Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government has begun testing a computerized screening system that compares airline passengers' names with those on terrorist watch lists, a Transportation Security Administration official said Thursday. Called "Secure Flight," it's meant to replace a plan that never got to the testing stage because of criticism that it gave the government access to too much personal information. Testing of Secure Flight began November 30. No announcement was made; TSA spokesman Justin Oberman disclosed its status when asked by The Associated Press. The testing has not turned up any suspected terrorists. Oberman said the agency expects to wrap...

by IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer GAZA CITY, Gaza - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that he wants to protect militants from Israel, rejecting Israeli demands that he crack down on them. It was his latest campaign gesture to court gunmen seen by many Palestinians as resistance heroes and by Israel as terrorists. Also Saturday, Israeli aircraft fired a missile at group of militants in Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip (news - web sites). There was no immediate word on casualties or other details. Israeli troops have been operating in the area in...

PUTIN DISMISSES GOVT Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed his entire government - including the prime minister - it is reported. Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko has been appointed acting prime minister. More follows . .

WASHINGTON -- A letter containing ricin sent last year to the White House threatened to turn Washington into a "ghost town" if new trucking safety regulations went into effect, according to a copy of the letter released Monday by the FBI. The letter, one of two intercepted last year that were signed "Fallen Angel," bore an Oct. 17 postmark from Chattanooga, Tenn. It was addressed to the White House and was discovered by the Secret Service at a Washington offsite mail processing facility in early November. The White House letter was typewritten on what appears to be yellow legal paper....

CEIBA, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Navy ships are vanishing from Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, ending an era when defense spending boosted Puerto Rico's economy and the U.S. territory was seen as a strategic asset. The military has used the base for six decades to keep watch over the Caribbean, and as the outpost closes, with thousands of troops and civilians to leave by March 31, Puerto Rico is losing an economic powerhouse that employed more than 6,000 people and brought an estimated $300 million a year to the island. Puerto Rican leaders are proposing to turn the base's airstrip into...

<p>CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Saturday that sales at its U.S. stores reached a record $1.52 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, up from $1.43 billion on the same day a year earlier.</p> <p>Top-selling categories were home electronics, small appliances and toys, Wal-Mart said in a statement.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) --The IRS is auditing the nation's largest teachers union, scrutinizing an organization that works energetically to elect candidates but files tax returns reporting zero political expenditures from member dues.</p> <p>The National Education Association promised Monday to cooperate, but its president, Reg Weaver, said the union "will not be silenced" by the audit or the conservative law firm that requested it.</p>

The Navy's secret brig Prison's mission evolves as terror suspects arrive BY TONY BARTELME Of The Post and Courier Staff It's 4:30 p.m., quitting time at the Naval Weapons Station, and hundreds of cars and trucks roll single-file past the gate onto Remount Road. Across the street, a photographer aims his camera toward a distant building on the base. BRAD NETTLES/STAFF The brig in Hanahan is one of the military's main medium-security prisons in the United States. The building is mostly blocked by live oaks and pines, but between the trees, you can make out an orange barricade, a fence...

A KIRO Team 7 Investigation has uncovered disturbing details of a plot to disrupt all telephone, computer and cell service to the North Sound. Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne proves our most precious infrastructures are still vulnerable to attack. The FBI won't tell you this, but we will: For the past two years, federal investigators have been trying to catch a criminal who has repeatedly tapped into a major fiber optics cable north of Seattle. This person hasn't been randomly chopping entire bundles of cables, but rather he or she is using surgical precision to black out one particular 911 emergency...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Prospects for a December meeting between President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac to mark the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase in New Orleans appeared all but dead Monday as officials from both countries conceded a lack of movement.</p>

<p>Gary Stillman, the director of a small K-8 charter school in Buffalo, New York, is an RFID believer.</p> <p>While privacy advocates fret that the embedded microchips will be used to track people surreptitiously, Stillman said he believes that RFID tags will make his inner city school safer and more efficient.</p>

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct. 19 — Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said on Sunday he is ready to hold presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections in the occupied territories by June, a spokesman said. -snip- But Qurie, installed this month as head of an emergency cabinet, said the elections could only be held if Israel withdrew its forces from Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and lifted a blockade on these areas.

Roxie Bauer has raised a daughter – mostly by herself – paid a mortgage for more than 25 years and paid off her car, all on a checker's paycheck from Vons. Bauer, after 29 years with the supermarket, earns $17.90 an hour, has good health benefits and a pension plan. But life stories like hers are rare these days, and she knows it. "We are dinosaurs," Bauer said of herself and others in her position. "I don't have a formal education, but I've been able to eke out a decent living." Fundamental changes in the economy over the last two...

Norway's tax authorities made their income tax lists public on Friday, and the resulting rush to check out the intimate financial details of celebrities and neighbors is the highlight of the Internet year. In 2002 Norwegians going online to check the earnings of their boss, friends or colleagues overstretched many Internet servers, and traffic ground to a halt at those unprepared for the crush. Sol/Eniro, who are behind major portals sol.no and kvasir.no have added searchable tax lists to their services this year, and rented in three large servers in Sweden to handle the extra traffic. "The tax lists are...

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 09/10/2003) One of the two Americans who won yesterday's Nobel prize for chemistry said he might use some of his award money to help defend academic freedoms against restrictions imposed on scientists as part of the US war on terrorism. "We're considering some social issues, including scientists who are being persecuted around the world and in the United States," said Prof Peter Agre, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Prof Agre, 54, won the £800,000 chemistry prize with Dr Roderick MacKinnon, 47, of New York's Rockefeller University, for studies into "molecular machines" in the body....

FDA Seizes Drugs From Illinois Repacker Associated Press WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration said it seized thousands of bottles of medication from an Illinois drug repacker on Monday, citing quality violations and complaints that some bottles contained the wrong drug. It's the FDA's second seizure from Alliance Wholesale Distributors, also known as Local Repack Inc., in as many months. The Richton Park, Ill., company has sued the government in hopes of recovering the first seized batch, valued at $2.5 million. Drug repackagers are one supply source for U.S. drugstores. As the name implies, they buy up medication, sometimes...

<p>LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Yetunde Price, the oldest sister and personal assistant of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, was fatally shot early Sunday, according to Raymone Baine, publicist for Serena Williams.</p> <p>Price and Serena Williams were recently profiled in People Magazine, which is owned by CNN's parent company, AOL Time Warner. "This is extremely devastating news," Bain said. "They are a very close-knit family."</p>

The Bush administration is not very popular overseas, at least if you believe the opinion polls. But if money could talk, it would tell a different story. For most of this year's second quarter, the United States was waging a war in Iraq, with help from the British and not very many others. There were demonstrations around the world against the war. But guess who was financing it? The world was. Figures released this week showed that private foreign citizens bought an unprecedented $129 billion in United States government and agency securities. Official accounts, mostly central banks, added $43 billion...

NORFOLK, Va. -- The Germans didn't back the U.S. war in Iraq, but a German brewery is treating American sailors and soldiers to beer. Munich-based Spaten, one of the world's oldest breweries, is donating 600 cases of lager to each branch of the U.S. military for personnel who fought in the war. Navy Capt. Terry McKnight, commanding officer of the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, said Wednesday that his sailors would have no qualms about drinking brew from a country that refused to join coalition forces in the invasion of Iraq. "A cold beer is a cold beer," McKnight said. Donald...

<p>NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow is supposed to stop mail deliveries, but costs are starting to force trimming of some operations within the U.S. Postal Service.</p> <p>The Postal Service has started reducing the hours at some of its lesser-used post offices as it faces dwindling first-class mail deliveries, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.</p>