Free Republic

<p>LONDON — The turbulent love life of Henry VIII, which led to the English Reformation and dissolution of the monasteries, may also have postponed the industrial revolution by 200 years.</p> <p>Archaeologists have found evidence that the Cistercian monks of Rievaulx Abbey, in North Yorkshire, were developing a prototype blast furnace for the large-scale production of cast iron when they were evicted by the king in 1538.</p>

<p>YONGYANG, North Korea - While the eyes of the world are transfixed by the competition for soccer's top prize in South Korea and Japan, the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong Il has scraped together its meager resources to put on its own spectacle: 100,000 people moving in robotic synchronicity in giant May Day Stadium.</p>

Saturday, 22 June, 2002, 05:25 GMT 06:25 UK UN delays troop immunity decisionEuropean peacekeepers also enjoy protection, says US By Mike Fox At the United Nations in New York The United Nations has put off making a decision on the demands from the United States that international peacekeepers should be put beyond the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The UN security council avoided the debate which had been expected on Saturday by renewing the mandate of the police force in Bosnia for another nine days, until midnight on 30 June - the court comes into existence on 1...

Saturday, 22 June, 2002, 04:04 GMT 05:04 UK New police uniform unveiledThe uniforms are designed to be more comfortable A new uniform for police officers in England and Wales has been unveiled. The Suffolk force will be the first to don the new black trousers, military style blue jumper and high visibility lightweight yellow jacket in August. It will replace the traditional black, silver-buttoned tunic currently worn by officers. Ranks above superintendent, however, will not have to sport the new look, but will remain in tunics. The traditional tunic will be a thing of the past for most officers The...

Will the judges be capable of standing up to the state? They will need to resist the pressure and prejudice whipped up by the Herald and its mentor, the minister of information, 'Professor' Jonathan Moyo, who has become the Goebbels of the Mugabe government. It is being said that two Supreme Court judges have accepted confiscated farms, on leases which can be terminated at the government's pleasure; if true, their bias would be flagrant. But establishing it in other cases will require careful analysis of court proceedings and the reasoning of judicial decisions, by an objective body like the...

Friday, 21 June, 2002, 13:52 GMT 14:52 UK Stigma keeps S Africans from Aids drugs More than 4m South Africans are thought to have HIV A South African company's offer of free Aids treatment has resulted in just one of its estimated 3,800 HIV-positive employees coming forward, new research has discovered. People feel that if they come out, they will be socially ostracised, overlooked for promotion, and their jobs may be at threat Researcher David Dickinson The chemical and mining company Sasol had offered to pay for anti-retroviral drug treatments, which boost sufferers' immune systems but which are too expensive...

<p>According to figures released by the department yesterday, 45 officers have tested positive for drugs, 2 percent of the 2,178-member force. All officers are tested annually, but at random times.</p> <p>Of those 45 officers, 16, or more than one-third, were white, while nearly two-thirds of those testing positive were minorities. Of the 29 blacks and Hispanics who tested positive, the vast majority, 26, were black. No Asians have tested positive for drug use.</p>

Harare - About 2 900 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe must stop operating on Monday under a new law to pave the way for the government's land redistribution exercise, a farmers' union spokesperson said on Friday. The farmers represent about 60 percent of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) members who held about 4 813 title deeds before the land reforms began in 2000. They would have to stop running their farms by Monday under a new law, spokesperson Jenni Williams said. On May 10 the government passed new legislation under which a farmer whose property has been earmarked for acquisition stops...

Christian Coalition Action Alert June 19, 2002 STOP MSNBC FROM TAKING ALAN KEYES OFF THE AIR NETWORK CAVES TO PRESSURE FROM ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS Respected conservative commentator Alan Keyes, a friend of the Christian Coalition, is in danger of losing his show ("Alan Keyes Is Making Sense") on MSNBC. Caving in to pressure from Moslem militants, the network is poised to move Keyes' show from its prime-time slot to a "dead hour" in the mid-afternoon. To stop this, you must take action immediately. Alan Keyes is one of the most articulate, engaging voices in the conservative, pro-family movement. The former...

Old Indian grounds discovered near site of proposed park COOLEEMEE, N.C. (AP) -- Looters searching for stone tools and spearheads near a proposed scenic park site have turned up one of the oldest American Indian archaeological sites in North Carolina. Though locals had been finding arrowheads near the site for years, no one knew that there had been an ancient settlement there, said Ken Sales, the chairman of the River Park Task Force, which is planning the park near Cooleemee Falls. Over the past two months, archaeologists at Wake Forest University surveyed 30 acres of parkland, screening soil at about...

