Israel had complained that the court’s ruling earlier Monday in the case of Ahmed Saadat violated a deal worked out with the United States and Britain, who are supervising Saadat and five other Palestinian prisoners at a prison in Jericho.

In a statement, the Palestinian Cabinet said it respected the court’s ruling, but could not implement it because “the Israeli occupation forces closed the city of Jericho immediately after the decision, and (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon’s spokesman had threatened to assassinate” Saadat.

The court had said that there was no evidence against Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the faction that assassinated an Israeli Cabinet minister last October.

Saadat, four members of the PFLP and a sixth man were taken to Jericho as part of an agreement that ended Israel’s 34-day siege of Arafat’s office May 1. The six were placed under the supervision of British and U.S. wardens.

The Supreme Court decision might complicate the mission of CIA director George Tenet, who arrived in the area Monday. His main mission is to discuss reforms in Arafat’s regime, including streamlining its sprawling security services and building an independent court system.

However, while overturning the Supreme Court decision might save Tenet the embarrassment of dealing with a U.S.-brokered deal that was coming unraveled with the release of a key prisoner, the Cabinet decision was another case of the executive branch overruling the judicial.

Arafat has the final say in decisions like this, and the Cabinet statement keeping Saadat in prison was in the name of his leadership.

Israeli officials have long charged that Palestinian imprisonment of suspected militants is a sham, because some militants are released shortly after they are imprisoned, and many are allowed to come and go from the lockups as they please. The Israelis refer to the Palestinian prison system as the “revolving door.”

PFLP gunmen assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in Jerusalem on Oct. 17, 2001. The PFLP said it was retaliation for Israel’s killing of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa two months earlier.

During the Israeli siege, Arafat convened a makeshift court in his office, which convicted the four PFLP members and sentenced them to prison terms of one to 18 years. However, Saadat was not charged, and neither was the sixth man, Fuad Shoubaki, said to be the mastermind of a seaborne Palestinian arms shipment intercepted by the Israeli navy in January.

In Gaza, a three-judge panel of the Palestinian Supreme Court ruled after a one-hour hearing that Saadat should be released. Outside the courtroom, several dozen PFLP backers, expecting the ruling, celebrated.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the Palestinian Cabinet decision.

After the court ruling, Sharon said that Israel “will take all the necessary steps so that he will not be released.” Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that if Saadat is freed, that would “free Israel of its obligations” under the deal. He did not elaborate.

At an Israeli Cabinet meeting Sunday, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, Avi Dichter, complained that the six prisoners at the Jericho jail were receiving unlimited numbers of visitors and were permitted to mingle among themselves — both which he said were violations of the agreement reached last month.

The men were also allowed to use cell phones until they were taken away two weeks ago, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The post Palestinians Overturn Order to Free Militant appeared first on My Blog.

Bush made a detour to Arizona while on his way to Alberta, Canada, where he is to attend the G8 leadership summit.

“Today, I signed a declaration declaring this an emergency which then provide for federal help, which means money to fight the fires. It means temporary housing money and long-term housing money, it means helpfor small business owners,” Bush said. “It also provides counseling services. For all those folks who need counseling, I hope you ask for it.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the government was providing 13 air tankers, 349 fire engines and 54 helicopters to help put an end to the state’s worst wildfire in its history. So far, more than 300 homes have been destroyed by the blazes, andnearly 30,000 people have been forced from their home.

Bush met with Arizona governor Jane Hull, local firefighters, emergency personnel, and evacuees who are living at the American Red Cross emergency center set up on a high school football field.

Standing in front of cases of soda and boxes of food, Bush thanked the people for being brave and told them that “we are all in this together.”

Bush got off Air Force One to change planes in Eagar, Ariz., where he boarded a plane to fly him over the burn zones. Eagar is located 40 miles from Show Low, the town that is the latest focus of firefighters.

The fire ravaging Arizona is one of 18 blazes burning in six Western states, swallowing up acreage at a pace roughly double the 10-year average. More than 2 million acres have been charred since spring.

Fire officials said cool temperatures would help slow the fire, and a path was scorched to slow the movement toward Show Low, but assessments were not positive.

