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AL HIILA, Iraq (Army News Service, Feb. 21, 2006) – More than 1,000 Iraqi Police stood in formation Thursday, as provincial leaders and police officials praised the achievements and courage of the latest IP Academy graduates, welcoming them to the ranks of an elite force. The IP academy graduates, decked out in their finest, displayed their best drill and ceremony techniques for the audience as they took the parade field for the formal portion of the graduation ceremony. Speaking on behalf of the Babil Provincial Police was Brig. Gen. Qais Hamza, provincial police chief. He expounded on the accomplishments of...

Source: JAMA and Archives Journals Date: 2006-01-19 Avian Flu Transmission To Humans May Be Higher Than Thought A new study suggests that there is an association between direct contact with dead or sick poultry and flu-like illness in humans and that the transmission is probably more common than expected, according to a new study in the January 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Anna Thorson, M.D., Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues analyzed data from household interviews conducted in FilaBavi, a Vietnamese demographic surveillance site in Bavi district, northwest Vietnam, with...

Cheaper than mink or sable - fur coats made from dogs that were skinned alive By Katy Duke and Elizabeth Day (Filed: 18/12/2005) It looks like the must-have item in every glamorous woman's winter wardrobe: a sleek, black fur coat dripping with opulence. But despite the seductive appearance, the coat is not mink or sable. Instead, it has been manufactured from dog fur - possibly from an animal that was drugged and skinned alive to preserve the fur's freshness. Heather Mills-McCartney with a rug made from cats' pelts Similar coats are selling rapidly in fashion boutiques across Europe. An undercover...

Spiral arm of Milky Way looms closer than thought 19:00 08 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee The Milky Way is made of four main arms curving around its centre – astronomers measured the distance from Earth to a star-forming region called W3OH inside the Perseus arm (Image: Y. Xu et al/Science) One of the Milky Way's star-studded spiral arms lies twice as close to Earth as some previous estimates suggested. New research has produced the most accurate distance measurement ever made of the arm, which could help astronomers understand how our galaxy's spiral structure formed. The Milky Way...

Icelanders richer than Norwegians? Icelanders are richer than Norwegians when Norway's Oil fund and Iceland's pension funds are compared reports the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, RÚV. According to the analyst department of Íslandsbanki, if the value of Norway's oil assets would be divided between the nation, each Norwegian would receive ISK 2.6 million. Icelanders on the other hand would receive ISK 3.8 million if the net assets of the Icelandic pension funds are divided between the nation - almost twice the amount that Norway's oil fund would pay each Norwegian. Norwegians plan to use the oil fund to pay out...

Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley Alleged 40,000-year-old human footprints in Mexico much, much older than thought Berkeley -- Alleged footprints of early Americans found in volcanic rock in Mexico are either extremely old - more than 1 million years older than other evidence of human presence in the Western Hemisphere - or not footprints at all, according to a new analysis published this week in Nature. The study was conducted by geologists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of California, Berkeley, as part of an investigative team of geologists and anthropologists from the...

Attractive women are more than just a pretty face By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 02/11/2005) The more fertile a woman, the more attractive she is to men, scientists claim today. For many years, scientists believed that when lovers gaze at each other they are merely using facial clues - large eyes, small nose, large lips and so on - to check that their prospective mate has high "fitness" and can efficiently pass their genes to the next generation. Keira Knightley. Study shows beauty is more than skin deep The female sex hormone oestrogen was thought to be the mediator...

Bird flu may have been brought into UK earlier than thought By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 25/10/2005) The possibility that bird flu could already be present in Britain is being studied by Government vets who are investigating whether the potentially lethal strain contaminated a quarantine "facility" in Essex much earlier than thought. As vets investigated how H5N1 influenza came to infect a parrot from South America, which is unaffected by this strain, the European Union, the world's biggest importer of wildfowl, said it was ready to propose a temporary ban on imports. The H5N1 virus - which has only...

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...

Is IANSA calling for a global ban on guns? Does IANSA think that nobody should own guns? Our members around the world are working to reduce gun ownership in their communities because that is what will make people safer. The situation varies from country to country; at a minimum, we believe that private gun ownership should be subject to basic standards including gun licensing an registration, with a ban on civilian owner ship of military weapons. In many countries if you want to drive a car you need a driver's license, and if you want to buy a car, the...

