Free Republic

A 21-year-old citizen of Chad who has been held for seven years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba must be released, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the government had not proven that Mohammed el Gharani was an enemy combatant and the detainee must be freed and sent home soon either to Saudi Arabia, where he was raised and his family lives, or Chad. Leon's ruling comes just before President-elect Barack Obama, who has vowed to close the prison camp, takes office on Tuesday. Since Obama's election in November, federal...

<p>A human rights group alleges the U.S. has operated detention facilities for terror suspects aboard Naval vessels, according to a published report in a European newspaper Monday.</p> <p>A study compiled by Reprieve says the U.S. may have used as many as 17 vessels as 'prison ships' where terror detainees were subjected to interrogation as part of the acknowledged rendition program operated since 2001, The Guardian reported.</p>

Microsoft said today it will continue to sell Windows XP Home beyond its scheduled June 30 kill-date for the emerging class of "ultra-low-cost PCs," or ULCPCs. The operating system has been granted a reprieve until mid-2010, but only for the diminutive laptops such as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC which lack the hardware necessary to run Windows Vista adequately. The cut-off date for XP licenses in mainstream boxes remains the end of June, 2008. Free live support and warranty-based technical support will dry up next April. After that, customers need to pay for phone support until April...

'CIA island jail' to be probed A UK parliamentary committee is to investigate allegations that US authorities held 'terrorist' suspects in secret prisons on an Indian Ocean island leased by the US from Britain, officials said. Reprieve, a British legal charity, says the CIA detained suspected al-Qaeda members at an airbase on the island of Diego Garcia. Reprieve says at least three al-Qaeda linked prisoners - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Hambali - were held on the island with the consent of British authorities. George Bush, the US president, admitted in 2006 the CIA had held the three and...

Saddam believed that he would be reprieved By Damien McElroy Last Updated: 9:05am GMT 08/01/2007 Saddam Hussein finally accepted his fate only two hours before his death, it emerged yesterday. Saddam Hussein moments before his execution Locks on his jail door at Camp Cropper detention facility near Baghdad airport slid open and guards entered to take the former dictator to a waiting helicopter. It was 3:55 am. Saddam looked up to accept for the first time that he was a condemned man facing death at the hands of his enemies. Members of Task Force 134, the US military unit guarding...

WASHINGTON - Big Bird and National Public Radio won a reprieve Thursday as the House restored $100 million that had been proposed as a budget cut for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting The 284-140 vote demonstrated the enduring political strength of public broadcasting, whose supporters rallied behind popular programs such as “Sesame Street,” “Postcards From Buster” and “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” The Public Broadcasting Service undertook a high-profile campaign to rescind the proposed cut. Lawmakers were flooded with letters and phone calls.

Nasa says 'no' to Hubble reprieve By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Shuttle visits are essential for Hubble Nasa has given a final "no" to requests for it to change its mind and grant a reprieve to the Hubble Space Telescope. It follows opposition to Nasa's chief, Sean O'Keefe's decision, that servicing missions should be cancelled because of astronaut safety concerns. New rules, following the loss of space shuttle Columbia last year, do not allow a Hubble visit by astronauts. The US space agency has said that if it is not serviced, Hubble will probably last only...

The Hubble Space Telescope, astronomy's vaunted time machine, was granted a conditional reprieve yesterday when an expert panel recommended that NASA consider sending a crew of astronauts at the end of the decade to extend its career, rather than dropping it out of orbit, as has been planned. But the committee said its recommendation should be carried out only if the science to be performed in those additional years was able to beat competing proposals for new NASA science projects. For the last 13 years, floating above the Earth's murky atmosphere, the telescope has beamed down crisp images of galaxies...

<p>A bill designed to rescue the California Coastal Commission from constitutional limbo is expected to pass the Assembly today and head to the desk of Gov. Gray Davis, who supports it.</p> <p>Aiming to resolve legal problems after an appeals court said the panel's oversight of California's spectacular 1,100-mile coast was constitutionally flawed, the bill raced through a special session with the backing of the Democratic majority and all of the state's coastal legislators. ``I've never seen any of these people move this quickly on anything,'' said Mark Massara, a Sierra Club lawyer who follows coastal legislation.</p>

The Other Side Hollie L. Moody (August 18th, 2002) I was in the Spirit and found myself with the Lord beside a large body of water. The sun was shining and I felt that it was the middle of the day. There was a small, but sturdy looking, wooden ship pulled up on the sand next to the Lord and I. I watched as the Lord pushed the boat into the shallows and stepped into it. He then held His right hand out to me. "Come with Me to the other side," the Lord said to me. I placed my...