* Obama in Moscow for nuclear talks US President Barack Obama is holding talks in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, focusing on further reducing nuclear stockpiles.

* IAF to train overseas for Iran strike op The IAF plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights.

* Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran The head of Mossad assured Netanyahu that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

* Tourism industry thriving in Iraq It may be hard for Westerners to believe, but one industry that’s booming, despite the global recession, is Iraqi tourism.

* PA Arabs: Jerusalem is No Home for Jews and Christians A poll released this week showed that PA Arabs are reluctant to grant rights to Jews or Christians within areas demanded for a PA state.

* Fayad: Jews welcome in our future state Jews would enjoy freedom and civil rights in a future Palestinian state, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad said.

* Iranian Expert: Obama Leading to Calamity Uri Lubrani, a former Israeli Ambassador to Iran and considered one of Israel’s top experts on Iran, says United States policies are leading inexorably to a tragedy.

* Historic Bible pages put online About 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible have been recovered and put on the internet.

* Iran’s response will be real, decisive Iran is ready to take “real and decisive” action if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities, a senior Iranian parliamentary official said.

* France lays down the law on Turkey’s EU progress France has warned Sweden to respect its views on Turkey’s EU membership negotiations during its EU presidency, saying it will tolerate the two sides moving closer only in certain areas.

* Israel sends sub through Suez Canal After a long hiatus, the Israeli Navy has returned to sailing through the Suez Canal.

* WHO warns swine flu ‘unstoppable’ The UN’s top health official has opened a forum in Mexico on combating swine flu by saying that the spread of the virus worldwide is now unstoppable.

* EU nations summon Iran envoys due to UK embassy arrests The European Union decided Friday to summon Iranian ambassadors across the 27-nation bloc in a joint protest against the detentions of staff at the British Embassy in Teheran.

* Africa leaders edge towards unity African Union (AU) members have agreed a plan to give its executive arm enhanced powers to co-ordinate common-interest policies.

* ‘Saudis block US push for normalization’ There are no guarantees the Arab world would move forward with steps of normalization toward Israel if Jerusalem declared a settlement freeze.

* Barroso stalemate threatens to distract EU from real problems With parliament looking increasingly likely to postpone a July vote on the nomination of the next commission president, there is a risk of having a lameduck executive.

* Jordan’s King Abdullah names teenage son as heir Jordan’s King Abdullah II named his eldest son as heir to the throne Thursday.

* Assad invites Obama to Damascus Syrian President Bashar Assad has invited his American counterpart Barack Obama to a summit in Damascus.

* Obama Prepares for Russia Summit, G8, Africa Visit U.S. President Barack Obama is preparing for another round of international travel.

* Vice President Biden discusses US future in Iraq Vice President Joe Biden discussed the future of the American mission in Iraq Friday with the top two U.S. officials there following the withdrawal of most troops from the cities.

* US opens ‘major Afghan offensive’ The US army says it has launched a major offensive against the Taliban in south Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

* Settlers hope PM won’t yield to US Settlers leaders on Wednesday promised to lobby against any concessions that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might consider making to the Americans on the issue of settlement construction.

* North Korea ‘test fires missiles’ North Korea has test-fired four short-range missiles.

* Egypt wants S-400 to counter Iran In a sign of mounting concern about Teheran’s missile capability, the Egyptian military recently expressed interest in purchasing the Russian-made, advanced S-300 and S-400 air defense systems.

* Cleric: Muslims should visit Jerusalem A senior Palestinian Muslim cleric on Wednesday urged Muslims to travel to Jerusalem, breaking a taboo against visiting the holy city because it would be considered as normalizing relations with Israel.

* PA okays joint Dead Sea contest bid What does the IDF have to do with an Internet contest to choose the world’s seven natural wonders?

* Ant mega-colony takes over world A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

* ‘Obama’ Think-Tank: Israel Should Cede Jerusalem Sovereignty A think tank which is arguably the most influential in Washington is proposing an “interim” neutral administration to govern Jerusalem instead of Israel.

* Iran says Europe no longer qualified to conduct nuclear talks Iran says Europe is no longer qualified to hold nuclear talks due to its meddling with the post-election protests in the country.

* John Bolton: Israeli Attack is Only ‘Iranian Option’ U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies have left an Israeli attack on Iran the only option in preventing the Muslim country from obtaining a nuclear weapo.

