Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In a career marked by second acts, Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is becoming a partner at Silicon Valley's most storied venture capital firm. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said on Monday that Gore, a campaigner for action to slow global climate change, will join the Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm as a partner focused on alternative energy investments. The venture firm, which since 1972 has backed seminal computer start-ups ranging from Sun Microsystems to Compaq Computer to Amazon.com to Google Inc, has...

NEW YORK - Fifty-three years after he was shot down on a desperate cargo-delivery flight over Vietnam, a legendary pilot and soldier of fortune known as Earthquake McGoon will be buried Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery. The burial plan was announced by the Pentagon on Wednesday. Earthquake McGoon, whose real name was James B. McGovern Jr., was one of the first two Americans killed in the Vietnam conflict. His remains were recovered from an unmarked grave in a remote northern Laos village in 2002 and identified last year by forensic experts at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's laboratory at Hickam...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Norman Vaughan, a dog handler and driver in Admiral Richard Byrd's 1928 expedition to the South Pole, died Friday just a few days after turning 100 years old. Vaughan died at Providence Alaska Medical Center surrounded by family and friends, said nursing supervisor Martha George. He was well enough Dec. 17 to enjoy a birthday celebration at the hospital attended by more than 100 friends and hospital workers. His actual birthday was Monday. Vaughan's motto was "Dream big and dare to fail." Days before his 89th birthday he and his wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, returned to Antarctica and...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Makobo Modjadji, the famed rain queen of South Africa's Balobedu people, has died of unspecified causes after just two years in power, the Modjadji Royal Council said Monday. She was 27. The queen was admitted to the Medi-Clinic in Polokwane on Friday with symptoms that included vomiting and died Sunday, council spokesman Clement Modjadji told the South African Press Association. He did not disclose the cause of death. The Balobedu of the northern Limpopo province believe magical powers are passed down from queen to queen, allowing her to transform clouds and create rain at a...