Mass presence of security forces expected in capital in wake of holiday weekend events, Ramadan prayers and former chief rabbi's funeral procession
Efrat Weiss
The heightened security alert declared by the defense establishment prior to the Jewish holiday of Sukkot is expected to increase further, Ynet has learned.
Sources in the defense establishment said that there are seven specific indications of potential terror attacks over the holiday, as well as dozens of general indications of such possible attacks.
The decision to increase security alertness was made following the IDF's latest operation in Gaza – which left 11 Palestinians dead – and the threat of retaliation made by Hamas, which clouds the many events planned throughout Israel for the coming holiday week.
Security forces are expected to especially focus on Jerusalem: The third Friday of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan will see some 4,000 Border Guard officers and police forces patrolling the city streets, the Old City, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, starting in the early hours of Friday morning.
Entry to Temple Mount will be restricted to Israeli ID holders only. Security forces will also allow Palestinian men 45-year-old and over to enter the Temple Mount, providing ...   more »

2nd Amendment advocates warn it poses clear constitutional threat
By Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
The Gun Owners of America is launching an urgent campaign encouraging citizens to call their U.S. senators and ask them to oppose a bill that could be described as "disarmament by diagnosis."
The legislation would allow a person's right to own a gun in the U.S. to be permanently removed under a wide range of circumstances.
"You'd think that when rabid, anti-gun legislators like Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy join together to pass anti-gun legislation, it would raise a few red flags," the alert says. "But these two New York Democrats are currently planning to roll over gun owners with H.R. 2640 – legislation which would bar you from owning guns if: You are a battle-scarred veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; or as a kid, you were diagnosed with ADHD."
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., announcing a provision to allow doctors to ban people from owning guns
Gun Owners Executive Director Larry Pratt told WND that those are just two of the circumstances that legitimately could be used under the pending proposal to permanently remove an individual's right to own a weapon ...   more »

Officials at secret confab learn of 'lawyer feeding frenzy' over release of infrastructure
By Jerome R. Corsi
Establishing public-private partnerships that give away control of U.S. infrastructure to foreigners is like playing the casino game "Texas hold'em," a top Texas Department of Transportation official told the EuroMoney conference meeting yesterday in the plush Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
James Bass, the chief financial officer of TxDOT, was speaking on the second day of a two-day seminar devoted to teaching state government officials how to lease public assets to foreign investment interests.
"Sure, you can expect political objections," Bass told the conference, "but if you play your cards right, you'll win."
WND reported last week EuroMoney shut out WND from the conference, refusing the $1,999 registration fee because WND was "too political" to attend.
Throughout the conference yesterday, various attendees telephoned WND to provide detailed, inside accounts on conference proceedings.
As WND has reported, campaign contributions to Gov. Rick Perry paved the way for TxDOT to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, a four football-fields-wide truck-car-train-pipeline to run parallel to I-35. In the PPP deal, Cintra, a Spanish investment concern, will own the toll rights on the superhighway for 50 years after ...   more »

Evangelicals to offer $120 million in relief supplies to Israel and her neighbors as Ahmadinejad says Mahdi's arrival "imminent."
By Joel C. Rosenberg  (Washington, D.C., September 27, 2007) -- How close is war in the Middle East? It's hard to say for certain, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is certainly ratcheting up the rhetoric.
In the summer of 2005, the newly-elected Ahmadinejad told followers the end of the world was just two or three years away, and that the way to hasten the coming of the Islamic Messiah known as the Mahdi or the Twelfth Imam was to annihilate Israel and the United States. Since then, his anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric has intensified dramatically. Now, two years into his cryptic but apocalyptic countdown, Ahmadinejad is telling the Muslim world that the return of the Mahdi is "imminent."
In an address to the "International Seminar on the Doctrine of Mahdism" in Tehran last month (August 25-26), Ahmadinejad warned that the West's day is almost finished and the preparations for the Hidden Imam "will soon be complete." In a speech translated from Farsi by MEMRI.org, Ahmadinejad said: "The current situation in the world has led the nations to reject in disgust the ...   more »

Science Daily — Researchers in California are reporting new evidence explaining pomegranate juice's mysterious beneficial effects in fighting prostate cancer.
In a new study, Navindra Seeram and colleagues have found that the tart, trendy beverage also uses a search-and-destroy strategy to target prostate cancer cells.
In previous research, Seeram's group found that pomegranate juice consumption had a beneficial effect for prostate cancer patients with rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels. Such increases in PSA signal that the cancer is progressing, "doubling time" a key indicator of prognosis. Men whose PSA levels double in a hort period are more likely to die from their cancer. Pomegranate juice increased doubling times by almost fourfold.
In the new study, they researchers discovered evidence in laboratory experiments that pomegranate works in a "seek and destroy" fashion. On consumption, ellagitannins (ET), antioxidants abundant in pomegranate juice, break down to metabolites known as urolithins. The researchers showed that the urolithins concentrate at high levels in prostate tissue after being given orally and by injection to mice with prostate cancer. They also showed that urolithins inhibited the growth of human prostate cancer cells in cell culture.
"The chemopreventive potential of pomegranate ellagitannins and localization of their bioactive metabolites ...   more »

