Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3, 2005 – The second day of Operation Kabda Bil Hadid, or "Iron Fist," resulted in successful engagements against terrorists in and around Sadah, about 12 kilometers east of the Syrian border, Multinational Force Iraq officials reported Oct. 2. The effort continues with a force of about 1,000 Marines, soldiers and sailors from Regimental Combat Team 2. That force engaged seven terrorists west of Sadah with Marine aircraft at about 11:45 a.m., officials said. Four terrorists were killed and the others fled into a nearby building. When the terrorists began firing, aviation assets were again called in, and...

Tom Adams, a Lincoln Park, Mich., resident and member of Gateway Anabaptist Church, preaches on a corner in Monroe, Mich., after the city of Monroe settled a federal lawsuit that stemmed from the ticketing last year of a group of street evangelists.AP Photo/KEITH KING MONROE, Mich. (AP) -- A group of street preachers are free to spread the gospel downtown following their settlement of a lawsuit against the city.Under the settlement agreed to last week, the city will not prosecute members of World Wide Street Preachers' Fellowship under the city's noise ordinance or for lack of a parade permit....

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- So now we're supposed to believe that American sports -- and American society -- lost their innocence because baseball players used steroids to hit home runs. Repeat after me, please, and say it loud: American sports have never been innocent, and America's capitalist society has a built-in set of checks and balances because we know unfettered competition for money breeds corruption. So, Sports Illustrated, spare me the whining about the congressional hearings on steroids and baseball. Spare me the whining about the lost summer of '98 and what to do with your scrapbook. I was a...

PARIS (AFP) - Human activities, notably the building of coastal resorts and the destruction of natural protection, contributed to the enormous loss of life from killer tidal waves that hit the shores of the Indian Ocean after an earthquake, an environmental expert said. Jeff McNeely, chief scientist of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN), who lived for several years in Indonesia and Thailand, two of the countries hit by Sunday's disaster, said it was "nothing new for nature" in a geologically active region. "What has made this a disaster is that people have started to occupy part of the landscape...

Convention Center Comes Tumbling Down In the end, the demise of the old Washington Convention Center resembled more of a deflation than an implosion -- the squat structure, at its tallest roughly the equivalent of a four-story building, didn't have far to fall. It died about 7:30 a.m. yesterday in a roughly 20-second ballet of crackling explosives, toppling walls and a large cloud of dust that marked the spot where on Dec. 10, 1982, city officials had hosted a grand opening reception. This time, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) presided over a gathering at the newer, flashier convention center a...

<p>Boston-area Catholics, increasingly alienated by the sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the church, say the characteristic they would most like to see in a new archbishop is openness to change, according to a new Boston Globe poll.</p> <p>Overwhelming majorities of Catholics living in the Archdiocese of Boston still have favorable opinions of their own parish priests and of Pope John Paul II, and 41 percent say their faith is very important to their everyday lives.</p>