Jordan's King Abdullah said in an interview published on Friday that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat had substantially lost control of armed groups and warned that even worse violence lay ahead in the Middle East. "What I can say is that over the years I always thought Arafat was capable of controlling Palestinian public sentiment and extremism," the king was quoted as saying in an interview with the Belgian weekly Le Vif/L'Express. "I think that is no longer the case today." The Jordanian leader renewed his call on the United States to engage more vigorously in efforts to halt...

At midnight tomorrow, in the latest grim act in Zimbabwe's bleak drama of land seizures, the lights effectively go out for more than 2,000 white farmers as the final notices of acquisition which gave them 45 days to wind up their operations come into effect. Some 60 per cent of Zimbabwe's remaining white farmers have to close down or be arrested and face up to two years in jail. Even before this, half of Zimbabwe's white farmers have had their operations disrupted or closed down by President Robert Mugabe's shock troops, since the so-called veterans of the war of independence...

<p>Hardware store workers who sold Abu Jeilani a machete the day before he was shot to death by Minneapolis police told investigators that he spoke and understood English, according to the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office investigation.</p> <p>But some Somali community leaders denied Friday that Jeilani, who was killed after refusing to drop the machete and a crowbar, spoke English well enough to understand police commands.</p>

The loyalty of immigrants has been remarkable in Western societies. Canada and the United States have both benefited from it. Lately, however, we've been witnessing a new phenomenon: The immigrant of dubious loyalty. We've also begun to see disloyal native-borns, whether of immigrant ancestry or Islamic conversion. It hasn't happened overnight. To see it in context, it's useful to look at the point of departure....

Saturday, June 22, 2002 - A group of telemarketers is suing to stop the state's "no-call" list from taking effect next month, alleging it violates their free-speech rights and provides unfair exemptions to politicians and nonprofit organizations. The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court, claims the list is too vague and broad, and will cause the state to lose "billions of dollars and thousands of jobs" by restricting interstate commerce."Unfortunately, this law does more harm than good. It poses a serious threat to Colorado's already weakened economy," said Jeff Burke, director of Colorado Citizens for Free Speech, among several...

June 22, 2002 Ashcroft Petitions Justices for Secrecy in DeportationsBy SUSAN SACHS ttorney General John Ashcroft asked the Supreme Court yesterday to permit secret deportation hearings for people arrested after Sept. 11, arguing that national security would be compromised by disclosure of any information about the detainees. The request presented the court with its first opportunity to review some of the Justice Department's antiterrorism policies, which have drawn criticism from civil rights groups. In the petition, Mr. Ashcroft and the department's chief immigration judge, Michael Creppy, asked the court to issue a stay of a lower court's ruling in New...

June 22, 2002 Smallpox Proposal Raises Ethical IssuesBy LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN TLANTA, June 21 — The decision by a government advisory panel to recommend smallpox vaccination for about 15,000 health care and law enforcement workers raises logistical and ethical issues involving not just the people who will get the vaccine but also those who will come in contact with them. If experience from the time when smallpox vaccine was routinely administered to the public is a guide, doctors say, some of the 15,000 "first responders" who receive the vaccine may suffer serious — potentially even deadly — complications. Steps may...

June 22, 2002 F.B.I. Warns of Possible Threat to SynagoguesBy PHILIP SHENON ASHINGTON, June 21 — The F.B.I. has warned its field offices and other law enforcement agencies that terrorists could use fuel tanker trucks for an attack on synagogues or Jewish schools, law enforcement officials said today, emphasizing that they had no solid evidence that such a plot was at hand. The alert, the latest in a series since Sept. 11 about possible terrorist threats, was issued as a result of interrogations of Al Qaeda fighters being held at the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the officials...

June 22, 2002 Senate Votes to Let Soldiers Overseas Pay for AbortionBy CARL HULSE ASHINGTON, June 21 — American servicewomen overseas would be able to pay for abortions at military hospitals under a proposal approved today by the Senate. By a vote of 52 to 40, the Senate voted to repeal the current ban on such payments as part of a defense spending bill, putting it in opposition with the House, which last month rejected a similar effort to change the policy, which has been in place since 1996. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and sponsor of the abortion...

June 22, 2002 Ruling Barring Execution of Retarded May Not Lead to Further RestrictionsBy LINDA GREENHOUSE ASHINGTON, June 21 — Despite the clarity of the Supreme Court's decision to abolish the death penalty for mentally retarded offenders, the court's next move is uncertain and the impact of the ruling on the overall death penalty debate is far from clear. While it is possible that the decision in Atkins v. Virginia marked a new direction for a court that has been notably deferential to the states on death penalty questions, it is just as likely that the decision was a singular...