Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- The Army has slammed shut a door previously open to women soldiers, barring female GIs from an elite reconnaissance role. Until now, women had been welcomed into squadrons slated to become key "eyes and ears" of the Army's future fighting force. Thirteen had joined the Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition Squadrons, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. But now the Army is reassigning those women GIs to other units and shutting the "tip-of-the-spear" squadrons to women. The reason: The service says the units will be directly involved in ground combat -- from which women soldiers are banned by a...

LONDON and NEW YORK, July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Former US President William J. Clinton, will participate in an MTV special, Staying Alive: A Global Forum on HIV/AIDS, taking place at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain on July 11, 2002. MTV, owned by Viacom International Inc. (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), will tape the forum for broadcast on channels around the world starting July 12, marking the launch of a youth focused global campaign on HIV/AIDS in conjunction with the Kaiser Family Foundation and the YouthNet Program spearheaded by Family Health International. The Staying Alive campaign will take an innovative...

UNCASVILLE, Conn. - The Mohegan Sun casino officially threw open the doors of its glitzy $1 billion hotel expansion this weekend with a star-studded $2 million bash that was more fun than creaming the house with a royal flush. Ex-President Clinton wailed on the sax with the Blues Brothers, talk-show titan Rosie O'Donnell dueted with Cyndi Lauper and Cher was Living Proof that Vegas-style entertainment has a new home in New England. ``When you have Cher, Cyndi Lauper and Steven Tyler in the house, why would you even think of going to bed?'' ex-``Party of Five'' gal Jennifer Love Hewitt...

Filed at 2:07 p.m. ET HANOVER, N.H. (AP) -- Television's Mr. Rogers greeted many of this year's Dartmouth College seniors daily when they were children, but some are not pleased he will be greeting them on graduation day. Fred Rogers, of ``Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood'' fame, is this weekend's commencement speaker. ``It's like Barney the dinosaur speaking at our graduation,'' said history major Michael Weiss. ``We're 22 years old and we're getting lectured by a guy who plays with puppets for a living.'' Some student skeptics said they wondered whether Rogers would greet the graduates with a cheery ``Hello, neighbor,'' change...

TO THE EDITORS: Lawrence Kaplan's article, "Right Questions, Wrong President" (TNR Online, 5/20/02), offers an uninformed analysis of President Clinton's anti-terrorism record. For example, he accuses President Clinton of rejecting more forceful options in response to the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. That simply is not true. There was an aggressive and forceful response that was the result of a consensus by the president's key military and national security advisors. It included the firing of 75 Tomahawk missiles on an Al Qaeda training camp Afghanistan where a gathering of key Al Qaeda operatives was taking place. This attack killed...

Filed at 8:24 p.m. ET PYONGYANG (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has invited former U.S. President Bill Clinton to visit Pyongyang to play a mediating role and to cool rhetoric from Washington, a North Korean official said on Monday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to specify whether Kim had issued the invitation to Clinton before or after President Bush's speech in January in which he branded North Korea as part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iraq and Iran. ``The plan of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is that Mr. Clinton should end the...

Fired by CNN last August after serving three years as president, Rick Kaplan has indicated he'd like to return to broadcast news -- on one of the networks. "I think people know I want to come back," Kaplan told the Philadelphia Inquirer Thursday, indicating that he had no preferences among the three major networks. "It's not if I can find a beautiful woman to marry, it's whether any beautiful woman wants to marry me. I'm hopeful." [On Thursday, the New York Daily News reported that Today show host Katie Couric was rumored to be drumming up support for Kaplan to...

NEW YORK -- Like birders tracking a rare and exotic species, Bill Clinton watchers in Harlem rarely see their quarry--but they talk about him an awful lot. "I heard he was in there watching the Super Bowl," says Muhammad Spencer, an outdoor incense vendor. "I saw a lot of trips from the pizza place." Spencer, who has a prime observation post from his table across from the 14-story building that houses Clinton's office, is not bothered that he hasn't actually seen Clinton. "It seems like everybody appreciates him being in the neighborhood," he says. "There's a reason he came down,...