Free Republic

JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- South Africa's minister of land reform says black farmers have resold nearly 30 percent of the white farmland bought for them by the government - often back to the previous white owners. Minister Gugile Nkwinti announced the startling indicator of failure at Wednesday's launch of a long-delayed government policy paper to revitalize plans to more equitably distribute agricultural land, redressing historical wrongs.

NEW YORK - A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit over YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, owner Google Inc. said. The company's lawyers made the claim in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan as Google responded to Viacom Inc.'s latest lawsuit alleging that the Internet has led to "an explosion of copyright infringement" by YouTube and others. The back-and-forth between the companies has intensified since Viacom brought its lawsuit last year, saying it was owed damages for the...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has finally gotten a motorcycle license after riding his Harley-Davidsons for years in movies and off without one. A spokeswoman for the governor, Margita Thompson, said he passed both a written and a riding test and got the required permit on Monday, nearly six months after he crashed one of his Harleys into an S.U.V. pulling out of a driveway while riding near his Los Angeles home with his 12-year-old son in a sidecar. The governor, who needed 15 stitches on his upper lip, said at the time that he had not bothered to get...