“With the fuel built up and the dryness of the conditions, there’s not a heck of a lot we can do,” said Larry Humphrey, incident team commander for the Bureau of Land Management.

Before he left Washington earlier in the day, the president declared Apache and Navajo counties and the Fort Apache Indian Reservation major disaster areas, making them eligible for federal aid and low-cost loans.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The post Bush Visits Arizona Burn Zones appeared first on My Blog.

During his 17 months as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs, Neal A. McCaleb focused on untangling a fund that has been mismanaged for more than a century. It manages $500 million a year in oil, gas, mining and timber royalties from Indian lands.

“The constraints imposed by ever-present litigation have taken their toll,” McCaleb said in a statement Thursday. “Unfortunately, the litigation has taken first priority in too many activities, thus distracting attention from the other important goals that could provide more long-term funding for Indian Country.”

In September, McCaleb and Interior Secretary Gale Norton were held in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth for failing to comply with his order fix the trust fund and concealing their failure to do so. The government plans to appeal the ruling.

McCaleb, 67, sought to change to fund management, but met resistance from Indian leaders. Negotiations bogged down and then broke off.

A 1996 lawsuit by a group of American Indians claimed the government squandered between $10 billion and $40 billion from the fund, set up in 1887 when Congress assigned American Indians small parcels of land and directed the Interior Department to manage the royalties.

Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to fix the management problems and to piece together an accounting of what the Indians are owed.

The post Tribal Trust Fund Manager Retires appeared first on My Blog.

Nobody was injured when shots were fired Friday morning as the Americans were training in the desert south of Kuwait City, the spokesman told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

However, the incident raised concern over the safety of U.S. troops in this small Gulf emirate. It came after shooting incidents last month involving American military personnel, including the Oct. 8 killing of a Marine and wounding of another on Failaka island.

Friday’s shooting occurred as U.S. troops were on desert military maneuvers at Oraifijan, 35 miles south of Kuwait City.

U.S. military officials say shots came from two white pickup trucks, each carrying two people. It was not immediately clear what kind of weapons were used. Earlier reports indicated four people were arrested. There was no explanation why authorities withdrew that account.

“The shots were fired within the vicinity (of U.S. troops), nobody was injured,” a U.S. spokesman said. He said Kuwaiti police were the primary investigators.

Efforts to contact police spokesman for comment were unsuccessful.

It was unclear if the shots had been directed at American forces or whether they came from hunters.

Kuwaiti officials have said privately that shots fired on Oct. 14 in the northwestern desert near U.S. troops probably came from Bedouin hunters who were not trying to harm Americans.

But U.S. military personnel have been on alert since the U.S. Marine was killed early last month. Two Kuwaiti fundamentalist Muslims who carried out the attack were killed by other Marines.

Attacks on U.S. military personnel have shocked Kuwaitis who depend on Washington for protection from Iraq, which invaded this oil-rich country in 1990. A U.S.-led coalition drove out the Iraqis the following year.

Kuwait signed a defense pact with Washington after the Iraqis were defeated.

Many Kuwaiti fundamentalist leaders have said the young people who attacked U.S. troops were “misguided,” and the number of militant extremists here is believed to be small.

Some 10,000 American forces are in Kuwait for routine desert training or maintaining equipment pre-positioned to defend the country. U.S. fighter jets use two Kuwaiti air bases to patrol a no-fly zone in southern Iraq.

The post Kuwaiti Police Search for Four Who Fired Guns Near U.S. Soldiers appeared first on My Blog.

But in the week since Perdue ousted the Democrat in a historic upset, he has sounded much less eager to take on the racially divisive issue that could cost Georgia millions in tourist dollars.

“My goal is to have this state heal, to be reconciled from a standpoint of bitter partisanship and the issues that would divide us,” Perdue said during a victory tour. He said the referendum idea “is something we will look at with the leadership once the leadership gets in place in the House and Senate and make a decision on how we will resolve the issue.”

On the campaign trail, Perdue had promised to back a referendum that would allow Georgians to choose from the old banner, dominated by the red-and-blue Confederate battle cross, and the new one, with the gold seal of Georgia on a blue field and just a tiny image of the old flag near the bottom.

The promise was well-received among many rural, white Georgians. Analysts say those voters were the key for Perdue — the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction in 1872 — as he pulled off perhaps the nation’s most stunning upset on Election Day.

