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To help spread the word about resiliency, The National Guard held a video contest tasking the states to produce videos to inform Soldiers about the issues that can affect resiliency. After a recent promotion to receive submissions, the Army National Guard has now selected three finalist videos. Please vote for the Georgia video and help send this amazing Soldier to AUSA 2010 to share his AMAZING story of personal courage and resiliency!

In late August the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) intend to stage their first-ever island defense exercises in December. The maneuvers will be held in concert with U.S. Navy forces to refine plans for recapturing the lightly protected Ryukyu Islands from a hostile—presumably Chinese—invading force (Yomiuri Shimbun, August 20). To date, the response from China has been rather muted considering the stakes it faces (Asia Times, August 31). As the first installment in this series on Japanese maritime strategy demonstrated, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been making efforts to break out of...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican police carried out the controlled detonation of a car bomb Saturday in the troubled border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from Texas. A phone tip around midnight led authorities to a dead body in a car in a shopping center parking lot, the federal Public Safety Department said in a statement. In a second car, police found the bomb. Agents deactivated the device and removed most of the explosive material to analyze it before safely detonating the vehicle, the department said. There were no injuries. Juarez is the same city where drug traffickers staged the first...

Meet Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, the GOP’s dynamic and dangerous duo. One is the author of “A Roadmap for America’s Future,” a bold blueprint that shows policymakers how they can shrink entitlement spending while also growing the economy. The other is the Garden State’s chief executive and YouTube sensation who’s implementing his own roadmap in a blue state drowning in red ink. Both are fighting back hard against the idea that government spending can’t be cut and thus taxes must be raised in order restore America’s long-term fiscal solvency. Now this is the worst sort of heresy to the...

My sister-in-law just joined Skype and is trying to drum up contacts. I am leery of anything "free" on the internet and see that Skype has some parts that are pay-to-use. I also assume, like facebook, they may have porous security or may exploit their member's personal information.Any opinions would be appreciated.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Prosecutors in Minnesota and Wisconsin are investigating dozens of cases in which voters may have illegally cast ballots in both states in the 2008 presidential election. At least two people have been charged so far. According to documents reviewed by The Associated Press, the potential cases of double voting were uncovered by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board under a rare agreement with the Minnesota Secretary of State's office to compare the states' election data. The states found 35 cases in which voters listed an identical name and date of birth and were recorded as voting on...

We live in the age in which print and video forms of journalism are merging into something new and, at this point, uncertain. Now, if you are paying close attention you know that the problem isn’t that journalists are flopping when it comes to moving into the “multi-platform future.” There has been lots of progress there. The problem is that the Internet age has wrecked the advertising business model that has been sustaining the news industry for several generations. Anyway, part of my job at the Washington Journalism Center is to convince students who think that they want to “go...

"The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a waste land of unemployment," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's chief. He said a double-dip recession remains unlikely but stressed that the world has not yet escaped a deeper social crisis. He called it a grave error to think the West was safe again after teetering so close to the abyss last year. "We are not safe," he said. A joint IMF-ILO report said 30m jobs had been lost since the crisis, three quarters in richer economies. Global unemployment has reached 210m. "The Great Recession has left...

<p>SPRINGFIELD — Effingham County sheriff deputies have reported the early Sunday morning arrest of three men to the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force.</p> <p>The men, two from Russia and one from Kazakhstan, were found near Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh on Old Augusta Road about 1 a.m. Sunday after a ranger with the Department of Natural Resources reported a suspicious vehicle, Effingham County sheriff’s spokesman David Ehsanipoor said.</p>

Derek Barnett, the president of the Police Superintendents' Association, will say that the harshest austerity drive since the Second World War is likely to lead to a period of rising "disaffection, social and industrial tensions". In a speech to his association's conference, he will suggest that history shows that widespread disorder is "inevitable" at some point. Chief Supt Barnett will also warn that crime will rise if front-line policing is cut too severely. Fears of widespread civil disobedience are being voiced as unions threaten co-ordinated strikes and a "campaign of resistance not seen for decades" against spending cuts. Delegates at...