* African troops – ‘fig-leaf’ for Somalia? An African Union summit has opened in Libya amid calls for more African troops to be sent to deal with the crisis in Somalia.

* Israel attempts to stop S-300 air defense supplies to Iran Israel has intensified its efforts to prevent deliveries of Russian S-300 air defense systems to Iran under a 2007 contract.

* Institutional problems loom large for Swedish presidency Sweden takes over at the helm of the EU on Wednesday (1 July) for a six-month presidency.

* US slaps sanctions on Iran firm The US has imposed sanctions on an Iranian firm accused of helping North Korea with its nuclear program.

* Hamas: Fear of Jihad Led US Voters to Arab-Friendly Obama In a public address delivered on Al-Aqsa TV by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based terror boss informed Arab viewers that U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama came to power in the United States due to Islamic jihad in the Middle East.

* Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference.

* Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs resigns Hatem Abdel-Qader, Palestinian Authority minister for Jerusalem affairs, resigned his post on Tuesday.

* Czech presidency limps off EU stage The Czech republic in the past six months helped to end a severe EU gas crisis and to ease Ireland’s Lisbon treaty problem.

* Iran leader cancels Africa visit Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has cancelled his trip to an African Union summit in Libya.

* Iraq stands firm, rejects foreign oil deals Iraq on Wednesday said it has rejected further offers from foreign companies to work in the country’s oil and gas sector.

By: Robert Maginnis – Human Events

Iran’s post presidential election protests are not evidence of a brewing revolution; rather they unmask a power struggle among the ayatollahs. The fracturing of the leadership has resulted in clear winners and losers internally and externally.

Iranian authorities declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, the winner in the June 12th election with 63 percent of the votes. But Ahmadinejad’s opposition alleged election fraud which triggered sweeping protests followed by a bare knuckled government response and a tepid investigation.

Last week, Iranian authorities imposed order to “secure the rule of law” according to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The ayatollah unleashed the security forces — Basij militia and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — to use whatever force necessary to squelch continuing popular dissent which had raged in Tehran since the election.

So far, the government’s crackdown has claimed at least 17 lives, eight members of the pro-government Basij militia, dozens more wounded and as many as 240 people jailed, including 102 political figures.

Mir Hussein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, asked Khamenei to investigate allegations of widespread election fraud. The “investigation” confirmed irregularities but authorities rejected calls for an election annulment. They insist the identified three-million fraudulent votes are not enough to overturn the landslide for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

All this is an ugly reminder of an oppressive regime, but so far the peoples’ response doesn’t constitute a revolution. By comparison the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran was the genuine article. It was a sudden and top-down populist, nationalist and Shia Islamic seizure of power that transformed Iran’s economic, social and political institutions. Shrill media reporting would have you believe it is happening again. However, Stratfor, a respected intelligence think tank, wrote, Tehran is “not St. Petersburg in 1917 or Bucharest in 1989 — it was [China’s] Tiananmen Square” in 1989 where mostly students and intellectuals protested against government authoritarianism and for economic and democratic reform.

For the election crisis to morph into a full blown revolution the protests would have to spread throughout the country, the economy would have to shut down and the military would have to turn on the leadership. None of these conditions materialized.

The protests petered out this week under an ever-intensifying crackdown and Mousavi bowed to pressure from the likes of Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami who threatened, “Anyone who takes up arms to fight with the people, they are worthy of execution. … [they are] at war with God” and should be “dealt with without mercy.”

For now the protesters have our sympathy and our support although greatly weakened by our reticent president. The oppressive government remains in power and is using the protests as an excuse to further distance Iran from the U.S.

The crisis produced winners and losers.

Iran’s security forces are winners, especially the IRGC. The government turned to the guards once Tehran’s streets filled with angry protesters. They responded with brutal tactics — clubs, gun fire and tear gas — to shutdown the protests and silence the media.

The 125,000 strong IRGC’s loyalty comes at a price, however. Since taking office in 2005, Ahmadinejad shifted the center of power from the clergy to the IRGC. The guards have steadily expanded their authority to include critical portfolios such as Iran’s missile program, its oil pipelines and other energy infrastructure and Iran’s atomic programs. Today, Iran’s power shift puts it much closer to a military dictatorship than the theocracy promised by the 1979 revolutionaries.