If Perdue does not deliver, he could face the same kind of anger that Barnes drew from supporters of the old flag, who say the Confederate emblem is a tribute to Georgia’s history.

“I’d be disappointed. I wouldn’t feel like he kept his word to the people of Georgia,” said retired police officer Terry Rumph, who attended a Perdue victory rally wearing a cap with a cloth emblem of the old flag.

Leaders of Georgia’s black community and its businesses do not want a drawn-out fight that could cost the state conventions and sporting events, as happened in South Carolina in a dispute over the flying of a Confederate flag over the Statehouse.

“That will take us back to the dark days of racial polarization,” said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat and veteran civil rights activist.

The new flag was pushed quickly through the Legislature last year by Barnes and a coalition of blacks, Democrats loyal to Barnes and suburban Republicans. Barnes surprised opponents by introducing the plan near the beginning of legislative session, lining up key supporters beforehand and telling everyone blacks would boycott the state if the change wasn’t made.

After nearly two years, the flag issue died in the Atlanta area but not in rural Georgia. Supporters of the old flag dogged Barnes at every public event, waving hundreds of the old flags.

Perdue dominated Barnes in rural, white counties, where “Boot Barnes. Let Us Vote” and “Change the governor, keep the flag,” were popular on T-shirts, signs and bumper stickers. Perdue won 95 of the 96 counties that are more than 65 percent white. Four years ago, Barnes won 55 of those counties.

Perdue, a 55-year-old who runs a grain business after a detour into veterinary medicine, said anger over the issue was only a small reason he was able to defeat an opponent who outspent him 6-to-1.

“The people offended by the flag change were only a small constituency of the people offended by Roy Barnes’ arrogant abuse of power,” he said. “They represent a small piece.”

The Confederate emblem added to the Georgia flag in 1956 at the height of Southern segregationist defiance.

Many think Perdue’s promise to reopen a divisive issue was bad politics.

“I think it was a big mistake. I think he just knocked the scab off a wound that’s begun to heal,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

Terry Jones, a 48-year-old black cab driver in Atlanta, said a referendum “would be a smack in the face” and could cost him business from lost conventions and trade shows.

Republican legislative leaders like Sen. Eric Johnson of Savannah profess confidence that a referendum can heal rather than divide “as long as the public is involved and there is open debate.”

“If the people sort of come together with a consensus through their elected officials and if we as legislators do our job, it will not be a divisive issue,” he said.

The post Perdue Evasive on Flag Issue appeared first on My Blog.

The twin reports released Monday led U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff to drop his own investigation into the case of Abdallah Higazy.

The Egyptian student was detained after investigators were told an aviation radio capable of communicating with commercial pilots was found in his New York hotel room overlooking the World Trade Center soon after Sept. 11.

He was charged with lying to FBI agents during a polygraph examination in which he supposedly denied owning the radio and then later admitted it was his. But further investigation proved the radio actually belonged to a pilot, and the charges against Higazy were dropped.

Higazy, 31, claimed he confessed only because the polygrapher threatened his relatives in Egypt.

The review by the Justice Department’s inspector general found no evidence to substantiate the claim and found “no further action with respect to this matter is warranted.”

But the review never explicitly explains why his test results would have indicated knowledge of the attacks, when authorities now say he was not involved.

The reports say Higazy indicated deception when he answered no to the following questions: “Did you take part in those attacks?” and “Were you involved in those attacks?”

The inspector general’s reports conclude that “the polygraph was administered appropriately and that the results were properly read to indicate that Higazy was deceptive” in questions about Sept. 11.

The findings imply that Higazy may have confessed to owning the radio under the mistaken impression the admission would get him released from custody.

U.S. Attorney James Comey said Monday he was “very proud of the way our office and the FBI conducted itself in the Higazy case.”

In releasing the reports, Rakoff questioned “whether the government’s continued reliance on such a doubtful investigatory tool as polygraph testing increases the possibility of false confessions.”

The post Inquiry Clears FBI Agents In False 9/11 Confession Probe appeared first on My Blog.