6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2

Howls of protest are coming from Los Angeles teachers whose evaluations on their effectiveness in raising student test scores have been published in the Los Angeles Times.But that is to be expected, for teachers are among the very few professions who feel that they can write their own job descriptions and evaluations. The statement of one teacher, that she was proud to have ranked “’less effective,’” because that showed that she chose to “’teach to the emotional and academic needs’” of her students was quite telling. Since when did teachers’ bosses (the citizens) ask them to teach to students’ “emotional...

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama has a children's book of inspirational profiles of American pioneers coming out two weeks after Election Day. "Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters" is a tribute to 13 groundbreaking Americans, from the first president, George Washington, to baseball great Jackie Robinson to artist Georgia O'Keeffe. It will be released Nov. 16 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books. The publisher will officially announce the new work Tuesday. Obama's 40-page book will have a first printing of 500,000 copies and a list price of...

Social Security Institute President Larry Hunter, a longtime Republican adviser, will launch the for-profit Alliance for Retirement Prosperity on Wednesday, representing a $5 million conservative challenge to the AARP. Where the nonpartisan, nonprofit AARP has sided with the Obama administration on many issues — most recently and most prominently, ardently supporting the health care reform law — the alliance will actively lobby for the law's repeal. Among its top-ticket agenda items: "Repeal ObamaCare, prevent the rationing of health care and reform Medicare and Medicaid." Other conservative groups, such as the 60 Plus Association and the American Seniors Association, have also...

Venezuela goes to the polls on Sept. 26 in a parliamentary election that opponents of President Hugo Chavez see as “a chance to turn the tide,” as Reuters news service puts it. Chavez may be taking on more authoritarian powers, but he also has to defend what the latest data show is the worst economy in the world. And you thought the Democrats had problems! The Economist magazine provides statistics weekly on 57 nations, from the United States to Estonia. Its most recent report forecasts that gross domestic product in Venezuela will decline by 5.5 percent in 2010. Next worst...

Democrat Jim Marshall has been sitting comfortably in his middle Georgia congressional seat since 2003. As he seeks re-election for a 5th term this fall, it appears he’s facing his toughest challenge yet. The incumbent is being called into the ring by Republican state representative Austin Scott, who is ready to make changes in Washington that will grow Georgia’s economy and create jobs.The 8th Congressional District of the Peach State is spread out over 7,200 square miles, including all of Macon and Bibb counties. Stretching from Newtown, a county in metro Atlanta, to Colquitt, a county just outside the Florida...

A planned Quran burning Saturday in Amarillo was thwarted by a 23-year-old carrying a skateboard and wearing a T-shirt with "I'm in Repent Amarillo No Joke" scrawled by hand on the back. Jacob Isom, 23, grabbed David Grisham's Quran when he became distracted while arguing with several residents at Sam Houston Park about the merits of burning the Islamic holy book. "You're just trying to start Holy Wars," Isom said of Grisham after he gave the book to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo.

A heavily-armed shootout between two groups of armed men has left at least 12 men dead in a small town outside of Padilla, Tamaulipas. The El Norte newspaper reported that the shootout ended around 2:30 a.m. Monday in the Ejido Las Brasiles. El Norte reported that the armed men used grenades, assault rifles and other high-powered weapons. The newspaper reported that the Mexican Army sealed off the area while authorities investigated the crime scene. Padilla is located just northeast of the Tamaulipas capital of Ciudad Victoria. It's not the first time Padilla has seen violence. At least five people were...

State Republicans moved the three-way U.S. Senate race to a new level Saturday, with party leaders pointing to an audit of their books they say implies Gov. Charlie Crist — now an independent candidate for U.S. Senate — ran up potentially "hundreds of thousands" of dollars in inappropriate charges. Party Chairman and state Sen. John Thrasher said the expenses came to light during the just-completed forensic audit by Alston & Bird LLP — which was the examiner in energy giant Enron's 2002 bankruptcy. He said the party may sue their former standard bearer to get the money back. The announcement...

Editor's note: Buckley Carlson is co-author of this column. We have heard more angry attacks on Americans from the so-called peaceful Muslim world for the mere mention that a Koran might be burned than we have ever heard from them in condemning their fellow Muslims for perpetrating terrorist attacks on behalf of their religion. Just this week, in a 1,000 word op-ed in The New York Times, Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam leading the effort to build the Ground Zero Mosque, dismissed the concerns of 70% of America, labeling us “radicals,” thus giving us the same identifier that Obama gives...