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The Obama team on the ground at the NATO Summit in Portugal is flying home pleased. It has been, the president declared, "an extremely productive two days" in Lisbon. Indeed major goals for the future of Afghanistan and the relationship with Russia have been met. For the former, there will be an ongoing, integrated relationship, a continued flow of aid, assistance, and training. For the latter, Russia, there's been a "restart" of relations, on ice for the last two years. Europeans and Americans hope that the chilly period between the U.S. and Russia has ended and will be significantly warmer...

Few small-business owners would hire more workers even if they had more money, according to the monthly American Solutions survey. Almost half (46%) would put the extra money into savings and 15% would hire more workers. One in 17 would use the money to delay laying off existing employees. This is the basic reason for the lack of job creation even though most experts think the economy is no longer in recession. “The cautious behavior shows entrepreneurs are still very reluctant to make any large investments or outlays of new capital given the current economic environment,” says American Solutions, a...

<p>AP – This image provided by NOAA shows Hurricane Rick taken at 2 a.m. EDT Saturday Oct. 17, 2009.</p> <p>MEXICO CITY – Hurricane Rick quickly strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm off Mexico's Pacific coast on Saturday and forecasters said it could strike the Baja California Peninsula in about five days.</p>

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2006 – Evacuating thousands of Americans from Lebanon is an extremely complicated undertaking, but one that servicemembers train to accomplish, Defense Department officials said here today. American servicemembers have been involved in getting U.S. citizens out of danger since the founding of the republic. Before the current non-combatant evacuation order - or NEO - for Lebanon, U.S. servicemembers helped evacuate people from Liberia in 1993, Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, Indonesia after the tsunami in 2005, Liberia again in 2004, Panama in 1989 and Saigon in 1975. Each of these NEO evacuations had different causes and different...

IFRANE, Morocco, Feb. 13, 2006 – Thanks to the way Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco manage their internal affairs, it's "an extremely low possibility" that al Qaeda or a similar terror organization can establish a foothold in those North African nations, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here today. Rumsfeld spoke with reporters on the final stop of a three-day relationship-building swing through the three nations in North Africa in which he sought to strengthen their military relationships with the United States while encouraging their leaders to continue raising their voices in favor of moderation and against extremism and terrorism in...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Q: How dumb is Susan Estrich? A: Susan Estrich is so dumb she thinks a manilla folder is a Filipino contortionist. Hey, Susan: Who's buried in Grant's Tomb? In case you had better things to do, like shampoo the cat, Estrich published a much-commented upon column claiming: "The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough." Susan, put down that crack pipe! [More]