Free Republic

A federal judge in New Mexico on Wednesday issued a temporary restraining order against state Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s ban on carrying guns in Albuquerque and its surrounding county, on grounds it violated the U.S. constitution. U.S. District Court Judge David Urias said the governor's 30-day suspension of concealed and open firearm carry rights went against recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and violated the rights of law-abding citizens to defend themselves. “They just want the right to carry their guns,” Urias said of the several plaintiffs who requested restraining orders on Lujan Grisham's Sept. 8 emergency public health order. The...

Defense Secretary James Mattis says transgender troops will be allowed to continue serving in the military while the Pentagon studies the issue. This comes after President Trump reversed an Obama-era policy that would allow trans-soldiers to serve. In a statement the Defense Secretary said once the panel reports its recommendations and he meets with the Homeland Security Secretary, he wll provide his advice to the president. This will allow the Trump administration to decide how to respond to the president’s executive order. He says in the meantime, the policy will remain law.

Donald Trump and his Republican allies are 'ready to slash the federal work force, impose hiring freezes and halt automatic pay raises' If President-elect Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress have their way, government employees will be easier to fire and they will have their pensions reduced, aides and lawmakers say. The incoming administration and its allies on Capitol Hill are planning to try and trim the public sector work force, in line with campaign promises to roll back government benefits, The Washington Post reported on Monday. With Republicans in control of both houses of the legislature as...

Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.
 
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing", recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. "There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, 'HELP-COLD'."
 
One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His...

Hell has frozen over…anyone still want to admit to global warming?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States froze the assets Friday of four Iranian companies, alleging they are involved in Iran's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Treasury Department named the companies as Pars Tarash (aka Pars Trash Company), Farayand Technique, Fajr Industries Group, and Mizan Machine Manufacturing Group. The action was taken under an executive order aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of WMDs and their supporters, the department said in a statement. The Treasury is barring all transactions between the companies and any US person and freezes any assets the companies may have under US jurisdiction. "So...

WASHINGTON - Pell grants for lower-income college students and efforts to combat AIDS overseas would get more money under a catchall spending bill heading to the House floor this week. Pentagon efforts to implement a 2005 round of base closings face a big budget cut, however, and hundreds of federal accounts would have their budgets frozen at last year's levels as Democrats keep their promise to live within President Bush's tight cap on domestic agency budgets. The massive $463.5 billion bill would wrap up long-overdue work on the 2007 budget year that began Oct. 1. Republicans wouldn't make tough choices...

FRESNO As the chill air descended on California last weekend, citrus farmers were already prepared for the worst. Past freezes in 1990 and 1998 taught the state's growers to insure crops that are one frigid night, hail storm or pest infestation away from disaster. State agriculture officials said Thursday that they were still assessing the damage from five consecutive nights of subfreezing temperatures in California's fertile Central Valley, and they could not yet estimate how much would be paid out by insurers. With losses to the state's citrus crop alone totaling an estimated $1 billion, the tally is certain to...

WASHINGTON - The Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to freeze funding for popular education programs such as Head Start and grants to schools for poor children and those with special needs. Job training programs would face a slight cut, and health research funded by the National Institutes of Health would receive a less than 1 percent gain over current levels. The panel approved a bill providing $143 billion in funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The so-called Labor-HHS bill was one of three domestic spending bills unanimously...

Energy crisis as Georgia freezes The price of firewood has soared in the Georgian capital Georgia's president has cut short a visit to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland and headed home to deal with a growing energy crisis. Mikhail Saakashvili said his country had used up its gas reserves and electricity blackouts were widespread. Bad weather has damaged power lines and explosions on the main pipeline from Russia last weekend hit gas supplies. Schools are shut and power is restricted to hospitals, bakeries and water pumping stations. Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli said Georgia had been under a virtual energy...

