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For the first time, biologists have documented gorillas in the wild using simple tools, such as poking a stick in a swampy pool of water to check its depth. Until now, scientists had seen gorillas use tools only in captivity. Among the great apes, tool use in the wild was thought to be a survival skill reserved for smaller chimpanzees and orangutans. The research in the Republic of Congo's rainforests was led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, which released details of his study. Breuer is in Africa and was not immediately available for...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 16, 2005) – Army engineers are using new technology to generate more than 100,000 gallons of potable water per day for the hospital in Biloxi, Miss., and area residents affected by Hurricane Katrina. An advanced Expeditionary Unit Water Purifier has been set up on the beach in Biloxi to provide water for the nearby Biloxi Regional Medical Center. After the hurricane hit, the hospital had been without water or relying on bottled drinking water for patients and staff. The Expeditionary Unit Water Purifier is the world's largest transportable desalination system, officials said. The relief mission...

TUCSON, Ariz. (July 11) - A high school in Vail will become the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop public school this fall. The 350 students at the school will not have traditional textbooks. Instead, they will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans. Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper. ''The efforts are very sporadic,'' said Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association. ''A minority...

Boxer Using Rice Attacks to Raise Money. BOXER LAUNCHES FUNDRAISING DRIVE Tue Jan 25 2005 22:03:11 ET Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) took her opposition to Condoleezza Rice to a new front: She has used it in a fundraising pitch to Democratic donors. The pitch went out Tuesday evening. On behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Boxer referred to Rice’s “misleading statements leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond,” and implored donors to “put the brakes on four more years of misdirection in Iraq and reckless policies at home” by helping elect more Democrats next year. ROLL CALL...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center will stop using police officers to subdue agitated psychiatric patients, responding to threats from federal regulators to pull the hospital's funding. Last week, the hospital received its second warning in six months about Los Angeles County police using Taser stun guns to stop aggressive mental patients. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the county-owned hospital was putting patients in "immediate jeopardy" by not first trying less extreme methods. Hospital officials told the Medicare agency on Wednesday that they would begin replacing police with mental health workers to...

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!

Jailed Assassin 'Weds' Using Loophole Fri Sep 3,10:25 AM ET By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Defying a life prison term in isolation, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin has secretly married by proxy, his bride said Friday. Larisa Trimbobler said she hoped her in-absentia wedding to Yigal Amir last month would help overturn a court ban on conjugal visits for the ultranationalist who shot Rabin at a 1995 rally in a bid to block peace deals with the Palestinians. Jewish law requires that two men witness a bride receiving her ring and marriage contract from the groom. According to...

US soldiers 'are using Jordan to enter Iraq' By Justin Huggler in Maan, Jordan 28 March 2003 This dusty, impoverished corner of Jordan is making the country's authorities nervous. For one thing, there is the protest against the war in Iraq that the people of Maan plan to hold today – a protest they call the "march of the coffins". Then there is the military base at Jafr, 50 miles away in the desert, where locals say they have seen hundreds of US soldiers arrive in the last few months, plus trucks carrying tanks and armoured vehicles. It encapsulates Jordan's...