By Caroline B. Glick     
To understand the strange twists that Hamas's war against Israel has taken over the past week, it is instructive to cast a glance at the current situation in Pakistan. For in their dealings with Hamas, the Bush administration and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government have apparently been operating in accordance with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's playbook.
In a radio interview this week, Michael Leiter, the Director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Center noted that Al Qaida today is stronger than it was two years ago. This development, he explained is the consequence of Musharraf's decision to sign peace accords with the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] along the Afghan border.
The first agreements in North and South Waziristan were signed in September 2006. They involved the removal of Pakistani military forces from the areas, and the release of 2,500 Taliban and al Qaida prisoners from Pakistani prisons. The Waziristan accords rendered the areas the Taliban's and al Qaida's first safe havens since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Freed from the need to defend themselves against the Pakistani army, al Qaida and the Taliban immediately turned their attention to Afghanistan. Within weeks ...   more »

By JPOST.COM STAFF  
Israel has secretly warned Syria that it may strike the country if Hizbullah attacks the Jewish state, Reuters reported on Friday.
In early February Hizbullah threatened Israel with revenge following the assassination of the group's chief of operations, Imad Mughniyeh. Israel has denied involvement in his death.
According to senior Israeli and European officials quoted by the news agency, later that month Israel secretly conveyed a message to Damascus through a third party that it would hold it accountable for any Hizbullah assault.
"The message was passed around late February, before the last round of fighting in Gaza," an Israeli official said. "It has become clear to us [that] Syria has to understand there is a price for its use of proxy terrorism, especially as Damascus is itself a proxy - the long-arm of Iran."
A European source said the message made it clear that Syria could be targeted, even if Hizbullah attacked from Lebanese soil.
The sources said Israel was mainly concerned that the terror organization would barrage the north with rockets in the event of a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile an unnamed British official told the news agency that any flare-up ...   more »

Draft of Islamic conference's concluding statement charges Israel with human rights violations
Reuters
The world's largest Muslim body will accuse Israel of committing war crimes against Palestinian civilians, according to a draft of the final communiqué of an Islamic summit in Senegal seen by Reuters on Friday. 
"The conference denounces the current and increasing Israeli military campaign against the Palestinian people and the serious violation of human rights and war crimes including the killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians," the draft said. 
Harsh Words  
Abbas: IDF operation in Bethlehem a barbaric crime  / Roee Nahmias  
Palestinian Authority condemns killing of four terrorists, says 'crime exposes Israel's mask'    
It called Israel's "collective punishment of civilians" a violation of international human rights law and said "the occupying forces must be held responsible for these war crimes." 
The communiqué is due to be approved at the end of a two-day meeting in Dakar, Senegal, of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the second largest inter-governmental bloc after the United Nations. 
'Clash of ignorance'
Meanwhile, leaders at the summit agreed to work with the West to fight religious bigotry and a US envoy pledged support for a dialogue to ...   more »

German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed solidarity with Israel in the face of threats to the Jewish state on Saturday, the eve of a three-day visit to the country, and said Iran must halt its nuclear program.
"The threats to which the Israeli state is exposed are also threats to us," Merkel said in her weekly podcast.
She said she would underline on the trip that "the Iranian nuclear program cannot continue and Iran must finally play to international rules."
The U.N. Security Council imposed a third round of sanctions on Iran earlier this month for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, adopting a resolution that Germany co-sponsored, though not itself on the council.
Western powers suspect that Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons, but Tehran denies this and says it nuclear program is intended only to produce electricity.
Judaism is a recognized minority religion in Iran, but Tehran does not recognize Israel and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often predicted Israel's imminent demise.
Merkel will be the first German chancellor to address Israel's parliament, more than six decades after the end of World War Two. Her visit will launch yearly talks between the governments.
She will also visit the Yad ...   more »

China trying to crack U.S. computers, buy nukes
Story Highlights
Pentagon: Chinese military expanding its Navy, investing in weapons

Officials worry China is trying to hack into U.S. military computers

"Intrusions" have already happened, officials say, though info was not classified

