Free Republic

The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals—guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively. Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA. In a study published on 22 February in Science, a consortium of researchers led by Steven Benner, founder of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, suggests that an expanded genetic alphabet could, in theory, also support life....

In the wake of a short, out-of-context video put up on Twitter about a confrontation after the Jan. 18 March for Life, pretty much everyone in the media and politics decided to condemn a group of minors from Covington Catholic High School.And then the facts started coming in.According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, over 50 individuals who went after the Covington kids and didn’t retract their statements will potentially find themselves in court after lawyers for the most visible of the students “sent letters to media outlets, individual journalists, celebrities and Catholic organizations as the first step in possible libel and...

The adolescent soccer players trapped for two weeks in a partially flooded cave in northern Thailand don't want their parents to worry. And they also wouldn't mind having some fried chicken ready for when they get home. That's what's on the minds of the 12 boys, ages 11-16, according to handwritten notes they sent out with divers who made an 11-hour, back-and-forth journey to act as postmen. The boys and their 25-year-old coach have been trapped since June 23, when they went exploring in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave after a practice game. Monsoon flooding cut off their escape...

Almost a dozen people have been injured at a Washington-area military base as a result of a letter that contained a hazardous substance, according to local first-responders. Hazmat crews rushed to Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall and were trying to identify the substance Tuesday afternoon, according to the Fort Myer Fire Department’s Twitter account.

Jan 26, 2018 WASHINGTON – As part of their ongoing oversight efforts to ensure that the FBI’s law enforcement activities are free of improper political influence, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) yesterday sent six letters seeking information and documents regarding Christopher Steele’s work on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary for America. The letters seek information and documents relating to those political organizations’ knowledge of and involvement in Mr. Steele’s work and his reported interactions with the FBI while he was working on behalf of...

A young Barack Obama questioned his place in the world and his racial identity, agonized over whether he’d make enough money as a community organizer, and lamented his incompatibility with his ex-girlfriend in 30 pages of letters he wrote to her that are now being archived by Emory University in Atlanta. The nine full letters, sent by Obama to his college girlfriend, Alexandra McNear, are being made public to researchers through Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. The university has had the letters since 2014 but could only make them public now, officials said. Written...

Click on the link to read this year's list of winners (exactly what you'd expect).

A letter written in Kurdish by a prisoner in Turkey’s southeastern Elazig prison has been censored by prison authorities for being in an “unknown language.”The letter, written by political prisoner Murat Akkurt to his brother, who is being held in Bitlis prison, was censored and prevented from being sent by prison authorities for being in the Kurdish language, reported Dihaber.The incident is the latest in a string of similar acts of censorship by the government. Signs in the Kurdish language were removed by state appointed trustees following the dismissal of Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP) mayors following Turkey’s coup attempt.The Kurdish...

Photos and more than 350 "intense" letters from Pope John Paul II to a married woman he corresponded with for more than three decades have been found at the National Library of Poland, Deutsche Welle reports, via a BBC documentary. The notes and images—often showing the pontiff, who was made a saint in 2014, in casual wear—reveal a friendship between himself and American philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka that included holidays spent together and an intimate relationship that historians are trying to figure out. "Here is one of the handful of transcendentally great figures in public life in the 20th century, the...

A teacher working in a British classroom had pupils send handwritten letters to 'hero' Syrian terrorists. The pupils were forced to write in both English and Arabic, opening each of their notes: 'To our brothers in...' The teacher's Twitter page also features sickening images of beheading victims.

CRAZED Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis have sent letters to European civilians ordering them to convert to Islam within three days or face being DECAPITATED in their own homes. Bloodthirsty Daesh Islamists posted notes through the doors of dozens of random neighbours in several cities across Sweden, including the capital Stockholm, threatening to murder "non-believers" in a terrifying campaign of violence. Sweden is now on lockdown after the chilling letters pledged to behead innocent civilians and then "bomb your rotten corpses afterwards".

In December 2001, as the investigation into the U.S. anthrax attacks was gathering steam, coalition soldiers in Afghanistan uncovered what appeared to be an important clue: a trail of documents chronicling an attempt by al-Qaeda to create its own anthrax weapon. The documents told of a singular mission by a scientist named Abdur Rauf, an obscure, middle-aged Pakistani with alleged al-Qaeda sympathies and an advanced degree in microbiology. Using his membership in a prestigious scientific organization to gain access, Rauf traveled through Europe on a quest, officials say, to obtain both anthrax spores and the equipment needed to turn them...

AL-QAEDA’S leadership secretly directed the Islamic militants whose armed revolt at the Red Mosque in Islamabad ended last week with more than 100 deaths after it was stormed by the Pakistan army. According to senior intelligence officials, the troops who finally took control discovered letters from Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were written to Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, the brothers who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. Government sources said up to 18 foreign fighters � including Uzbeks, Egyptians and several Afghans � had arrived weeks before the final shootout and set up firing ranges to...

Was looking at the area on fire between Bastrop, TX and Smithville, TX and saw this: Click here to see huge letters cut on someone's land.

We've just received word that the former Delphi Tower in Saginaw Michigan has been evacuated, and that it's being treated as a HAZMAT situation. Police, Fire, and HAZMAT crews are on the scene. The building houses the Saginaw offices of US Senator Carl Levin. Little else is known, but we were contacted by one evacuee who told us that "Levin got a suspicious letter in the mail." Given the two recent Ricin-tainted letters received in D.C., we assume they're taking no chances. More as it develops.

Two leading U.S. senators are calling on the Obama administration to release secret letters to foreign governments assuring them that they will not be legally penalized for doing business with the Iranian government, according to a copy of a letter sent Wednesday to the State Department and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) disclosed in the letter to the State Department that U.S. lawmakers have been shown copies of several letters sent by the Obama administration to the Chinese, German, French, and British governments assuring them that companies doing business

Haz-mat teams and federal investigators responded across Oregon on Monday after numerous sheriffs received suspicious mail, some of it delivering an unknown substance, authorities told NBC News.

Nearly two weeks after 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was murdered on San Francisco’s Pier 14 by an illegal alien and convicted felon who was released from prison earlier this year, President Barack Obama has failed to contact the victim’s family or mention her in public. Yet Obama took the time to write (and release) 46 personal letters this month to felons imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses whose sentences he has commuted. Like the 46 felons to whom Obama wrote, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez had served time for non-violent offenses, some of them drug-related. After his arrest, Lopez-Sanchez, who had been deported five...

New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet Scientists hope that new genetic letters, created in the lab, will endow DNA with new powers. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta MagazineThe two new letters are named P and Z, and fit seamlessly into existing DNA. By: Emily SingerJuly 10, 2015 Comments (14) DNA stores our genetic code in an elegant double helix. But some argue that this elegance is overrated. “DNA as a molecule has many things wrong with it,” said Steven Benner, an organic chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida.Nearly 30 years ago, Benner sketched out better versions of both...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...