Free Republic

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iran is prepared to negotiate a suspension of its most sensitive nuclear work if it receives fair guarantees in talks with major powers, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday. He said talks with the European Union on Iran's nuclear program were on the right track and he hoped no one would try to sabotage them, an apparent reference to the United States. He said talks with the European Union on Iran's nuclear program were on the right track and he hoped no one would try to sabotage them, an apparent reference to the United States....

Iran could cut West's oil supplies in event of war, warns American chief in Gulf By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 21/09/2006) Iran could trigger a global terrorist campaign and choke the West's oil supplies in the event of war with America, the top US commander in the region has warned. In a rare public discussion of how a war with Iran might unfold, Gen John Abizaid, the chief of the US Central Command, gave a sobering assessment of Iran's military potential. He warned that in a war Iran would rely on unconventional means to challenge America's superiority. "Number one,...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2006 – Thousands of Kentuckians are expected to show their patriotism at the Sept. 10 Freedom Walk in Louisville, Ky., a volunteer organizer for the event said yesterday. “I think it’s more than appropriate that we show support for our troops who have their lives on the line daily to ensure that we have freedom,” Wayne Hettinger told American Forces Press Service during a telephone interview from his office in Louisville. “The response we’ve had in the Louisville area has been phenomenal,” Hettinger said, noting he and other Louisville Freedom Walk organizers are preparing for a large...

The federal government has mapped out a few places that could be targets for a major terrorist attack. NORAD, in Colorado Springs, Colo., for one. The West Wing of the White House. Or another New York City landmark. But the director of an organization that analyzes the country's level of disaster response offers up one more — Tucson's elementary schools. In his new book "Americans at Risk," Irwin Redlener blasts what he calls a slow emergency response by the government to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and last year's Hurricane Katrina. He lists five worst-case scenarios to further illustrate...

Pentagon's satellite-saving plan could backfire 16:37 15 August 2006 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Protecting hundreds of low-Earth-orbit satellites from destruction seems a laudable idea, and the US Pentagon wants to do just that. But the scheme could backfire, by shutting down civilian and military communications and impairing Global Positioning System signals. The Pentagon is concerned that a high-altitude nuclear explosion or an intense solar storm could fill near-Earth space with charged particles, crippling the operation of many satellites. It has proposed a plan called “radiation belt remediation” to clean it up. The idea is to orbit satellites that would...

Anti-terror raids could spark riots, says police chief By Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent (Filed: 25/06/2006) Anti-terror raids could spark rioting unless police maintain a strong relationship with the Muslim community, according to a senior officer. James Hart, who retired on Friday as Commissioner for the City of London Police, compared today's situation with the tensions that led to the Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots in the 1980s - both sparked by bungled police operations. James Hart: 'We have seen all this before' This month's botched terror raid in Forest Gate, east London, in which a suspect was shot and...

Beijing shopgirl could be descendant of Confucius By Richard Spencer in Beijing (Filed: 20/06/2006) Kong Tao is a 24-year-old sales assistant from a humble village background in eastern China, living in Beijing. But popular belief has it that she is a descendant of Confucius, the Great Sage. Now Miss Kong, with three million other people worldwide, may be able to find out whether her claim to fame is well-merited, or whether she can return to obscurity. The Chinese Academy of Science has said it is willing to offer DNA tests to anyone claiming Confucius as an ancestor. Since Confucius's proper...

Cats could hold key to spread of avian flu virus By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 13/06/2006) Cats should become a new focus of efforts to understand and prevent the spread of avian flu, according to government advisers. In a review of the science underpinning the contingency plans drawn up by the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), Prof Jeffrey Waage, a member of Defra's Science Advisory Group's Epidemic Diseases sub-group, said: "The ability of mammals to contract and transmit the avian influenza virus has important human health implications. "We know about cats as a potential host for...

Flu pandemic could cost billions 14:21 04 May 2006 NewScientist.com news service Shaoni Bhattacharya, Singapore A human influenza pandemic may cost billions, and perhaps trillions of dollars, a top health economist has warned at a meeting of bird flu experts in Singapore on Thursday. However, Martin Meltzer, at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Georgia, US, argues that economic models can help governments and healthcare systems to reduce the impact vastly – keeping key healthcare workers in place and hospitals running. Analysing the costs of a pandemic, combined with epidemiological information, can help make crucial decisions...

This could be your oldest relative . . . April 29, 2006 By Anna Cox They lived more than two million years ago and almost 700 000 years apart. They belonged to the same species and they have finally been reunited at Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind. In what has been described as an historic and important event by academics, the skull of Mrs, Mr or Ms Ples (the gender has not been agreed on) and the bones of the Taung child - a fossilised child's skull found in a quarry at Taung, in the North Western province -...

