Free Republic

If you want to be among the first in San Diego to find out how much money the city must pay into its sagging pension system – and as a result the likelihood of service cuts and layoffs – show up early today. The pension board's meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. on the fourth floor of 401 B St., and a crowd is expected. “To think you have to get to the pension board meetings early, it just goes to show what a circus the city has become,” said Joan Raymond, president of the American Federation of State, County and...

Genes of deadly bird flu reveal Chinese origin 22:00 06 February 2006 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie The H5N1 flu virus has been circulating continuously in poultry in south-eastern China for a decade, scientists have found. A massive genetic analysis shows the virus has mainly been spread by poultry, but also that wild birds carried it from southeast China to Turkey. Yi Guan and colleagues at Shantou University, plus scientists in Xiamen and Hong Kong, say the only way to stop the virus is to control it in southeast China. The Chinese authorities have denied the country is the epicentre...

NEW YORK - In the eyes of her stepfather, 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown was an out-of-control troublemaker. She stole money from her parents and broke her siblings' toys, she stole milk from a younger sibling and broke their computer printer, he said. And when he found that she had gone into the refrigerator and taken a cup of yogurt she wasn't supposed to have, he flew into a rage. Police say Cesar Rodriguez beat the little girl to death, then tossed her on the floor of what was known in the family's apartment as the "dirty room," a rodent-infested room where...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (Jan. 4, 2006) -- Just like the training they receive, Marines are equipped with the gear they need to accomplish their missions. In addition to the standard issue, however, many Marines seek out and purchase their own gear as a way to make their job easier and gain the edge. With constant rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of the Global War on Terrorism, many Marines have come to learn what gear works best, both issued and paid for out of pocket. Marines throughout the Corps recently commented on the gear they rely...

Footprints Reveal Ancient Outback Life CANBERRA, Australia, Dec. 22, 2005 (AP) Children meandered around their parents' ankles. A man, likely a hunter, dashed through the mud. Somebody dragged a dead animal along the shores of a lake. Now the footprints they left some 20,000 years ago are giving a fresh perspective on the lives of Australian Aborigines. Since an Aboriginal park ranger stumbled upon the first print in 2003 in Mungo National Park, 500 miles west of Sydney, archaeologists helped by local Aborigines have excavated 457 other prints from the region's shifting sands. "This is the nearest we've got to...

Simple Test Reveals Fake Currency An everyday object can test for counterfeit currency. LOS ANGELES, CA -- Science writer reveals simple method to verify counterfeit currency. Consumers are wary of receiving large denomination bills during the holiday season. Last week 4th graders from Gary, Indiana were caught with counterfeit currency produced on their personal printers. In the United States in 2002, $43 million in fake currency was circulated. When counterfeit currency is seized, neither consumers nor companies are compensated for the loss. So what can we do about it? Two things: Visual inspection and a little-know test to tell good...

Phokaia excavations reveal mystery of Athena Thursday, December 8, 2005 Griffins thought to be guarding the ancient Temple of Athena might become the symbol of Foça along with Mediterranean seals, says archaeologist Özyiðit ÝZMÝR - Turkish Daily News Sculptures of horses and griffins as old as 2,600 years were discovered during excavations at the Temple of Athena located at the ancient city of Phokaia, which is today within the borders of Ýzmir's Foça district. The finds reveal that the sculptures were used as main decorative items for terraces at the ancient city, the goddess of which was Athena, and that...

December 07, 2005 Cave paintings reveal Ice Age artists By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent BRITAIN’S first cave art is more than 12,800 years old, scientific testing has shown. Engravings of a deer and other creatures at Creswell Crags, in Derbyshire, have proved to be genuine Ice Age creations, and not modern fakes, as some had feared. The engravings were found in 2003 at two caves, Church Hole and Robin Hood’s Cave, which lie close together in the Creswell gorge. Palaeolithic occupation deposits dating to the last Ice Age were excavated there in 1875-76, but the art remained unnoticed. Although the...

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac said Monday that the unrest in France's poor, largely nonwhite suburbs revealed a "crisis of identity" that the entire nation must heal with firmness and with measures that combat what he called the poison of discrimination. Chirac — speaking to the nation for the first time since the unrest erupted Oct. 27 — said France must instill values and hope in the "sons and daughters of the Republic" growing up in the poor, largely immigrant suburbs ringing French cities. French law must be obeyed, he said, but all of France — its companies, unions and...

