Free Republic

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A 92-year-old Australian woman has become the nation's oldest first-time home buyer after securing a housing loan she does not have to pay off for another 30 years. Her local financial institution is banking on the mother-of-five living to 122 under the terms of the loan. Margaret Cole, who grew up in a poor coal-mining town in Wales, Britain, decided concerns among the nation's traditionally risk averse banks about her age would not stop her embracing the "great Australian dream" of home ownership. "She has been a battler all her life and was not taking no for...

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Just about any employer with enough money to provide workers an Internet connection is also spending a little extra to prevent them from visiting non-work Web sites. Yet many have no idea where those workers are whiling away most of the hours between nine and five. A recent survey found that workers frequent online news sites more often than things like pornography, gambling, or even shopping sites -- and they consider news one of the most addicting things available on the Internet. "Initially we saw the most abuse in pornography and gambling sites, now we...

WASHINGTON -- There are more differences between a chimpanzee and a human being than once believed, according to a new genetic study. Biologists have long held that the genes of chimps and humans are about 98.5 percent identical. But Roy Britten, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology, said in a study published this week that a new way of comparing the genes shows that the human and chimp genetic similarity is only about 95 percent.

HASTINGS, Neb. -- Teasing a dog can get you more than a nasty bite. A 21-year-old man ended up in jail Friday when he messed with the wrong canine. The man was gesturing at officers trying to tow a vehicle, said Hastings Police Sgt. Dan Losada. He said the man also barked at a police dog named Wojo.

A GANG behind a £2.5million Heathrow heist yesterday put their hands up to the robbery after being snared by Britain’s leading LIP READER. The crooks — who stole the fortune in old US dollars from a plane at the airport’s Terminal One — were secretly filmed as they BOASTED about the robbery, PLANNED how they would spend the cash and BRAGGED about how police did not have a clue.But detectives did ... and were gathering all the evidence they needed with the help of deaf Jessica Rees.She was given 23 videos to study, and although they were silent, was able...

LAKE WORTH, Fla. Sept. 23 — Five bodies, including those of a pregnant woman and three of her relatives, have been found, and police were trying to identify a suspect. The victims ranged in age from 17 to 52. Police Lt. Susan Wellborn would not say how they had been killed but added that police were working to identify a suspect and motive. The person responsible must have been "somebody very angry or upset over something," Wellborn said. The body of Carmen Valentin, 42, was discovered by police about 4 a.m. Sunday in a roadway in Lake Worth, about five...

From my friend's weblog: 1) During routine fire drills last week, campus safety unlocked all our rooms and searched thoroughly (even to the point of going through drawers and into our closets) for "illegal" things such as candles (fire hazards), alcohol, drug-related paraphanelia.. etc which were then confisciated. It's causing tremendous outrage because of the invasion of privacy. It all boils down to what the school considers to be their property. I feel that yes, this is school property, but we do pay to live here which should warrant us some property rights. Yes, we did sign a contract which...

As the fall elections draw near in this non-presidential year, an unlikely battleground in America's war on drugs has appeared in the middle of the desert, like a shifting mirage -- Las Vegas. Home to 1.4 million of Nevada's two million residents, the city's greater metropolitan area has the chance, come November 5, to vote on what would be the most far-reaching reform to America's drug laws since marijuana was made illegal in 1937. 'A lot is at stake here,' said Krissy Oechs lin, spokeswoman for the Washington- based Marijuana Policy Project, the organisation putting up more than $1 million...

Mon, September 23, 2002 White supremacists get an angry greeting Virginia protesters pray, trade chants at racist gathering By Meredith Fischer and Paige Akin MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE RICHMOND Their words collided. "RAHOWA" - Racial Holy War - the white supremacists chanted. "Jesus!" the protesters shouted. The voices grew louder and louder inside the Chester Library meeting room Saturday, where blacks packed seats intended for whites who hate them. John King, the Virginia leader of the World Church of the Creator, stood at a lectern condemning Jews and blacks. Whites are the superior race, he told them. "There is no...