Fears that chicken farm's 'safe' bird flu virus could mutate By David Sapsted (Filed: 28/04/2006) As ministry vets prepared to gas 35,000 chickens to curb an outbreak of bird flu, a prominent virologist warned the government not to be sanguine over this supposedly "safe" strain of the disease. Prof Albert Osterhaus, a Dutch virologist, said that the H7 strain found in the flock just outside Dereham, Norfolk, had the potential to mutate into a form just as hazardous as the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 100 people in Asia. The farm in Hockering, Norfolk, where 35,000 chickens are...

Iraq civil war could spread, say Saudis By Anton La Guardia in Riyadh (Filed: 20/04/2006) Saudi Arabia issued a stark warning yesterday that Iraq was in the grip of civil war which threatened to "suck in" neighbouring countries. On a day when at least 17 more people were killed across Iraq, Riyadh expressed alarm that events were spiralling out of control. Prince Saud al-Faisal:b at odds with Britain over Iraq "Civil war is a war between civilians and there is already war between civilians," Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said. "The threat of break-up in Iraq is a...

Horse antibodies could combat a bird flu outbreak 12:16 28 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie An old-fashioned method may offer a cheap and quick way to protect against the H5N1 bird flu virus. Chinese scientists have produced antibodies in horses that are an effective treatment for bird flu – at least in mice. Jiahai Lu at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and colleagues repeatedly inoculated horses with a chicken vaccine against H5N1 bird flu to make them produce antibodies. They then collected the horses’ blood, separated out the antibodies and split them to make them less likely to...

Before Scandinavia: These could be the first skiers By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BEIJING – Move over Bode. You may have competition you don't know about - among a sturdy skiing clan in northwest China. They are central Asians, Mongols, and Kazaks, living in the remote Altay mountains of Xinjiang province, where some claim skiing was first conceived. Using curved planks whose design dates back 2,000 years, the Altaic peoples are formidable skiers. They might not win a medal on perfectly groomed Olympic trails. But they can break their own paths, track elk for...

Earth rocks could have taken life to Titan 18:08 17 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee, Houston Titan may offer a 'soft' landing for life-carrying boulders blasted from Earth (Image: NASA/JPL)Related Boulders blasted away from the Earth's surface after a major impact could have travelled all the way to the outer solar system, new calculations reveal. The work suggests that terrestrial microbes on the rocks could in theory have landed on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. But whether they could have survived once there remains unclear. The fact that meteorites from the Moon and Mars have landed on Earth confirms...

Britain 'could be harbouring 20 more Abu Hamzas' By Philip Johnston and George Jones (Filed: 15/02/2006) Britain could be harbouring 20 more foreign radical imams like Abu Hamza, the Government's anti-terrorism watchdog said yesterday. Lord Carlile QC, who carried out an official review of counter-terrorism laws, said radicals such as Hamza had been able to operate because not enough had been done to check the credentials of people arriving from abroad. Hamza was jailed for seven years last week for inciting murder and preaching hatred. Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer, said he feared that other extremists were continuing to...

'Wrecking ball' could break the ice on Mars 11:58 26 January 2006 NewScientist.com news service MAggie McKee Orbital images show what appear to be glacier-like features in the mid-latitudes of Mars (Image: A Nahm/Brown University) A plan to drop a quarter-tonne copper ball through Mars's atmosphere and study the ejecta it blasts away from the planet's surface on impact is to be proposed to NASA. The mission, called THOR, would test models suggesting the planet's tilt – and therefore its climate – swings through extreme changes every 50,000 years. Robotic landers and rovers have previously visited the Red Planet's equatorial...

Iran 'could go nuclear within three years' By Con Coughlin, Defence and Security Editor (Filed: 16/01/2006) Iranian scientists are expected to start work this week on the highly technical task of enriching tons of uranium to a level where it could be used in the production of atomic weapons, say the latest reports received by western intelligence agencies. The work is to be undertaken at the top-secret Natanz uranium enrichment facility 90 miles north-east of the capital, Teheran. The very existence of the plant was concealed from the outside world until two years ago, when an Iranian exile group produced...

Week of Dec. 3, 2005 Vol. 168, No. 23 , p. 366 Pomegranate juice could fight Alzheimer's Christen Brownlee From Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience Drinking pomegranate juice has been linked to a host of positive health effects, such as reduced risks of heart disease and cancer. Researchers may soon add another benefit to drinking the deep-red drink: slowing progression of Alzheimer's disease. Richard Hartman of Loma Linda (Calif.) University and his colleagues worked with mice that were genetically predisposed to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms, including buildups in the brain of a protein called beta-amyloid. The...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2005 — On Dec. 22, 1941, 4,600 American soldiers marched off transport ships docked in Brisbane, their deployment to The Philippines having been diverted days earlier by rapid Japanese advances in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor had just been attacked. Darwin would be bombed three months later. Those servicemen disembarking in Brisbane were the first of some one million US troops who would pass through Australia over the next four years during World War II. As one woman wrote: "Suddenly the Yanks were here ... They all seemed to have big mouths and square teeth, and came from...