Free Republic

PHILADELPHIA - For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot. The ambitious plan, now in the works, would involve placing hundreds, or maybe thousands of small transmitters around the city — probably atop lampposts. Each would be capable of communicating with the wireless networking cards that now come standard with many computers. Once complete, the network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere radio waves can travel — including poor neighborhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare. And the city would likely offer the...

The most worrisome thing about John Kerry is Teresa Heinz-Kerry. She is rich beyond anyone's wildest imagination, and John Kerry has become dependent on her great wealth. Addicted to Teresa's money, he is under her control to a much greater degree than he would ever admit. Our constitution demands that a president be native-born, and for good reason. But Teresa has found a loophole. I find the prospect of John Kerry being President while he is under the influence of his foreign-born wife, with divided loyalties, to be very unsettling. Yet, somehow this topic is off-limits to the press, the...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - In a blow to prosecutors, a police investigator conceded Thursday that he deliberately failed to mention a witness who contradicts crucial elements of the murder case against Scott Peterson (news - web sites). Detective Allen Brocchini admitted that he excluded from his reports any reference to a woman who recalled seeing Laci Peterson (news - web sites) at the warehouse where her husband stored his small boat. Prosecutors have claimed that Peterson hid the recently purchased boat from his pregnant wife as part of his plan to kill her and dispose of the body in San...

Wal-Mart: The chain rates high with those who need jobs and bargains. Its foes tend to be rivals, high-wage unions and folks who presume to speak for the poor. It's been a mixed week for the world's largest retailer. The Chicago City Council approved the first Wal-Mart in that city while it voted down plans for another. And in Vermont, a preservationist group declared Wal-Mart a threat to the entire state. As diverse as these cases seem, there's a pattern here. Not to sound too Marxist, but there's an element of class warfare in the Wal-Mart saga, with the chain...

Crime laboratory evidence shows the 19-year-old woman who has accused Kobe Bryant (news) of rape had consensual sex with another man hours after she said the basketball star raped her, MSNBC reported on Wednesday.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A federal drug agent shot himself in the leg during a gun safety presentation to children in what police describe as an accident. His bosses, however, are still investigating the incident...

LONDON (Reuters) - Ireland's ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants could have added health benefits if research in the United States is anything to go by. Nearly two years before the emerald isle became the first country to outlaw smoking in public places, the city of Helena in Montana passed similar legislation and saw a sharp drop in heart attacks. Opponents subsequently had the U.S. law overturned but in the six months it was enforced, hospital admissions for heart attack fell by 40 percent in the city. "The observations...suggests that smoke-free laws not only protect people from the long-term...

6/13/02 9:02 AM CARROLLTON, Ala. (AP) -- Authorities arrested the girlfriend of a Mississippi man who was seriously injured in what was originally being investigated as a group attack and possible hate crime. Rodney Outlaw, 25, of Macon, Miss. is being treated at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa with severe wounds to his buttocks, rectum and arms. Investigators had speculated the victim being dragged behind a vehicle was one possible explanation for the injuries sustained, Pickens County Sheriff David Abston said. A hate crime against the black man was still being considered a possibility before Outlaw changed his story...

NEW YORK (AP) - A team of scholars is investigating a disputed, prize-winning book about the role of guns in the United States. The dean of Emory University, where author Michael Bellesiles is a professor of history, asked for the panel after the school concluded its own inquiry of "Arming America," according to a statement issued Thursday by the school. Robert Paul, dean of the Atlanta-based college, "has concluded that further investigation would be warranted by an independent committee of distinguished scholars from outside Emory," the statement said. However, the statement did not specify why the new investigation was necessary...

FLASHBACK: CLINTON OFFICIAL MET WITH ENRON CHAIRMAN; $100,000 CASH DONATION TO DEMOCRATS TIMED TO PLANT APPROVAL TIME MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 On Nov. 22, 1995 President Clinton scrawled an FYI note to chief of staff Mack McLarty, enclosing a newspaper article on Enron Corp. and the vicissitudes of its $3 billion power-plant project in India. McLarty then reached out to Enron's chairman, Ken Lay, and over the next nine months closely monitored the project with the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi, keeping Lay informed of the Administration's efforts, according to White House documents reviewed by TIME magazine. In June 1996, ...

F.B.I. Did Not Test Letter to NBC or Immediately Notify City Hall By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JIM DWYER lthough the F.B.I. was notified on Sept. 25 about suspicious letters sent to NBC, neither the letters, nor the powder residue inside them were tested until nearly two weeks later, and then only because a private doctor notified city public health officials about a troubling skin condition in the news assistant who had handled the mail, officials acknowledged yesterday. In fact, the F.B.I. laboratory neither performed nor sought any tests on the powder or the skin samples taken from the employee, ...