Ahmadinejad’s victory is also a win for the terrorist organizations on Israel’s borders who can count on continued Iranian funding and weapons. For many of the Arab states it appears to be a return to the status quo. While they have no love for the Persians and would like to see the radical, hegemonic, ballistic missile-armed leadership removed, at least the U.S. will not now be cementing a closer relationship with Tehran at Arab expense.

The “Twitter” reformers are winners because they exposed the oppressive regime and showed the world that some Iranians really want change. They used social networks like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to undermine the ability of the authoritarian regime to control access to and distribution of information. For a short time their firsthand reports gripped the world with insights from Tehran’s bloodied streets.

President Obama is the biggest loser because he appears to be an inept leader and his plan to diplomatically defang Iran lies in shambles. A recent Washington Times article claims Obama sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader expressing interest in “cooperation in regional and bilateral relations” and a resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Then, almost two weeks after the election and the anti-protester violence, Obama condemned the regime.

On June 23, Obama belatedly condemned “… these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.” But he was careful not to reject the flawed election results because he feared America would become “a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States.” That outcome was predictable and is exactly what transpired.

Ayatollah Khamenei addressed both Obama’s letter and the president’s stern remarks. The cleric asked, “Which one of these remarks are we supposed to believe?” Then he blamed America’s “agents” for the protests, vandalism, looting, sabotage and starting fires.

Ahmadinejad said Obama’s stance on Iran’s post election turmoil imperils relations. “They keep saying that they want to hold talks with Iran … but is this the correct way? Definitely, they have made a mistake,” Ahmadinejad said.

Iran’s clerics are big losers because they split over the election. Khamenei supported Ahmadinejad and endorsed the crackdown. Ali Akbar Hasheimi Rafsanjani, the former president who leads two influential councils, openly supported Mousavi’s candidacy. During the protests, Rafsanjani family members were detained apparently in an attempt to pressure the cleric to drop his support of Mousavi which was seen as a challenge to Khamenei.

Rafsanjani still remains on the sidelines of the crisis perhaps because he does not want to undermine the Islamic republic. However, Stratfor cites a Saudi media outlet that reports Rafsanjani may be setting up an alternative clerical establishment in defiance of Khamenei. This would seriously weaken the Islamic republic if true.

Mideast peace is a loser. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tehran’s brutal actions “unmasked” the Iranian regime’s “true nature.” He emphasized that a government willing to shoot its own people could not be trusted. Expect Tehran to become more repressive at home and take more risks with its foreign policy.

The election crisis split the ayatollahs and demonstrated a real revolution is possible with the right kind of support. But for now Iran is more militaristic, the suppressed reformist movement is licking its wounds, the Mideast is less safe and President Obama’s plan to talk Ahmadinejad out of atomic weapons and terrorism is dead in the water.

By: Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes

HILLAH, Iraq — The remains of what was once the greatest city in the world occupy a vast site on the bank of the Euphrates River.

Their roots go back 3,800 years to when the city of Babylon was the heart of a Mesopotamian empire, and the remnants include great slabs of stone that are said to be the remains of King Nebuchadnezzar’s castle. A giant stone lion guards one end of the fortifications, but the most stunning remnants were removed by European archaeologists in the early 20th century.

Now soldiers with the 172nd Infantry Brigade are exploring the ruins as part of a U.S.-Iraqi effort to preserve the ancient city and plan for the return of Western tourists.

Members of the brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment escorted a group of U.S. heritage tourism experts to the ruins last week for the first of several visits to develop a preservation and tourism plan for the area.

U.S. and coalition troops have been criticized in the past for damaging and contaminating artifacts. In a 2006 report, the head of the British Museum’s Near East department said that, among other things, military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, and sand and archeological fragments were used to fill military sandbags.

Now the rapidly improving security situation in surrounding Babil province has persuaded the U.S. State Department and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to embark on the preservation project, dubbed the Future of Babylon Project.

The State Department and the World Monuments Fund have committed $700,000 to the project, which will see U.S. and Iraqi experts develop a plan to preserve the site and develop a local tourism industry, said Diane Siebrandt, the U.S. embassy’s cultural heritage officer.

The Babylon project is one of several that the State Department is involved in to conserve ancient sites in partnership with the Iraqi government, she said.

Two people with expertise developing tourism plans for historic sites in third-world nations, Gina Haney and Jeff Allen, have been employed by the State Department to run the U.S. side of the project. They visited the ruins for the first time last weekend.

