Free Republic

Home-made helicopters hit northern Nigeria by Aminu Abubakar Sun Oct 21, 6:43 PM ET KANO (AFP) - Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts. "It took me eight months to build this one," he said, sweat pouring from his forehead as he filled the radiator of the banana yellow four-seater which he now parks in the grounds of his university. The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi...

*With the White House as her backdrop Tuesday, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan ate her last meal at midnight and begin a hunger strike designed to call attention to her efforts to bring home U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. Danny Glover, Rev. Al Sharpton and Susan Sarandon are among the celebrities joining Sheehan for the nationwide effort, dubbed “Troops Home Fast.” So far, more than 3,000 people from the U.S. and 18 other countries have signed up to join the “rolling fast,” meaning they’ll be giving up food on designated days and encourage others to fast with them on those days....

A man attempting to row across the Atlantic from Senegal to New York in memory of victims of the slave trade and to raise money to fight AIDS watched his boat sink when he was rescued after it sprang a leak, police told AFP. Victor Mooney, a 41-year-old New Yorker, set off from the island of Goree off Dakar on Sunday morning planning to row 8,000 miles (12,900 kilometres) via South America and the Caribbean in a 24-foot (7.3 metre) boat. The Senegalese navy received a distress call from Mooney about an hour into his journey and contacted police who...