Free Republic

Two U.S. Navy ships, including a guided missile destroyer USS McFaul, and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter are getting underway to transport humanitarian assistance supplies to Georgia, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) said on August 21. It said USS McFaul (DDG 74) departed from Souda Bay, Crete, on Wednesday and the cutter Dallas (WHEC 716) will depart later this week. McFaul and Dallas are scheduled to transit into the Black Sea and arrive in Georgia within a week, according to the U.S. European Command. The announcement comes after it was reported that Turkey gave its go-ahead to sail through its straits...

NATO warships, which passed through Istanbul's Bosporus Strait Thursday, entered the Black Sea for long-planned exercises and routine visits to ports in Romania and Bulgaria, the alliance said. A U.S. Navy warship entered Turkey's Dardanel Strait on Friday taking relief supplies to Georgia. Three warships - from Spain, Germany and Poland - sailed into the Black Sea on Thursday. The move is not linked to the tensions over Russia's invasion of Georgia, which lies on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, about 900 kilometers (550 miles) from the Romanian coast, said officials at NATO's military command in southern Belgium....

John J. McFall, a conservative California Democrat who served 11 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before being implicated in a bribery scandal, has died. He was 88. McFall died March 7 at a hospital in Alexandria, Va., according to The United States Association of Former Members of Congress. He had Parkinson's disease and complications from a broken hip. McFall was elected to Congress in 1956 and served on the powerful House defense appropriations subcommittee, where he was an advocate for the Vietnam War policies of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. As chairman of the House appropriations...