Religious tensions at boiling point in Beitar Illite as 14-year-old girl attacked by member of town's 'modesty guard'
A 14-year-old girl from Beitar Illite was taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem after an unknown person spilled acid on her face, legs and stomach, causing light burn wounds. 
The act has been attributed to a representative of the so-called 'modesty guard' in this town where religious and secular residents are increasingly at bitter odds.
MDA received the call just before midnight on Wednesday and paramedic Dror Eini who arrived on the scene to treat the girl also managed to calm her down enough so she could explain what had happened.
Eini told Ynet that “the modesty guards have been threatening her for quite some time.” According to the paramedic the focus of the threats has largely been the victim's 18-year-old sister and some suspect the attacker mistook the younger girl's identity for that of her older sister's.
Eini said the teenager was in a difficult emotional state: “She cried the whole way to the hospital, partly because she was in pain but mostly because she was terrified.” According to Eini at the time of her attack the girl ...   more »

Sophisticated screening and interviewing process that has proven itself very well... There are some key questions that put you in a category that may require the interviewer to ask you some more questions."
Edwards explained, "When we were doing interviews there was a lot of fine very lines... We would have to say... all of these other answers were correct, but really just this one little thing was flagged... so we would flag them to be re-interviewed... but who ever knows if they were, or if they were just put on a plane."
While it is understood that there are participants every year who take advantage of the system, the implications are less clear.
"From a larger organizational perspective, if you have 20,000 participants and even 200 or 2,000 somehow trick their way through the eligibility requirements, I think it would be considered an acceptable failure percentage, for lack of a better term, that any organization would accept," said Jacob Shwirtz, head of the Birthright Alumni Association in Israel.
"I think participants understand that this is a gift... so I think the percentage of people who abuse it is very small," said Jay Rosen, formerly involved in staffing Hillel Birthright ...   more »

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama did not rule out Palestinian sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem when he called for Israel's capital to remain "undivided," his campaign told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.
Slideshow: Pictures of the week "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," Obama declared Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7,000-plus attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.
But a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with."
"Two principles should apply to any outcome," which the adviser gave as: "Jerusalem remains Israel's capital and it's not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967."
Obama: J'lem must remain an undivided capital
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Next president will shape Mideast
He refused, however, to rule out other configurations, such as the city also serving as the capital of a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods.
"Beyond those principles, all other aspects are ...   more »

By Bob Burgdorfer
CHICAGO Tyson Foods Inc, the second largest U.S. chicken producer, said on Tuesday it will destroy about 15,000 chickens in Arkansas exposed to a mild strain of bird flu, and while there was no risk to human health the news sent its shares lower.
The affected chickens, which will not enter the food supply, had antibodies of a mild or low pathogenic strain of bird flu called H7N3.
It is the deadly high pathogenic H5N1 strain, which has never been found in the United States, that worries scientists because it has spread to and killed people around the world.
While the findings are no threat to humans, shares of U.S. chicken companies dropped as investors worried foreign buyers may ban U.S. chicken. The United States exports about 16 percent of its chicken, and a loss of key overseas markets could create a glut of chicken here.
There have been previous cases of mild bird flu in the United States. Last year government investigators found cases in 13 states.
Because of the Arkansas findings the U.S. Agriculture Department already has suspended shipments of chicken from that state to Russia, the top overseas market for U.S. chicken. One concern ...   more »

By Julienne GageOvertown resident Anthony Stewman (far left), a Baptist, says he welcomes the City of Miami's Peacemakers initiative, regardless of the sponsored group's ties to the Nation of Islam.
Overtown resident Anthony Stewman (far left), a Baptist, says he welcomes the City of Miami's Peacemakers initiative, regardless of the sponsored group's ties to the Nation of Islam.
 MIAMI —  Controversy is growing in Miami over the city's decision to launch a nearly $1 million crime-fighting initiative that will include street patrols by a group with close ties to the Nation of Islam.
The City of Miami says it plans to give $150,000 to a civilian patrol group known as the Peacemakers, to be run by the Progressive Land Development International, an organization that shares a mailing address with the Nation of Islam in Miami.
The rest of the money will go to separate initiatives, including adding video camera surveillance and extra police patrols in the predominately black neighborhood of Overtown.
But not everyone thinks having a group tied to the Nation of Islam patrolling the neighborhood is a good idea.
Andrew Rosenkranz, the Anti Defamation League's Florida Regional Director, said the Nation of Islam has "a well-documented, irrefutable public ...   more »

