Free Republic

The military is taking steps to prepare women for combat roles in 2016. The Marine Corps announced that it would give young female lieutenants who wash out of the grueling Infantry Officer Course a second shot, same as their male counterparts. The Army is conducting a study to test just how fit a soldier has to be to engage in combat. The study involves 60 women and 100 men. CBS News reported on both developments last week. The Marine Corps announcement came after Marine 2nd Lt. Sage Santangelo took the Infantry Officer Court and wrote about her experience last month...

The Bureau of Land Management announced Saturday that it has concluded its mission to remove illegal cattle from a rural Nevada range after a tense week-long standoff with a rancher and militia supporters. "Based on information about conditions on the ground, and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public," the statement read. Bureau officials had dismantled designated protest areas supporting rancher Cliven Bundy, who they say refuses to comply with the "same laws that 16,000 public land...

Groups from as far away as New Hampshire are riding out to Nevada to join the cattle rancher whose standoff with the federal government is growing tenser by the day. The groups said they were going to the ranch, some 80 miles north of Las Vegas to stand with Cliven Bundy, who property is surrounded by federal agents. Bundy's herd, which once numbered nearly 1,000, is being thinned out by private contractors under the watch of dozens of armed federal agents in SUVs and helicopters, the government says, he has refused for two decades to pay fees to allow the...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will announce Friday she is stepping down, ABC News has confirmed. The president will nominate Sylvia Burwell, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her. Sebelius approached President Obama about a month ago and asked to step down after the health care sign-up numbers were released, two senior administration officials and a confidante of Sebelius' told ABC News. The White House always worried about finding someone to win confirmation at HHS, but Burwell was overwhelmingly confirmed as budget director with a vote of 96-0 about a year ago. Earlier today...

AMC's new television series "Turn" debuted Sunday night, telling the tale of America's first spy ring that helped Gen. George Washington win the Revolutionary War. The series follows Abe Woodhull, played by Jamie Bell of "Billy Elliot" fame, a Long Island cabbage farmer with a wife, infant, and father who's sympathetic toward the Brits. He's recruited into the Culper Ring, tasked with gathering recon on the redcoats. The story is based on a real-life story chronicled in the book "Washington's Spies" by Alexander Rose. In the debut episode, Woodhull initially resists becoming involved in the uprisings, focusing instead on his...

As long as Firefox/Mozilla is willing to can their conservative CEO...shouldn't we cast our vote by canning Firefox/Mozilla.

I try to avoid using words like “blockbuster” and “breakthrough” when writing about new drugs and treatments. I’ve been disappointed too many times. But, though they’ve been in short supply lately in cardiovascular medicine, sometimes there really are breakthroughs and blockbusters. In my career writing about cardiovascular medicine I’ve seen the introduction of the ACE inhibitors, statins, stents, ICDs, and clopidogrel, among others. All of these became multibillion-dollar products and, more importantly, vastly improved the prospects for millions of people with cardiovascular disease. Now there’s a new candidate that just might join this group. I’ll tell you why, but I...

Training for U.S. Navy SEALs, the special operations force, follows a warrior tradition that harkens back to Samurais, but fitness experts say the tough regime is gaining popularity with entrepreneurs, corporate executives, lawyers and elite athletes. The workout, geared toward mental as well as physical transformation, is so demanding that the casual gym-goer looking to shed 10 pounds before swimsuit season need not apply. “We look at training as being as important to our life as eating and sleeping,” said retired Navy SEAL commander and fitness instructor Mark Divine, the author of “8 Weeks to SEALFIT: a Navy Seal’s Guide...

Think mind reading is science fiction? Think again. Scientists have used brain scanners to detect and reconstruct the faces that people are thinking of, according to a a study accepted for publication this month in the journal NeuroImage. In the study, scientists hooked participants up to an fMRI brain scanner – which determines activity in different parts of the brain by measuring blood flow – and showed them images of faces. Then, using only the brain scans, the scientists were able to create images of the faces the people were looking at. “It is mind reading,” said Alan S. Cowen,...

