gil hoffman and sheera claire frenkel,
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not help Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's chances of surviving next week's publication of the Winograd Report when he told Kadima MKs who visited him in Ramallah Thursday that Jerusalem was on the table in diplomatic talks.
Shas chairman Eli Yishai told Olmert this week that if the Jerusalem issue was raised in negotiations, his party would leave the coalition, which is also threatened by Labor chairman Ehud Barak's vow to remove his party upon Winograd's publication.
"Everything is on the table and nothing is excluded," Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei told reporters when asked whether Jerusalem would be a subject for negotiations.
"Jerusalem, borders, settlements, refugees water, everything," Abbas added. "It's important for both sides to continue talking. We are talking constantly."
Asked whether the Palestinians would accept Shas's demand that the Jerusalem issue be raised last in the talks, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told The Jerusalem Post "All on the table means everything from the beginning. We haven't started negotiations yet, but that's what was decided in Annapolis."
Erekat insisted that the negotiations must proceed full speed ahead and without restrictions due to the one-year time limit ...   more »

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent 
Israel has completely frozen all new construction in West Bank settlements, despite recent comments by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel would treat construction in the major settlement blocs differently from building in most settlements.
Olmert has categorically denied approval for all new construction tenders, including in the so-called consensus settlement blocs, which Israel intends to keep in any future peace accord with the Palestinians.
The freeze also applies to the construction of public institutions, including schools and kindergartens. 
Olmert recently sent an official letter to relevant cabinet ministers instructing them to refrain from authorizing any construction in the West Bank without his and Defense Minister Ehud Barak's prior approval.
Several days ago, the prime minister met with Ma'aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel, who asked Olmert to approve several construction plans -including in the controversial E1 corridor linking Ma'aleh Adumim to Jerusalem.
Olmert refused, saying the issue was sensitive in terms of relations with the United States and the Palestinian Authority.
Kashriel also asked Olmert to approve tenders for the completion of the settlement's 07 neighborhood. Barak approved the construction during his term as prime minister, and the new neighborhood was to have a total ...   more »

Israel wants to abandon all responsibility for the Gaza Strip, including the supply of electricity and water, now that the territory's southern border with Egypt has been blasted open, Israel's deputy defense minister said Thursday.
It was not immediately clear whether the minister, Matan Vilnai, was expressing the view of the Israeli government, or was testing international receptiveness to such idea.
As tens of thousands of Palestinians clamber back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt, details have emerged of the audacious operation that brought down the hated border wall and handed the Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup, the London Times reported Thursday.
Click here to read the London Times report.
Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.
But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The London Times at the border admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.
That meant that when the explosive charges ...   more »

By Adam Entous
ALLENBY BRIDGE, West Bank (Reuters) - The first battalion of Palestinian security forces crossed into Jordan on Thursday to begin training under a U.S. program after nearly a year-long delay.
Washington wants to train the backbone of a Palestinian gendarmerie but the program is projected to graduate only 2,000 men in 2008, the timeframe set by President George W. Bush for reaching an agreement on a Palestinian state.
The first battalion of nearly 700 U.S.-screened recruits to serve in an overhauled National Security Force crossed the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge, in the occupied West Bank, into Jordan for what officials called "law and order" training.
The eventual plan is for a nearly 50,000-member gendarmerie in the West Bank.
The slow start to the U.S. program could compound doubts about peace efforts that largely hinge on convincing Israel that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can combat militants before its army leaves occupied land, Western officials said.
U.S. government documents show the four-month-long courses, at a facility in Jordan already used by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, will focus on law and order and policing training. None of the instructors will be U.S. government personnel.Palestinian and many Western observers blame Israel for undermining ...   more »

Itamar Sharon
As the United Nations Security Council debated a response to the situation in the Gaza Strip and Sderot, Israel's New York Consulate held a protest in front of UN headquarters on Thursday, in which they placed 4,200 red balloons on the UN's doorstep. The number of balloons signified the 4,200 Kassam rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since the 2005 disengagement from the Strip.
The display was meant to raise world awareness to the fact that Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip are part of an effort to end the rocket attacks, the consulate said in a statement.
"Up until this day, every attempt to raise the issue and make it part of the American media's agenda has been unsuccessful," Consulate Spokesman David Saranga said.
"The suffering of Gaza residents has received increased attention recently. The display is intended to emphasize the suffering of the residents of Sderot [and to] illustrate the incessant Kassam rocket attacks, as well as to call on the international community to stop ignoring what is happening in Israel," Saranga explained.
Meanwhile, as the New York Consulate was staging the protest, five rockets were fired from Gaza into the western Negev. The rockets hit ...   more »