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Japan’s prime minister Thursday that the world will soon not include the United States, Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
"The U.S. domination is on the fall. Iran and Japan as two civilized and influential nations should get ready for a world minus the U.S.," Ahmadinejad told Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the sidelines of the U.N. food summit in Rome on Tuesday, IRNA reported.
The hard-line leader called for Japan’s cooperation in finding their historical and true status, IRNA reported.
"No body or power can wipe Iran off the world scene and Iranian nation of course can well manage its affairs under such an atmosphere," he said.
Also on Thursday, Iran accused the U.S. of pressuring the U.N.'s nuclear agency to base its latest investigation of Tehran's nuclear activities on fake evidence suggesting that Iran had a secret weapons program.
Ahmadinejad is currently at odds with Iran's new reformist parliament due to growing social and economic unrest.
In addition, the Iranian president is under fire worldwide for his comments on the destruction of Israel, his "suspicions" of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and his belief that homosexuals deserve to be executed, tortured ...   more »

MSNBC
A rare form of tuberculosis caused by illegal, unpasteurized dairy products, including the popular queso fresco cheese, is rising among Hispanic immigrants in Southern California and raising fears about a resurgence of a strain all but eradicated in the U.S.
Cases of the Mycobacterium bovis strain of TB have increased in San Diego county, particularly among children who drink or eat dairy foods made from the milk of infected cattle, a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases shows.
But the germ can infect anyone who eats contaminated fresh cheeses sold by street vendors, smuggled across the Mexican border or produced by families who try to make a living selling so-called "bathtub cheese" made in home tubs and backyard troughs.
Scientists at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine are warning that improved screening, treatment and public education are necessary to prevent the spread of the disease that now accounts for about 10 percent of all new cases of TB in that border region - and, perhaps, others.
"M. bovis TB is a disease of antiquity," said Timothy Rodwell, a researcher who led the study published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It is ...   more »

To Prophesy Islam’s War
Against America - Bill Wilson
By Bill Wilson
WASH—Jun 5—KIN-- Iran is threatening to sue the United States for damaging Iran's international reputation by accusing it of trying to make a nuclear bomb. Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan over cartoons published by a Danish newspaper that made fun of the "prophet" Mohammed. And the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel recently issued a report that Islamic attacks against Christians in Gaza were noticeably increasing. But an American president predicted Islam’s radical behavior against the West in 1827.
The Barbary pirates were Islamic terrorists from modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. They were attacking American ships and holding Christian Americans as slaves. In 1786, future presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, ambassadors France and Britain, respectively, met with the Libyan ambassador to Britain Sidi Adja to discuss peace. Adja told them, "that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take ...   more »

by Rabbi Doniel Baron
The inner meaning of 50 and why Shavuot has no date.
Every Jewish holiday falls on a specific day of the month, with one exception: Shavuot, the day on which we accepted the Torah. Shavuot is always the 50th day following the beginning of Passover. It could technically fall on any one of three dates since the number of days in a Jewish month could vary from year to year. The name Shavuot alludes to its independence from the standard calendar. The name means "weeks," demonstrating how the holiday marks the culmination of seven weeks regardless of the date. What is the essence of that dateless day? Hints to the answer lie within the process that leads to Shavuot, the book we read on Shavuot, and the number 50 itself.
Metamorphosis
The key to understanding Shavuot lies within the process that leads up to it. We start counting the days from our exodus from Egypt, our birth as a people, and continue to count until Shavuot, the 50th day. That count marks a period of national metamorphosis. The Jewish people had been so entrenched in Egypt that the Torah described the Exodus as the extraction of ...   more »

