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WASHINGTON, May 12, 2006 – Spending Mother's Day thousands of miles away from their kids is going to be no picnic for more than 7,400 military moms deployed in support of the war on terror. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Christine Buckley, deployed to Djibouti with Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, has been home only twice to celebrate Mother's Day with her sons, ages 8 and 6. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert S. Taylor, USN  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Many say they're planning their own celebrations thinking of their children and calling home,...

4/21/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Imagine being pinned down by enemy forces, with no relief in sight. Now, imagine picking up a phone and calling your friendly local fighter pilot, flying overhead only miles away, for help. With the new Fighter Aircraft Communication Enhancement, or FACE, pod, ground units in combat are now able to do just that. Fielded for the first time in late 2004, the FACE pod is a solution to communication problems often experienced by aircraft in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. Used effectively in several theaters, the FACE pod allows ground units to communicate with...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today refused to hear an appeal by two North Carolina-based tobacco companies who claimed California's tough anti-smoking ads smeared their reputations. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., now Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Reynolds American Inc., and Lorillard Tobacco Co. of Greensboro, N.C., had asked the justices to overturn a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that rejected the companies' claims that their First Amendment rights were violated by California's ad campaign. California uses part of an 87-cent tax on every package of cigarettes to fund health education that includes a campaign to discourage smoking. The ads included a...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2006 – Troop morale across the U.S. Central Command area of operations is high, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the end of a USO trip to the region. Marine Gen. Peter Pace took a weeklong trip to the region that ended Jan 3. He brought stars of screen and comedy and nine tons of Starbucks coffee to cheer the troops at the holidays. "American Idol" 2004 finalist Diana DeGarmo, comedian Reggie McFadden and country singer-songwriter Michael Peterson accompanied the chairman. Retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, an NBC News analyst who received the...

11/21/2005 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- After years of deployments, some of the ideas Airmen come up with evolve. As the holidays approach, one of those simple ideas is making an impact on family members back home. The Story Time Video Program gives deployed troops here the opportunity to be a part of their children’s lives though they are thousands of miles away. The idea: parents are video taped reading to their children. Airmen at this base can read one of more than 200 stories to their children or simply talk to their families at the learning resource center --...

Military Working Dog Takes Away Bomb's Bang. By Lance Cpl. James B. Hoke Marine Corps Air Station Miramar MARINE CORPS AIR STATION MIRAMAR, Calif., Oct. 26, 2005 -- From the deserts of Iraq to the grassy slopes of Afghanistan, there has always been an impending threat of disaster. However, with the help of one of man’s best friends, Kwinto, this threat has been slightly reduced. Kwinto, a military working dog on Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, is an 8-year-old Belgium Malinois whose area of expertise is patrolling for and detecting explosives.“Kwinto was accepted for training in September of 1999,”...

The questions that won't go away for Condi Rice By Alec Russell in Birmingham, Alabama (Filed: 24/10/2005) Condoleezza Rice, the ultra-poised American secretary of state, has persistently said that she has no intention of running for the White House and that she expects people to believe her. All weekend, as she roamed her home state of Alabama with her guest Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, she fended off questions about her future. When a girl asked the question on a visit to her old school she looked weary before flashing her famous smile and saying: "I don't want to run...

Clinton country Since the 42nd president, Arkansas's claim to fame is bigger than a watermelon, writes Kevin Pilley April 16, 2005 early morning in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas THE MAN at the bar at Atlanta airport asked me where I was headed. When I said "Arkansas", he raised his eyebrows and blew out his cheeks. I asked him what it was like. "Let's put it this way," he replied. "Some of the people there still have tails." Arkansas is archetypal Nowheresville rural America. Or at least, it used to be before Bill Clinton came along. Now nowhere is somewhere. Clinton...

U.S. border governors stay away from Mexico meeting By Eduardo Quiros Fri Jul 15, 7:08 PM ET The governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger (C) holds his hand to his chest as he stands between the governor of the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, Enrique Martinez (L) and Jose Natividad Gonzalez (R) the governor of Nuevo Leon, at a meeting of U.S.- Mexico border governors in the northern Mexican city of Torreon July 14, 2005. This is Schwarzenegger's first official trip to Mexico as governor of California. (Stringer/Mexico/Reuters) TORREON, Mexico (Reuters) - A meeting in Mexico to address a vicious drugs...