Siemens is making border crossings in Europe more secure through biometric systems that store individual characteristics such as fingerprints and facial photos on a chip integrated into a passport.  
The systems have already been installed in several countries. The data is read at a passport checkpoint and compared with a live digital photo of the traveler, thereby making it practically impossible to travel with a false passport. The system software was developed in the Biometrics Center in Graz, Austria.
Switzerland introduced biometric passports in September 2006, and Siemens IT Solutions and Services recently provided a solution for producing so-called e-passports to the Czech Republic. To this end, SIS equipped some 230 passport control stations in that country with around 600 photo stands, passport scanning machines, and printers, as well as corresponding IT systems. In the future, an ultra-thin RFID chip equipped with an antenna will be embedded into Czech passports.
The chip will store personal data such as the passport holder’s name and date of birth, as well as a digital photo and fingerprint that will be read by special scanning devices at border crossings. The traveler’s actual fingerprint will be read by a fingerprint scanner, while his or ...   more »

Iran's role with the violence in Iraq remains a major preoccupation of the Bush administration, with the U.S. military now building a base, practically within shouting distance of Iran — an extraordinary step to curb what it says is the smuggling of advanced weapons into Iraq.
It will be called Combat Outpost Shocker, and it will hardly come as a pleasant surprise to Iran that the United States will have a new base just 5 miles from their border. Col. Mark Mueller, of the 3rd Infantry Division, said it is the first time the U.S. military will be that close to Iran.
"Obviously, they probably won't be very happy about it," Mueller told ABC's Terry McCarthy.
The U.S. accuses Iran of fighting a proxy war in Iraq, as it smuggles sophisticated roadside bombs and long range rockets into the region that kill Iraqis and American troops."While claiming to support Iraq in its transition, Iran has actively undermined it by providing lethal capabilities to the enemies of the Iraqi state," Ambassador Ryan Crocker said during his testimony on the state of the war to Congress Sept. 10.Struggle for Influence in Iraq
The Shocker base will be home to about 200 soldiers, ...   more »

By Sharon Weinberger September 25, 2007 | 3:00:00 PMCategories: Planes   
Just in time for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United States, defense industry officials promised that the 30,000-lb. Massive Ordnance Penetrator will be ready for delivery on a B-52 bomber by 2008. Coincidence? As Defense Daily (sorry, subscription only) reports today:
 The Spirit's MOP will reach its initial operating capability in late 2008 with full operating capability following in the spring of 2009, Heimple said. Integration work began on the weapon in June 2007.
The B-2A can carry two MOPs, one in each of its weapon bays. The munition Northrop Grumman calls "like" the Joint Direct Attack Munition with a guidance system aided by the Global Positioning System, MOP contains more than 5,300 pounds of conventional explosives inside of a 20.5-foot-long steel enclosure. The weapon is said to be able to penetrate up to about 60 feet of dirt and concrete (Defense Daily, Dec. 4, 2006, Jan. 22 and July 20).
The mass makes it three and a half times as powerful as the Air Force's heaviest weapons, Heimple said. After extensive testing to gauge whether it is better to drop multiple bombs in the same spot ...   more »

U.S. Rep.: 'Rogue regimes, terrorists know about EMP, are working to acquire weapon'
By Bob Unruh
SCUD missile
A new report says a SCUD-type missile launched from a small ship 200 miles from the coast of the United States could unleash a nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulse over Washington, D.C., that would leave behind $771 billion in damage.
"More than five countries have the capability to inflict an EMP attack. Rogue regimes and terrorists know all about EMP and are working to acquire this weapon. We know the odds of our house burning down in any given year are very low, but that doesn't mean we will cancel our fire insurance," said U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md. "If America doesn't develop insurance against EMP, we will increase the odds of inviting this type of unimaginable attack in the future."
The report was produced by Sage Policy Group of Baltimore and commissioned by Instant Access Networks, which is leading a pilot project with Frostburg State University and Public Technology Institute to analyze dangers from EMP.
Experts have predicted the EMP attack essentially would destroy any electronics within range of its impact, leaving technology comparable to that available in the 1800s.
EMP attacks are ...   more »