Free Republic

It's a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot's cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. "I hope you will support my work on...

NEW DELHI: Strategic experts have warned that some of the recent security incidents in different parts of the world involving aircraft and airports could be 'testers' by terrorists. Though some of these airline security incidents could be results of 'genuine innocence' of first-time travellers, the experts have asked the airlines and aviation authorities not to ignore them as some of them could be terrorist probes with actual imminent threats. They have also pointed out that there have been about two dozen incidents since August, leading to flight diversions, emergency landings, escorting of civil aircraft by air force fighters and arrests...

NEW YORK, April 14 (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines Inc. (DALRQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research), which is operating under bankruptcy protection, and the union representing its pilots on Friday said they reached a tentative agreement, potentially averting a strike that could have been fatal to the airline. The No. 3 U.S. airline and the pilots union, the Air Line Pilots Association International, or ALPA, said the tentative agreement is expected to be presented to the union's governing body, the Delta MEC, in the upcoming weeks. Both parties declined to disclose details of the tentative agreement, which if ratified, would then be...

Union support for John Kerry is no surprise, but it's not usually visible from 20,000 feet in the air. Mark McClain, who leads the Northwest Airlines pilot group at the Air Line Pilots Association, has plowed the word "Kerry" into his soybean field near the airport in Des Moines, Iowa.

WASHINGTON, D.C.---The Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), the union that represents most of the nation’s airline pilots, has endorsed John Kerry for president. The union’s Executive Board voted unanimously to endorse the presumptive Democratic nominee at a meeting today in Washington. "The evidence is clear that President Bush’s record adds up to an unending string of actions that have hurt pilots, other working Americans, and the unions that represent them. It is time for a change," said Capt. Duane E. Woerth, president of ALPA, after the vote was announced. Reached on the campaign trail, Senator Kerry placed a call...

Tests reveal Amesbury Archer ‘King of Stonehenge’ was a settler from the Alps The man who may have helped organise the building of Stonehenge was a settler from continental Europe, archaeologists say. The latest tests on the Amesbury Archer, whose grave astonished archaeologists last year with the richness of its contents, show he was originally from the Alps region, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The tests also show that the gold hair tresses found in the grave are the earliest gold objects found in Britain. The grave of the Archer, who lived around 2,300BC, contained about 100 items, more than...

<p>April 25, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Hundreds more commercial airline pilots will be trained to carry guns in the cockpit by Sept. 30, as the federal government committed $8 million to train them, the Transportation Security Administration said yesterday.</p> <p>The first 44 pilots allowed to carry guns were sworn in as federal flight-deck officers on Saturday after a week of classes, drills and testing at a federal law-enforcement facility in Glynco, Ga.</p>

WASHINGTON, Jun 03, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The president of the American Federation of Teachers was paid more than six times the salary of a big-city school teacher, according to financial reports the government is making available on the Internet for the first time. One of several union presidents who reported six-figure incomes in 2000, AFT President Sandra Feldman was paid $337,282, according to financial information the union filed with the Labor Department. Her salary jumps to $523,090 when allowances and business expenses were added. The union counted 706,973 members that year. Her pay compares with the average...