Free Republic

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - April 23, 2007 - Think Rock, Paper, Scissors is just a kids' game? Try telling that to Ray Scott, a burly 64-year-old retiree.

Paper Photog Quits Over Altered Picture Monday April 9, 2007 11:01 PM By JOHN SEEWER Associated Press Writer TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - A staff photographer for The Blade who digitally altered a front-page photo has resigned, the newspaper said Monday. Allan Detrich had told Blade editors that he altered a photo of a college baseball team for his personal files and mistakenly sent it to the newspaper. The photo showed Bluffton University players kneeling March 30 at their first game after a bus crash killed five players in Atlanta. Photos of the team in other Ohio newspapers showed the legs...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department said on Friday it was slapping duties on imports of coated paper from China, reversing a decades-old policy of not applying duties to subsidized goods from non-market economies. Anger over the U.S. trade deficit with China, which hit a record $233 billion last year, has spurred demands for a tougher response to Chinese government subsidies, which many U.S. lawmakers believe are fueling that country's exports."China's economy has developed to the point that we can add another trade remedy tool, such as the countervailing duty law," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told reporters. He...

Michelle Conlin ride her scooter, even in the snow. ?Rain is worse,? she said. A sour odor hovered oh-so-slightly in the air, the faint tang, not wholly unpleasant, that is the mark of the home composter. Isabella Beavan, age 2, staggered around the neo-Modern furniture ? the Eames chairs, the brown velvet couch, the Lucite lamps and the steel cafe table upon which dinner was set ? her silhouette greatly amplified by her organic cotton diapers in their enormous boiled-wool, snap-front cover. A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there. Meanwhile, Joseph, the...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will cut its circulation area by dozens of counties, offer buyouts to 80 newsroom employees and spend $30 million to upgrade a printing plant as part of a multifaceted revamp of the paper's operations. The AJC, which has one of the largest online operations among regional newspapers, plans to shift more resources to focus on digital news. As part of the change, the paper will trim its circulation territory to 73 counties, centered on metro Atlanta. The pullback will take effect April 1 and means the print version of the AJC will no longer be available in...

NEXT time you unpack a new television, DVD player or other made-in-China electronic item or toy, chances are the cardboard packaging being thrown away has helped make Zhang Yin, 49, China's richest woman. And when you do throw away the packaging, there's a chance Zhang's company, the auspiciously named Nine Dragons, will be buying the cardboard to recycle it. It's a virtuous circle that last month saw Zhang named as China's richest person by the Hurun Report, knocking off two-time winner Huang Guangyu, the 37-year-old Harvey Norman of China who owns the Gome electronics retail chain. The rival Forbes rich...

PHILADELPHIA — Layoff notices were given today to 71 newsroom employees at The Philadelphia Inquirer, about 17 percent of the paper's editorial staff, as it grapples with sharp declines in circulation and advertising revenue, union officials said. The layoffs, which will be effective Jan. 17, could be whittled down by workers who volunteer to leave for other jobs or retire, the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia said. "It's very sad," said Bill Ross, the Guild's local representative who is meeting with affected employees this morning. "There are multiple boxes of tissues." Company spokesman Jay Devine said the layoff number will...

Just headline right now...will post story ASAP.

Paper Says It Has Unseen Video by Atta Sunday October 1, 2006 2:16 AM LONDON (AP) - A previously unseen video made by Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been obtained by Britain's The Sunday Times, the newspaper reported Saturday. In editions available late Saturday, the paper said it had been handed the so-called martyrdom video, but did not reveal the source of the tape. It reported that Atta was filmed reading a document marked in Arabic as a will as he sat beside fellow hijacker Ziad Jarrah - who seized control...

Nickel prices took a severe beating in late trade at the London Metal Exchange on Monday, falling over $1,000 from Friday's kerb close. Three-months futures ended Monday's kerb at $27,600 per tonne, down $1,100, or 3.8 percent. Once selling began, the metal slipped into free-fall, traders said. "It was around $28,500, then on the next trade -- which was half an hour later -- it had gone down $300, then another $300." Volumes were tiny and support practically non-existent."It was trading one lot, then two lots, then one. There was a void underneath it," the trader said. Sellers may have...

Teen mails taped confession of father's slaying to paperAssociated Press Posted on Sat, Sep. 02, 2006 RALEIGH, N.C. - A man obsessed with the 1999 Columbine school attack made a videotape showing his father's bloody corpse and describing plans to attack his former high school, then mailed it to a newspaper which posted excerpts on its Web site. The release of the video late Thursday was the latest twist in the case, which began when Alvaro Castillo was arrested Wednesday in front of Orange High School in Hillsborough after multiple shots were fired from the parking lot. Two students suffered...

