Free Republic

- Each year, the U.S. State Department formally rebukes and imposes penalties on governments that protect and promote terrorists. But since 1996, when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the nation harboring Osama bin Laden has never made the department's list of terrorist-sponsoring countries. The omission reflects more than a decade of vexing relations between the United States and Afghanistan, a period that found the State Department more focused on U.S. oil interests and women's rights than on the growing terrorist threat, according to experts and current and former officials. It was not until 1998, when two U.S. embassy bombings ...

Mitochondria can trigger a lethal immune response after injuries. Carl Hauser's patient was dying. A broken pelvis had brought the patient to the hospital, and now it seemed that a severe bacterial infection was killing him. Hauser — a trauma surgeon at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson — and his colleagues performed test after test, but could not find any sign of infection. Finally, with nothing left to try and time running out, Hauser removed a 30-litre mass of clotted blood. His patient immediately recovered. It would take Hauser over 15 years to determine why the patient's...