Free Republic

N. Korea threatens to stop preserving remains of U.S. soldiers SEOUL, April 5 (Yonhap) -- North Korea threatened Monday to stop preserving the remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, pressing Washington to resume its search regardless of a nuclear standoff between the two countries. A joint excavation, which had been a source of hard currency for the impoverished North, came to a halt in 2005 due to tension over Pyongyang's nuclear arms ambitions. The U.S. estimates about 8,000 of its soldiers are buried in the North. The two sides held talks in January about resuming the...

A powder sent to the American embassy in Rome during last week's G8 in Italy was the ashes of the sender's wife, it emerged today. Officials at the embassy went into overdrive when the envelope arrived last Wednesday, just hours before President Barack Obama arrived in the Italian capital for the summit. The post room of the building was sealed off and staff evacuated as police scientists in protective overalls arrived to take the powder away amid fears it could be an anthrax terror attack.

Man Sets Fire to 911 Memorial in New York City: Reveals Lax Security and the Fate of 911 Victim's Bodies Stored in Temporary Tent New York City Fiasco: Eight Years and Counting, 911 Victims Still Stored in Temporary Tent Next to Morgue According to the New York Post, a Harvard Law grad, Brian Schroeder, 26, originally from Texas, allegedly set fire to the 911 makeshift memorial where the victim's remains are stored. While none of the remains were damaged, many of the mementos left by friends and family were destroyed. Schroeder gave himself up by walking into the 13th Precinct...

Joe Kelly won't go as far as calling Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course a burial ground. But the 91-year-old track historian is quite sure that Willie Doyle, who rode Effendi to victory in the 1909 Preakness, isn't the only guy whose remains are mingled with the turf where the great Seabiscuit and War Admiral famously battled.*** While Doyle's choice of Pimlico's finish line as his final resting place is among the more colorful episodes in horseracing lore, it's hardly unique.*** Some venues honor such requests, such as NASCAR's Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, where Wayne Estes has adopted the informal role of...

SEOUL, South Korea – A visibly grayer and thinner Kim Jong Il proved Thursday he remains in charge of communist North Korea, presiding over parliament in a triumphant return to center stage after months out of the public eye following a reported stroke. Limping slightly, Kim arrived at the grand hall housing the 687-seat Supreme People's Assembly to a standing ovation and praise for a weekend rocket launch heralded as "historic" at home though assailed in some nations as provocative.

As someone who has dedicated a part of my life to the alleviation of animal suffering in various parts of the world, it is my wish that upon my death, my body be used to further that same goal. It is with this purpose in mind that I make the following directions and designations relating to the disposition of my final remains. I make these directions and designations after thorough consideration and pursuant to my firm belief in the purposes for which they are made. 1. Upon my death, it is my wish that my body be used in a...

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2009 – Much progress has been achieved in Iraq, but there’s still work to be done, a senior Pentagon spokesman said today while addressing that and other topics in a news conference. Although “enormous progress” in security has been made in Iraq, Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters, these gains “are still fragile,” particularly in and around the northern Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. However, southern Iraq, which includes the city of Basra, is experiencing “remarkable calm” and relative prosperity, Morrell said, while the capital of Baghdad now is “enjoying a period of stability” that it...

-- A corpse has been tentatively identified as missing toddler Caylee Anthony's, attorneys for her mother told a Florida judge on Friday.

Seven years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the remains of 13 of the 19 men responsible have been identified and are in the custody of the F.B.I. and the New York City medical examiner’s office. But no one has formally requested the remains in order to bury them. “Politically, one can understand that this is a hot potato,” said Muneer Fareed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America and a former professor of Islamic studies. “People don’t want to identify with the political equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer.” What would happen if someone asked for the hijackers’...

Itanagar, June 27: A five-member US Defence Department team has arrived in Ita nagar to coordinate a joint Indo-US search operation to find the wreckage of US fighter planes and remains of hundreds of pilots missing in action during World War II in Arunachal Pradesh. Official sources said on Friday that a team from the US Joint Prisoners of War/Missing In Action Accounting Command (JPAC) arrived on June 24 on a coordination mission for the search on humanitarian grounds. The team comprised Lt Col Peter Huddle, Lt Col Bruce E Cox, Maj Craig Tippins, Maj William J Taylor and Capt...

