Therefore, it was easier for me to get ...   more »

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments ...   more »

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Tuesday became the latest Republican to predict a government shutdown this fall when Congress and the White House spar about the size of an annual spending package that is assured to eclipse President Bush's request.
"It is inevitable," Blunt said. The Senate isn't expected to take up most of its annual spending bills by the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1; this would create a logjam that would force Congress to approve a stopgap measure in order to consider a massive omnibus spending package to fund the federal government.
Despite sagging approval ratings, Bush is expected to veto any package that exceeds his initial request to the Congress. Republicans on the Hill would then be forced to sustain that veto.
Blunt, the top GOP vote-counter in the House, predicts his members would support their president, forcing a perilous showdown with major political stakes for either party.
Republicans are bracing for the prospect of a spending fight by positioning themselves before lawmakers leave for the monthlong summer recess.
The biggest variable at this stage remains when Democrats choose to address the measure. By starting the process earlier, both sides could expedite a ...   more »

The planned crescent-shaped "memorial to heroes" of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania is nothing less than a huge outdoor mosque that pays homage to Islam, charges the author of a new book.
Alec Rawls' "Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93," published by World Ahead documents a long list of Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Flight 93 National Memorial.
The primary feature, he says, is the giant central crescent of what originally was called the "Crescent of Embrace" design. A person facing into this half-mile wide crescent – still present in the superficially altered "Bowl of Embrace" redesign – will be oriented almost exactly at Mecca.
That is significant, Rawls said, because a crescent that Muslims face to point them in the direction of Mecca – called a "mihrab" – is the central feature around which every mosque is built.
Rawls said it seems impossible such startling revelations could go unreported, but Pennsylvania newspapers have ignored him.
He learned from a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that editors knew about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent in September 2005 when the design was first unveiled. But the editors decided the information should not be published, ...   more »