Reubens was charged with one misdemeanor count of possessing materials depicting children under the age of 18 engaged in sexual conduct, said Ana Garcia, a spokeswoman with the City Attorney’s office. He surrendered to authorities Friday and was released on $20,000 bail.

Jones, who played the uptightdean of studentsand comic foil to Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was charged with hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose for sexually explicit photos — a felony — as well as misdemeanor possession of child pornography. He was freed on $20,000 bond after surrendering Thursday.

Reubens, 50, and Jones, 56, are acquaintances and both cases stem from the same police investigation, said Los Angeles County District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

“Los Angeles Police Department brought us both cases at the same time in connection with an investigation,” Gibbons said Friday.

Reubens could face as much as a year in jail and a $2,500 fine if convicted. If Jones is convicted, he faces up to three years in prison and would have to register as a sex offender for life.

“This is all about photos. There’s no allegations of any touching or any improper acts with a minor,” Jones’ attorney, Jeffrey Brodey, told the Los Angeles Times. “This will be resolved very quickly so he can get on with his life and get back to work.”

Brodey did not return a call from The Associated Press on Friday.

Reubens’ attorney, Blair Berk, dismissed the charge against his client as “simply untrue and without merit.”

“Mr. Reubens has never at any time knowingly possessed any artwork from his extensive vintage and antique art collection even remotely related to anything improper,” Berk said in a statement.

Jones is to be arraigned next Thursday. Reubens’ arraignment is scheduled for Dec. 19.

Authorities searched the homes of both men on Nov. 16, 2001, according to the offices of the district and city attorneys. The statute of limitations on the misdemeanors would have run out Saturday if charges had not been filed.

Reubens pleaded no contest to an indecent exposure charge in 1991 after he was arrested in Sarasota, Fla., for allegedly exposing himself in a movie theater.

After that plea, Reubens’ long-running Pee-wee Herman Show was canceled and his star faded, although he has had supporting roles in a number of films since, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Blow.

Jones has appeared in dozens of films, including Amadeus, Ed Wood and Beetlejuice.

The post Two Actors Face Child Porn Charges appeared first on My Blog.

Topics and Guests for Friday,
Nov. 15

Could Iraq become a thriving, free democracy if Saddam Hussein is removed from power?
• Bruce Jackson of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq

Is Al Qaeda’s war on the West going global?
• Brian Jenkins, terrorism analyst

The opening bell affects stock traders’ brains as if they were Pavlov’s dogs. The science called neuroeconomics looks at the effects of money on the mind
• Paul Glimcher, professor of neural science at New York University

Is former first lady Hillary Clinton getting ready for a run for the White House?
• Carl Limbacher of Newsmax.com

Be sure to tune into The Big Story with John Gibson…
weekdays at 5 p.m. ET.

The post Topics and Guests for Friday, Nov. 15 appeared first on My Blog.

The 38-year-old man from Woodbridge, Va., was taken to George Washington University Hospital here and held for observation, District of Columbia police spokesman Joe Gentile said. Police did not release the man’s name, pending an investigation.

A police bomb squad fired a water cannon at two suspicious packages found in a rental van the man had parked outside the department. Neither was found to contain explosives, police spokesman Quintin Peterson said.

An officer with the Federal Protective Services was first alerted to the man. The FBI and D.C. police were questioning him, and the Secret Service was looking into whether to charge him with threatening the president, Peterson said.

Morning rush-hour traffic was brought to a standstill as several streets were closed in the area, and about 7,000 people were evacuated.

Officials tore open a file box full of books from the van and inspected a suitcase and clothing bags, and the FBI confiscated the truck.

People were allowed back into the building and the roads reopened by midmorning.

The post Man Taken Into Custody in D.C. After Threats appeared first on My Blog.

Party: Democrat

Candidate: U.S. House of Representatives

Born: 5/3/1947, New York, NY

Religion: Jewish

Marital Status: Single

Education: BA Brown Univ., 1968; MIA Columbia Univ., 1970; JD Yale Univ., 1973; MPhil Yale Univ., 1974; PhD Yale Univ., 1975

Previous Political Experience: No prior elected office

Campaign Web Site: http://www.schneider-for-congress.com

Click here for the Fox News Election Map

The post Jan Schneider (Democrat) appeared first on My Blog.