THE cheque from the Saudi Government for $360,000 was enclosed in an envelope.
It was a donation, a gift, a part payment to subsidise the construction of a building that would become Sydney's Muslim heartbeat: Lakemba mosque. More than 35 years after Sydney cleric Khalil Shami received the cheque, he insists it came with no strings attached. But while the cheque had no tangible conditions in the form of written instructions or binding contracts, the cleric received a message from his donors several months after depositing it.

"They said: 'Please, can you mention the tragedy of the Palestinian people and what's happened to them in your sermon?"' Shami tells Inquirer. "Which is really a very noble cause, a very noble cause, I couldn't see a negative in their request."

The message Shami received from Riyadh brings into question the influence petro-dollars can have on their recipients, whether the money is bankrolling a religious centre, a clerical allowance or Queensland's Griffith University, which was exposed by The Australian last month for seeking a $1.37million Saudi grant, of which $100,000 was received, and offering to keep elements of the deal a secret.

The Saudi Government - largely through its embassy - is believed to have funnelled at least $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to propagate hardline Islam, bankroll radical clerics and build mosques, schools and charitable organisations.

But the Saudi cash that has flowed into Australia, that also allegedly has paid the allowance of hardline Canberra cleric Mohammed Swaiti, who has publicly praised jihadists, is dwarfed by the $90 billion Riyadh is believed to have pumped into promoting Islamic fundamentalism internationally.

US-based Middle East expert and author Daniel Pipes says it is wrong to presume that all academics would follow their donor's line merely to keep the stream of funds rolling.

"Academics have a distinct point of view and are not about to be bought and change their point of view for any sum of money," he tells Inquirer. "But they are willing to shape their work and their views. So you can't buy them but you can rent them. So someone who might have been inclined to ask tough questions will do something else. It's subtle. It's not like the Saudis come to town to buy up academics who grovel before them, as was the case with Griffith University."

Last month, Britain's MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans reportedly told his Government that the Saudi Government's multimillion-dollar donations to universities, along with other funds from Muslim organisations in countries such as Pakistan, had led to a "dangerous increase in the spread of extremism in leading university campuses".

 Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.

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VIENNA, Austria - A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday.

Ban said the U.N. and all members of the international community were very concerned and immediate action was needed.

He spoke to reporters at U.N. offices in Austria, where he was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the United Nations and European Union can forge closer ties.

"This steeply rising price of food — it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for additional $755 million.

The style is believed to have started in prisons, where inmates are issued ill-fitting jumpsuits but no belts to prevent hangings and beatings. The look was popularized in gangster rap videos.

Danny Federici, the longtime keyboardist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band whose talents were showcased in some of the rocker's best-loved songs, has died.  He was 58.

Federici came back for a final appearance with the band last month in Indianapolis, playing on eight songs including “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” a Springsteen classic that spotlighted Federici's accordion playing, the Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, reported.

`Natural Musician'

The newspaper's official Springsteen blogger, Stan Goldstein, wrote today:  “To many of us E Street Band fans, it's like losing a member of our own family.”

During his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, Springsteen called Federici “the most instinctive and natural musician I ever met, and the only member of the band that can reduce me to a shouting mess. I love you, Danny. Your organ and accordion playing brought the boardwalks of Central and South Jersey alive in my music. Thank you.”

JANUS RESEARCH MEANS GETTING MORE THAN YOUR HANDS DIRTY

Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion.  In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.

Mr. Obama should do as well or better among [small-town, working-class] voters if he is the Democratic candidate in November.  If he doesn't, it won't be because he has offended the tender sensibilities of small-town Americans.  It will be because he has embraced a misleading stereotype of who they are and what they care about.

U.S. executions are all but sure to resume soon after a nationwide halt, cleared Wednesday by a splintered Supreme Court that approved the most widely used method of lethal injection.
    ....

 Voting 7-2, the conservative [sic] court led by Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffed the latest assault on capital punishment, this time by foes focusing on methods rather than on the legality of the death penalty itself. Justice John Paul Stevens voted with the majority on the question of lethal injections but said for the first time that he now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional.