Mike Mount
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Chinese military continues to increase spending on efforts to break into U.S. military computer systems, expand its Navy, and invest in intercontinental nuclear missiles and weapons to destroy satellites, according to the latest U.S report on China's military power.
The annual report from the Pentagon to Congress says China's total military spending in 2007 was between $97 billion and $139 billion, but it is hard to tell exactly how much was spent and on what.
In comparison, the U.S. military budget request for 2008 is $481.4 billion, not including war requests.
Pentagon officials said a chunk of China's spending went to cyberwarfare, because 2007 saw several "intrusions" believed to be from the Peoples Liberation Army. In the incidents, unclassified U.S. military computer systems were broken into and information was taken, according to Pentagon officials.
While the information taken was not classified, Pentagon officials said the worry is the Chinese hacking required many of ...   more »

 by Jacob Goldstein
There may some day come a flu pandemic so horrible that the number of Americans in respiratory failure will far exceed the number of mechanical ventilators needed to keep them alive. What do we do then?
The state of New York has taken a crack at the answer. A paper published this month in the bracingly titled journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness lays out a plan for deciding who would get a ventilator and who wouldn’t. A draft of the full guidelines is online here.
To learn more, we called Tia Powell, an author of the draft guidelines and the director of New York’s Task force on Life and the Law. Here are the highlights.
Would it be possible to stockpile ventilators, so we would never have to ration them?
There actually are extra ventilators bought by the federal government, New York State, New York City and a lot of different facilities. Even if you were going to say, “I’m going to buy an infinite number of these,” the resource that’s really scarce in a situation like pandemic flu is staff, is people. If you’re sick enough to have that kind of intensive care, we ...   more »

Global money woes hit, with inflation at 19%
Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
LONDON – Financial analysts for British intelligence agencies have produced a graphic view of how the global financial crisis is affecting the Iranian economy, with inflation rampaging at 19 percent and fuel for cars on a ration-only basis, according to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The assessment comes just as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad secures his hold on the country after this week's elections, which saw hard-liners overwhelmingly returned to power.
The elections affirmed the Islamic Republic's continuation through a combination of brutal suppression and a highly effective security system controlled by the Revolutionary Guards.
But behind that, there are growing signs the financial crisis that has rocked Wall Street and world stock markets has begun to bite ever deeper into the Iranian economy. 
A country which is awash with oil – Iran produces 4.3 million barrels a day and possesses the world's ...   more »

Academy's goal to 'appreciate traditions, histories of Asia, Middle East'
A charter school for kindergarten through eighth-grade students in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., is named after a Muslim warlord, shares the address of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, is led by two imams, is composed almost exclusively (99 percent) of blacks, many Somalis, and has as its top goal to preserve "our values."
And it uses funds from taxpayers of Minnesota.
The school's agenda was revealed by Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten, who noted that she asked for permission to visit the school and interview officials for her report, but was denied. The school also declined to return a WND telephone request for an interview.
But it has been drawing objections from a number of people, including Robert Spencer, the expert who monitors such developments at Jihad Watch. 
"Can you imagine a public school founded by two Christian ministers, and housed in the same building as a church? Add to that – in the same building – a prominent chapel. And let's say the students are required to fast during Lent, and attend Bible studies right after school. All with your tax dollars," he wrote. "Inconceivable? Sure. If such ...   more »

The source of contaminants found in a German version of the blood-thinning drug heparin has been narrowed down to one possible supplier from China, manufacturer RotexMedica GmbH said Friday.
The Trittau, Germany-based company, part of France's Groupe Panpharma, recalled three batches of the drug last week after 80 dialysis patients were sickened, saying at the time that the contamination was believed to be linked to ingredients from China.
In a statement Friday, RotexMedica said that its investigation has now narrowed down the source of contamination to one possible supplier from China. The statement did not identify the company, and a spokeswoman would not elaborate.
"Further investigation is still necessary to confirm this finding," the company said.
While there have been no reported fatalities in Germany, a different brand of heparin produced in the U.S. has been linked to 19 deaths there, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA urged all U.S. suppliers of heparin to start using high-tech tests to make sure their products are free of a contaminant that is the prime suspect for hundreds of allergic-type reactions linked to Baxter International Inc.'s U.S.-sold heparin injections.
RotexMedica said it was working with German authorities, the FDA, ...   more »

The Venezuelan President's show of force on Colombia's border has heightened U.S. concerns about his escalating arms purchases from Russia
by Peter Wilson
While Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez likes to boast that his revolution is constructing a new socialist man, he isn't neglecting the country's soldiers whose support is essential to his rule. Over the last three years, Chávez has spent more than $4 billion on jet fighters, attack helicopters, and rifles. And he is poised to spend billions more later this year on Russian-made submarines and air defense systems.
Chávez's growing military clout was no more apparent than in last week's confrontation with Colombia over the death of a rebel leader. The strike by Colombian forces that killed Raul Reyes, the No. 2 man in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), took place inside the Ecuadorean border. But it was Chávez who immediately escalated the conflict by sending nine battalions of men, plus armor and military jets, to his country's frontier with Colombia. Colombia countered with accusations that a computer belonging to Reyes revealed Chávez had sent $300 million to the FARC.
Saber Rattling on the Border
A summit of Latin American Presidents in the Dominican Republic managed ...   more »

