Free Republic

WASHINGTON, June 19 — With both Republicans and Democrats in Congress urging him to increase spending to fight global AIDS, President Bush announced a $500 million plan today to prevent expectant mothers from passing the AIDS virus to their babies. More than 2,000 infants are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus every day during pregnancy, birth or breast feeding, despite the widespread availability of cheap antiretroviral medicines that greatly reduce transmission of the virus from mother to child. The White House said the new money, which includes $200 million already set aside by Congress, will provide treatment to a million...

ASHINGTON, June 19 — President Bush told more than 6,000 people at a multimillion-dollar Republican gala tonight that it was essential for the party to retain control of the House and to win back the Senate."We're here for the same reason," Mr. Bush said at the fund-raiser, which brought in more than $30 million for Republican House and Senate candidates in the fall elections. "We want Denny Hastert to remain the speaker of the House and Trent Lott to become the majority leader of the Senate."Some of the biggest contributors at the dinner at the Washington Convention Center were...

It happened three times in the last century -- and nearly happened again in 1997. Now experts say that another killer flu epidemic is brewing. Will it emerge to kill millions -- as did the 1918 Spanish flu? Or will it be nipped in the bud, as in the 1997 emergence of chicken flu in humans? There are no easy answers. But now the same experts who led the successful effort to stop the 1997 virus in Hong Kong raise troubling new questions. Those questions come from a report in the June 25 issue of the prestigious Proceedings of the...

URSK, Russia, June 14 — A decade after it began its spasmodic transition to capitalism, the Russian government is moving to dismantle one of the lasting legacies of the Stalinist era: the collectivization of the nation's farmlands. Urged by President Vladimir V. Putin, the lower house of Parliament, the Duma, passed a preliminary bill last month intended to create a legal system to buy and sell Russia's vast agricultural lands for the first time since the country's farms were nationalized in 1917. The Duma's increasingly pliant deputies are expected to adopt a slightly amended version by Friday, but land...

ASHINGTON, June 19 — President Bush has resolved to promote the formation of a Palestinian state within a few years, but only if Palestinian leaders meet specific benchmarks, including a lasting crackdown on terrorism and other broad reforms, according to senior officials and others familiar with the plan. But in daily White House meetings on the president's planned speech on the Middle East, some senior officials have expressed concern that the reforms demanded of the Palestinians are so detailed — they all but call for leaders to replace or work around Yasir Arafat — that the Palestinians will reject them....

JERUSALEM, June 19 — "There are no words," Abraham Orel, 23, a quiet-voiced Talmudic student, said tonight. He was hard to hear for all the shouting of anger and vengeance, all the trucks and ambulances grunting by efficiently. "You have a sick feeling in your stomach." Never at ease these days, Jerusalem barely had time to swallow the suicide bombing that killed 19 Israelis on Tuesday when a second attacker struck tonight. Another six people were killed, and Mr. Orel stood watching medical workers clean up the gore, not sure what to think. "I guess you could say I am...

Bill Cosby who's hit NBC television sitcom idealized family life throughout the 1980's has some harsh words about America's favorite openly disfunctional family, 'The Osbornes.''First of all you media need to stop with this Ozzy Osbourne.This is a sad, sad family; it is a sad case.The children are sad and the parents are sad,' Cosby tells entertainment show 'Access Hollywood on Thursday, June 20.'This is not entertainment.'While many think audiences respond to the MTV series based on the misadventures of Ozzy and crew because it shows that even the rich and famous suffer the same complicate family dynamics as the...

TLANTA, June 19 — On the eve of a planned vote on whether to change the government's recommendations on smallpox vaccine, a national advisory panel struggled today to determine what is the actual risk of a bioterrorist attack with smallpox."We now know we have enemies with the intent to inflict harm and we know that we are vulnerable," said Dr. John F. Modlin of Dartmouth Medical School, the panel's chairman. "What we don't know is what the capability of these individuals may be."The last case of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949, and no case of the...

ERUSALEM, Thursday, June 20 — For the second day in a row, a Palestinian suicide bomber struck this embattled city on Wednesday, this time killing six people at a bus stop, even as Israel began carrying out a policy of taking back land on the West Bank in retaliation for the attacks. Yasir Arafat condemned both bombings early this morning in a strongly worded statement distributed to Palestinian newspapers, radio and television stations in which he expressed a need to "speak to you frankly about the necessity to stop these attacks." It remained to be seen, however, whether anyone among...

Terrorism expert Laurie Mylorie criticized ex-president Clinton on Tuesday, after he told the Council on Foreign Relations this week that President Bush should make achieving peace between in the Mideast his first priority and leave Saddam Hussein for later. "How could anyone call what's going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians a peace process?" Mylorie told Judicial Watch Radio host Jane Chastain. "The whole diplomacy called the peace process was based on fundamental misunderstandings of the world and the Middle East held by Bill Clinton and the labor party in Israel," explained the terrorism expert. In fact, warned...