Haney said the pair will involve the local community in the plan’s development, as they did with a similar project encouraging Western tourists to visit Ghana’s Gold Coast.

“You could throw money at it and do all this work, but unless you can create a sustainable situation, your opportunities for tourism will run out,” Allen said. “The idea is to develop something that is going to be here 30 to 40 years from now and has benefits for the local people. We don’t want something that will only benefit outsiders.”

The Iraqi government will be involved in the planning as well.

“If you have 200,000 people a year coming to this site, you will have people staying at hotels, visiting restaurants, buying souvenirs,” Allen said. “The site is in some ways a revenue generator for the local community.”

Babylon could be comparable to the Egyptian pyramids, which draw millions of tourists each year. But the area lacks the tourist infrastructure that has been built at sites such as the pyramids, he said.

“There is nothing for tourists here, but if you interpret and present it in the right way, you can spark interest,” he said.

Allen, who has experience designing walkways and signs for other heritage sites, said detailed planning won’t happen until authorities have worked out how best to preserve the ruins. The crumbling rocks of the original city are surrounded by more elaborate and modern fortifications, including a maze-like collection of interior walls built on top of genuine ruins during Saddam Hussein’s time.

“Some of the past restoration work hasn’t been very good,” he said. “Saddam was trying to inherit the power of the ancients and continue that legacy. His restoration methods helped reinforce that vision of himself, and he created a pattern of restoration and repair work that benefited a certain agenda.”

One of the 172nd soldiers who visited the ruins, 1st Lt. Bryan Kelso, 24, of Jacksonville, Fla., walked in wonder near the ancient stones.

“It’s amazing to be surrounded by this history. To think that we are standing where Alexander the Great has been,” he said, referring to the great Macedonian conqueror who died in Babylon. “Babylon is one of the oldest and first civilizations known to man. They created the wheel and the first calendars. Everybody coming here gets a sense of what this place really is and how it all traces back.”

By: Yisrael Medad – Los Angeles Times

No one, including a president of the United States of America, can presume to tell me, a Jew, that I cannot live in the area of my national homeland. That’s one of the main reasons my wife and I chose in 1981 to move to Shiloh, a so-called settlement less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem.

After Shiloh was founded in 1978, then-President Carter demanded of Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the village of eight families be removed. Carter, from his first meeting with Begin, pressed him to “freeze” the activity of Jews rebuilding a presence in their historic home. As his former information aide, Shmuel Katz, related, Begin said: “You, Mr. President, have in the United States a number of places with names like Bethlehem, Shiloh and Hebron, and you haven’t the right to tell prospective residents in those places that they are forbidden to live there. Just like you, I have no such right in my country. Every Jew is entitled to reside wherever he pleases.”

We now fast-forward to President Obama, who declared on June 15 in remarks at a news conference with Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that Jewish communities beyond the Green Line “in past agreements have been categorized as illegal.”

I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology.

Suppose someone suggested that Palestinian villages and towns in pre-1967 Israel were to be called “settlements” and that, to achieve a true peace, Arabs should be removed from their homes. Of course, separation or transfer of Arabs is intolerable, but why is it quite acceptable to demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area? Do not Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in the state of Israel?

Some have questioned why Jews should be allowed to resettle areas in which they didn’t live in the years preceding the 1967 war, areas that were almost empty of Jews before 1948 as well. But why didn’t Jews live in the area at that time? Quite simple: They had been the victims of a three-decades-long ethnic cleansing project that started in 1920, when an Arab attack wiped out a small Jewish farm at Tel Hai in Upper Galilee and was followed by attacks in Jerusalem and, in 1921, in Jaffa and Jerusalem.

In 1929, Hebron’s centuries-old Jewish population was expelled as a result of an Arab pogrom that killed almost 70 Jews. Jews that year removed themselves from Gaza, Nablus and Jenin. The return of my family to Shiloh — and of other Jews to more than 150 other communities over the Green Line since 1967 — is not solely a throwback to claimed biblical rights. Nor is it solely to assert our right to return to areas that were Jewish-populated in the 20th century until Arab violence drove them away. We have returned under a clear fulfillment of international law. There can be no doubt as to the legality of the act of my residency in Shiloh.