On Dec. 3, 1943, a B-24D Liberator bomber with two Army airmen from Massachusetts flew a stealth mission to destroy Japanese war vessels in the Bismarck Sea. The mission turned out to be a success. The crew found a Japanese convoy and bombed it.

NEW YORK - The city has identified the remains of four more victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, including one man whose DNA was found beneath a service road that was initially paved over, officials said Monday. Ronald Keith Milstein's remains were found beneath the road that was built to carry cleanup and construction trucks in and out of the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the city medical examiner's office said. Milstein of Queens was 54 when he was killed. More than 400 human bone pieces have been recovered from beneath the road, which has become...

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006. The Jurassic-era leviathan is one of 40 sea reptiles from a fossil "treasure trove" uncovered on the island. Nicknamed "The Monster", the immense creature would have measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail. A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half Richard Forrest,...

FAMILIES OF the victims of the September 11 terror attacks on New York have been devastated to learn that body parts of their loved ones have been found in the past two weeks by workers building the replacement for the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, just a few miles away, distraught relatives are left to mourn at the world’s largest rubbish dump — the final resting place for the remains of their sons and daughters. This is the reality of New York more than six years after the attacks on the Twin Towers. It’s a situation described by one still-grieving mother...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Monday that Venezuela should open the coffin of independence hero Simon Bolivar to examine the bones, saying there are sufficient doubts about his death in 1830 to warrant a full investigation. Although history books maintain Bolivar died of tuberculosis, Chavez said doubts exist because some writings suggest it is possible the South American "Liberator" might have been murdered. Chavez has raised this theory before, but went further during a speech on the anniversary of Bolivar's death. "Who knows if they even made Bolivar's bones disappear? We have to determine it now," Chavez said....

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The families of eight U.S. military men who died in a 1944 plane crash in the Himalayas want the Pentagon to step up efforts to recover their remains from the crash site discovered last year by a mountaineer. Exactly what happened to the B-24 bomber dubbed "Hot as Hell," was a mystery for more than 60 years. It disappeared while on a flight from Kunming, China, to Chabua, India, to pick up weapons and other supplies and return to base in China. Clayton Kuhles of Prescott, Ariz., a mountaineer who has made it his mission to...

OSLO, Norway - Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday. Initial excavation of a site on the Svalbard islands in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo. "It seems the monster is a new species," he told The Associated Press. The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year....

(IsraelNN.com) The Israeli government's first Arab minister made it clear Wednesday that as far as the Temple Mount is concerned, Israeli sovereignty is nonexistent and Islam rules. The minister spoke in his official capacity as Minister of Science, Culture and Sport, from the Knesset podium, in response to a parliamentary question by MK Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP) regarding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. MK Eldad's question referred to the unsupervised digging carried out by the Muslim authorities (the "Wakf") on the Temple Mount during the summer, by means of heavy machinery. "I received a series of photographs of digs on the...

(IsraelNN.com) The Israeli government's first Arab minister made it clear Wednesday that as far as the Temple Mount is concerned, Israeli sovereignty is nonexistent and Islam rules. The minister spoke in his official capacity as Minister of Science, Culture and Sport, from the Knesset podium, in response to a parliamentary question by MK Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP) regarding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. MK Eldad's question referred to the unsupervised digging carried out by the Muslim authorities (the "Wakf") on the Temple Mount during the summer, by means of heavy machinery. "I received a series of photographs of digs on the...

WASHINGTON - The Republican presidential race is extraordinarily volatile heading into the autumn stretch before voting begins. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani leads the field in national popularity polls but Mitt Romney, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, has maintained an edge where it counts — in some of the first states to vote. The upcoming official candidacy of Fred Thompson, a former Tennessee senator and "Law & Order" actor, reconfigures the eight-man contest — and brings a dose of Hollywood glamour to the race. Arizona Sen. John McCain remains a factor but is weakened financially and politically; he's seeking traction...