Silsbee Highschool cheerleader kicked off squad for refusing to cheer for player who raped her. A Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad for refusing to chant the name of an athlete she said had raped her will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate her free-speech suit against the school district, her lawyer says. The cheerleader and her parents... 

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, left, and his co-defendant Platon Lebedev, right, talk behind a glass enclosure at a court room in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010. Khodorkovsky, 47, is in the final year of an eight-year sentence after being convicted of tax evasion, and the new conviction on charges of embezzlement and money laundering could keep him behind bars for several... 

Anti-Arab demonstration in Bat Yam, December 20, 2010 Rabbi Gilad Kariv condemns letter by 30 rabbis’ wives calling on Jewish girls to stay away from Arab men. The head of Israel’s Reform Judaism movement on Tuesday harshly criticized a letter by 30 rabbis’ wives calling on Jewish girls not to date Arabs, work with them or perform national service in... 

Guilty: Moshe Katsav, who was president of Israel from 2000 to 2007, has been convicted of rape in a Tel Aviv court ‘Riddled with lies’: Former Israel president Moshe Katsav facing four years behind bars after being found guilty of rape. The former president of Israel has been found guilty of two charges of rape this morning. Moshe Katsav, who was in charge... 

How long before you will be subjected to a virtual strip search before you can buy food or other necessities? As we predicted, Homeland Security and national security state officialdom are in the process of expanding the police state and citizen humiliation grid from airports to hotels and shopping malls. “The United States is stepping up security at ‘soft targets’... 

Federal Examiners Say Religious Decoration Inappropriate. What in the world are they thinking over at the Federal Reserve? The privately-owned central bank that runs the U.S. economy is now forcing local banks to remove every shred of Christian faith from their establishments. When Federal Reserve examiners recently visited a local bank in Perkins, Oklahoma they demanded... 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union was fined 1.2 million euros ($1.6 million) for breaching party donation rules, adding to the CDU’s difficulties as it prepares to fight seven state elections. The fine was imposed by the lower house of parliament in Berlin, the Bundestag, for party funding violations in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate... 

Environmental groups had called on the Obama administration to restore wilderness protections. The US is to make millions of acres of public land eligible for wilderness protection, officials have said. The order reverses former President George W Bush’s policy forbidding the government from doing so. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Thursday said the new policy... 

Mistaken identity... Carnita Matthews outside court with a friend A BURQA-CLAD mother of seven who claimed she was the victim of mistaken identity has been jailed for six months for making a false complaint against a police officer. Magistrate Robert Rabbidge dismissed Carnita Matthews’ allegations that a highway patrol officer was racist after he pulled her over... 

An Israeli child plays with Christmas decorations at a market stall in Nazareth in 2009. The mayor of a Jewish suburb of Nazareth sparked outrage on Wednesday after refusing to allow Christmas trees to be placed in town squares, calling them provocative. The mayor of a Jewish suburb of Nazareth sparked outrage on Wednesday after refusing to allow Christmas trees to be... 

One of the police officers arrested a street preacher Telling a street preacher that it is against the law to affirm the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality is costing a team of British policeofficers some $11,000 – plus legal fees. That was the resolution announced by The Christian Institute in a case that it fought on behalf of a street preacher, Dale Mcalpine,... 

Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the country since 1994 and has been dubbed “Europe’s last dictator”. A Belarusian human rights organization says seven of the candidates who ran against the country’s authoritarian leader face charges that could lead to 15 years in prison in the wake of post-election violence and massive arrests. Ales Belyatsky of the human rights... 

The European Commission has come under fire for producing more than three million copies of an EU diary for secondary schools which contains no reference to Christmas but includes Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim festivities. More than 330,000 copies of the diaries, accompanied by 51 pages of glossy information about the EU, have been delivered to British schools as a... 

Policemen arrest an activist from the Belarus youth organization Mlady Front (Young Front). Security forces in Belarus have detained over 600 people, including seven opposition candidates, after smashing a mass rally protesting fraud in the landslide re-election of president Alexander Lukashenko. Western governments have been quick to condemn the vote and the crackdown,... 

The Israeli market for donor livers has been well-documented. Most international trafficking rings have involved wealthy Israeli patients on ‘transplant tours’. It is fitting that the man described as the “fixer” in Kosovo’s alleged organ ring was an Israeli of Turkish descent. Moshe Harel, a fugitive wanted by Interpol in connection with...