Palestinian Authority security forces have vowed to arrest Hamas members and bring order to the West Bank, according to a Thursday report by London daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

"We arrested hundreds of Hamas members, and we'll continue to do so," a high-ranking Palestinian Authority official told Asharq. "We will prevent them, however we can, from bringing anarchy to the West Bank. We will hit them with an iron fist."

Read more at jpost

As Israeli-Palestinian peace talks get under way in Washington, the largely Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem shows the intensifying battle for control of the city.

Read more at CSM

In a bid to set parents' nerves at ease, a southwest suburban school district has become one of the first in the state to begin using GPS to track schoolchildren riding buses to and from school each day.

Palos Heights School District 128 had previously been using ZPass, a GPS technology provided by Seattle-based Zonar Systems, to track the buses. But now the district is outfitting students' backpacks with a luggage tag-sized unit that logs when the student steps on and off the bus.

Read more at NBC

A study by University of Central Florida researchers of decades of weather data and the flowering dates of 70 native and non-native plants found "significant" temperature increases in more than a fourth of the state's counties in the summer and more than a third of them in the fall.

"The weather in Florida has been getting wacky," said Betsy Von Holle, the assistant biology professor who led the study. "And that's definitely having an impact beyond simple temperature changes.

"If the trend continues," she added, "it may affect everything from when we start seeing flowers and birds migrating to what foods we can grow."

Read more at Orlando Sentinel

Israel's defense minister said on Wednesday the Jewish state would be willing to hand over parts of Jerusalem in peace talks with the Palestinians to be launched by President Barack Obama.

Read more at Reuters

As Middle Eastern leaders gathered in Washington to inaugurate a new round of Israeli-Palestinian talks, Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli settlers in their car outside the West Bank city of Hebron.

The attack appeared to be an attempt to spark violence that could undermine the peace negotiations and was a stark reminder that the Islamist Hamas movement remains an important force in Palestinian politics, no matter how much either the Israelis or the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas wish they would go away.

Read more at CSM

Teheran will target Israel's Dimona reactor in a retaliatory attack if the Islamic regime is hit by an Israeli or US air strike, a Iranian official told the Arabic-language newspaper Asharq al-Awsat on Monday.

"Teheran is aware that Israel and the United States want to target Iran, but we are also aware that while they actually have the option to launch war, they do not have the option to end it. This is America's and Israel's point of weakness. We know that there is no solution to this point of weakness, thanks to the importance of the Gulf region, America's problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the (geographically) small area of the Zionist entity," the anonymous official was quoted by the paper as saying. He also specified that the Dimona reactor would be on the top of Iran's target list in a potential war.

Read more at jpost

Are we witnessing the slow but certain death of cash in this generation?  Is a truly cashless society on the horizon?  Legislation currently pending in the Mexican legislature would ban a vast array of large cash transactions, but the truth is that Mexico is far from alone in trying to restrict cash. All over the world, governments are either placing stringent reporting requirements on large cash transactions or they are banning them altogether. We are being told that such measures are needed to battle illegal drug traffic, to catch tax evaders and to fight the war on terror. But are we rapidly getting to the point where we will have no financial privacy left whatsoever? Should we just accept that we have entered a time when the government will watch, track and trace all financial transactions? Is it inevitable that at some point in the near future ALL transactions will go through the banking system in one form or another (check, credit card, debit card, etc.)?

Read more at Prison Planet

Iran unveiled a new artillery shell on Sunday, vastly improving its arsenal's range. Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said the new 130 millimeter advanced artillery shells will be far outstrip the previous capabilities of the Islamic Republic's army, Press TV reported on Sunday. “This ammunition uses solid propellants and act like ballistic missiles,” the Iranian defense minister noted.

Vahidi also lauded Iranian experts in the arms production division of the country's defense industries for their efforts to further enhance the range of the artillery ammunition from 27 to 42 kilometers.

Read more at jpost

The Internal Revenue Service has delayed approval of tax-exempt status for a private organization and is reviewing its educational work, telling a lawyer for the foundation that it must be examined by Washington because its activities may "contradict the administration's public policies."

The allegation is contained in a federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by Z STREET, a Merion Station, Pa., group that educates on the statehood and status of Israel.

"Not only is it patently un-American but it is also a clear violation of the First Amendment for a government agency to penalize an organization because of its political position on Israel or anything else," said Z STREET president Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a former First Amendment lawyer.

Read more at WND