Damascus lambasts Israel, US over demands UN nuclear watchdog agency conduct visits to Syrian facilities
AFP
Syria's official press lashed out at the United States and Israel on Tuesday over claims it was building a secret nuclear reactor, and said the Jewish state's own atomic facilities should be subject to international inspection.
Fact or Fiction?  
Syria to allow probe of nuclear allegations 
IAEA chief says Damascus has agreed to let inspectors into country this month to probe allegations of illegal nuclear activity     
UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Monday that his inspectors would this month visit the site of the suspected reactor that was bombed by Israeli warplanes in September last year.
The site at Al-Kibar was attacked after Israeli and US intelligence concluded it was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, but the Syrians have denied the allegations.
"The American and Israeli claims are false. Instead, Israel should be called on to submit its own nuclear installations to international inspection so at least we know how many nuclear weapons it possesses," Syria's official Ath-Thawra newspaper said in an editorial.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear armed power in the Middle East but has ...   more »

By Ofer Aderet,  
Nazis against anti-Semitism? As bizarre as that sounds, a group of Germans which calls itself "National Socialists For Israel" launched its Web site in support of Israel.
"Stop the hatred of the Jewish people," the Web site reads. "The Jews are a healthy, strong nation."
The organization - whose members have yet to reveal themselves to the public - claims that Israel's right to exist is anchored in the principles of social Darwinism, the same principles which the Nazis adopted prior to the Second World War.
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"Israel earned the right to live among the nations [after emerging] from unending wars," the group writes on the site. "Israel also has a right to exist. This nation also has culture... The nation of Israel is appreciated... It is our duty, as neo-Nazis, to defend this supreme success. Not just for the German people and the European cultural sphere, but also, especially, for Israel."
As such, "Nazis for Israel" also leveled criticism at their colleagues in the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), calling them "politicos, cowards, and reactionaries."
"Show us proof of a Jewish plot to dominate the world," they wrote in a rare manifesto which was ...   more »

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies   
The moment when Israel and the Palestinian Authority will have to make tough decisions is fast approaching, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference Tuesday.
"We must stop the Iranian threat by all possible means," he said.
"Each and every country must understand that the long-term cost of a nuclear Iran greatly outweighs the short-term benefits of doing business with Iran."  
Olmert is to meet Wednesday with U.S. President George W. Bush to discuss the Iranian nuclear program and upgrading security relations between the U.S. and Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who also addressed the AIPAC conference in Washington Tuesday, stressed the urgency of establishing a Palestinian state, saying that the increase in violence in the Middle East makes the establishment of a peaceful Palestinian state more urgent rather than less.
That remark, however, was greeted with silence - though the secretary had been warmly greeted by the conference. AIPAC has been a leading skeptic regarding the current Palestinian leadership's ability to control terrorism should a state be established.
Rice said that while the present opportunity is not perfect by any means, it ...   more »

By Maria Glod, Tom Jackman and William Wan
A Fairfax County man was killed yesterday when swift-moving and violent thunderstorms swept through the Washington region, toppling trees and power lines and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power.
The Annandale area man was killed when a massive oak tree smashed into a white 1995 Toyota 4Runner on Hummer Road in Annandale just before 3:15 p.m., at the height of the first wave of storms, authorities said. Another Annandale area man, the driver, was injured.
The storms also knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the area, and continued outages prompted Montgomery and Prince George's county schools to close today. Officials with several other systems said they would make a decision this morning. Area utility companies said last night that they expected many outages to extend into late tomorrow.
In Bethesda, a tree fell on a car near Greentree and Fernwood roads, trapping the driver, a 40-year-old woman, who was rescued with minor injuries, authorities said. WRC (Channel 4) showed footage of a man being pulled from a car after a tree fell on it on River Road in Bethesda. He was unhurt. ...   more »

