Free Republic

The 1980s and 1990s were the Belle Époque - the beautiful age - of commercial development, a time when getting project approval could be as simple as shaking the right hand or making the right campaign donation. And Americans were all for it, ready to embrace the next mall or Home Depot or Starbucks Coffee outlet that gave them easy access to consumer products. Mike Saint was there for it and remembers when making proposed developments reality was simple. No more. "At a conference in 2004, I heard a developer say 'Up until 1999, anything I wanted to do was...

Yara wins Ethiopian contracts after handing out prize Oslo-based Yara International, one of the world's largest fertilizer makers, has won some major contracts in Ethiopia, just three months after it awarded a controversial prize to Ethiopia's prime minister. Yara boss Thorleif Enger (left) awarded a prize and USD 200,000 to controversial Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi. Yara said it wanted to honor Zenawi's contribution to the African Green Revolution. PHOTO: HEIKO JUNGE/SCANPIX Protesters outside the Oslo Concert House didn't think Ethiopia's president deserved the prize. PHOTO: HEIKO JUNGE/SCANPIX Related stories: Yara ponders ship sale - 22.12.2005 Yara establishes African prize -...

HELENA, Mont. - The Rocky Mountain West, long a Republican stronghold, is fertile ground for Democrats hoping to take back Congress and the White House in coming years, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean told supporters here Saturday. Democrats have more in common with Westerners than the GOP, the former Vermont governor said. They appreciate the free-spirited, independent thinking that dominate states like Montana, and understand the wish for a balanced budget and a strong military, as well as treating soldiers well when they get home, something Dean said the Bush administration has neglected. "I think we're going to have a...

Koreas Can't Break Nuclear Impasse By PAUL ALEXANDER, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago SEOUL, South Korea - The two Koreas concluded their first face-to-face talks in 10 months Thursday without making any progress on the impasse over the North's nuclear program, although they did agree to hold Cabinet-level talks next month. The agreement came hours after word emerged of a secret meeting last week between U.S. and North Korean officials. The focus of both efforts was to get Pyongyang to rejoin six-nation talks on getting it to abandon its nuclear program, but the reclusive communist country -- which regularly uses...

Newsweek: Mistakes Made in 'Good Faith' Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Newsweek Retracts Koran-Desecration Story WASHINGTON — One day after retracting a story that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran (search), a top Newsweek editor acknowledged the magazine made "serious mistakes" but suggested to FOX News that no one would be fired over the incident. "Clearly there were mistakes here," Dan Klaidman (search), Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, told FOX News on Tuesday. "It was in good faith, they were honest mistakes, and we are trying to be transparent about it." Asked if anyone would be fired, Klaidman didn't answer directly but...

South Korea has been agonizing over a recent request from North Korea for an ``unusually’’ large volume of fertilizer aid, officials in Seoul said Sunday. According to the Korean National Red Cross (KNRC), the North’s Red Cross sent a telephone message on Jan. 13 asking for 500,000 tons of fertilizer for this spring. It marks a large increase from the 300,000 tons that Seoul has shipped to the North every year _ 200,000 tons in the spring and the remaining 100,000 tons in the autumn _ since the historic 2000 inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, with the exception of 2001. South...

Want to purchase some locally produced, organic fertilizer for you garden? Unfortunately it contains arsenic, lead and mercury amongst other interesting additives. And it may spontaneously explode and burn while in storage. Not interested? Then how about buying acclaimed Foodland Ontario vegetables and fruit, grown on a less refined version of the same ‘natural’ fertilizer? These are not available at present, as Toronto’s sewage pelletizer, which made the fertilizer, burned down in July 2003. And biosolids ‘cake,’ the less processed poop, is not exactly popular with the province’s farmers. But they could be coming soon to a store near you,...

AGRIUM: The site will remain open if it can negotiate cheap gas. Alaska's biggest manufacturing employer says it will shut down its Kenai Peninsula plant in November 2005 unless it can strike a deal for new supplies of inexpensive natural gas. Agrium, owner of the 36-year-old fertilizer plant in Nikiski, announced Tuesday it had settled long-running lawsuits with Unocal, the oil company that sold the facility in 2000. The settlement assures Agrium a supply of cheap gas only through October of next year. After that, the plant will shut down unless a favorable new contract for gas can be obtained,...

