Free Republic

AL ASAD AIR BASE – The proud mayor of a small town near here, a location formerly controlled completely by the insurgency, invited a platoon of U.S. Army paratroopers for a tour of his now-peaceful area, May 13. Mayor Myeser Abdol Mohsin Freh hosted 2nd Platoon, Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Advise and Assist Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, on a tour of Barwana, a small town on the eastern shore of the Euphrates River across from larger Haditha in Iraq's Al Anbar province. "I am proud of my city," said Myeser to 1st Lt. Samuel...

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Customers in Germany and Britain lined up to buy the iPhone as it debuted there Friday, with Apple Inc. hoping to replicate the success that the combination cell phone, music player and Web browser has seen in the United States. Apple hopes to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, helped by its launch in Asia next year. In Germany, the phone went on sale at more than 700 T-Mobile shops, including one in Cologne that opened just after midnight with some 350 customers already waiting outside...

5 Marines were killed in Iraq yesterday. The more than 2000 U.S. troops lost in Iraq makes me want to vomit. But now, as calls to pull our troops out of Iraq grow, I fear that a premature withdrawal will lead to an even greater disaster than the sacrifices already made. Cutting and running now would render this ultimate in human toll meaningless. Unfortunately, the great gains that have come from American sacrifices go under-reported. Iraqis are learning the intricacies of democratic politics, as “accountability has taken root.” Coalitions are being formed and reshuffled. Pundits are speculating on party endorsements....

TOLEDO BEND RESERVOIR, Texas - One biologist compares the persistent green weed to "The Blob," the title character in the 1950s sci-fi classic flick that grows and grows and consumes everything in its path. Other scientists describe the plant as looking like little heads of lettuce or squished green grapes. Then they use terms like noxious, invasive and just plain scary. Even the species name sounds sinister: salvinia molesta. No one has anything good to say about what's more commonly known as giant salvinia, a Brazilian tropical floating fern that's found a home in slow-moving streams and freshwater ponds and...

Discoveries reveal a flourishing Dunhuang 1,000 years ago www.chinaview.cn 2004-03-21 15:20:33 LANZHOU, March 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Documents and other cultural objects unearthed from China's Mogao Grottoes, in northwest Gansu Province, provide evidence that Dunhuang was a flourishing international trade city over 1,000 years ago. Professor Zheng Binglin, also a research fellow with the Dunhuang Studies Institute of the Lanzhou University, made the conclusion based on his research on documents and other cultural objects of late Tang Dynasty (618-907) and Five Dynasties period (907-960). Dunhuang city, located in the western part of Gansu, is now a famous tourism city because it...