<p>Tess Williams of Elk Grove wept when she saw her sister holding a sign in the crowd of protesters standing outside Santa Cruz's City Hall last week.</p> <p>"It just is so unlike her," Williams said. Her sister, a soccer mom, PTA secretary "and always the more quiet and elegant of us two," isn't the sign-waving type.</p>

A Thai woman has draped herself with scorpions in an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. Kanchana Ketkeaw will aim to spend the next 32 days covered in 3,000 scopions to break a world record. She began her stunt at Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum in Pattaya, east of Bangkok. The scorpions are non-venomous and only eat insects. Of 1,500 species of scorpions worldwide, only about 20 to 25 are regarded as dangerous.

<p>HILLSDALE - For more than a year, Brian Andrew Newman carried on a friendship, then a relationship, with a Hillsdale County girl.</p> <p>She was barely 14 years old. He said he was 16. At one point, Brian even lived with the girl and her family.</p>

<p>NEW YORK — You eat a lot of cheeseburgers at fast-food restaurants and you get fat.</p> <p>But whose fault is that?</p> <p>Lawyers for two obese teenagers in New York say McDonald's is to blame, and they're taking Ronald to court.</p>

<p>Some wit once defined a fanatic as a person who redoubles his effort just as he loses sight of his objective. That wit must have been thinking of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson.</p> <p>Their objective is supposed to be chasing drug traffickers who sell dangerous drugs such as methamphetamines and heroin to children. Instead, they are raiding plots that supply medical marijuana to grandmothers with cancer under the terms of California's Proposition 215.</p>

WASHINGTON - More than 30,000 American college students will be denied federal funding for the 2002-2003 school year due to the Drug-Free Student Aid provision of the Higher Education Act, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Department of Education. The HEA provision, which was passed by Congress in 1998, denies federal financial aid to students with prior drug convictions. A total of 86,898 students have been denied financial aid since the enforcement of the HEA drug provision in 2000 and the DOE estimates that tens of thousands of students will chose not to apply for federal financial...

WASHINGTON -- More than half of convicted drug offenders at state prisons have no history of violent crime or serious drug offenses, and a disproportionate number of them come from poor, minority communities, a study to be released today has found. The study by the Sentencing Project, a Washington- based advocacy group that promotes alternatives to prison, offers a detailed look at state-incarcerated drug offenders, who made up almost a quarter of all inmates. It is based on information collected in 1997, when the last federal survey of state drug prisoners was conducted. An estimated $5 billion is spent each...

WASHINGTON, -( AP )- The nation's drug policy director warned parents Tuesday against trivializing the dangers of marijuana to their kids, warning them that more teens are addicted to pot than to alcohol or to all other illegal drugs combined. MANY PARENTS and children have outdated perceptions about marijuana, said John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. They believe marijuana is not addictive, that it's less dangerous than cigarettes or that it has few long-term health consequences. In reality, more teens enter rehabilitation centers to treat marijuana addiction than alcohol or all other illegal drugs combined,...

Psychologist Larry Sideman and his staff spend a good chunk of their time chasing non-violent drug offenders sent by the courts to the Phoenix clinic for treatment. But their power of persuasion often fails, and annoyed judges and prosecutors can't lock the drug offenders up for refusing rehabilitation. That would change if Proposition 302 passes on the November ballot. It would tweak an existing law that mandates that first- and second-time offenders be diverted to treatment instead of put behind bars. "It's very difficult to get some of them to our door," said Sideman, the clinical director at the Treatment...

With the anniversary for 9/11 came the opening of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's "Target America" touring propaganda exhibit. The taxpayer-funded museum mockery implements the same simplistic logic the DEA loves about drugs and the connection between narcotic trafficking and terrorism, while omitting the real story about the failed U.S. "War on Drugs." What? Did some Americans say that they would like to see an exhibit that tells the story about that failed war, the abuse of billions of taxpayer dollars to interfere with other nations' governments and to harass and imprison thousands of our citizens? Well, though it isn't...

Early in the morning of Sept. 5, dozens of armed men stormed a respected medical facility where nearly 300 people desperately ill from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses got their medicine. Brandishing semiautomatic weapons in the faces of terrified patients, including a woman paralyzed from childhood polio, they destroyed all of the medicine and took prisoner the facility's operators. The work of Osama bin Laden? Hamas? Some other international terrorists? No. This particular terrorist raid was carried out by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The facility they attacked was the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana ( WAMM ) in Santa...