Free Republic

"By March 23 many of our largest cities & hospitals are on course to be overrun with cases."

California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that’s just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by The Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion. The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning,...

The Navy has estimated a worst-case cost overrun of as much as $1.1 billion for the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, the service's most expensive warship. The carrier is being built in Newport News by Huntington Ingalls Industries under a cost-plus, incentive-fee contract in which the Navy pays for most of the overruns. Even so, the service's efforts to control expenses may put the company's $579.2 million profit at risk, according to the Navy.

President Barack Obama’s administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, while aiming to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters, say supporters of stronger immigration law enforcement. The new rules were quietly announced Friday with a new memo from top officials at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The “prosecutorial discretion” memo says officials need not enforce immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or if their relatives have volunteered for the US military. “They’re pushing the [immigration] agents to be even more lax, to...

Los Angeles -- Elvira Sosa left Mexico for the United States more than 30 years ago, but last year was the first time she'd been counted as part of the U.S. Census. Sosa was among thousands of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles who filled out a census form last year, and city officials said the response, especially among Latinos, might have saved the area money and congressional representation. The increased count was purposeful: A Census Bureau outreach program...included Spanish call centers that would field questions about the census, plus billboards, bus advertisements and fliers with information... The response: The 2010...

A majority of Hispanic children are now U.S.-born children of immigrants, primarily Mexicans who came to this country in an immigration wave that began about 1980, according to a report released yesterday. The analysis of census data by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center charts a substantial demographic shift among the nation's 16 million Hispanic children, who constitute one of the fastest growing child populations in the United States and account for more than one of five U.S. children. As recently as 1980, nearly six of 10 Latino children were in the third generation or higher, meaning that their parents,...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - In an embarrassing battlefield defeat for Pakistan's army, Islamic extremists attacked and seized a small fort near the Afghan border, leaving at least 27 soldiers dead or missing. The militants did not gain significant ground, but they did further erode confidence in the U.S.-allied government's ability to control the frontier area where the Taliban and al-Qaida flourish. Attacks on security forces are rising in the volatile tribal region, and Pakistan is reeling from a series of suicide attacks that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and hundreds more, chipping away at President Pervez Musharraf's prestige...

BEIJING - People living in communities surrounding a large shallow lake have been overrun by field mice after floodwaters drove the rodents out of islands on the lake, state media reported Monday. The mouse invasion began on June 23 when the Yangtze River flooded, raising the water level in central China's Dongting Lake and submerging mouse holes on lake islands, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Now, an estimated 2 billion mice are ravaging crops in 22 counties around the lake, and authorities were rushing to construct walls and ditches to keep the rodents out. Residents have killed more than...

Kansans shudder, scoff at 'reconquista' Whispers of effort by Hispanics to take over parts of U.S. has some worried, others chuckling By Tim Vandenack The Hutchinson News Michelob Ultra tvandenack@hutchnews.com The influx of Hispanic newcomers to southwest Kansas, most of them Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, frequently makes Evelyn Fulton wonder, somewhat darkly, what the future holds. "I truly believe if we aren't careful, they're going to take us all over and we're just going to be standing there (thinking), 'What happened?' " the longtime Dodge City resident said. Ninety miles away in Liberal, similar thoughts sometimes cross Candy Brock's mind. She's...

This is a video of a Tradewinds 747 overrun. Follow the link and go to the cargo section and follow the thread "Video,Tradewinds 747 overrun". Nothing happening at first but watch the whole thing