How does that old joke go? "This is your captain speaking; I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that we're lost. … I have no idea where we are. But the good news: We're making exceptionally good time."
Seems to me that's a pretty good description of America today.
If anybody today is paying even casual attention to the news, it must be obvious that our society is going through cataclysmic changes. While there have always been occasional scandals and public shocks, they've never been the rule. I remember reading about the "Teapot Dome" scandal, involving major politicians in cahoots with unscrupulous businessmen. But that enormous fiasco seemed to effect a wholesale cleanup that lasted perhaps a decade. That's the way it seemed to work: a big shameful mess followed by a period of decorous, moral behavior.
For most of our history as a nation, the Judeo-Christian principles that fostered and permeated our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution – our very way of life – dictated that immoral, corrupt, dishonest behavior was simply unacceptable. It was no secret that we all, fallible and failing at times, actually believed that there are unchanging standards of acceptable ...   more »

By Stephen Baskerville
The California appeals court decision criminalizing parents who homeschool their children is only the tip of an iceberg. Nationwide, parents are already being criminalized in huge numbers, and it is not limited to homeschoolers.
During the Clinton years, the trend toward turning children into tools for expanding government power increased rapidly. Otherwise indefensible programs and regulations are now rationalized as "for the children."
As a result, government now has so many ways to incarcerate parents that hardly a family in America has not been touched. The criminalization of parents is highly bureaucratic, effected through a bureaucratic judiciary and supported by a vast "social services" machinery that few understand until it strikes them. They then find themselves against a faceless government behemoth from which they are powerless to protect their children or defend themselves.
Homeschoolers are usually accused of "educational neglect," a form of child abuse. Like other child abuse accusations, it does not usually involve a formal charge, uniformed police, or a jury trial. Instead the accusations are leveled by social workers, whose subjective judgment is minimally restrained by due-process protections. As Susan Orr, head of the federal Children's Bureau points out, these social workers are in ...   more »

Jim Rogers:
INTEREST RATES, FED, BEN BERNANKE, JIM ROGERS, FEDERAL RESERVE, WEAK DOLLAR, INFLATION
By CNB
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign and the Fed should be abolished as a way to boost the falling dollar and speed up the recovery of the U.S. economy, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe Wednesday.
Asked what he would do if he were in Bernanke's shoes, Rogers, who slammed the Fed for pouring liquidity in the system and accepting mortgage-backed securities as guarantees, said: "I would abolish the Federal Reserve and I would resign."
If this happened, "we don't have anybody printing money, we don't have inflation in the land, we don't have a collapsing U.S. dollar," he told "Squawk Box Europe."
The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday a rescue package that it would put around $200 billion into banks and investment houses and allow them to put up risky home-loan packages as collateral.
Wall Street responded to the news with the biggest rally of the year, but Rogers reminisced of the 1970s, when the Fed printed money to avert a recession, boosting inflation and then forcing interest rates tomore than 20 percent to keep a lid on ...   more »

By CHRISTIAN GYSIN
A schoolboy who was taking Ritalin has been found hanged in his bedroom.
Anthony Cole, 15, had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and recently had his prescription for the drug increased.
Recent research claims that Ritalin, also used to combat hyperactivity in children, has led to many developing "manic and psychotic" symptoms.
Anthony Cole was found hanging after his Ritalin prescription had been increased
The drug has previously faced criticism for side effects that include mood swings and sleeping difficulties.
Anthony's father said he had noticed the schoolboy becoming snappy and acting as if in a trance shortly before he died.
Days earlier, he had asked his mother how to write a will and enquired about life insurance.
On Saturday, an hour after cuddling her and telling his family he loved them, Anthony was found dead by his father.
Colin, 51, of Conniburrow, Milton Keynes, said yesterday: "He was just so cheerful and always smiling, but I think he bottled a lot of his feelings up.
"He had said he was worried about his GCSEs and that bigger boys at school had been picking on him.
"He had his problems but on school holidays he seemed so much ...   more »

Shalom:
I just wanted to let you know my Mom went to be with the Lord today.
This was a good thing, she had suffered for so many years, and her mind was gone, she did not know us.
So the Lord took her home on Palm Sunday !!
We will make funeral arrangements tomorrow. She is at the Mount Olivet Funeral home in Ft.Worth on North Sylvania Her funeral will either be at the funeral home or Southcliff Bapt. church. I am leaning more towards the funeral home, but need to convince my siblings of this. funeral home
The funeral will probably be on Wed. due to family coming in, but not sure of the time.
I will send another email tomorrow with details.
If you can not get hold of me you can call Joann Bond at 580-276-7466 or Donita at 817-295-2851
Mom's name  is Dorothy Fike
Blessings, Jodie    more »