Free Republic

Can openers, scissors and spiral-bound notebooks discriminate against lefties. Despite such challenges, 10 to 12 percent of the human population has historically preferred the left hand. Why doesn't the number ever waiver? Nobody knows for sure, but new research supports a body of evidence that suggests genetics have a hand in it all. In the meantime, the myth remains that lefties are more artistic. And the idea that left-handed fighters have an advantage persists on scant evidence, supported by Scottish lore and Rocky Balboa's heroics in the ring. Look, Mom: Both hands! Like many traits, handedness is probably determined by...

DETROIT - In one of the largest buyout programs ever, more than 125,000 hourly workers of General Motors Corp. and auto supplier Delphi Corp. are being offered up to $140,000 to give up their jobs to help cut the companies' crippling labor costs. GM did not say how many workers it expected to accept the offer, but it is aiming to slash 30,000 hourly jobs by 2008. Some workers wasted no time in declaring the deal "fantastic" and started calculating what they would get, based on years of service, if they accepted the offer. GM and Delphi have said that...

BOSTON - The College Board disclosed Wednesday that 27,000 SAT college entrance exams missed being rechecked following the initial discovery of scoring problems, with the result that another 375 students were given incorrectly low marks. In a news release, the College Board said that last week it asked Pearson Educational Management, which scores the exam, to confirm all 495,000 October tests had been rescored; that request followed an earlier oversight in which 1,600 exams were overlooked. Last weekend, Pearson notified the College Board that 27,000 tests from the pool of October exams still had not been re-evaluated. They have since...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line president on Saturday accused the United States and Europe of being "hostages of Zionism" and said they should pay a heavy price for the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have triggered worldwide protests. Denmark — where the drawings were first published four months ago — warned Danes to leave Indonesia, saying they faced a "significant and imminent danger" from an extremist group and announced it had withdrawn embassy staff from Jakarta, Iran and Syria. Yemen announced that three chief editors of privately owned Yemeni papers will stand trial for printing the Danish...

QALAT, Afghanistan - Police killed four people Wednesday as Afghans enraged over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad marched on a U.S. military base in a volatile southern province, directing their anger not against Europe but America. The U.S. base was targeted because the United States "is the leader of Europe and the leading infidel in the world," said Sher Mohammed, a 40-year-old farmer who suffered a gunshot wound while taking part in the demonstration in the city of Qalat. "They are all the enemy of Islam. They are occupiers in our country and must be driven out," Mohammed said. Wednesday's...

WASHINGTON - Troops and civilians at a U.S. military base in Iraq were exposed to contaminated water last year and employees for the responsible contractor, Halliburton, couldn't get their company to inform camp residents, according to interviews and internal company documents. Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, disputes the allegations about water problems at Camp Junction City, in Ramadi, even though they were made by its own employees and documented in company e-mails. "We exposed a base camp population (military and civilian) to a water source that was not treated," said a July 15, 2005, memo...

May all of you at FR, especially those living in the Central Time Zone a very happy 2006, and may God grant all your wishes and answer your prayers. Let's all work towards a safer, prosperous and stable America. Thank you and may God bless you all.

WASHINGTON - A solid majority of Americans oppose immediately pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, citing as a main reason the desire to finish the job of stabilizing the country, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Some 57 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. military should stay until Iraq is stabilized, while 36 percent favor an immediate troop withdrawal. A year ago, 71 percent of respondents favored keeping troops in Iraq until it was stabilized. In an effort to build public support for his Iraq policy, President Bush planned an Oval Office address for Sunday night to discuss the U.S. mission...

Today, the largest HD has a capacity of around 400 GB. Anyone wanna take a guess when will the first 1 TB HD be released??? I say January or February 2007

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., under a new barrage of criticism for how it treats its workers, is going on the offensive a week before the launch of a documentary that attacks the retail giant. The company alleges that director Robert Greenwald's movie "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices" gets basic facts wrong. The world's biggest retailer and largest private employer in the United States, with 1.2 million domestic workers, is also touting a rival DVD release, "Why Wal-Mart Works: And Why That Drives Some People C-R-A-Z-Y". "I'm a bit surprised at the amount of money that they...

