Free Republic

Taliban gunmen shoot 14-year-old girl activistMINGORA, Pakistan — Fourteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai was admired across a battle-scarred region of Pakistan for exposing the Taliban's atrocities and advocating for girls' education in the face of religious extremists. On Tuesday, the Taliban nearly killed her to quiet her message.A gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school in the volatile northern Swat Valley and shot Malala in the head and neck. Another girl on the bus was also wounded.....Malala began writing a blog when she was just 11 under the pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC about life under the...

A KING 5 News photographer covering the May Day march in downtown Seattle on Tuesday was assaulted by one of the marchers and ended up with a bloody cheek. Richard Departee was covering the march as the participants made their way through downtown.

In a stinging rebuke, Citigroup shareholders rebuffed on Tuesday the bank’s $15 million pay package for its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, marking the first time that stock owners have united in opposition to outsized compensation at a financial giant.

When an affluent private school in Madison Valley offered to pay as much as $9.7 million for an empty public school in 2009, the choice for the cash-strapped Seattle school district seemed obvious: Sign the papers. But what could have been a straightforward real-estate deal turned into an elaborate chess game that ended with a well-connected church buying the closed Martin Luther King Elementary School with $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars.

    Battle off Samar, October 25, 1944    "In no engagement of its entire history has the United States Navy shown more gallantry, guts and gumption than in those two morning hours between 0730 and 0930 off Samar" — Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison History of United States Naval Operations in World War II Volume XII, Leyte  The escort carrier USS Gambier Bay, burning from earlier gunfire damage, is bracketed by a salvo from a Japanese cruiser (visible in the background,) shortly before sinking during the Battle off Samar. The Battle off Samar was the centermost action of...

Rumours that the Higgs boson - sometimes called the 'God particle' - has been detected by the Tevatron particle accelerator have been denied. A spokesman for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory told the Telegraph: "The rumour of evidence for the Higgs boson is just that: a rumour, with no factual basis. "Beyond that, we don't comment on rumours."

One of three teens convicted of manslaughter in the killing of Seattle's beloved "Tuba Man" has been charged in the robbery of another youth, and prosecutors plan to seek an exceptional sentence if he is convicted. The youth, 16, who was arrested by Seattle police near his home Wednesday morning, is to be arraigned in King County Juvenile Court on Thursday on a felony charge of second-degree robbery stemming from a January incident in which a youth was robbed of his wallet and music player outside the Garfield Teen Life Center. The Seattle Times is not naming the teen because...

This is an orchestral march based on FreeMike's painting of the 9/12 DC march. (Starting around the 3:10 mark, the piece envisions the horse galloping)A Free RepublicI originally begain this a couple years ago as the 3rd movement of my 3rd symphony but gave up after about 20 measures because I couldn't make it work. The piece had a lot of motion and Mikes painting made me think of it again, in the context of being a march. When I added percussion, this work pretty much wrote itself.The last 4 or 5 measures are missing because after the healthcare vote,...

Authorities have identified John Patrick Bedell as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting. He appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings. If so, that would make the Pentagon shooting the second violent extremist attack on a federal building within the past month. On Feb. 18, Joseph Stack flew a small aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Mr. Stack left behind a disjointed screed in which, among other things, he...

I wouldn't normally post something from YouTube, but this particular video is pure genius. The author did most of the music and video himself, on a personal computer.I may be bias because he's a high school friend of my younger brother, and I grew up in the region where this high school is, but still....I think most of us can identify with the message and skill displayed in this.Seventeen

Renton, Wash. -- The search for the suspect in the Lakewood police shooting led police to a home in Renton on Monday night. A SWAT team surrounded the home in the 13000 block of Renton Avenue South around 6 p.m. Monday, and a police source confirmed the incident is connected to the Lakewood murders.

MSNBC has brewed up a sponsorship deal with Starbucks that positions the coffee chain as the title sponsor of the daily news program Morning Joe. Per terms of the agreement, the Starbucks brand will be visible at various points in MSNBC’s weekday 6 a.m.-9 a.m. news show, via graphic elements like billboards and banners and on-set placement. The latter portion of the deal is nothing new; co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are often seen drinking out of Starbucks cups, so much so that many viewers already assumed that MSNBC was compensated for the integration. Appearing on this morning’s.........

Next time the cashier says "paper or plastic," think outside the bags. Think about ocean pollution, giant landfills and global warming, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels says. Then think to next year, when you might have to either pull out a reusable tote or pay 20 cents a bag. Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin proposed a 20-cent "green fee" Wednesday on all disposable bags to encourage customers to carry their milk and eggs home in their own bags. Forget the canvas sacks at home? Shoppers at grocery, convenience and drug stores will pay the price starting Jan. 1, if...

State lawmakers appear on the verge of dumping the math and science sections of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and replacing them with a very different kind of test. The idea is to do something about the fact that so few students pass the math and science sections. But the proposed remedy is generating a lot of concern because it could mean big changes in what students are expected to learn, and how they're tested. "We need to make sure that the cure is not worse than the ailment," said Marc Frazer, vice president of the Washington...

Goodbye, war on smoking. Hello, war on fat.In a span of two months, smoking bans have been imposed in Scotland, enacted in England, Denmark, and Uruguay, proposed by the government of Portugal, and endorsed by the French public. China has banned new cigarette factories. In Virginia, our third most prolific tobacco state, senators voted to ban smoking in nearly all public places. The Arkansas legislature, backed by a Republican governor, passed a similar ban and voted to extend this policy to cars in which a child is present. Tobacco companies have won a skirmish here or there, but always in...

An image of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. will replace a graphic of a crown as the official logo of King County under a measure approved Monday by the County Council. "King County is the first government in the nation to adopt the image of our foremost civil rights leader as its official logo. This is truly a day to celebrate," said Councilman Larry Gossett, who sponsored the ordinance. The ordinance directs the county executive to design the new logo and submit it to the council for approval.

About 80 Muslims of different sects gathered for prayer and a sermon Friday in Seattle, responding to sectarian violence in Iraq with a call for common worship. Muslims in Washington, like those in the rest of the world, are predominantly Sunni and generally worship in mosques separate from Shiite Muslims. But the bombing of one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, followed by attacks on Sunni mosques, has some Seattle-area Muslims searching for unity. "It's probably the first solidarity prayer in the whole area that I'm aware of," said Jafar "Jeff" Siddiqui, who helped arrange the service at the Islamic...

Budget woes force Seattle board to act School closures must become a reality by 2007 if Seattle Public Schools is to recover from its ongoing budget woes and improve academic performance, School Board members said Wednesday. In announcing a six-month schedule for choosing which schools to close or consolidate, board President Brita Butler-Wall said the district "can no longer tolerate" educational inequalities around the city. Mike Urban / P-I Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas fields reporters' questions at a news conference. With him are School Board members Michael DeBell and Mary Bass. "It's time for us to create a...

They installed Windows...