US airmen told to stay away from capital By David Sapsted (Filed: 12/07/2005) All 12,000 American airmen based in Britain have been banned from going near London because of the bombings. The directive, issued on Friday, indefinitely bans USAF personnel, most of them based at the huge airfields at Lakenheath and Mildenhall in Suffolk, from going inside the M25. Families of the servicemen and women are being "highly encouraged" to stay away, too. While Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, was boarding an Underground train yesterday and declaring that "we don't let a small group of terrorists change the way...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Thursday it would take many years for Iran to achieve the capability to produce highly enriched uranium needed for an atomic bomb. Blix also dismissed worries about a new nuclear reactor being built in Iran, saying it was not suitable to produce weapons-grade material. "They have many years to go before they will be able to produce highly enriched uranium for a bomb and I believe there is plenty of room for negotiations," Blix said in an interview with Swedish Radio. The U.S. has accused Iran of trying...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - NASA scientists used an infrared telescope to see past stardust and spot hidden galaxies more than 11 billion light-years from the Earth, according to a journal article published Tuesday. Scientists used the Spitzer Space Telescope to find the galaxies, the most luminous in the universe. The galaxies shine with light equivalent to 10 trillion suns but were too far away and too drenched in cosmic dust to be seen - until now. "We are seeing galaxies that are essentially invisible," said Professor Dan Weedman of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. Weedman co-authored an article detailing the...

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Sacramento biotech company Ventria Bioscience is moving its headquarters and controversial field trials of genetically engineered plants to Missouri. Officials at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville said the move could help turn the school into a center for plant-made pharmaceutical production. Ventria has been looking to move for months, partly because of the hostile reception and regulatory hurdles it faced earlier this year in California when it tried to expand field trials of rice that contains common human proteins. "We looked at several companies and decided that Ventria was a perfect fit to be our anchor company," university President...

Iraqi rebels slip away to fight another day By Aqeel Hussein in al-Nouaimia and Toby Harnden in Fallujah (Filed: 14/11/2004) Families fleeing the besieged city of Fallujah say that rebel fighters have slipped through the American and Iraqi military cordon and have been driven away in Mercedes cars to rejoin the battle elsewhere in Iraq. The fighters, said to include foreign militants using satellite telephones, are believed to be heading for Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, to open a new front. Abu Haider, 47, a mechanic who escaped with his family on Friday, said: "I saw many fighters...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Oct. 14) -- Tiger Woods and his bride were briefly detained Thursday by U.S. Coast Guard officers on their yacht Privacy, then were turned away from San Juan's port because they had failed to notify authorities of their arrival Since July 1, new security regulations require many boats to submit an arrival notice at least four days before entering a U.S. port, Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Eric Willis said. The 28-year-old golfer and Swedish model Elin Nordegren, 24, were married Oct. 5 at a luxury resort in Barbados and later set out on the Privacy, along...

"I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms...

The Labor Department reported this morning that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% in August, down from 5.5% in July, and that our economy created 144,000 new jobs in August. July job creation was revised upward to 73,000 from the 32,000 initially reported. 78,000 new jobs were added in June. Looks like the July numbers were a blip and we’re getting back to the torrid pace of job creation of May (248,000), April (346,000), and March (353,000). After President Bush’s stirring speech last night and the good economic news, just how will Senator Franken-Kerry put a negative spin on...

Will John Kerry issue in an age of a “stronger America” as his campaign bumper stickers state? I have found quite the contrary, and have provided documentation. In the mid 1960’s he tried to avoid military service for 12 months so he could continue his studies in Paris, according to Britain’s Telegraph. [1] Then he served 4 ½ months in Vietnam. Though he claimed a Purple Heart for his first “injury,” his own diary for that day states, “we hadn't been shot at yet.” [2] According to the Military Order of the Purple Heart, you have to be wounded to...