I am a revenant — one who has returned after a long absence to ancestral lands. The Supreme Council of the League of Nations adopted principles following the 1920 San Remo Conference aimed at bringing about the “reconstitution” of a Jewish National Home. Article 6 of those principles reads: “The administration of Palestine … shall encourage … close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands.” That “land” was originally delineated to include all of what is today Jordan as well as all the territory west of the Jordan River.

In 1923, Britain created a new political entity, Transjordan, and suspended the right of Jews to live east of the Jordan River. But the region in which I now live was intended to be part of the Jewish National Home. Then, in a historical irony, a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah, fleeing the Wahabis, was afforded the opportunity to establish an Arab kingdom where none had existed previously — only Jews. As a result, in an area where prophets and priests fashioned the most humanist and moral religion and culture on Earth, Jews are now termed “illegals.”

Many people insist that settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that convention does not apply to Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza district. Its second clause makes it clear that it deals with the occupation of “the territory of a high contracting party.” Judea and Samaria and Gaza, which Israel gained control of in 1967, were not territories of a “high contracting party.” Jewish historical rights that the mandate had recognized were not canceled, and no new sovereign ever took over in Judea and Samaria or in Gaza.

Obama has made his objections to Israeli settlements known. But other U.S. presidents have disagreed. President Reagan’s administration issued a declaration that Israeli settlements were not illegal. Support for that position came from Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, who determined that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria did not constitute “occupation.” It also came from a leading member of Reagan’s administration, the former dean of the Yale Law School and former undersecretary of State, Eugene Rostow, who asserted that “Israel has a stronger claim to the West Bank than any other nation or would-be nation [and] the same legal right to settle the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as it has to settle Haifa or West Jerusalem.”

Any suggestions, then, of “freezing” and halting “natural growth” are themselves not only illegal but quite immoral.

By: WorldNetDaily

The leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church today backed off on a much-anticipated announcement about the Ark of the Covenant — the ancient container holding the Ten Commandment — which he claims to have seen.

But no other evidence or, indeed, even any announcement, was made public today when word had been expected.

Ark hunters and Bible enthusiasts have been buzzing for two days on the report from the Italian news agency Adnkronos that Patriarch Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, said, “Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries.”

He had suggested the possibility the artifact might be viewable in a planned museum.

“I repeat (the Ark of the Covenant) is in Ethiopia and nobody … knows for how much time. Only God knows,” he said in the Adnkronos report available online.

The report said Pauolos reported the artifact “is described perfectly in the Bible” and is in good condition.

“The state of conservation is good because it is not made from man’s hand, but is something that God has made,” Pauolos said, according to the report.

The agency had reported an announcement would be made at the Hotel Aldrovandi in Rome, and a hotel spokeswoman told WND Pauolos had been in residence there, but no news conference or event was scheduled.

“The Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia for many centuries,” said Pauolos in the report. “As a patriarch I have seen it with my own eyes and only few highly qualified persons could do the same, until now.”

Bob Cornuke, biblical investigator, international explorer and best-selling author, has participated in more than 27 expeditions around the world searching for lost locations described in the Bible. A man some consider a real-life Indiana Jones, he has written a book titled “Relic Quest” about the Ark of the Covenant and participated in History Channel production called “Digging for Truth.”

Next week, Cornuke will travel to Ethiopia for the 13th time since he began his search for the Ark. He told WND he believes it is possible Ethiopia could have the real artifact.

“They either have the Ark of the Covenant or they have a replica that they have believed to be the Ark of the Covenant for 2,000 years,” he said.

Cornuke said, if it is genuine, there’s a plausible explanation of how the Ark may have come to the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Ethiopia.

“The Ark could have been taken out of the temple during the time of the atrocities of Manasseh,” he said. “We have kind of a bread crumb trail that appears to go to Egypt, and it stayed on an island there for a couple hundred years called Elephantine Island. The Ark then was transferred over to Lake Tana in Ethiopia where it stayed on Tana Qirqos Island for 800 years. Then it was taken to Axum, where it is enshrined in a temple today where they don’t let anybody see it.”

Cornuke said he traveled to Tana Qirqos Island and lived with monks who remain there even today.

“They unlocked this big, four-inch thick wood door,” he said. “It opened up to a treasure room, and they showed me meat forks and bowls and things that they say are from Solomon’s temple. When the History Channel did this show, they said it was one of the largest viewed shows. People were fascinated.”

He said Ethiopians consider the Ark to be the ultimate holy object, and the church guards the suspected artifact from the “eyes and pollution of man.”