By Michael Kahn
LONDON (Reuters) - Disinfectant wipes routinely used in hospitals may actually spread drug-resistant bacteria rather than kill the dangerous infections, British researchers said on Tuesday.
While the wipes killed some bacteria, a study of two hospitals showed they did not get them all and could transfer the so-called superbugs to other surfaces, Gareth Williams, a microbiologist at Cardiff University, said.
The findings presented at the American Society of Microbiology's General Meeting in Boston focused on bacteria that included methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
"What we have found is there is a high risk," Williams, who led the study, said by telephone. "We need to give guidance to the staff on how to use the wipes because we found there is a possibility of cross transfer."
MRSA infections can range from boils to more severe infections of the bloodstream, lungs and surgical sites. Most cases are associated with hospitals, nursing homes or other health care facilities.
The superbug can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections and can often only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics.
Experts have been saying for years that poor hospital practices spread dangerous bacteria, and yet many studies have shown that health care workers, including ...   more »

City pays mosque-based Muslim group $150,000 to patrol, promote civility
Rasul Muhammad
The City of Miami hired Muslims with ties to the Nation of Islam to patrol streets and keep the peace.
The city will pay $150,000 to Peacemakers, a civilian group run by Progressive Land Development International, as part of a $1 million crime-fighting initiative, Fox News reports. However, a great deal of controversy has been caused by the organization's mailing address – it also belongs to the Miami's Nation of Islam.
Though Peacemakers insists it has no official affiliation with the Muslim organization, the patrolling group is run by well-known NOI member Rasul Muhammad. He is also the son of late Elijah Muhammad, the man responsible for developing the NOI.
Peacemakers' corporate offices are also located in Miami's Nation of Islam Muhammad Mosque 29, the 7th regional headquarters of the Nation of Islam.
According to reports, Andrew Rosenkranz, the Anti Defamation League's Florida Regional Director, said the City of Miami made an odd selection when it chose the civilian patrol group to teach acceptance and civility.
The Muslim group has "a well-documented, irrefutable public record of racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism," Rosenkratz said.
According to the Miami Herald, Muhammad ...   more »

By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Last Updated: 4:01PM BST 03/06/2008
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has used his first trip to Western Europe to launch a new attack against Jews.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives at the UN food summit in Rome
Arriving in Rome for a United Nations summit, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "The people of Europe have suffered the most harm from Zionists and today the costs of that falsified regime, whether political or economic, are on Europe's shoulders."
He added: "I do not believe my statements [at the conference] will cause any problems. People love what I say because they are trying to save themselves from the oppression of Zionists."
Mr Ahmadinejad visited both Belarus and New York last year, but this is his first trip to a major European nation. Italy has refused to hold any talks with him, but was powerless to deny him entry because of United Nations rules regarding the summit.
"In the name of God, I love the Italian people, who are so rich with civilisation and history. Our two people have much shared history," he said.
Hundreds of Roman Jews protested against his presence outside the Colosseum.
Around 40 heads-of-state attended the first day ...   more »

By Amanda Ripley
When a plane crashes or the earth shakes, we tend to view the survivors as the lucky ones. Had they been in the next seat or the apartment across the street, they would have perished. We marvel at the whimsy of the devastation.
The recent earthquake in China and the cyclone in Burma, not to mention the battery of tornadoes and wildfires ripping through the U.S. this season, remind us that disasters are part of the human condition. We are more or less vulnerable to them, depending where we live.
But survival is not just a product of luck. We can do far more than we think to improve our odds of preventing and surviving even the most horrendous of catastrophes. It's a matter of preparation--bolting down your water heater before an earthquake or actually reading the in-flight safety card before takeoff--but also of mental conditioning. Each of us has what I call a "disaster personality," a state of being that takes over in a crisis. It is at the core of who we are. The fact is, we can refine that personality and teach our brains to work more quickly, maybe even more wisely.
Humans are ...   more »