Today I want to alert you to an extremely handy mainstream news service called Infobeat. I find it useful to know what the politically correct media folks deem important - and how various story slants are presented.
The Infobeat website is http://www.infobeat.com/ where you find information on how to subscribe. Infobeat sends a wealth of condensed open paragraph versions of various articles in News, Sports, Entertainment, Technology and Finance. This service is for free and meant to get you to visit the various websites.
I'll give you a few samples from today's version in hopes of enticing you to subscribe. It is helpful to me to have my readers surf the mainstream news and send me pertinent articles which I don't have time to seek out on my own.
Below are some summaries from Infobeat:
* Clinton offers Israel more aid
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton is establishing a new strategic partnership with Israel and promising boosts in U.S. military aid and up to 50 jet fighters as inducements for territorial concessions by Prime Minister Ehud Barak to the Palestinians and Syria. U.S. military aid to Israel will be boosted by nearly one-third, from $1.9 million [ed: must be billions!] a year currently to $2.4 billion annually over the next decade if Congress approves. And the administration is urging Congress to approve a special $1.2 billion appropriation to carry out a pullback on the West Bank. Barak is responding with enthusiasm to the overtures, promising to test the perilous waters of Mideast peacemaking for the next 15 months. See <<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560364599-ded>full story
* Barak urges U.S. to release Pollard
WASHINGTON (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak urged President Clinton to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard but did not get a response to his plea, a top White House official said Monday. A former civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, Pollard was convicted of espionage in 1985 for giving Israel tens of thousands of top-secret documents. He is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison. Clinton was asked about Pollard during a joint news conference with Barak. But the prime minister spoke up first and pre-empted the president. The issue of Pollard nearly derailed peace talks at Wye River, Md., last October when then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly proposed that he be allowed to take Pollard home to Israel on his plane when the negotiations concluded. See <<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560360074-1cb>full story
* 2 U.S. soldiers killed in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Two U.S. soldiers in Kosovo were killed and three suffered minor injuries when their armored personnel carrier overturned, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping force said Monday. The soldiers were the first American peacekeepers to die in Kosovo since Serb forces pulled out of the province and alliance troops began moving in last month under a peace accord. The identities of the soldiers were not immediately released. Lt. Commander Louis Garneau, a spokesman for KFOR, the international peacekeeping force, said the accident occurred Sunday about nine miles west of Gnjilane, the southeastern Kosovo town where U.S. forces are based. See
<<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560357229-4a9>full story
* Update: Clinton, Barak set peace time frame
WASHINGTON (AP) - Acknowledging the road ahead will be perilous, President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak established a "new partnership" Monday designed to produce a breakthrough in Middle East peacemaking within 15 months. "By then we should know," Barak said as the two leaders directed key national security experts to meet jointly and report to them every four months. Clinton and Barak, meanwhile, said they would meet at regular intervals to try to keep peacemaking on track. Peace will not drop on the Middle East like a miracle, said Barak. It will take hard work and for an Israeli leader determined to guard his people's security in an unfriendly environments, there can be no "second opportunity," he said. See
<<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560363144-7ea>full story *** Also: Text of Clinton-Barak statement, see <<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560360338-376>full story *** And: Vatican official miffed at Israel, see <<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560358539-560>full story
* New massacre victims found in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Hatred and violence in Kosovo are claiming new victims even as old ones are just being documented by international investigators gathering evidence of atrocities during the brutal Serb clampdown on the province. Four ethnic Albanians killed over the weekend near Klina, in western Kosovo, provide stark evidence that the ethnic hatreds that led to the brutal Serb-Albanian conflict are continuing despite attempts by NATO-led peace forces to cap tensions. Evidence of earlier brutality was unearthed Monday in the northern town of Podujevo, where local authorities exhumed the bodies of 19 victims of a Serb massacre, including 80-year-old Fariz Fazliu, who went missing March 28, the Muslim holy day Bajram. See
<<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560364549-9f9>full story *** Also: Kosovo TV coverage supported Clinton, see <<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560360802-020>full story
* Yugoslavia: UN violates resolution
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Yugoslavia accused Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday of expanding the United Nations' power in Kosovo and illegally suspending Belgrade's control over the Serb province. In a letter to the secretary-general, Yugoslavia's U.N. envoy Vladislav Jovanovic claimed Annan was violating the June 10 Security Council resolution ending the conflict which reaffirmed Yugoslavia's sovereignty. He called Annan's July 12 report to the Security Council on the U.N. civilian mission "biased and tendentious" and said it showed "scant respect" for Yugoslavia's sovereignty over Kosovo. In the report Annan outlined the sweeping powers the U.N. interim administration will have until a transitional authority is established. See
<<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560360825-db7>full story
* Update: FCC study says Net prospers without regulation
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Communications Commission should maintain its hands-off policies to help foster growth of the Internet, intervening with only minimal regulatory action to address anti-competitive behavior, says an FCC staff study released Monday. The internal study comes as the commission has stood aside in one of the most contentious debates about the future of how the Internet will reach consumers: whether cable businesses offering high-speed Internet service must share their lines with competitors. The FCC has declined to force such line sharing. The paper credits commission policies over the past 30 years that have opened up parts of the telecommunications market as laying the groundwork for Internet use to flourish. See
<<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560360324-0e3>full story
* Detectives lose business to Internet
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - If Sam Spade or Mike Hammer were around today, they'd probably be plumbers, thanks to a boom in Internet snooping, which lets savvy computer users do their own detective work instead of hiring a gumshoe to do it for them. Some private detectives - there are about 8,700 in California - say their business has been stunted by the ability of people to use the Internet to gather information they used to hire a private eye to collect. San Francisco's best-known private detective, Hal Lipset, whose agency has been peeking into the private lives of people for more than 50 years, has seen business plummet by 40%, according to his operating manager, Kyle Rimdahl. See
<<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560358555-e27>full story
Thought for the Day:
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
(Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1850)