By Caroline B. Glick 
It is hard to believe, but in just two weeks, American voters will all but determine the identities of the Democratic and Republican nominees for this year's presidential elections. It is hard to believe because today, after a handful of early primaries, neither side has even identified a frontrunner.
The open race, unprecedented in recent history, is a consequence of the fragmentation of America's political center. Ten years after Bill Clinton's impeachment; seven years after President George W. Bush's contested victory in 2000; and five years into the Iraq campaign, the cleavages both between the two major parties and within them have given purchase to candidates and policies that would have previously never made it out of the starting gate.
On the Republican side, this phenomenon is being played out in the campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and Governor Mike Huckabee. On the Democratic side of the aisle, it is manifested in Senator Barack Obama's campaign.
Last Saturday Congressman Paul placed second in the Nevada primaries with 14 percent of the vote. Paul, who has raised some $20 million in three months, owes much of his mainstream support on both the Left and the Right to ...   more »

 IRNA reports 11-ton load of enriched uranium transferred to the light-water Bushehr nuclear power plant
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran received a sixth shipment of nuclear fuel Thursday from Russia, destined for a power plant being constructed in the southern port of Bushehr, the official IRNA news agency reported. 
The report said the 11-ton load of enriched uranium arrived in Iran and was transferred to the light-water Bushehr nuclear power plant Thursday morning. The remainder of the fuel will arrive in two separate shipments in the coming weeks, it said. 
"Of 82 tons of initial fuel needed for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, 66 tons have been shipped to Iran so far," the agency reported. 
Iran received the fifth shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia on Tuesday. The first shipment arrived on Dec. 17 after months of dispute between the two countries, allegedly over delayed construction payments for the reactor. 
Iran has said Bushehr, the country's first nuclear reactor, will begin operating in the summer of 2008, producing half its 1,000-megawatt capacity of electricity. Russia's decision to ship nuclear fuel to Iran follows a US Intelligence report released last month that concluded Tehran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late ...   more »

By Diana West - Mazir-i-sharif.Ring a bell? In 2001, a 32-year-old Marine captain and CIA officer named John Micheal Spann was killed there in a prison riot, thus becoming the first American combat death in Afghanistan. Not incidentally, Spann, before violence broke out, had interrogated an uncooperative John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. This all took place before the United States military completely toppled Afghanistan's Taliban oppressors. Nearly seven years later, American-liberated Mazir-i-sharif has again made headlines — well, one or two — as the site of the prison where a 23-year-old Afghan journalist has been detained for three months (and counting) on blasphemy charges. These charges derive, Reuters reports, from Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh "distributing an article which said Prophet Mohammed had ignored the rights of women." As President Bush might say... well, what might President Bush say: Let freedom reign?
Then there's Halabja.
Remember Halabja? The name is notorious for being the town where in 1988, 15 years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurdish civilians to death. This month, American-liberated Halabja made headlines as the site of the court that sentenced a Kurdish author in absentia to six months in prison for blasphemy: namely, for ...   more »

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
It is now a well-established tradition in Washington that any scandal, no matter how seemingly innocuous, soon is given the suffix "-gate," establishing a lineal connection to the mother of all scandals, Watergate.
Well, let me be the first to suggest that a recent scandal in the Pentagon be known hereafter as "Front-gate" in recognition of the central role played in the drama by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization designated by the Justice Department as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). With the House and Senate both back in business this week, Front-gate should be subjected to close congressional scrutiny since it may involve the most strategically ominous case of official misconduct since the Clinton Administration's China-gate.
The Front-gate saga began with the firing last month of Stephen Coughlin, a Major in the Army Reserves who was working as a civilian contractor for the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he ran afoul of one Hashem Islam. Islam is Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England's point-man for the Pentagon outreach to the Muslim community.
Hashem Islam is also evidently an admirer of ISNA. He arranged for Secretary England to address one ...   more »