“In Ethiopia, their whole culture is centered around worshipping this object,” Cornuke said. “Could they have the actual Ark? I think I could make a case that they actually could.”

Want to know more about the ancient box holding the Ten Commandments? Get “Exploring the Ark of the Covenant” – a two-DVD set!

But according to a statement delivered to WND by the webmaster for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, there is no chance that the religious leaders and people in the nation will give up their custody of what they believe is the Ark.

“I think Abba Pauolos must be out of his mind. … An (artifact) should not be shown or touched other than the clergies but to put it on display is a reckless comment let alone doing it,” the statement said. “Not only the local clergies but the people of Ethiopia won’t allow it and it is not going to happen.”

The webmaster noted there were artifacts moved from Ethiopia to Britain over the years, and even those are not allowed to be displayed.

Pauolos in the Adnkronos report said any display would need the approval of the supreme court of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

A spokesman for a U.S. branch of the church, Mehereto Belete of Los Angeles, told WND he had been given no word of any major change in the status of the Ark.

“It is news for us just as it is for you,” he said.

Cornuke explained that a special guardian lives inside the church which reportedly holds the Ark and never leaves. Once a guardian is appointed, he stays until he dies and another man replaces him.

“We know for a fact that there have been 30 guardians in history who have never left that enclosure,” Cornuke said. “I know the guardian. When CNN and BBC went over there, he wouldn’t see anybody but me. So I went and talked to him, and he’s getting very aged. He told me they have the real Ark and he worships 13 hours a day in front of it. When he gets through, he is covered in sweat and he’s exhausted.”

He said he met a 105-year-old man who claimed to have seen the Ark 50 years ago when he was training a replacement guardian.

“It frightened him to death when he got a glimpse of it.”

Cornuke said he also met with the president of Ethiopia nearly nine years ago and had a one-on-one conversation with him in his palace. He asked if Ethiopia had the Ark of the Covenant.

According to Cornuke, the president responded: “Yes, we do. I am the president, and I know. It’s not a copy. It’s the real thing.”

However, Grant Jeffrey, host of TBN’s Bible Prophecy Revealed and well-known author of “Armageddon: Appointment With Destiny,” does not believe claims that the Ark is in Ethiopia. He told WND he spoke extensively with Robert Thompson, former adviser to former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

Jeffrey said Thompson told him the Ark of the Covenant had been taken to Ethiopia by Menelik, purported son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. When Menelik became emperor, he claims royal priests entrusted him with the Ark of the Covenant because King Solomon was slipping into apostasy. A replica was then left behind in Israel.

“The Ethiopian royal chronicles suggest that for 3,000 years, they had been guarding the ark, knowing that it had to go back to Israel eventually,” Jeffrey said.

He claims that after the Ethiopian civil war, Israel sent in a group of commandos from the tribe of Levi and the carried the Ark onto a plane and back to Israel in 1991.

“It is being held there secretly, waiting in the eyes of the religious leaders of Israel, for a supernatural signal from God to rebuild the temple,” he said. “They are not going to do it before that. When that happens, they will bring the Ark into that temple.”

But author and Bible teacher Chuck Missler, founder of Koinonia House, told WND the theory of Menelik obtaining the Ark is not biblical, though he believes there is a possibility that the Ethiopians may have the real deal.

“The fact that the Ethiopians may have been guarding the Ark of the Bible is very possible,” he said. “They cling to a belief that is clearly not biblical in terms of how the Ark got down there. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”

Missler said there is no biblical basis for the Menelik account, and he believes there was a reason for that version of events.

“What everybody overlooks is that there’s a reason that particular story was cooked up in early times,” he said. “It was to give their kings Solomonic descent. There’s reason why they would try to sell that. But just because the official belief in how it got down there is not biblical, doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”

Tennessee historian and “Time is the Ally of Deceit” author Richard Rives, searched for the Ark and participated in excavations beneath Mount Moriah outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. His group was trying to verify claims by relic hunter Ron Wyatt that he actually saw the Ark there several decades ago after tunneling through a small passageway.

While they found Roman ruins from the first century, Rives told WND they were unsuccessful in confirming Wyatt’s account. Nonetheless, Rives does not believe the story of Menelik obtaining the artifact or that Ethiopia ever had the real Ark.

“God’s presence was on the mercy seat. That was the throne of God,” he said.

If the account were accurate, Rives said God would have been dwelling on an Ark replica in Jerusalem.

