Free Republic

Critics Question No-Bias Finding By CBS Panel If there is one line in the 224-page report on CBS News that has set critics aflame, it is that there is no "basis" for concluding that Dan Rather and his colleagues had a "political bias" in pursuing their badly botched story about President Bush's National Guard service. What, they say? No evidence? "In any fair-minded assessment of how CBS performed and why they so badly butchered their own standards, that has to be part of the explanation," said former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, now a professor at George Washington...

If getting rid of clutter happens to be one of your New Year's resolutions, nothing will clear up a few cubic feet of space like getting an old computer, monitor or printer out the door. In most cases, selling that antique hardware to a friend, co-worker or eBay user won't be an option computers lose their value faster than almost any other manufactured product in history. Just tossing them in the trash isn't a good idea either: Most computing gear contains such toxic components as lead, mercury and cadmium. Instead, your options probably fall into the same two categories as...

"I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms...

Syria - Archeological Findings Palmyra- Syria 29-05 (SANA)- The Finnish archeological team working in Bashir Mount in the desert area of Palmyra ( Tadmor ) has unearthed 46 archeological sites that date back to 80,000 years B.C. Member of the team Prof. Margo Alstawt Watsing of Helsinki University said her group used sophisticated equipment to survey the mountain’s archeological traces that extend along the Euphrates River on the ancient famous Silk Road, some 180 KM east of Palmyra. She added that clay, copper, bone and granite pieces were unearthed at the scene, an indication that man had very long ago...

<p>YORK -- Richard Weingroff really loves roads, as long as he doesn't have to travel too far on them.</p> <p>Weingroff, information liaison specialist for the Federal Highway Administration and the FHA's unofficial historian, doesn't have anything against roads -- he just doesn't like to travel much. But when he does hit the road, he sticks to the new interstates and steers clear of the older secondary highways.</p>

Chance provided key to finding Hambali By Kathy Marks in Sydney 22 August 2003 The chance discovery of a key in the pocket of a close aide led police to Hambali, one of the world's most wanted terrorists, according to Thai media reports yesterday. The Nation newspaper said Thai authorities had not been looking for Hambali, the senior al-Qa'ida figure in South-east Asia and alleged mastermind of numerous bomb attacks in the region. They found him by accident after arresting a Malaysian man suspected of being an al-Qa'ida associate or sympathiser. That man was a "small potato", according to security...

Pearl killed 'for finding terror links' Paul Webster, Paris Thursday April 24, 2003 The Guardian The American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan because he uncovered links between the British terrorist Richard Reid and the Pakistani secret service, according to an investigation by the French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Lévy. Lévy's book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? traces the Wall Street Journal correspondent's last investigation after he was persuaded to go to Pakistan by a London-born double agent, Omar Saeed Sheikh. Sheikh has since been sentenced to death in Pakistan for overseeing the murder, in which the reporter's...