MORE THAN 1 Billion CATHOLICS AROUND THE WORLD PRAY FOR POPE JOHN PAUL II    

The Liberal Agenda by The Readers of The American Prospect We’re taking suggestions: What does liberalism stand for? Anybody who's ever had to raise money knows the meaning of the phrase "elevator pitch": You're in an elevator with a potential moneybags, and you have, say, seven floors to tell him why he should write you a check. Well, we all know the basic outline of conservatism's elevator pitch: "We believe in freedom and liberty, and we're for low taxes, less government, traditional values, and a strong national defense." But what is liberalism's? We at the Prospect have, among us, attended...

It has been noted that there has been a grievous and unprovoked attack on Great Britain on these pages http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1295524/posts which THE MANAGEMENT, in their wisdom, have seen fit to leave in situ. Therefore, here is the British response. [Note to Mr Moderator, please feel free to remove this thread (I'm sure you will anyway) and indeed ban me from these boards (once again) However, if you do choose you that path, please display your lack of bias and sense of fair play by removing the "40 Reasons why the US is Better than Britain (humor)" thread which I have...

Weaker Than Ever: MoveOns state of denial is bad for Democrats Fri Dec 3, 2:40 PM ET By Marc Cooper Never mind that George W. Bush won re-election by 4 million votes. Or that Democrats lost in 28 out of 50 states. Or that more than a third of Latino votes went to the Republicans. And that something like 40 percent of union votes went Republican. Dont worry — be happy. "We are truly stronger than ever." I know that because the liberal political action group MoveOn wrote me to tell me so. Indeed, it was so darn pleased 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!

This request was made earlier, but it bears posting again. The soldiers and their families need our support. While listening to Lucianne Goldberg on the Laura Ingraham show, a caller requested help for the soldiers again. She specifically mentioned this site. During the call, she said that soldiers that are injured during duty number over 10,000. Also, she said that a number of the families who travel to medical facilities to be with their loved ones are forced to sleep in their cars as they cannot afford lodging anywhere else. Sounded like this site and the post was worth a...

One hundred years ago today, the steamboat General Slocum had ended its excursion up the East River on the way to Long Island Sound in a nightmarish blaze that killed more than 1,000 people. It was the City's first Titanic-size disaster, 8 years before that ill-fated North Atlantic vessel hit an iceberg. 1,000 Lives May Be Lost in Burning of the Excursion Boat Gen. Slocum -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- St. Mark's Church Excursion Ends in Disaster in East River Close to Land and Safety -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 693 Bodies Found--Hundreds Missing or Injured -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Flames Following Explosion Drive Scores to Death in the Water...

Israel now finds itself more isolated than ever (Filed: 23/03/2004) European foreign ministers were quick yesterday to condemn the "extra-judicial killing" of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, by Israel. Jack Straw was particularly indignant about Israel's failure to abide by international law. A whiff of hypocrisy emanates from such moralising ministers, some of whom have cheerfully countenanced assassination attempts of their own - most recently against the leaders of Iraq, al-Qa'eda and the Taliban. Tony Blair, for one, is well aware that Hamas belongs on the same terrorist continuum as the bombers of Madrid and Manhattan, not...

SA rock art older than thought Friday February 06, 2004 11:23 - (SA) New radio-carbon dating technology shows some South African rock art to be three times older than previously believed, Newcastle University in the United Kingdom said. A study by archaeologists at the institution estimated that rock art at the World Heritage Site of uKhahlamba-Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal could be 3,000 years old. Their age was originally put at 1,000 years, university spokeswoman Claire Jordan said in a statement to Sapa. Archaeologists from the Australian National University in Canberra participated in the study. "The findings, published in the current edition...

Computer scientists at Rice University say the Internet is developing wrinkles. So they're proposing, along with colleagues at other universities, to radically overhaul America's Internet infrastructure, from the backbones that transport data around the world, to conduits into homes. To jump-start the process the National Science Foundation awarded $7.5 million Wednesday to several academic institutions, including Rice, to develop technologies 2,000 times faster than dial-up and up to 250 times faster than DSL or cable modems. And they want to bring this ultra high speed to 100 million homes. "We need to take the next step," said Ed Knightly, an...