“I just don’t believe they could have persuaded him to sit on a fake Ark of the Covenant,” he said.

Many theories exist about the ultimate fate of the Ark, including that it has been hidden in a still unknown location, it was destroyed by enemies of the Israelites, taken by Egyptian invaders to Egypt or removed by divine intervention.

The quest for the artifact received additional publicity in 1981 when actor Harrison Ford searched for it in Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Cornuke said Ethiopians claim their purported Ark is kept in a large stone sarcophagus lined in ornately hammered silver. The Ark itself is made of acacia wood and laminated with a thin veneer of gold. The mercy seat sits atop the Ark and is made of pure, hammered gold and includes two cherubim facing one another.

Whether the artifact is real or simply a copy, Cornuke said an unveiling might leave the world with more questions than answers.

“We have only typology to go on,” he said. “We could probably have some people analyze the wood samples and come up with some kind of dating protocol on it because it is acacia wood to see if that is it.”

Rives said a close inspection of the Ten Commandments would be necessary to ensure they are in accordance with true text and not later versions of the Ten Commandments.

Cornuke said experts would also need to determine whether the artifact itself fits biblical description and trace its path to Ethiopia.

“We are peeking behind the veil of history,” he said. “We’re taking a glimpse of an artifact that could be a very holy object.”

* U.S., Iraqi experts developing plan to preserve Babylon, build local tourism industry The remains of what was once the greatest city in the world occupy a vast site on the bank of the Euphrates River.

* Russia Holds Major War Games In Caucasus Thousands of troops, backed by hundreds of tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry, began rumbling through the North Caucasus on Monday.

* US soldiers leave Iraq’s cities US troops have withdrawn from towns and cities in Iraq, six years after the invasion, having formally handed over security duties to new Iraqi forces.

* Iraqi oil for sale in TV auction BP and China’s CNPC have won a contract in the televised auction for contracts to run oil and gas fields in Iraq.

* Pakistani militants abandon deal A wing of the Taliban based in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan say they have scrapped a peace deal with the government.

* Obama’s ‘Outreach to Muslims’ Prompts Mass Koran Distribution The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose officials in the past have been convicted for being associated with Muslim terrorist groups, said it will announce at a news conference Tuesday that it is launching an “education campaign”.

* Iran confirms Ahmadinejad victory Iran’s top electoral body, the Guardian Council, has confirmed the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential election after a partial recount.

* Investment Houses: Israel the Land of Economic Promise Three international investment houses have issued a rosy forecast for the Israeli economy, which one firm says is at the beginning of a decade of constant growth following this year’s recession.

* German court gives conditional green light to new treaty Germany’s highest court on Tuesday ruled that the EU’s new treaty is compatible with German law, so long as the role of the national parliament in EU decision-making is strengthened.

* ‘Stop selling uranium ores to Iran’ President Shimon Peres met his Kazakhstani counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev on Tuesday morning and urged him to act to stop his country’s sale of uranium ores to Iran.

* Hark! Where’s the Bible Ark? Ethiopia’s Orthodox patriarch cops out on revealing plan for public viewing

* Baghdad set for US pullback party Iraq is preparing for a giant party in a Baghdad park and a special holiday as US troops approach their deadline to quit cities and towns.

* Israel approves 50 settler homes Israel has approved the construction of 50 new housing units in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

* Syria again threatens war over Golan Syrian officials reiterated their threat to forcefully take the Golan Heights from Israel unless an agreement between the two countries is reached soon.

* World Bank to Fund Dead Sea-Red Sea Canal Test Project The World Bank has agreed to fund a pilot program of what could turn out to be one of the most ambitious water projects in the world – the Dead Sea Canal Project.

* Nato resumes Russia military ties Russia and Nato have agreed to resume co-operation on security issues, after nearly a year of difficult relations.

* U.S. and Russia Differ on a Treaty for Cyberspace The United States and Russia are locked in a fundamental dispute over how to counter the growing threat of cyberwar attacks that could wreak havoc on computer systems and the Internet.

* In defense of the settlements Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in Israel.

* Palestinian support for Hamas waning Hamas support among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is waning, according to a survey.

* EU denounces arrest of UK embassy staff in Iran The European Union said it would have a “strong and collective response” to any harassment of diplomats in Iran, in solidarity with the Britain, which saw eight of its embassy staff arrested.