Free Republic

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA is about to embark on an unprecedented asteroid-belt mission with a spacecraft aptly named Dawn. The 3 billion-mile, eight-year journey to probe the earliest stages of the solar system will begin with liftoff, planned for just after sunrise Thursday. Rain is forecast, however, and could force a delay. Scientists have been waiting for Dawn to rise since July, when the mission was put off because of the more pressing need to launch NASA's latest Mars lander, the Phoenix. Once Phoenix rocketed away in August, that cleared the way for Dawn. "For the people in the...

BOSTON, United States (AFP) - Former president Bill Clinton (news - web sites) urged Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) not to copy the Bush-bashing tactics of some of his supporters. "The most important thing is that he not fall into that," Clinton told NBC television in an interview aired a few hours before Clinton was to speak at the opening of the Democratic Party convention here. The two-term president said there was nothing Kerry could do about the tactics used by some of his supporters against the Republican incumbent George W. Bush. "I don't think there's...