Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sexual reproduction may be nearly as old as animal life itself, according to researchers who discovered a new species of organism that lived 540 million years ago. The tube-like creatures called Funisia dorothea anchored themselves in abundant flocks onto the shallow, sandy seabed of what is now the Australian outback. Nothing appears to have evolved yet to eat them, so they lived peaceful lives, reproducing sexually at times and by asexual methods such as budding at other times, Mary Droser of the University of California Riverside and colleagues reported in the journal Science. They behaved very much...

(Adds Rogozin, government official quotes, details, background) MOSCOW, March 20 (Reuters) - Russia has requested an emergency meeting of the Russia-NATO council to discuss U.S. authorisation for arms supplies to Kosovo, Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russia's envoy to NATO as saying on Thursday. U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday authorised arms supplies to Kosovo, saying it would "strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace", according to a document on the White House Web site. "I have addressed NATO's secretary-general with a proposal to hold an emergency informal meeting of the Russia-NATO council to discuss U.S....

With a few genetic alterations, hens could soon be 'pharmed' to produce cancer-fighting drugs. Roger Highfield reports With Easter just days away, thoughts naturally turn to eggs of the chocolate kind. So here's a question: what's the most valuable egg in Britain? Forget about the elaborate creations of master chocolatiers. The genetically modified brown eggs produced by a flock of designer hens at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh are the biotechnological equivalent of a Fabergé. Several generations of Isa Brown hens - a prolific egg-laying French cross between Rhode Island Red and Rhode Island White - have been bred from...

State regulators will soon decide whether Wisconsin's largest utility should fix up or shut down its 50-year-old coal-fired power plant in Oak Creek, WI, a decision that could cost ratepayers $750 million or more. We Energies says a $750 million retrofit, including pollution controls that would keep the plant running until 2030, is far more affordable than closing the plant and spending billions on a new, less-polluting plant to replace it. A retrofit also would buy time as regulators decide how hard to clamp down on power plants in response to concern about their contribution to global warming.The decision will...

Did he do it? That was the question my friend, herself an old friend of Barack and Michelle Obama, asked me in the wake of the Illinois Senator’s powerful and eloquent speech on race this this week. Did he put the issue of race to rest? The short answer is no. I know many Obama supporters who were deeply troubled by what they’ve been reading and seeing of the rants of his former pastor. It’s ugly stuff. Obama did what he had to do to reassure those folks, the people who started as his supporters and wanted to be reassured...

ALBUQUERQUE -- Four Mexican nationals have been ordered held without bond after they were arrested in connection with a bribery case involving the illegal purchase of resident alien cards. Special agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives made the arrests Saturday as part of a six-month joint investigation. Luis Daniel Miramontes-Morales, 44, is accused of paying $12,000 in cash to a federal agent he believed was a corrupt government employee in exchange for four green cards. His wife, sister and brother-in-law are charged with illegally entering the United States....

The first time I heard of Willy Wimmer was during the NATO "freedom through bombs" campaign in Serbia in 1999. "Never before so few lied so thoroughly to so many, as in connection with the Kosovo war", he famously observed. "People died for this". Wimmer, then a member of the Christian Democratic Union party in the German Bundestag, was referring to the organized media's attempt to convince the population of Germany that there was indeed a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo, one that would necessitate a humanitarian intervention. The attempt was, as we know, all too successful. NATO spokesman, Jamie Shea,...

While President Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq tooth and nail, media in the Arab world lambasted the U.S. war for unleashing disasters, divisions and terror.

A study on self-sufficiency says 20 percent of Coloradans don't make enough to take care of basic needs. One in five Colorado residents earns less than the amount needed to cover basic needs, according to new data. The Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute on Wednesday released its second annual Self-Sufficiency Standard, which calculates a bare-bones budget for basics like food, housing, child care, transportation and other necessities. The standard, which is calculated for a variety of family types, including single-parent families and households with infants or older children, is calculated for all Colorado counties. Ginger Wiggins is among those living below...

MUCH. We are currently the world’s only superpower, and though Russia and China are now doubling their military efforts and budget we still lead by a country mile. (Statistics widely available for anyone who can spell Google can confirm.) I know we have lost many great American men and women. I know that those families who have buried their loved one(s) have done so with both pain and pride (Cindy Shehand and her ilk being the exception). I know that thousands have been hurt and now live the rest of their lives with pain. I know war. However I am...