Pa. Sued Over Electronic Voting Machines Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop Pennsylvania counties from using "paperless" electronic voting machines, saying that such systems leave no paper record that could be used in the event of a recount, audit or other problem. The suit asks the state's Commonwealth Court to decertify machines used in 58 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The other counties use optical scanning systems, in which voters fill in bubbles on paper forms that are counted in scanning machines; the plaintiffs say such systems should be in use statewide. "Whatever the initial promise may have...

New Evidence Suggests Longer Paper Making History in China A 2,000-year-old piece of paper inscribed with legible handwriting has been found in Gansu Province, suggesting that China's paper-making and handwriting history are older than previously thought. The 10 square centimeter piece of paper, made from linen fibers, was found during restoration of an ancient garrison near the Yumen Pass at Dunhuang in northwest China. The garrison was in use during the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-25 A.D.), a report in the Beijing-based Guangming Daily said. "The paper was made in 8 B.C., more than 100 years before the birth of...

NEW YORK The most widely used electronic-voting systems all have flaws that can be addressed relatively easily, but few states and counties have actually implemented recommended security measures, researchers concluded Tuesday. Even the printing of paper records widely seen as a countermeasure to hacking and other attacks on ATM-like touchscreen machines does little good if audits aren't routinely and automatically performed, researchers said. While California and 11 other states require audits in addition to paper trails, more than half of the 26 states requiring paper records don't do so. The report, based on interviews with elections officials and analyses of...

June 7, 2006 — A federal judge ordered two attorneys to settle their dispute by using the children's playground game "rock, paper, scissors." The ruling yesterday by Judge Gregory Presnell of the U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla., stated that he was so dissatisfied with the case's "latest in a series of Gordian knots" that he is fashioning "a new form of alternative dispute resolution." In the dispute at hand, the two attorneys could not agree about where to take the sworn statement of a witness in a case concerning payment of insurance claims. The judge's order states that the...

NEW YORK (AP) - Shares in newsprint makers Bowater Inc. and Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. fell Monday after Bank of America cut the stocks to "Sell," advising investors to take profits after recent gains. Analyst George Staphos also cautioned that he expects growth in newsprint demand to slow within the next 12 months, as the industry's boom cycle starts to weaken. "We view 2006 as a peak pricing year, and 2006/2007 as the peak in profitability," he said, adding, "This would argue that now is the right time to sell positions." Staphos said investors should be ready to increase their holdings if...

3/9/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- She’s called the “shredder queen.” Staff Sgt. Cassandra Ali, 379th Expeditionary Communications Squadron base records manager, keeps track of Airmen who sign up to shred paper. In the last two weeks, she’s moved 57 20-pound bags of pulverized paper from the base’s newest operational security tool, a multipurpose high-security, high-volume industrial shredder. The shredder is far from your standard paper slicer. “Pulverizer would be a more appropriate name,” said Senior Master Sgt. James Patrie, 379th Information Services Flight superintendent. “What comes out of that machine looks nothing like paper.” Unlike most unclassified shredders on...

Brouhaha ContextBy John Hammer Despite what Americans have been led to believe by the mainstream media, the protests about the Danish cartoons are about as spontaneous as the canned laughter on an old network sitcom. Imagine for a moment that you are so outraged by the riots in Pakistan that you and 10,000 of your closest friends and family decide to protest. So you go to your flag locker and pull out your Pakistani flag to burn. What? You don’t have a flag locker with flags of every nation in the world? Wow, if one is to believe the tripe...

Saudi paper 'shut' in cartoon row By Sebastian Usher BBC World media correspondent Saudis have begun boycotting Danish products A newspaper in Saudi Arabia has stopped publishing after printing some of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Shams (Sun) has been suspended as part of an investigation into its decision to publish the cartoons that have caused anger across the Muslim world. It printed them next to articles urging Saudis to take action against Denmark where the cartoons first appeared. Three weeks ago, Shams, became one of few newspapers in the Arab world to print some of the cartoons. The...

Paper: White House Knew About Levees Early By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 41 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Twenty-eight government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, reported that New Orleans levees were breached Aug. 29, the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, documents released Thursday show. A timeline of e-mails, situation updates and weather reports, pieced together by Senate Democrats, indicates the Bush administration knew as early as 8:30 a.m. EST about levee failures that would ultimately lead to massive flooding of the city and its surrounding parishes. Senate Democrats said the documents raise questions about whether...