Free Republic

In late October I switched my VOIP phone service from Vonage to Verizon's Voice Wing. The reason was a few features not offered by Vonage and the price was the same as with Vonage. It took over a month and several phone calls to Vonage customer service before they would release my phone number to Verizon. They then put a block on my phone number, without telling me, so that my phone cannot be accessed by any Vonage customer. It took me several weeks and help from friends with Vonage service to figure out what Vonage had done. I called...

Directive from Bush allows president extraordinary powers in national crisis Halliburton's former engineering and construction subsidiary has a contingency contract with the Department of Homeland Security to construct detention facilities in the event of a national emergency, according to WND columnist Jerome Corsi.

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Police are seeking 10 men, including several tribal elders, accused of pressuring a Pakistani woman to hand over her teenage daughter as payment for a 16-year-old poker debt, officials said Tuesday. In the latest case highlighting how conservative customs threaten women's rights in Pakistan, Nooran Umrani alleges that, despite paying off her late husband's debt of $165, she was threatened with harm if she failed to hand over her daughter, Rasheeda.

An Afghan governor today showed the media photographs of arrested Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif, claiming he had been picked up in a house containing packets of anthrax powder. Gul Aghar Sherzai, governor of Nangarhar Province, where Hanif was arrested late on January 15, did not say how it had been proven the powder was the deadly anthrax bacteria or what quantity had been found. Intelligence officials and police did not confirm the discovery of anthrax.

Frozen in time: the disabled nine-year-old girl who will remain a child all her life · Parents fiercely criticised over 'offensive' surgery · Disability groups say case raises troubling issues Ashley's parents call her their Pillow Angel, a moniker that is a reference to the love and joy they feel for their nine-year-old daughter and the severe disabilities she has suffered from birth. She cannot sit up, walk or talk, is fed by tube, and, as her parents put it, "stays right where we place her - usually on a pillow". Ashley won't know this, as she is brain-damaged and...