Free Republic

The world finally knows how former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke views the 2008 financial crisis. “September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression,” said Bernanke in a document filed Aug. 22 with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, reports The Wall Street Journal. Of the 13 “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

A US court has ordered a major dynamic DNS company, abused to distribute malware, to turn domain control over to Microsoft.

Government Motors. Remember that one? That's a huge, overlooked detail in this whole GM recall crisis - the federal government's oversight of a company they bought out of bankruptcy four years ago and, under their nose, that same company is hiding its deadly, dirty laundry. Charlie LeDuff caught up with California Democrat Henry Waxman, who was head of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at the time of that purchase.

Companies added fewer workers than projected in February, a sign that U.S. employers were waiting for a pickup in demand before boosting headcount, a private report based on payrolls showed today.

Delta is set to fly the last scheduled U.S. commercial McDonnell Douglas DC-9 flight on Monday, January 6. Appropriately tagged as Delta flight 2014, the final flight will depart Minneapolis/St. Paul for Atlanta just before sunset, marking the end to a 48 year career of flying scheduled commercial flights in the United States.

The National Transportation Safety Board says in a preliminary accident report that a small commercial plane that crash-landed in Hawaii waters floated for about 25 minutes before sinking.

Two years ago Fox 2 Problem Solver Rob Wolchek got a tip from someone inside Chrysler's Jefferson North Assembly plant about what some workers were doing at the park on their lunch break.

He is best known for his critical actions as an off-duty DC-10 training captain who helped captain Al Haynes minimize loss of life on United Airlines Flight 232 when all flight controls were lost, on July 19, 1989.

Gives a whole new meaning to the word Powerball.

One of the best annual meteor showers will peak in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and for some skywatchers the show could be quite impressive. The best seats are in Asia, but North American observers should be treated to an above average performance of the Leonid meteor shower, weather permitting. The trick for all observers is to head outside in the wee hours of the morning – between 1 a.m. and dawn – regardless where you live.

Baseball Hall of Famer George Kell has passed away. He was 86. Kell, a Swifton native, played third base for the Philadelphia Athletics, Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and Baltimore Orioles in the 1940's and 1950's. He was considered one of the best third basemen ever to play the game. Kell retired from baseball and moved to the broadcast booth announcing the game on radio. Most of his years were spent broadcasting Detroit Tigers games. He was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983. An announcement about his death is expected later today...

Jury Finds That Ex-Officers Were Punished For Exposing Alleged Wrongdoing By The Mayor's OfficeMayor Kwame Kilpatrick said at a news conference this afternoon he was "absolutely blown away" by a jury's decision awarding a total of $6.5 millon to two former Detroit police officers in a whistleblower lawsuit. A jury ruled in favor of two former Detroit police officers Tuesday, awarding them $6.5 million in a whistleblower lawsuit that churned out allegations of misdeeds by the mayor's staff and extramarital affairs by the mayor himself.

MARIAZELL, Austria (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children, in a sermon on Saturday at the 850-year-old pilgrimage site of Mariazell in Austria. "Europe has become child-poor. We want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future," the pope told a crowd of faithful from his canopied area at an open-air mass that took place under heavy rain. But Benedict held out hope, saying: "The earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished ....

Nasty looking weather right now in northern Indiana. 5 different tornado warnings/multiple counties within the hour. If it holds together Ohio will be hearing it in the overnight hours. Just a heads-up.

EAST POINT, Georgia (AP) -- The owner of a car dealership has been accused of killing two employees because they kept asking for pay raises. Rolandas Milinavicius has been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Inga Contreras, 25, and Martynas Simokaitis, 28. All three are from the eastern European nation of Lithuania but had been living in Atlanta, Georgia, authorities said. Milinavicius, who was having financial problems, told police he shot the two Thursday after they kept asking for more pay, said police in East Point, which is just outside Atlanta. "He told us that...

Warren Buffett is famous for two things. First, for amassing the second-biggest fortune in the U.S. as one of the most talented investors the world has ever known. Second, for an aversion to spending a dime of that $41 billion on anything but the strictly necessary. That includes declining to provide his kids with fortunes of their own, collecting yachts or racehorses, or giving large chunks of his wealth to worthy causes. Thus it may strike some as the supreme paradox that the man who is one of America's greatest misers in life will probably become one of its greatest...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Halle Berry (news) was taken to a hospital after colliding with a piece of set equipment while filming a running scene for "Catwoman" but is now back at work, production spokesman Joe Everett said. The accident was quite minor, Everett said Tuesday, denying reports that the Oscar-winning actress was hit in the head with a microphone boon and spent six hours in a hospital waiting room. "She had to maneuver past a piece of equipment, a set piece and she didn't quite run past it, but she's just fine," he said. "She was taken to hospital...

A rare desert snowfall turned the Las Vegas Strip and surrounding valley into a winter wonderland Tuesday. For the first time in five years, parts of Las Vegas received an inch or two of snow on cars, trees, sidewalks and roads, while rain mixed with snow flurries fell downtown and on the Strip. A thin layer of snow blanketed the top of the Bellagio hotel-casino, turning its green roof a shade of winter white. The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area was closed Tuesday due to snow and slippery roads. Authorities required snow tires or chains on vehicles traveling in...

SEATAC, Wash. -- More than a decade ago, Capt. Al Haynes saved 185 lives when he crash-landed a DC-10 in Sioux City, Iowa, after its center engine exploded. Now he's trying to save one more. His daughter, Laurie Haynes Arguello, has aplastic anemia, a condition in which her bone marrow cannot produce enough white or red blood cells. She needs a marrow transplant, and although she has a donor lined up, she doesn't have the $156,000 that her insurance will not pay. So she and her dad, accompanied by 25 of their friends, have started raising money. In two weeks...

It appears many of the liberal talkshow hosts are also tasting the wrath of "dumbing down America" with "all sports networks" Alan Colmes(Fox News) radio show dumped no matter what your political persuasion, this is a disease that continues to spread among talk radio.... Mark Scott was silenced by 24 hr. sports.....who will be next?