Direct Link Discovered Between Agricultural Runoff And Algal Blooms In SeaScientists have found the first direct evidence linking large-scale coastal farming to massive blooms of marine algae that are potentially harmful to ocean life and fisheries. Researchers from Stanford University's School of Earth Sciences made the discovery by analyzing satellite images of Mexico's Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California - a narrow, 700-mile-long stretch of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Mexican mainland from the Baja California Peninsula. Immortalized in the 1941 book Sea of Cortez, by writer John Steinbeck and marine biologist Edward Ricketts, the...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Terry Nichols admitted during plea negotiations in his state trial last year that he played a major role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a newspaper reported Sunday. Nichols admitted to prosecutors in a signed statement that he helped Timothy McVeigh make the bomb that killed 168 people in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, The Oklahoman reported. McVeigh was put to death for masterminding the attack. "McVeigh told me what to do," Nichols said in the statement, which was prepared with the aid of his attorneys. Nichols, 49, is serving life sentences without...

Nearly 3,000 pounds of stolen ammonium nitrate are unaccounted for in North Carolina, even as the U.S. braces itself against a possible al Qaeda truck bomb attack. Two and a half tons of ammonium nitrate were stolen from a Royster-Clark fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem, N.C. in early July, according to the Winston-Salem Police Department, consisting of one hundred 50-pound bags. Mixed with fuel oil, ammonium nitrate is a favored ingredient used in al Qaeda truck bombs. Nearly a month after the theft was reported, 59 bags of the volatile fertilizer are still unaccounted for, police said Monday. Dozens of similar...

Dan Rather will be on Larry King in a few minutes to gin up interest in his full-hour interview with former pres. Clinton (7:00 sunday, cbs) "Veteran newsman Dan Rather discusses the beheading of an American hostage, and his interview with former President Bill Clinton. Tune in at 9 p.m. ET. "

Alberto Sanchez-Lopez, 32, was sitting in the Monmouth County jail, Freehold Township, this week waiting for a court appearance and not fully understanding the nature of the crime he is alleged to have committed that resulted in his arrest on the morning of June 8. According to a press release issued by the Manalapan Police Department, Sanchez-Lopez, of Jackson, was arrested near the Tennent post office, Route 522, and charged with obstruction of the administration of the law and hindering apprehension. He is being held in the county jail in default of $10,000 bail set by Manalapan Municipal Court Judge...

<p>LONDON — Britons bracing for a terror attack like last month's Madrid train bombings are coming to terms with the idea the attackers may not be foreign militants but the sons of friendly Asian families living next door.</p> <p>Police yesterday were questioning eight young British-born Pakistanis arrested a day earlier in raids that officials said had foiled a major bomb plot. Half a ton of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer suitable for making bombs, was seized.</p>

A trailer with Oklahoma tag number 4205CN is missing from a plant in Henry County, just south of Atlanta. Henry Co. PD has just notified surrounding agencies, and are looking for help...This is just breaking on television; details to come.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former government scientist accused the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday of knowingly using unreliable data when it denied a petition to halt the use of sewage sludge for fertilizer. The microbiologist, David Lewis, testified at a House subcommittee hearing that the EPA used data about sludge quality at two Georgia dairy farms that had already been rejected by Georgia state officials as "completely unreliable, possibly even fraudulent." He asked the House Resources Committee's subcommittee on energy and mineral resources to call on the EPA for an internal investigation of the moratorium and other matters. Lewis, a...

"It's not as bad as it sounds," he said. "You get used to it. You can work in it. As a matter of fact, it's a pretty cool place to work." Sloan is part of a five-man crew mining the bat waste from the Bracken Bat Cave, home to 20 million or more Mexican freetail bats from February to October every year, making it the largest bat colony in the world. That many bats leave a lot of guano. In fact, in parts of the cave it's piled 30 feet deep, and if some of it weren't removed periodically, the...

E.P.A. to Study Use of Waste From Sewage as Fertilizer By JENNIFER 8. LEE The Environmental Protection Agency will sponsor a series of scientific and public health studies on the safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer, including nationwide chemical tests and building a human health complaint database. The studies, in combination with the agency's announcement on Wednesday that it will more closely regulate 15 chemicals found in sewage sludge fertilizer, are part of the agency's efforts to address public concerns about an agricultural practice that has grown rapidly around the country over the last decade. The announcements also reflect...

FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBER - A Scenario She is 25 years old, single, and very pretty. She is Saudi by citizenship and Palestinian by birth. Her father was killed by Israeli troops when she was 12 years old, and the hatred has festered for 13 years. Khadra came to the United States on a student visa in 1998, went to school for two quarters, and then just disappeared from view. When she left her family, she knew, and they probably knew, that they would never see each other in this life again. A mosque about 4 miles from downtown Manhattan has...

S. Korea to Send 200,000 Tons of Fertilizer to N. Korea -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seoul, May 2 (Yonhap) -- South Korea plans to provide 200,000 tons of fertilizer as humanitarian aid to North Korea from May through June, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said Friday. Jeong reported the plan to the unification, diplomacy and trade committee of the National Assembly.