Free Republic

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is 33 times more likely to occur in a Native American baby than a Caucasian baby, 37 times more than Hispanics, and 5 times more likely than a Black baby. The cost of care for each individual affected is estimated at $2.4 million over a lifetime. Yet most tribal nations have cut funding for education and prevention. Few have FAS Coordinators any longer. Read more about it and what you can do.

Iran makes no secret of the fact that it manufactures weapons for export, including mortar bombs of the general type found in Iraq. Customers from around the world can log on to the Web site of the government-owned Defense Industries Organization and view a wide array of Iranian-made munitions. If they decide to order, they apparently can pay by credit card, as a VISA logo suggests. The site - which promises "best quality and fast service" - is an example of the vigor with which Iran has moved into a global arms market long dominated by the United States and...

<p>The Army Reserve officer who went public with details about a secret military unit called Able Danger is being fired from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency, a move that also could end his military career.</p>

Marburg : Malice or Malpractice ? I entered some correspondence today,concerning possible origins of the Angola Marburg epidemic: an outbreak that started among very young children,and that is killing anywhere from 89% to 97% of those it infects-(depending on whose stats you trust.) This was the response I got. " I think if you check back, previous Marburg epidemics have been in places where there weren't any children, e.g. gold-mining camps. WHO has reported that traditional healers are re-using non-sterilized syringes & needles to give their medicines to victims, hence spreading the disease, also some local doctors have not been...

NORFOLK, Va. - With bells ringing and horns blaring, the Navy on Saturday commissioned the lead ship of its latest class of fast-attack submarines specifically designed for post-Cold War security threats. The $2.2 billion, nuclear-powered USS Virginia differs from other submarines because it can not only roam the deep blue ocean but also get close to shore in shallow water, which Navy officials say is important in fighting terrorism. Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson and wife of former Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., gave the traditional order to "man our ship and bring her to life" in ceremonies...

Top News Crew Rage? Mon, 19 Jan '04 US Airways Passenger Says He Was Poked We've all heard of air rage. In these days of heightened security, long lines and short tempers, it's no longer uncommon to read about passengers who fly off the handle. But crew members? John McLeod was flying from Charlotte (NC) to Tampa Bay (FL) last month when the flight attendant announced it was time to "stow your tray-tables and raise your seats to their upright and locked positions." When he didn't immediately comply, he got a few sharp pokes in the shoulder from a...

John Pike is everywhere, promoting himself in the media as "a national security expert"Just today in the Christian Science Monitor: "It makes me nervous that, like the British, we've acquired an empire in a fit of absent-mindedness," says John Pike,a national security expert at GlobalSecurity.org. The key aspects of today's US military deployments, according to Pike, are their scope, and their durability. "They're not just a bunch of guys passing through," says Pike. Let's take a look at John Pike. Spokesman John Pike: self-promoter [Excerpt from his site] John Pike, one of the world's leading experts on defense, space and ...

A group of US scientists has warned the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) that recent advances in biotechnology could give life to "designer" biological weapons able to target selected groups of people, act with a delay and turn deadly in reaction to medicine, according to a CIA (news - web sites) document made public here. The warning came during a closed-door seminar organized at the request of the CIA by the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites) to devise strategies for dealing with the dangerous by-products of the so-called genomic revolution. The spy agency would not...

Adoptions not always the stuff of fairy tales By CHRISTI KILLIEN GUEST COLUMNIST It was the middle of a blazing Houston summer in 1970 when my parents decided to adopt a 3-year-old boy. They were both 37 years old and already had three children, two girls and a boy. I was the oldest, an adolescent with long blonde hair, skirts I rolled up short on the way to school and a pile of Glamour magazines in my room. Dad told us we would meet our new brother on a get-to-know-you outing at the Houston zoo. Fine, I remember thinking, but...

An anthrax outbreak in the U.S., just what the Federation of American Scientists has been waiting for. Having spent a lot of time on the arms-control wars over the past 30 years, I'm well acquainted with the Federation of American Scientists. Its mission is promoting arms control with a scientific twist, nicely illustrated with the huge anthrax outbreak near a suspected Soviet biological weapons facility at Sverdlovsk in 1979. "Because the world scientific-medical fraternity is a close one," a statement by the FAS council said, nations can't expect to conceal secret large weapons accidents or arms-control violations. "We have not...

Toogood Reports [Weekender, June 9, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Psst! The anthrax-laced letters that killed five people last fall, were sent by a home-grown, American terrorist. In fact, the killer — a heterosexual, Christian, white male wacko, if you'll excuse the redundancy — is a scientist who was doing contract work for the CIA, and who murdered five innocents on orders from the CIA. The feds have covered it all up. Pass it on. I know who did it, because Barbara Hatch Rosenberg told me. Rosenberg is not only a tenured professor of microbiology at the New York State...

WASHINGTON - The military wants to develop nuclear bombs that could destroy - not just disturb - deeply buried and fortified underground targets, according to excerpts from a classified Pentagon report. The report, called the Nuclear Posture Review and completed in January, said more than 10,000 underground military facilities exist in more than 70 countries. About 1,400 of the underground facilities are considered specially important because they house weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles or top-level military command stations, the report said. "At present the United States lacks adequate means to deal with these strategic facilities," it said. The U.S....