The capital's famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till around April 5. In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May. And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Dr. Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago,...

LONDON (Reuters) - Gas-belching volcanoes may be to blame for a series of mass extinctions over the last 545 million years, including that of the dinosaurs, new evidence suggested on Thursday. A series of eruptions that formed the Deccan Traps in what is now India pumped huge amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere 65 million years ago, with likely devastating repercussions for the Earth's climate, scientists said. Gigantic eruptions, forming so-called "flood basalts," are one of two leading explanations for a series of mass extinctions that have killed off species periodically throughout history. The other theory involves asteroid impacts --...

It seems the more Barack Obama tries to explain the peculiar statement he made Tuesday concerning his white grandmother's "fear of black men who passed by her on the street," the more he's assuring attention regarding the matter. "The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity...But she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know . . .inbred...reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."

Are you tired of the skewed accounts of what is going on in Iraq. Here is a copy of the letter I sent to the 'Iraq Body Count' web site which asks them a few questions that they will never be able to answer. Enjoy. ---------------------------------------------------- Letter to the people at 'Iraq Body Count' http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ Dear People, I stumbled upon your website regarding the Iraq Body Count and was rather amazed at the claims made: aprox 82,000 - 89, 000 civilian deaths. The reason I have doubts about such a fantastic number is because all of our military actions in...

U.S.-Based Plotters On January 8, 2007, Shahawar Matin Siraj, a Queens, New York resident, received a thirty-year jail term after being convicted of conspiring to plant explosive devices at a New York City subway station. On March 2, 2007, James Elshafay, a Staten Island, New York resident, received a five-year prison sentence for his involvement in the plot; he had pled guilty in October 2004. The Target: The Herald Square Subway Station Siraj and Elshafay planned to target Manhattan’s Herald Square (34th Street) subway station, which United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Roslynn R. Mauskopf labeled...

Battle Of The Sexes Includes Food Choice Men Eat More Meat, Frozen Foods; Women Choose VeggiesPOSTED: 8:43 am EDT March 20, 2008 ATLANTA -- If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then Mars is a land where the refrigerators are stocked with meat and frozen pizza, and Venus has a bounty of yogurt, fruits and vegetables, a new study suggests. The study of eating habits of adults, called the most extensive of its kind, was a telephone survey of 14,000 Americans. It confirmed conventional wisdom that most men eat more meat than women, and women eat more...

A wild chase involving illegal immigrants ends in a massive fire and over a dozen suspected aliens scattering from the scene. The blaze sparked up right off Saratoga near Greenwood. The chase actually began near Farm Road 43 and State Highway 286 around seven o'clock Wednesday night. The pick up ran a stop sign which triggered the chase. Fifteen People in all were crammed into the pick up truck. The chase eventually ended in a field near Greenwood when the truck ignited a massive brush fire. Three people were apprehended including the driver and a fourteen year old boy. The...

Georgia Republicans have a choice to make, a choice between math and myth. The math is pretty simple: We're heading into a major recession that a lot of economists predict could be deeper and longer than anything we've experienced in a generation or longer. Already, state revenues have begun to fall significantly, raising fear of budget shortfalls. Recession math smacks head-on into Reagan myth Jekyll Island deserves a planned, professional upgrade Local control trashed in great power grab of '08 Peeling off from the herd shows Obama's patriotism Speaker's tax proposal badly flawed Hillary's defeated; GOP sets its sights on...

From three o'clock in the afternoon onward, the mob moved along Yutuo Road, Beijing East Road, and Duosenge Road, smashing businesses and setting fires. They stormed into shops, hospitals and news agencies. Nearby public facilities, transportation and electric power lines were damaged. Seven banks operating within the area failed to escape the mob. Rioters smashed ten ATM machines to pieces leaving those branches in a complete mess. Rioters set fires in the areas around the Jokhong Temple, Ramoche Temple and the Chomsigkang Market. In the city centre, fires started in the Si Fang supermarket, Lan Dun Plaza and Wen Zhou...

For Pope And President, A Chasm Over Iraq By TOM FEENEY [Newark, NJ] -- On social issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, the conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the conservative President Bush find much common ground. But next month, when Benedict makes his first visit to the U.S., his meeting with Bush is likely to underscore an issue where there remains a deep divide between the Vatican and the White House — the war in Iraq.From the start of the five-year-old war, the pontiff and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, have spoken out against it. "Nothing...