Free Republic

It is hard to imagine what Marilyn Monroe would have looked like had she lived to the age of 80. That is the milestone she would have celebrated today but for her death in 1962. The epitome of the "blonde bombshell", she remains as well known in death as she was in her life. The image of her standing on a vent with her dress being blown upwards is familiar even to people who have never seen The Seven Year Itch, the film from which the classic image came. Her life was a series of dramatic highs and lows ending...

“It's embarrassing,” says NBC News terrorism expert Roger Cressy. “It's a bit of a black eye, but it's not going to have any long-term impact on the CIA or its ability to fight the war on terror.”

Osama bin Laden has vowed never to be taken alive and once gave his bodyguard a pistol with two bullets to shoot him if it appeared that he might be caught, according to a new book of interviews with people who know the al Qaeda leader. The book excerpted in the new issue of Vanity Fair, "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History" by CNN security expert Peter Bergen, also says bin Laden intensely dislikes deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. After the 2001 attacks on the United States carried out by al Qaeda the Bush administration made much...

Seventeenth-century Islamic brassmakers were far ahead of European peers, engineers sayContact: Kurt Pfitzer kap4@lehigh.edu 610-758-3017 Lehigh University Archaeometallurgists announce findings after four-year study of astrolabes Manufacturers of brass astrolabes in 17th-century India were two centuries more advanced than their European peers, says a doctoral student at Lehigh University who just completed a four-year study of astrolabes. Brian Newbury, who earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering in May, said the high zinc content in astrolabes fabricated in Lahore (now in Pakistan) proves that brass made there in the early 1600s was produced by a co-melting technique that was not...

Scientist Spots What May Be Missing Mars Polar Lander NASA Craft Vanished During a Landing Attempt on Red Planet Six Years Ago By ALICIA CHANG, AP A NASA image may show the craft's parachute. A white dot labeled MPL a few hundred yards away could be the lander. LOS ANGELES (May 6) - Nearly six years after NASA's Mars Polar Lander vanished during a landing attempt on the Red Planet, a scientist said he has spotted what appears to be wreckage of the spacecraft. The observation came during a re-examination of grainy, black-and-white images taken by the orbiting Mars Global...

President George W. Bush would still top 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry in a repeat of the 2004 presidential race (46%-42%), while support for third parties would climb to 7%, a new Zogby International poll reveals. The same poll finds that, given the chance to elect Bush to a third term, just 29% of likely voters say they would do so, while 58% would choose someone new. The telephone survey of 1010 likely voters was conducted from February 25 to 27, 2005, and has a margin of error of +/-3.2 percentage points. The same survey found the President's job approval...

John Kerry picked up 17 votes and George W. Bush lost six in Cuyahoga County's presidential recount. That means the county still went for Kerry giving him 448,503 votes compared with 221,600 for Bush. Cuyahoga was among 45 of Ohio's 88 counties that completed recounts by Friday, according to the Associated Press. Numbers for the two major candidates changed little, though. Bush added 303 votes to his state total; Kerry gained 443. The higher numbers were due mainly to hanging chads falling from ballot cards, the Associated Press reported. (snip)

Andy Rooney indicated Thursday that CBS may once again be considering airing a one-hour nightly newscast. Appearing on Larry King's CNN program, Rooney said: ‘Most of the American public gets their news from television. And if we're going to have an informed electorate, we have to have good television news. I think it's vital that we have it. I keep waiting for some hero to come in and say, look, I'm going to give them the money. We're going to run this network, we're going to make all our money off programming and we can make plenty of it that...

Even non-Americans can cast a vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election thanks to a website tracking world opinion on the race for the White House. Surfers clicking on www.globalvote2004.org can tick a virtual ballot for President George W. Bush, Democratic challenger John Kerry, or one of five other candidates fighting to win the real vote on November 2. Voters are asked to register which country they're from, creating a non-official tally of who the rest of the world would choose to lead the planet's most powerful country. "It's fun and obviously not constitutionally approved, but it is a serious...