Petition: Stop EU Money being used for Terrorist Acts against Israel http://www.petitiononline.com/EUMoney/petition.html - so, please, act: 1)sign 2)tell to others - to anyone, but especially to your friends being EU citizens (not that us Americans have many. of those, or at least admit it) We make the Union change its policy. Let's stand together for Israel. Am Israel Chai!

When I wander into the entrance of Jerusalem, I turn into a suicide warrior, I turn into a suicide warrior, in battle dress, in battle dress, in battle dress. Thank you. – an 8-year-old girl shown on Palestinian TV on a show considered to be equal to our "Sesame Street" Is it any wonder that today in Jerusalem Israel was hit by yet another homicide bomber? That makes 70 such attacks in the last 21 months by those who target Jewish women and children. This one was no different. Currently there are 19 dead (I never include the bomber along...

An anti-Israeli Internet petition critical of MSNBC's "Alan Keyes is Making Sense" has Keyes fans wondering if the cable network succumbed to pressure from radical Muslims when it announced it was yanking the pro-Israeli commentator from its prime-time schedule. MSNBC said earlier this month that it was dropping the conservative firebrand from his 10 p.m. time slot after just a five month run. Shortly before the announcement, a pro-Muslim petition calling on the network to remove Keyes began circulating online. "It is our intent the undersigned to express our disapproval of the content and manner in which Mr. Keyes...

NEW YORK--An iron law of avant-garde art is that theorizing expands to fill a void of talent. That law explains the execrable exhibit ``Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art,'' now in its final days at the Jewish Museum at the corner of 92nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The works by 13 ``internationally recognized'' artists make, the museum brochure says, ``new and daring use of imagery taken from the Nazi era.'' In the cant of artists' self-puffery, the word ``daring'' usually means artists are daring to strike political poses that are imbecilic and, among the avant-garde, fashionable. Here the artists daringly draw...

Jun. 19, 01:17 EDT Serbs promise crucial evidence against Milosevic Document purportedly put security services under Yugoslav leader's control BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) — Yugoslavia's western-backed government will unseal a secret document from Slobodan Milosevic's era that reportedly placed his country's security troops directly under the former president's command, the justice minister said today. Once unsealed, the document will be handed over to the UN tribunal prosecutors at The Hague, Netherlands, Savo Markovic said. For the UN court, now trying Milosevic on charges of war crimes and genocide in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, the document could be key...

WASHINGTON--Whenever a massacre occurs in Israel, Palestinian spokesmen rush out to say: ``Yes, this is terrible, but this is what happens when you have a people with no hope for an end to the occupation.'' Apologists in the West invariably echo this exculpation/explanation. Of all the mendacity that pollutes Middle Eastern discourse, this one is the worst. It assumes that the listener is not only stupid but amnestic. Two years ago at the Camp David summit, in the presence of the president of the United States, the Palestinians were offered an end to the occupation--a total end, a final end--by...

LOS ANGELES, June 19 (UPI) -- China's long-standing interest in using its plentiful coal to offset limited petroleum supplies took a step forward this week with the signing of an agreement with an American company for the development of the world's first plant that will convert coal directly into gasoline and diesel fuel. Hydrocarbon Technologies, a Utah subsidiary of Headwaters Incorporated, announced that the $2 billion project with Shenhua Group, China's largest coal company, would eventually produce 50,000 barrels of clean-burning gasoline and diesel fuel per day. "We are excited about the many opportunities created by this landmark agreement with...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If The New York Times obituary page the other day is any indication, it is now a good time for readers with an appetite for history to start pursuing the obit pages regularly. The last great figures of a momentous era in American history are passing on. The last heroes of World War II are well into their 70s and 80s. The commanding figures, the officers and strategists of the war, died years ago. Now, the men who, when young, won the decorations for valor are dying, too. On June 11, not one but two World War...

A favorite liberal trick is to always call any proposed reduction in the rate of growth of spending a "cut." This implies that some people will end up with less than they are getting now, when in fact they will get more -- just not as much more as they would get without the so-called "cut." Another liberal trick is to exaggerate the size of future budget deficits or diminish the size of surpluses by assuming passage of new tax reductions. For example, groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities regularly include a fix for the Alternative Minimum...

Some of the greatest, growth-minded economists in history had names beginning with the letter S: Smith, Schumpeter and Say. Adam Smith taught us the virtues of free markets and free trade. Joseph Schumpeter placed entrepreneurship and technological innovation at the center of economic growth. And Jean-Baptiste Say understood in 1803 that we produce in order to consume. Say was also the first to wear that great S-term -- supply-sider. He argued correctly that production and consumption are forever tied together, but it is the supply of risk capital and the supply of production that truly lie at the heart of...