Press Interpreter

09/15/06 -- Pope Benedict XVI has stirred a wave of criticism in the Muslim world with comments he made regarding Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, PBUH. Among those criticisms are calls for him to apologize regarding the insulting fallacies.

10/07/05 -- Journalists for Al-Jazeera in Lebanon reported that the Lebanese army ordered its units settled around the Palestinian refugee camps to take the necessary measures to counteract attempts of a likely strike by Israel.

09/12/05-- Sources within the Mauritanian opposition said that an airplane is carrying scores of members of the Mauritanian opposition in exile, who will return en masse today.

08/13/05 -- The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Fayssal Mekdad, announced that President Bashar al-Asad has decided to attend a summit of the United Nations next month, this being the first time in recent history that a Syrian President has attended the international organization in New York.

07/30/05 -- The ousted Iraqi president faced a bare-knuckled assault last Thursday while appearing for a hearing before a special Iraqi court in Baghdad.

In a statement regarding Saddam, his defence team claimed that "a man took a shot at Saddam and the two of them exchanged blows during the hearing, which was attended by the lawyer for the defence, Khalil Aldulaimi."

07/09/05 -- The leaders and imams of the Islamic Union appealed to the Muslims of Macedonia to ease tensions, after the escalation of a clash over the presidency of the union, following an attack upon five of the imams by armed and masked men.

06/19/05 -- The regional office of the United Nations organization for education, science, and culture (UNESCO) came to agreements in the Egyptian capital with the companies Microsoft, Intel, and Hewlett Packard for the planning and undertaking of training programs for Arab teachers in information technology, so that these programs would be successful according to the standards which UNESCO has established.

06/10/05 -- Today, Friday, the American military announced the killing of five members of the marine infantry (marines) in an explosion in western Iraq.

The American forces explained that the five marines met their deaths yesterday, Thursday, in combat in Haqlaaniyya.

05/25/05 -- An Italian judge has ordered Oriana Fallaci, an American author of Italian descent, to stand in court on a charge of defaming Islam, which has infuriated the Italian Justice Minister, but delighted representatives of Muslim emigrants.

05/27/05 -- The Al-Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia said that their colleague Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi is "healthy" two days after the announcement that he was injured and taken to a neighboring country for treatment, according to a new press release from the organization on the internet.

05/26/05 -- The US is growing increasingly dependent on crude oil despite attempts to increase local production to meet a rise in demand.

Doug McIntyre, an analyst at the US government’s Energy Information Administration, said that long-term demand expectations pointed to an increase on the US dependence on imports.

05/24/05 -- Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa and Mauritanian Foreign Minister Mohamed Vall Ould Bellal told Aljazeera that the North African summit, which was set to take place in the Libyan capital on Thursday, had been delayed for an unspecified time.

05/14/05 -- An Aljazeera correspondent in Pakistan, relying upon tribal sources there, reported that a prominent member of the al-Qaeda organization was killed within the past few days, when an American spy plane targeted him with a rocket within one of the tribal regions of Pakistan.

04/28/05 -- Finally, after a tug of war lasting three months between different political blocs, both great and small, the National Assembly of Iraq (the Parliament) bestowed its confidence in the government of the Prime Minister, appointed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with the majority of 180 votes out of the 185 representatives present at the session of the 275-member parliament, a day after the principal committee agreed to their selection.

04/14/05--In the last few months, Yemeni authorities have concentrated on measures aiming to prevent the sale of their antiquities abroad, orchestrated by international groups, and have strengthened supervision at border crossings, airports, and harbors. They have achieved some notable successes during this period, which have contributed to the defeat of smuggling by antiquarians and the arrests of merchants and dealers both local and foreign.

04/08/05 -- The Egyptian actor Khaled El Nabaoui confirmed that the film, the production of which is currently taking place in Hollywood, about the period of the Crusades between the Muslims and the Christians, will justify the superiority of the West over the Arab and Islamic worlds, but it will not endeaver to instill the old rigid stereotypes known about them, as some fear.

04/07/05 -- Reuters attributed to an official within the Egyptian Ministry of Health a statement that four people, among them an American man and a French woman, were killed in a bombing in Cairo’s First District.

04/02/05 -- The United States voiced its disappointment in Ethiopia’s decision to expel three American organizations, saying that they had worked to further democracy in Addis Ababa, guaranteeing reforms in the elections scheduled last 15 May / Adar.

03/24/05 -- Three graves, dating back to the Roman era, were discovered by chance last week in the city of Homs,* north of the Syrian capital, Damascus, in the course of excavations for the erection of a building.

03/11/05 -- An Egyptian researcher has determined that the curricula in Israel aim to indoctrinate youth with an inclination towards war and establish a “racist� mindset against Arabs, a conclusion which arose through the analysis of an ensemble of 16 books assigned to pupils.

03/01/05 -- In the discussion in which she participated at the Third Cairo Conference for Literary Achievement, the Egyptian critic Hibah Sherif notes that literary works are more accurate than history books for the explanation of events and phenomena, among them the rise of Naziism in Germany during the 30s of the 20th century.

02/24/05 -- At a late hour on Thursday evening, Pope John Paul II, the Vatican Pope,* submitted to emergency surgery opening an incision in his trachea to aid him in breathing with more facility.

The Italian wire service said that surgeons had succeeded in opening a small incision in the neck and trachea of the Pope, in an operation occupying 30 minutes, which sought to permit air to flow directly to the lungs, in order to remedy respiratory problems.

02/23/05 -- Contrary to the sluggish speed with which the crisis between Lebanon and Syria has passed in the past several years — against a the backdrop of the Syrian presence in Lebanon, which was hardly reported in the news even while a small number of Christian Lebanese parties confronted it — this recent crisis is snowballing. It is as if it is a race against time and between the voices demanding peace and the voices demanding escalation.