Free Republic

Excerpted / snippet text: President Barack Obama has admitted that his failure to pass "common sense gun safety laws" in the US is the greatest frustration of his presidency. ........ However, Mr Obama said race relations had improved during his presidency.

One of the inherent rights of owning a vehicle is the ability to get on one’s backside — a wrench in one hand and a grease rag in the other, and just tinker to your little heart’s desire. Since the vehicle was invented, it’s been an important facet within the community of gearheads. General Motors — the same company responsible for 87 deaths related to faulty ignition switches, FYI — wants to take that right away from you citing safety and security issues. Along with a few other big names. It’s called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It’s been around...

Excerpt only snips: Would you still make your weekly or monthly shopping trip to the United States if you had to pay an additional fee each time you crossed a land border by car or bus?"Given this, I was shocked to see that the Fiscal Year 2014 budget request proposed a study for a new toll on all passengers and pedestrians crossing the border from Canada into the United States. Putting up economic barriers to regional commerce is the absolute last thing we should be doing to grow the Western New York economy."

TORONTO - The Canadian Auto Workers union said negotiating with the big three automakers - General Motors, Chrysler and Ford - before Monday's midnight strike deadline is like juggling "a lot of balls up in the air." If the CAW, which represents 21,500 members in the three companies, doesn't reach a settlement with the big three, it could mean a walkout could start at 12:01 a.m. Monday. "It's a little tough to tell at this point in time what the impact will be because it depends upon status of bargaining with each of the three companies," CAW secretary treasurer Peter Kennedy said...

Excerpted Website: Snip: The airline plans to eliminate 993 out of 5,150 maintenance jobs in Tulsa. In 2010, the airline closed a Kansas City, Mo., maintenance facility that it acquired in the 2001 purchase of bankrupt TWA. Separately, the union for American Airlines flight attendants said 901 of its members have signed up to get payments of $40,000 apiece for quitting their jobs at the financially troubled company so far.

Snip: The United States is running out of helium. Yes, helium. Thanks to a 1996 law that has forced the government to sell off its helium reserves at bargain-bin prices, the country’s stockpile of the relatively rare and nonrenewable gas could soon vanish. Party supply stores are already feeling the pinch, as helium shortfalls are driving up the price of balloons........ A severe helium shortage, experts say, would cause problems for large swaths of the economy, from medical scanners to welding to the manufacturing of optical fibers and LCD screens.

A Chinese group known as "Sino-Michigan Properties LLC" has bought up 200 acres of land near the town of Milan, Michigan.  Their plan is to construct a "China City" with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens.  Essentially, it would be a little slice of communist China dropped right into the heartland of America.This "China City" would be located about 40 minutes from both Detroit and Toledo, and it would be marketed to Chinese business people that want to start businesses in the United States.  Unfortunately, this is not just an isolated incident. ...

ATHENS – While Greek politicians squabble over who can – or can’t – form a coalition government in the wake of May 6 elections in which anti-austerity rage caused a fractured result, more than 1,000 businesses in Greece are closing up shop each week, victims of a deep recession caused by pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that have made many Greeks simply stop spending on anything than goods needed for their survival. Figures released by the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce showed that retail sales during the Greek Easter period were down 18 to 21 percent in the...

Hostess Brands Inc. on Friday sent out letters notifying its more-than 18,000 workers that they could be laid off in the next two months. The maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread on Friday mailed out WARN Act notices to all of its employees, a Hostess spokeswoman confirmed to Bankruptcy Beat Monday. The federal WARN Act requires companies to give employees 60 days notice before closing a facility or ordering mass layoffs. However, sending the notices doesn’t mean a company is definitely going to lay off the recipients.

Running into a rabid bear can pretty much ruin your morning, according to two men who survived to tell the tale of Virginia's first-ever reported rabid bear, an encounter that occurred in the neighborhood of the hiker-heavy Appalachian Trail and the family-friendly Skyline Drive. It started out a pretty typical day for Bobby Bryant, the farm manager at Royal Orchard, the 2,800-acre estate on Afton Mountain that used to provide Albemarle Pippins to Queen Victoria and is owned by the Scott family of Scott Stadium and Scott & Stringfellow brokerage-firm fame. Bryant, a 56-year-old Afton native who's worked on the...