WASHINGTON - A Spanish judge issued international arrest warrants Wednesday for three U.S. soldiers for an incident in which a U.S. tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and killed two journalists. High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrants for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, charging them with murder and violating the Geneva Conventions in the death of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso. He requested that they be extradited to Spain for interrogation. Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish network Telecino, and Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters,...

WASHINGTON - Social Security checks for nearly 50 million Americans are going up next year an average of $39 a month, the biggest boost in 15 years, although rising energy bills and higher Medicare premiums will erase a big chunk of the gain for many. The 4.1 percent cost of living adjustment announced Friday by the Social Security Administration is the biggest increase since a 5.4 percent gain in 1991. Last year's increase was 2.7 percent. The average Social Security check will increase from $963 to $1,002 in January. Rising energy prices, including a record-breaking surge in September, were the...

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - Advertising executive Keith Reinhard has a message for U.S. companies: America's tarnished image may soon hurt your bottom lines. "Sooner or later, anti-Americanism has got to be bad for business," said Reinhard, president of Business for Diplomatic Action and chairman of the New York ad agency DDB Worldwide. "In marketing, we know that changes in behavior inevitably follow changes in attitude." Speaking Thursday at the Virginia Conference on World Trade, Reinhard encouraged businesses to practice diplomacy overseas and to take other actions, such as recruiting more foreign interns, to help change the way people view Americans. Reinhard...

WASHINGTON - In a letter to his top deputy in Iraq, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader said the United States "ran and left their agents" in Vietnam and the jihadists must have a plan ready to fill the void if the Americans suddenly leave Iraq. "Things may develop faster than we imagine," Ayman al-Zawahri wrote in a letter to his top deputy in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy. ... We must be ready starting now." Senior U.S. military commanders have...

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Eight years ago, Chen Hua thought she'd put poverty behind her when she left her remote, mountain village in Sichuan province for a factory job in China's booming Pearl River Delta. But even in one of the wealthiest and most dynamic parts of a country on the rise, she's finding the dividends of China's economic revolution do not always pay out. Earlier this year, the garment workshop where she snipped dangling threads from clothes suddenly stopped paying wages. For several months, she and her colleagues kept working, hoping they would eventually be paid. Then one day,...

SENECA FALLS, N.Y. - Inspired by Alan Shepard, the first American to journey into space, a 14-year-old from suburban Chicago wrote a letter to NASA in 1961 asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut. She got a curt reply: Girls are not being recruited by the nation's space program. "It had never crossed my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply because I was a girl," recalled the letter writer, better known today as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she was enshrined Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame,...

So far, Fred Phelps (of Westboro Baptist Church infamy) hasn't spoken about Hurricane Katrina, but I see it coming. Can anyone predict what he'll be saying??? And will anyone have the intestinal fortitude to shut him up??? Just my $2/100.

The Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth. Apparently, they've already started with the National League West, where it's quite possible the division champion will finish with more losses than wins. For the record, that has never happened before. So what has gone so horribly wrong in this division, once dominated by fly balls into McCovey Cove and the pride of Dodger blue? You can make the case that division disintegration all started with the deteriorating knee of Barry Bonds. Coming out of spring training, the Giants were labeled as the team to beat – and man, have they...

LOS ANGELES - Potato chips and french fries could soon come with a warning label in California if the state's top attorney prevails in a lawsuit filed Friday against nine fast food chains and snack-food makers. Attorney General Bill Lockyer asked for a court order requiring McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Frito Lay and other companies to warn consumers that their fries and chips may contain acrylamide, a chemical the state says causes cancer. At least one of the companies disputes that, saying there is no evidence the substance is carcinogenic. "In taking this action, I am not telling people to...

LANSING, Mich. - Ever since the first Model Ts rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line, Detroit and its surroundings have been the capital of the U.S. auto industry. But now, thanks to cheap health care and changing tastes in cars, its Canadian neighbor is challenging it for the title of North America's top producer. Michigan last year alone built roughly 2.6 million Chevrolet Silverados, Ford Mustangs, Jeep Grand Cherokees and a host of other models. But that wasn't enough to hold off neighboring Ontario, Canada, long a car-building center but largely in Detroit's shadow. Separated from Michigan by lakes Huron,...