he release of French hostage Bernard Planche yesterday earned the Americans warm thanks from Paris. This reflects the rapprochement between the partners on Iraq as well as on other matters in the Middle East. Expressing his thanks to "all those who mobilized" to help the French hostage regain his freedom, Jacques Chirac "thanked the coalition forces that permitted this release". Dominque de Villepin was more explicit. Thanking "the diplomatic services and intelligence services", the prime minister also thanked "the US authorities that lent their assistance to this release". Such expressions of gratitude, which have been rather rare in the Iraqi...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has frozen the assets of two Saudi nationals for allegedly providing support to al Qaeda, and asked the United Nations to take similar action. The U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday it had listed the two men -- London-based dissident Saad al-Fagih and Adel Batterjee, another Saudi national -- as "specially designated global terrorists" for providing financial and material support to al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. "The U.S. is submitting both names to the United Nations (Security Council) 1267 Committee, which will consider adding them to the consolidated list of terrorists tied...

SACRAMENTO - The Schwarzenegger administration threw a wrench Friday into California's preparations for the November election by freezing nearly $18 million in federal funds while the state auditor investigates allegations that Secretary of State Kevin Shelley improperly directed government contracts to Democratic allies. Shelley's office, county election officials and voting-rights groups were alarmed by the surprise announcement, which could delay until after the November election scores of programs to train poll workers, aid non-English-speaking voters and improve disabled access to polling places on Election Day. ``We are very sympathetic with the governor and other people's concerns about how public funds...

Multi-millionaire heiress Teresa Keinz Kerry, wife of Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, refuses to disclose her tax records.

VIENNA, Austria - Iran abruptly froze further U.N. inspections of its nuclear program for six weeks on Friday, throwing into turmoil international attempts to verify Tehran's claims that it is developing atomic power and not weapons. The move was dismissed as unimportant by Iranian representatives. But diplomats familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency described it as a potentially insurmountable obstacle to the agency's efforts to deliver a judgment by June on the nature Tehran's past and present nuclear ambitions. One diplomat described the freeze until the end of April as counterproductive to Iran's stated aim of...

U.S. Freezes Funds of 3 Linked to al-Qaida Tuesday December 23, 2003 12:46 AM By JEANNINE AVERSA Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration acted Monday to financially paralyze two foreign entities and an individual believed to be providing money for al-Qaida's terror network. The Treasury Department added to its list of suspected terrorist financiers: Vazir, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Travnik, Bosnia; a key representative of the group, Safet Durguti; and Hochburg AG, a company located in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. The department's designation freezes any of the three's financial assets in this country. It also means they are...

WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department moved Friday to block the financial assets of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a suspected member of the al-Qaida cell in Germany that is believed to have planned the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Mzoudi is among the 17 new people — all foreigners — that the government added to its list of entities suspected of helping to bankroll Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. The action by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control means that U.S. banks must block any assets found in the United States that belong to these people. Treasury said the 17 names have...

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has acted to freeze the assets of an organisation suspected of raising funds to help Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terror network build a nuclear bomb. Financial institutions were ordered to freeze funds belonging to the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) at midnight. BIF's chief executive Enaam Araout was recently indicted in the USA for operating it as a racketeering enterprise and providing material support to organisations including al-Qa'eda. "Strong evidence" existed to link BIF with al-Qa'eda and bin Laden, said the Treasury. This includes personal contacts between senior BIF officials and al-Qa'eda operatives involved in the 1998...

Britain has ordered its financial institutions to freeze, with immediate efffect, any accounts belonging to Jemaah Islamiah, accused of involvement in the Bali bombing. "Jemaah Islamiah engages in terrorism. Its aim is to establish an extensive fundamentalist republic covering Malaysia, Singapore and parts of the Philippines, and it is prepared to bomb, shoot and kill to achieve that end," said Chancellor Gordon Brown, while announcing the asset freeze last night. "By freezing its assets we will undermine its future operations. If fanaticism is the heart of modern terrorism, then finance is its lifeblood. All countries must act to cut off...

The Italian Government says it's frozen the bank accounts of 11 individuals and 14 companies suspected of links to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. Among the account-holders is Yussef Nada, a prominent businessman and former member of the banned Egyptian Islamic organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. The Finance Ministry in Rome said Italy and the United States had jointly requested that the 25 names be placed on a United Nations list of al-Qaeda suspects.