Long, infrared exposures of giant gas and dust clouds reveal structures that are invisible at optical wavelengths (Image: J Foster and A Goodman, CfA) Astronomers have discovered a new way to probe dark clouds of gas and dust in space, shedding light on the mysterious conditions that nurture star birth. Stars condense from giant clouds of molecular gas and dust that float through space. But these stellar wombs are difficult to study because they are barely visible at optical wavelengths. And other methods that probe their structure are not very precise – for example, estimating how much dust they...

Published online: 24 October 2005Charlotte SchubertY chromosomes reveal founding fatherDid conquest and concubines spread one man's genes across Asia? The Manchu warriors took control of China in 1644. © Punchstock About 1.5 million men in northern China and Mongolia may be descended from a single man, according to a study based on Y chromosome genetics1. Historical records suggest that this man may be Giocangga, who lived in the mid-1500s and whose grandson founded the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1912. The analysis is similar to a controversial study in 2003, which suggested that approximately 16 million men...

Contact: Lori Stiles lstiles@u.arizona.edu 520-626-4402 University of Arizona Radiocarbon dates reveal that New Guinea art is older than thought When the de Young Museum reopens in a new, earthquake-resistant building in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park next Saturday, Oct. 15, it will debut what curators consider the largest and most important private collection of New Guinea art in the world. Gregory W. L. Hodgins and A. J. Timothy Jull of The University of Arizona will attend the gala event. The scientists have radiocarbon dated some of the collection that New York-based entrepreneur John Friede and his wife, Marcia, are giving...

WASHINGTON - The John Roberts of nearly a quarter-century ago was a loyal foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution, a deeply conservative lawyer with strong views on the Constitution and a penchant for stating them provocatively. His self-confidence was striking. A few months after turning 30, Roberts wrote that senior Justice Department officials, in rejecting his earlier advice on a subject, had decided the Constitution "did not mean what it said." As a young lawyer, the man President Bush has picked for the Supreme Court scoured documents that crossed his desk for their legal implications — and for stray commas....

NEW YORK -- The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy flat. And cell phones likely were used to set them off. Those details from the July 7 London bombing emerged on Wednesday at an unusually wide-ranging briefing given by the New York Police Department to city business leaders. The briefing -- based partly on information obtained by NYPD detectives who were dispatched to London to monitor the investigation -- was part of a program designed to encourage more...

Egnatia digs reveal Roman road secretsExcavations uncover ancient equivalent of interstate highway A man walks along the remains of a wayside inn along the route of the ancient Via Egnatia, near the northern town of Komotini. Culture Ministry officials have unearthed extensive traces of the second-century-BC highway, which was built with safety features to protect even the clumsiest charioteer. By Costas Kantouris - The Associated Press KOMOTINI - Archaeologists excavating along the route of the ancient Via Egnatia are revealing the secrets of the ancient Romans' equivalent of an interstate highway. Stretching 861 kilometers (535 miles) across modern-day Albania, the...

EU is forced to reveal 'obscenely high' salaries By Justin Stares in Brussels (Filed: 12/06/2005) Civil servants on the Brussels gravy train now earn £70,000 a year after tax. And that's just for starters. The European Commission, by instinct bashful about its generous perks and allowances, was forced to disclose the figure, and much more, in response to a written question from a Czech MEP. The Commission admitted that its officials, who number nearly 20,500, are entitled to seven separate allowances over and above their pay, plus a generous pension scheme after just 10 years' service. The average take-home pay...

* There are a couple of issues which attend to this Newsweek thing. First, there is the First Amendment to the Constitution. For those of us who haven't actually read the First Amendment since 8th Grade Social Studies, here it is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. * This is a pretty big bag of freedoms in one Amendment. Religion, speech,...

Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Date: 2005-01-16 NASA/French Satellite Data Reveal New Details Of Tsunami For the first time, orbiting satellites have observed and measured a major tsunami event in open ocean, the Indian Ocean tsunami that resulted from the magnitude 9 earthquake southwest of Sumatra on December 26. The measurements are of tremendous value to researchers worldwide and will aid our understanding of these events. NASA's Jason and Topex/Poseidon oceanography satellites have captured the first-ever observations and measurements of a major tsunami event in open ocean. (Graphic courtesy of NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) U.S. and French teams working in parallel with...

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!

Antarctic craters reveal strike The asteroid may have raised sea levels by up to 60cm Scientists have mapped enormous impact craters hidden under the Antarctic ice sheet using satellite technology. The craters may have either come from an asteroid between 5 and 11km across that broke up in the atmosphere, a swarm of comets or comet fragments. The space impacts created multiple craters over an area of 2,092km (1,300 miles) by 3,862km (2,400 miles). The scientists told a conference this week that the impacts occurred roughly 780,000 years ago during an ice age. When the impacts hit, they would have...