David Drake

The men are among 44 people arrested around the country by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Members of the local Somali community says this is a case of a cultures clashing.

"Khat has been part of Somali culture for many years," said Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

"In their minds, their not committing any crimes. Those people feel that Khat is very normal, like having a cup of coffee in the morning. It's an obvious clash of two different cultures, two different legal systems, two different mind sets..."

DEA agents arrested 14 members of greater Seattle's Somali community, each on two felony counts of conspiracy to import and distribute the drug that is commonly chewed like tobacco in countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Kenya and Ethiopia. If found guilty, they could face up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine. All 14 pleaded not guilty and were held pending further court appearances.

On the streets of Muslim communities in Great Britain, local grocery markets legally sell a narcotic stimulant called khat (pronounced "cot"”). Green bundles of the leafy plant wrapped in banana leaves sit inside beverage coolers next to Snapple and Coca-Cola.

Khat is chewed like tobacco to produce a euphoric state that can turn into an outburst of irrational violence according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. It is imported from places like Yemen, Kenya and Somalia into Great Britain at the rate of some 30 tons per month. It is sold legally throughout Great Britain, mostly in neighborhoods densely populated by North African Muslim immigrants to whom khat chewing at home is as common as coffee drinking in America.

Khat has been grown for use as a stimulant for centuries in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. There, chewing khat predates the use of coffee and is used in a similar social context. Its fresh leaves and tops are chewed or, less frequently, dried and consumed as tea, in order to achieve a state of euphoria and stimulation.

A lozenge that releases a dose of nicotine when sucked is the latest focus of a long-brewing controversy whether access to smoking cessation products should be as easy as walking into a convenience store.

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"I won't [fly United again], and I hope no other black person will fly them either," she told the Daily News

TV star Mo'Nique got kicked off a United Airlines flight Sunday after getting into a spat with a flight attendant...

[The] incident started when her hair stylist stashed a hair dryer in a first-class bin. While Mo'Nique was flying in the front of the cabin, her aide was in coach., and this time the comedian isn't laughing - she's crying racism.

"This happens to black people all the time, and they don't have a voice. I have a voice."

More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too big to fit into scanners, or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate, radiologists reported on Tuesday.

Six friends spruced up in fake blood and tattered clothing were arrested in downtown Minneapolis on suspicion of toting "simulated weapons of mass destruction."

Police said the group were allegedly carrying bags with wires sticking out, making it look like a bomb, while meandering and dancing to music as part of a "zombie dance party" Saturday night.

Dressing up like characters from the movie "Night of the Living Dead" might have been OK, but toting bags with what police said appeared to be protruding wires apparently crossed a line.

A friend of the group said the arrests were overkill and that the suspicious devices were homemade stereos.

Zombie dances and raves have been around for some time. Last fall, for example, nearly 200 people, most shrouded in tattered clothes and bluish makeup, participated in a "zombie pub crawl" in Northeast Minneapolis.

According to the affidavit, [James L.] Williford denied that he said threatening remarks about [Bill] Clinton during an interview with Secret Services agents. However, he did say the thought Clinton was a "communist mole for the Red Chinese."

Jack Warden, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor who played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 85.

Warden, who lived in Manhattan, died Wednesday at a hospital in New York, Sidney Pazoff, his longtime business manager, said in Los Angeles Friday.

"Everything gave out. Old age," Pazoff said. "“He really had turned downhill in the past month; heart and then kidney and then all kinds of stuff." ”

His numerous big-screen roles included a news editor in 1976's "All the President's Men," ” Paul Newman's law partner in 1982'’s "“The Verdict"’ and the president in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie “"Being There." ”

His later roles came in Woody Allen's 1994 "Bullets Over Broadway"”; Beatty's 1998 political satire "Bulworth"” and the 2000 football movie "“The Replacements."

[Donors included Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Chris Rock, Bette Midler, James Caan,] Donald Trump's ex-wife Marla Maples, who gave $2,000, and director Rob Reiner, who gave $3,200. Billy Crystal donated $4,000, and Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger gave $2,100.

Janeane Garofalo has stepped down as fulltime co-host of the evening "Majority Report" on Air America. She will do guest-hosting and fill-ins. Sam Seder, whose relationship with Garofalo at times was reportedly edgy, will continue as "Majority Report" host.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz decided that the Maryland Fair Share Health Care Fund Act would have hurt Wal-Mart by requiring it to track and allocate benefits for its Maryland employees in a different way from how it keeps track of employee benefits in other states.

Motz cited the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which he said pre-empts state laws regarding employee benefit plans.

American taxpayers would for the first time in our history be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos and I'm not going to allow it," [President Bush] said.

The 2001 ban provides government money only for so-called lines of stem cells that already existed when the order came into effect, not for any new lines.

Two other less controversial bills received unanimous backing from the Senate, and were signed into law by President Bush.

The other Arabs have spoken, too. In a stunning development, the 22-member Arab League criticized Hezbollah for provoking the current crisis. It is unprecedented for the Arab League to criticize any Arab party while it is actively engaged in hostilities with Israel.

They are therefore eager to see Hezbollah disarmed and defanged.

Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don't invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the U.S. has a Lebanon allergy. And Israel could not act out of the blue because it would immediately have been branded the aggressor and forced to retreat.

Hence the golden, unprecedented opportunity. Hezbollah makes a fatal mistake. It crosses the U.N.-delineated international frontier to attack Israel, kill soldiers and take hostages. This cross-border aggression is so naked that even Russia joins in the G-8 summit communique blaming Hezbollah for the violence and calling for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty in the south.

But only one country has the capacity to do the job. That is Israel, now recognized by the world as forced into this fight by Hezbollah's aggression. The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.

‚"The Israelis know that if the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die," Clinton told the crowd at a fund-raising event for a Toronto Jewish charity Monday. (August 04, 2002)

[She said] the Jewish state was upholding "American values".

"We are here to show solidarity and support for Israel," Senator Clinton told thousands of people who rallied outside the UN offices in New York. "We will stand with Israel, because Israel is standing for American values as well as Israeli ones."

Senator Clinton said she supported whatever steps were necessary to defend Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria in the military conflict in the Middle East.