Free Republic

Israel is known to go its own way when it comes to its air combat capabilities. In the past, this has included making dramatic modifications to imported air warfare assets, and also developing its own unique weapons and sub-systems. The country's guided munitions and missile development and manufacturing abilities are especially strong, and US assistance in the form of cross-corporate cooperation and foreign aid have allowed the Israeli defense industry to field extremely high-tech systems that are tailored to the country's specific needs. One of these systems is the Stunner missile. RAFAEL Stunner interceptor and booster The missile is very...

Taya Kyle, the widow of American Sniper and Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, stunned at the Oscars last night in Hollywood. She arrived on the red carpet in a beautiful green dress, carrying her husband's dog tags. Although American Sniper didn't win best picture last night from the Academy, it certainly has won over Americans. The movie has grossed a whopping $400 million since its opening in January, breaking all kinds of records. The film received six Oscar nominations overall and according to Forbes, is one of the top grossing best picture nominees of all time. Alan Robert Murray and Bub...

Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, February 4, 2011, 11:49 AM Stunner. President Obama gets his Middle East news from the anti-Semitic anti-American Aljazeera channel. The Business Insider reported, via FOX Nation: The Daily Beast just posted an “exclusive” look inside the White House’s “scramble” to find the right response to the unfolding crisis in Egypt this week. The short version is that the crisis caught U.S. intelligence off guard and they were slow to react. But here’s the line that jumped out at me. Now, huddled in the big office of their boss—one of the administration policy-makers trying to...

A recently discovered comet is surprising skywatchers by becoming brighter than predictions had first suggested and can now be seen with the unaided eye during the next few weeks. Comet McNaught, officially catalogued as C/2009 R1, was discovered by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught last September using the using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt telescope and a CCD camera. It's the 51st comet that bears McNaught's name. Although initially an extremely faint object, enough observations of the newfound comet were made to allow Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to calculate an orbit. Comet McNaught is expected to...

Its inventors are comparing it to the Star Trek phaser: a way of exploiting an on-off 'switch' in nematodes that paralyzes them when they're exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. But when exposed to ordinary light, they become unparalyzed and wake up. It's the first time that photoswitching has been demonstrated in a living animal. The report describes the development and successful testing of a photoswitch composed of the light-sensitive material, dithienylethene. The scientists grew the transparent, pinhead-sized worms - C. elegans - and fed them dithienylethene. When...

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AFP) - A more than 20-kilo (41-lb) mushroom has been picked in a forest in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, university The white mushroom, macrocybe titans, measured a towering 70 cm (27 in) tall, was found near Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, according to the Southern Border University Center.