 The case decided Wednesday was not about the constitutionality of the death penalty generally or even lethal injection. Instead, two Kentucky death row inmates contended that their executions could be carried out more humanely, with less risk of pain.

 Wednesday's decision was announced with Pope Benedict XVI, a prominent death penalty critic, in Washington and the court's five Catholic justices—Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas—headed to the White House for a dinner in his honor. All five supported the lethal injection procedures.

 Wednesday's case involved two inmates, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death by juries in Kentucky. Baze killed a sheriff and a deputy who were attempting to arrest him. Bowling shot and killed a couple and wounded their 2-year-old son outside their dry-cleaning business.

Fayette County Commonwealth Attorney Ray Larson, who prosecuted Bowling in 1992, said after the ruling: "Fact of the matter is, this lethal injection process is about as far from cruel and unusual as anything you can imagine. This is just another one of those things the anti-death penalty gang is throwing against the wall to see what sticks."

    But actually none of this really matters. As JUSTICE
    STEVENS explains, " 'objective evidence, though of great
    importance, [does] not wholly determine the controversy,
    for the Constitution contemplates that in the end our own
    judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the
    acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth
    Amendment.' " Ante, at 14 (quoting Atkins v. Virginia, 536
    U. S. 304, 312 (2002); emphasis added; some internal
    quotation marks omitted). "I have relied on my own experience
    in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of
    the death penalty" is unconstitutional. Ante, at 17 (emphasis
    added).
    
    Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule
    by judicial fiat. In the face of JUSTICE STEVENS' experience,
    the experience of all others is, it appears, of little
    consequence. The experience of the state legislatures and
    the Congress—who retain the death penalty as a form of
    punishment—is dismissed as "the product of habit and
    inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process."
    Ante, at 8. The experience of social scientists whose
    studies indicate that the death penalty deters crime is
    relegated to a footnote. Ante, at 10, n. 13. The experience
    of fellow citizens who support the death penalty is described,
    with only the most thinly veiled condemnation, as
    stemming from a "thirst for vengeance." Ante, at 11. It is
    JUSTICE STEVENS' experience that reigns over all.

Sports fans should know what the Beardsley family sacrificed for a chance to represent the U.S.

Beardsley at age 4 learned to swim at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He attended the United Nations International School, where one of his classmates was an Afghani prince.

Diplomacy runs in the Beardsley family. His grandfather was consul-general for the Republic of China to Peru in the 1950s.  His mother fled Shanghai during the Communist takeover of 1949.

“One of the last boats out,” he says.

Beardsley's grade-school days began with a 45-minute commute (90 minutes with traffic) from home in Harrington Park, New Jersey, to Manhattan, where his father worked.  First learning.  Then swimming.  Then back to dad's office.  Then home by 6 p.m.  Maybe.  Then more swimming.  Friends were scarce.

“No time,” Beardsley says.

Mom and dad forced Beardsley to join the local swim team.  There, his first coach, a former U.S. Marine, affixed some sort of bands around Craig's ankles to keep his feet together.  By age 11 Beardsley was being recruited by area swim clubs.

Serious training started at age 12.  All-swimming, all-the- time.  No basketball.  Not anymore.

Beardsley remembers his father waking him up at 4:15 a.m. for morning workouts.  At 14, Craig, an accomplished cellist (his mother was a concert pianist), was accepted to the Manhattan School of Music.  A wasted application.

“I was spending all of my time in the pool,” he says.

Think about Craig Beardsley the next time some politician or activist uses the word boycott. Think about the 4-year-old's commute. Think about bloody hands and up-river swims.

Powerful religious clerics also ban sports for girls in public schools, deeming it un-Islamic, and recently canceled two rare all-women's events, a soccer match and a marathon. Gyms for women were closed in the early 1990s and have been allowed to reopen, but only when affiliated with hospitals.

Banning the opening of these sports centers is not a ban on sports. A woman can practice sports at home, and there are many ways to do that, or she can race her husband in a deserted area, like the prophet Muhammad ... who raced with his wife Aisha twice.