The Kremlin has embarked on a cautiously evolving strategic drive to re-establish itself in the Arab world. Its anti-aircraft missile deal with Syria is believed by DEBKAfile’s strategic experts to be only a foretaste of much larger transactions to come.

The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said Thursday that American intelligence agencies believed North Korea had mastered the technology for arming its missiles with nuclear warheads, an assessment that if correct, means the North could build weapons to threaten Japan and perhaps the western United States.-New York Times

"Outsourcing" – which has become synonymous with sending American jobs to India or China – could soon mean foreign workers sleeping in ships just a few miles off America's coasts. In an outrageous affront to U.S. labor laws, a California company plans to anchor a 600-cabin cruise ship just beyond the three-mile limit off the coast of El Segundo, near Los Angeles, and stock it with foreign software programmers.-NewsMax

With the help of a dime-size adhesive tag on a vehicle's windshield and cutting-edge technology that detractors equate with Big Brother, police soon could track Texas cars and trucks - if a legislator's bill makes it into law.

Here’s a transcript of the televised address given by President Bush on Thursday, April 28, 2005, followed by his question-and-answer session with the media.

On Thursday, he was the man to beat in the 2006 presidential election, and his left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, no longer seemed likely to be a distant third in Mexico's political races.Lopez Obrador's transformation was completed Wednesday night, when President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, the brigadier general who had doggedly pursued Lopez Obrador on criminal charges stemming from a land dispute

The Pentagon has released hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers taken since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.The pictures were released as a result of legal action taken under the Freedom of Information Act.University of Delaware professor Ralph Begleiter, who made the request, argued the photographs were a public record -BBC

Just who is the IRS? I have been trying to find out for years whether or not the IRS is an agency of the federal government.Why would I ask such a question since the IRS has been invading our privacy for years and putting a gun to our heads to voluntarily hand over the fruits of our labor, backed up by compromised federal judges?Because, much research has raised very serious legal questions the IRS steadfastly refuses to answer -Devvy Kidd/WorldNetDaily

The CIA will no longer be allowed to hold unregistered "ghost" detainees at U.S. military prisons such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon's top intelligence official said on Thursday.Army investigators who first disclosed that the CIA concealed dozens of unregistered detainees at Abu Ghraib blamed the spy agency's practices for a loss of accountability, abuse and a poisoned atmosphere at the infamous facility

A former senior Bush administration official told Senate staff members yesterday that John R. Bolton, the president's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, sought to punish two State Department officials for disagreeing with him on nonproliferation issues, congressional sources said.And a former CIA chief, disputing Bolton, said the nominee had tried to fire a national intelligence officer who believed Bolton was exaggerating evidence on Cuba, they said -Washington Post

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Chile’s President Ricardo Lagos early Thursday evening, a meeting that may prove crucial to José Miguél Insulza’s bid to become secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS).“On the chess board that is America, the queen is moving to take South America,” Chávez said -Santiago Times CL

Oil exporter Venezuela drew closer to Cuba on Thursday by establishing subsidiaries of its state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and a government bank on the Communist-run island.Presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, who are seeking to build an alternative to the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas -- from which Cuba is excluded -- attended the launchings in an upbeat mood.Th Venezuela's oil wealth to prop up Castro

PART TWO explained why a State would provide the best vehicle for introducing such a new monetary unit.This PART highlights some of the specifics of the plan as they apply to the model State, New Hampshire.In principle, though, the bill is very simple, because it promotes monetary freedom and the honesty such freedom imposes on the government in the most straightforward manner possible: free competition among media of exchange in the open market -Dr.Edwin Vieira,Jr.,Ph.D.,J.D./NewsWithViews

America is showing increasing signs of alarm at the influence of Hugo Chavez, the firebrand Leftist president of Venezuela who has eclipsed Fidel Castro as Washington's regional bogeyman.The United States, obsessed with the Middle East for the past three years, has let Latin America drift to the Left, leaving Washington with almost no allies in its own back yard -Telegraph UK

President Bush urged Congress on Thursday night to tilt the Social Security system to benefit low-income retirees of the future as part of a plan to shore up the program's finances.

Is the current property boom an unwelcome replay of the dot.com bubble of the late Nineties and destined to burst in the same way, showering a lot of people with a lot of pain?-BBC