JPost.com Staff
A Dutch politician cautioned that the government of the Netherlands was dominated by a "fear of Islam," after it delayed the release of a short film he had made attacking the Koran. In the film, Geert Wilders, the leader of the conservative Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) compares the sacred Muslim text to Hitler's Mein Kampf.
In an open letter to the Dutch De Volkskrant newspaper Wednesday, Wilders claims that the panic shown by politicians and by police served only to prove his point.
Police and politicians were afraid that the film would spark riots and even went so far as to tell Wilders that he would have to leave the country,
"If I had announced that I was going to make a film about the fascist character of the Bible would there have been a crisis meeting of Holland's security forces?" he asked. "Would I have received as many death threats as I have done since announcing I was making a film about the Koran? Of course not."
"The fact that a 10-minute film not yet shown could, according to some, lead to economic boycotts, riots and other horrible things says everything about the nature of Islam. Nothing ...   more »

Wants a new Canadian dollar pegged to U.S. currency
By Jerome R. Corsi
Canadian dollar
Herbert Grubel – the Canadian economist who developed the concept of a North American currency comparable to the euro – laments that politics prevents the U.S. from agreeing to the creation of the amero right now.
In an op-ed piece entitled "Fix the Loonie" in Canada's National Post, Grubel expresses concern about the current relative strength of the Canadian dollar, or "loonie," in comparison to the weakening U.S. dollar.
The strength of the loonie, now trading more than par ($1.02) to the U.S. dollar, has caused Canada's exports to be more expensive in the U.S. market.
About 85 percent of all Canadian exports are headed to the U.S. and a more expensive loonie threatens to harm the Canadian export market.
Grubel wrote that Canada "has a bad case of the dreaded Dutch disease, which is named after the problems that developed in the 1960s when the Netherlands sold natural gas that had been discovered on its coast."
The resulting increase in Dutch exports caused a strong appreciation of exchange rates which in turn caused the loss of Dutch manufacturers' ability to compete abroad with their ...   more »

Political TV hosts fed up with PC Islam will devour cookie with face of prophet
By Joe Kovacs
This cookie with a depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad will be eaten on 'Flamethrower,' a new political program on Faith TV
A new, cutting-edge, political TV show will challenge Islam with biting humor tomorrow night, placing the face of the prophet Muhammad onto a cookie and then having it eaten on camera.
"We're going to take a stand and say Muhammad's face is delicious," said Molotov Mitchell, the 28-year-old incendiary creator and host of "Flamethrower," a program described as a low-budget, gritty cross between the "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "The View" if Ann Coulter were the producer. "This is religious and culinary history in the making."
The theme of this week's episode is "All Things Islam," as panelists take on the faith of Muslims in a no-holds-barred fashion.
"Islam is not even a religion," Mitchell told WND from a location somewhere in Eastern North Carolina. "It's an ideology of 'might makes right' disguised as a religion. We're going to show that Allah was with us when we baked this cookie and ate it. Deal with it!"
Mitchell and ...   more »

March 30, 2007—No, Jupiter hasn't acquired a new toupee and goatee to impress Venus.
Those dashing purple puffs are x-ray images of the gas giant's high-voltage auroras—"northern lights on steroids," said planetary scientist Randy Gladstone of this image released yesterday by NASA.
The colorized picture is something of a collage. Several x-ray images taken by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory have been combined and superimposed on the latest Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter.
"Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet," said Gladstone, of the independent, nonprofit Southwest Research Institute in Texas, in a statement.
Gladstone hopes these latest observations will help him crack some Jovian mysteries. For starter, what causes these "hyper-auroras"?
The solar system's biggest planet and its magnetic field rotate extremely quickly—every ten hours—generating ten million volts around its poles. Toss in charged particles from the volcanic moon Io and you've got a crackling, nonstop sky show.
But how do the volcanic particles get from a relatively small moon to Jupiter's planetary poles? That, Gladstone says, remains one of the planet's unsolved puzzles.
 Original Source
 

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Psalms 137:5-6
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 6 If I do not remember thee,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.   Many of you may have read last week that the Yisrael Beiteinu party has resigned from Olmert’s coalition government. If the Shas party follows suit, then Olmert will likely be toppled.
After President Bush’s recent visit, it is apparent that Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are all on the chopping block. For us, this is a biblical issue, not a political issue. If these things proceed, thousands of Israeli people will be uprooted from the land on which they make their homes, land that has been promised to them by the God of Israel. Many of our most sacred Christian holy sites will become part of the new Palestinian state that even now is in process of being established.  
Gush Katif was a shadow of things to come. God in His mercy has allowed us to have a “sneak preview” of what life will be like for any Israelis unfortunate enough to within the pre 67 borders.. For many ...   more »