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WASHINGTON – The House on Thursday passed legislation that could greatly expand private property rights under the environmental law that is credited with helping keep the bald eagle from extinction but also has provoked bitter fighting. By a vote of 229-193, lawmakers approved a top-to-bottom overhaul of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, perhaps the nation's most powerful environmental law. The law has led to contentious battles over species such as the spotted owl, the snail darter and the red-legged frog. The rewrite faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, head of the panel...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - State education officials painted a brighter picture about the percentage of students passing the high school exit exam because they ignored dropouts, according to a study released Tuesday by the University of California, Los Angeles. The study is the latest salvo in the long-standing fight over the state's exit exam, which tests students on their ability to master basic math and English. The mandatory, multiple-choice exam is in line with targets for state accountability and the new federal requirements under the No Child Left Behind law. California high schoolers have been taking the test since...

Turnout in Spain's referendum on the European Constitution yesterday was 42.34%, the lowest in a vote in Spain since democracy was restored. Only four of ten voters came to the polls. 76.67% voted yes and 17.29% voted no. Despite the very low participation, prime minister Rodriguez Zapatero announced that Spaniards had "made European history" with a "clear firm yes". Oppostion leader Mariano Rajoy said that Zapatero "wanted to be first into Europe" but "he went too fast", since the low turnout "is a failure" for Zapatero. BBC: The BBC's Katya Adler, in Madrid, says the turnout was embarrassingly low for...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Re 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, has called the Sudanese rampage against Black Africans a “genocide:” We concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed [Arab militia] bear responsibility and genocide may still be occurring. The Sudanese government has been sponsoring a campaign of mass rape, mass murder, forced relocations, and forced starvation against Black Africans in Darfur. The BBC today tried to spin the usual “the U.S. is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t” argument today: Critics point out...

Fox News is reporting that Donald Regan, former Secretary of Treasury and Chief of Staff to Ronald Reagan has passed away.

Mystery object passed shuttle on Flight Day 2 February 10 2003 at 01:11PM Military radar picked up images of a small object of still unknown origin near the shuttle Columbia on the second day of its fatal mission, a Nasa spokesperson has said. "It's only raw data coming in. We don't know whether it was space debris that passed by the space shuttle or something that came off the shuttle," Bill Jeffs said at Houston's Johnson Space Centre. The incident happened with the shuttle at an orbiting altitude of 277 kilometres. "It was on Flight Day 2, one day and...

WASHINGTON –– An exhausted and divided House signed off on a $29 billion anti-terrorism bill early Friday after the two parties waged a caustic election-year brawl over a Republican effort to boost the federal borrowing limit.......