<p>WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will visit the tense border zone between the two Koreas on Sunday after arriving in Seoul at a time of renewed nuclear acrimony with Stalinist North Korea.</p> <p>Obama wants to pay tribute to some of the 28,500 US soldiers serving in South Korea, and the strength of their host nation, a key ally in Asia, a region to which he has reoriented American foreign policy.</p>

Excerpt only: Details about text messages, phone calls, emails and every website visited by members of the public will be kept on record in a bid to combat terrorism. The Government will order broadband providers, landline and mobile phone companies to save the information for up to a year under a new security scheme. What is said in the texts, emails or phone calls will not be kept but information on the senders, recipients and their geographical whereabouts will be saved. Twitter will also be saved and so will information exchanged between players in online video games. The information will...

Snips from Excerpt only website: For reasons that have never been publicly explained, a squad of VIPR agents showed up at a Savannah Amtrak station one day …….Everyone who entered the station was thoroughly searched. It didn't seem to matter whether people were getting on trains or getting off trains, or just looking for a place to go to the bathroom. ….freight railroads were having their own problems with the VIPR teams. The TSA demanded that VIPR agents be allowed to enter yards at any hour of the day or night without notice and to watch employees from hidden positions....

Snips from excerpt website: Japanese solar company Sanyo plans to lay off about 140 employees in California, or about 40 percent of its manufacturing workforce in the United States, as it shifts its strategy in order to compete with large rivals, particularly those from China. The company, which is part of Panasonic, is buiding a large factory in Malaysia that will make wafers and turn them into solar cells and then panels. Panasonic plans to invest 45 billion yen (about $580 million) in the new factory. A fellow manufacturer in Japan, Sumco, announced Friday it would get out of the...

A new poll from Public Policy Polling (D) shows that while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is sewing up the Republican nomination, the process is dragging him down in key swing states — PPP numbers from Ohio show that a 56 percent majority of general election voters now view Romney unfavorably, which leads to a seven point deficit in a matchup with President Obama. Obama leads Romney 49 - 42 in the new Ohio poll, a state where the political ground has shifted greatly over the last few months. After the massive defeat of SB 5, the anti-union legislation pushed...

If you're in the market for a new set of wheels, you might be surprised to find out that your spiffy new car may not have spare tire - and instead be equipped with a sealant kit. In 2010 the U.S. Department of Transportation required new vehicles to meet certain fuel efficiency standards. In order to meet the new mandate, some car makers are doing away with traditional spare tires and the corresponding tools to bring the car's overall weight down. Tara Hanley of AAA MountainWest noted, "Our first concern was that motorists were aware of it and that they...

US "Mass Ordnance Penetrators" fail initial testing, says 'Wall Street Journal'; Pentagon seeks to upgrade program.   Even the heaviest US bombs are not powerful enough to destroy some of Iran’s more fortified nuclear facilities, The Wall Street Journal quoted US officials as saying on Friday. The Pentagon is taking steps to improve its “bunker-busting” capabilities, they added. The US’s 13,600-kg. “mass ordnance penetrator” (MOP) was specifically designed to be able to take out Iranian and North Korean nuclear facilities. According to the report, initial tests indicated that the bomb would be incapable of performing these tasks, either because of...

A Muslim pilot working for a well-known British carrier has said he was fired because his bosses feared he might copy the September 11 terror attack.The London-based pilot — who was not named for legal reasons — was judged a security risk after the discovery of his link to two alleged extremists suspected of "planning to use an aircraft as part of a hostile or terrorist act". According to the unnamed airline, the pilot was "in a position to divert or sabotage an aircraft", the Daily Mail reported. "I felt they believed I was going to fly planes into buildings....

(CNSNews.com) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that the cuts in defense proposed by President Barack Obaama will create "risks" in America's "capability to respond" to threats. “The risks come with the fact that, you know, we will have a smaller force," Panetta said a t a Pentagon briefing. "As we said, it’s larger than we had prior to 9/11, but obviously it will be a smaller force, and when you have [a] smaller force there are risks associated with that in terms of our capability to respond.” Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Panetta’s assessment, while pointing out that when the...

Snips from Excerpt Only Website: Senators from both sides of the aisle are warning that looming EPA regulations on gasoline could impose billions of dollars in additional costs on the industry and end up adding up to 25 cents to every gallon of gas.  Citing the nearly $3.40-a-gallon average price of gas and the state of the economy, the senators said "now is not the time for new regulations that will raise the price of fuel even further."