Free Republic

Beijing (AFP) - Beijing on Wednesday closed the first of four large coal-fired power plants that are set to be shut down as part of efforts to curb its choking air pollution, media reported. The 50-year-old Gaojing Thermal Power Plant is to be replaced with a gas-fired power station, one of four that is to be built as the Chinese capital aims to boost its reliance on cleaner energy, Xinhua news agency said. The other three major coal-fired power plants in Beijing will be closed by 2016, the state-run agency added. A five-year plan was introduced in the city last...

Intrade, the futures trading website, will no longer be available to residents of the United States as a result of “legal and regulatory pressures,” the Dublin, Ireland-based site announced Monday. The website allows people to buy and sell shares in possible outcomes. For example, before Election Day, users could buy shares that President Barack Obama would be re-elected. Those who did were paid out for those shares when Obama defeated Mitt Romney. Users who held shares in Romney becoming president lost money on those shares. “We are sorry to announce that due to legal and regulatory pressures, Intrade can no...

TOKYO (AP) — Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation's 50nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol. Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomarinuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido went offline for mandatory routine maintenance. After last year's March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor halted for checkups has been restarted amid public worries about the safety of nuclear technology. "Today...

Do it yourself guy builds train detector to automatically shut bedroom window(PhysOrg.com) -- In a nice display of can-do thinking leading to positive action, a guy by the name of Ed Rogers has devised a device that automatically shuts the window in his bedroom whenever a train passes by, reducing the noise significantly. He has posted a video on YouTube explaining how he did it. To start out, Rogers first installed a linear actuator (a mechanical device for moving an object) connected to a part he printed off using MakerBot’s Thing-O-Matic, which was then connected to wires that snaked...

Since the announcement that Hosni Mubarak has stepped down, people have been celebrating across the world. But one group isn't joining the party: Israel's representatives in Cairo. The embassy here has been shut down indefinitely, and the Israeli flag was removed from the building's roof. Israel's diplomats and their families have allegedly been evacuated due to security concerns. Israel has long feared that the fall of the Mubarak could lead to a renunciation of their peace accord with Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces announced that they will support all current treaties. Following the 6 Day War...

Quote from the homepage of the website: "This domain name has been seized by ICE-Homeland Security Investigations, Special Agent in Charge, New York Office, in accordance with a seizure warrant obtained by the United States Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York...."

President Obama was briefed this morning on a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday. The base is a main locus of the United States' strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They're on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across the base. On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what's known as "LF...

Democratic senators ripped their Republican counterparts for forcing cancellations of hearings throughout the Senate on Wednesday, claiming that the GOP is needlessly blocking essential national security business. Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Claire McCaskill both complained that Republicans kept them from holding their hearings on budget requests for the military's Pacific and strategic and police training contracts in Afghanistan. Either party in the Senate is allowed to object to holding hearings, as Senate rules require a unanimous consent request for hearings to be held after 2 p.m. Most of these unanimous consent requests aren’t even noticed on...

TIKRIT, Iraq (Army News Service, May 15, 2006) – Iraqi army and U.S. Soldiers raided a suspected insurgent training camp during Operation Iron Triangle near Lake Thar Thar, southwest of Tikrit May 9. Nearly 200 Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 4th Iraqi Army Division, and approximately 230 Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team air assaulted from CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters into the suspected camp after intelligence sources pin-pointed the location as being the Muthana Chemical Complex. The 150-square kilometer complex was a chemical production facility that was closed by the United Nations after...

BEIJING - Chinese police have closed 598 Web sites in a crackdown on pornography, but online gambling and fraud are growing, state media said Friday. The latest crackdown, launched in March, led to 25 arrests, the China Daily Newspaper said, citing figures from the Ministry of Public Security. That figure was low compared with more than 500 people arrested in a nationwide crackdown last year. China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users after the United States, with more than 100 million people online. The communist government encourages Internet use for education and business but has launched repeated campaigns...

<p>KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (May 13) - The al-Qaida-linked Web site that first posted a video of American civilian Nicholas Berg's beheading was shut down Thursday by the Malaysian company that hosted it - because it was drawing too much traffic.</p>

Zimbabwe shuts down 'racist' private schools By Peta Thornycroft in Harare (Filed: 05/05/2004) Zimbabwe's government closed the country's 46 private schools yesterday and sent children away at the start of the new term, arguing that the fees were too high. Aeneas Chigwedere, the education minister, accused the schools of being "racist" institutions which raised their fees to keep out blacks. School's out: pupils from St George's College await a lift home However, the overwhelming majority of children at 45 private schools are black. All but one or two private schools are run as not-for-profit trusts. "We are dealing with racist...

Norway Shuts Cairo Embassy Over Threats Thursday January 8, 2004 11:46 PM OSLO, Norway (AP) - Norway temporarily closed its embassy in Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday because of an undisclosed terror threat, officials said. Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said it was not clear how long the diplomatic station would remain closed. The decision ``is based on a total evaluation of the threat picture,'' Klepsvik said. ``We do a running evaluation of the threat level.'' He would not give any details about the possible threat. Norway, the home of the Nobel Peace Prize and famous for its global peace efforts,...

Spain shuts border in response to virus ship Staff and agencies Monday November 3, 2003 Spain today closed its border with Gibraltar after a British cruise ship hit by a contagious stomach bug docked in the territory. The Aurora left Greek waters on Friday without landing after more than 430 of the passengers fell ill with norovirus, which causes sickness and diarrhoea. Peter Caruana, Gibraltar's chief minister, said his government let the vessel land because it was not "going to allow 2,000 British tourists to float around the Mediterranean like refugees" and condemned the Spanish response. "This is a gross...

Help Bush Country expose this injustice.  Do your part in sending this to Foxnews, CNN and any other news outlets you can think of.  We MUST stop Hollywood liberals from taking rights away from regular Americans. What are we talking about? Read below: The William Morris Agency has been successful in silencing the American Public with their efforts in closing down the website http://www.boycott-hollywood.us. If you cannot access the site, here is the cached page: http://www.hollywoodhalfwits.com/boycott_hollywood.htm WMA has put pressure to Dotster through their Attorneys (Rintala, Smoot, Jaenicke, & Rees LLP in Los Angeles, CA) to close down the...

China shuts schools and sends 17 million pupils home in effort to contain outbreak By Raymond Whitaker 24 April 2003 CHINA: Beijing closed schools for two weeks and sent 1.7 million pupils home yesterday as the country struggled to contain a Sars outbreak thought to have originated in its south. Facing accusations that the worldwide spread of the disease was due to Chinese secrecy and slowness to react, the authorities also announced plans to invoke emergency measures to quarantine people exposed to the virus and to restrict access to buildings where there were infections or suspected infections. The official news...

Kuwait shuts border area as US troops prepare for war By Jack Fairweather in Kuwait (Filed: 27/10/2002) A large area of northern Kuwait is to become a "military zone" in response to security fears expressed by United States forces, Kuwait's defence ministry announced yesterday. "For safety reasons we have decided to clear the area of all non-military personnel. Evacuation measures are being put in place today," Brig-Gen Ahmed Rahmani said. While the security of US forces in the region is cited as a prime reason for the creation of the zone, it will provide troops with a closed arena, away...