The outgoing director of the National Security Agency wants former President Jimmy Carter to know: It's safe to use email. Gen. Keith Alexander, in an exclusive interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, addressed concerns raised by the former president, who on Sunday said he uses snail mail to communicate with foreign leaders for fear his emails are being monitored. "We're not [monitoring the emails]," Alexander said. "So he can now go back to writing emails. The reality is, we don't do that. And if we did, it would be illegal and we'd be ... held accountable and responsible."

Gilead Sciences' (GILD) Sovaldi is now projected to become the best-selling medicine of all time by several analysts. Sovaldi is the first in a new wave of Hep C treatments that promise better cure rates and a shorter treatment course. Some even forecast it would reach $9 billion or more in sales by 2017, at which level it would surpass Pfizer's (PFE) Lipitor and take the crown as the biggest-selling drug of all time. Analysts are trying to outdo each other with optimistic forecasts. According to ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum, if prescriptions were to never grow again, that is...

MIT scientists have developed a way to image cells (without fluorescent markers or other labels) as they flow through a tiny microfluidic channel for sorting. This is an important step toward cell-sorting systems that could help scientists separate stem cells at varying stages of development, or to distinguish healthy cells from cancerous cells, the scientists say. Other cell-sorting methods require adding a fluorescent molecule that highlights the cells of interest, but those tags can damage the cells and make them unsuitable for therapeutic uses. The new method is based on a 2007 microscopy development that allowed the scientists to detail...

<p>But for the average consumer, there is a part of Amazon’s AMZN -2.60% business that they may know little, if anything about, yet has the potential to become one of the company’s biggest sources of revenue and profit margins: Amazon Web Services.</p>

Gilead Sciences, facing mounting criticism over the high price of its new hepatitis C pill Sovaldi, has offered to supply the medicine to Egypt at a 99 percent discount to the U.S. price. While the drug will still cost $900 for a 12-week course of treatment, that is a fraction of the $84,000 charged for a course of treatment in the United States. The high price tag in America prompted questions from U.S. lawmakers on Friday, after U.S. health insurers said they were seeking help from state health officials to foot the bill. Gilead said it was "pleased to have...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered that a substance called Vacquinol-1 makes cells from glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain tumour, literally explode. When mice were given the substance, which can be given in tablet form, tumour growth was reversed and survival was prolonged. The findings are published in the journal Cell . The established treatments that are available for glioblastoma include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But even if this treatment is given the average survival is just 15 months. It is therefore critical to find better treatments for malignant brain tumours. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and...

Federal prosecutors are at odds with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder over whether mandatory minimum sentences -- a key part of the government's so-called war on drugs -- should be rolled back. Congress approved many of those harsh penalties in the 1980s. Under the guidelines, a dealer busted with 1,000 marijuana plants, for example, or large amounts of certain narcotics, could face five, 10, even 20 years behind bars. As a result, prosecutors say, drug crime has gone down. But now Holder is leading the charge to overhaul mandatory minimums. Amid exploding incarceration rates, and allegations that long prison sentences...

As Ukraine appears to have all but conceded Crimea to Moscow, ethnic Russians in Kherson, the province just north of the peninsula, are believed to be pushing a secession vote of their own in what a local leader angrily denounced as "treason." The province has a huge ethnic Russian population, and a vote - particularly with politicking from Russia - could go against Kiev as did last Sunday’s referendum in Crimea. In addition to a major push from ethnic Russian politicians, the proposal in Kherson could be boosted by the presence of Russian soldiers, pro-Moscow protesters and the kind of...

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) declined on Friday after Democratic leaders request a briefing by Gilead on Hepatitis C drug pricing Link Here. Analyst Robyn Karnauskas of Deutsche Bank spoke to management about the letter, which discusses concerns around an affordability. The company noted that these types of letters have happened from time to time in HIV. "Rep Waxman has been very vocal around drugs during his tenure. However, this letter is also written from the minority party in Congress currently. Generally, we think that not much comes out of these briefs..."

Today’s biopharma industry has a richer and more exciting late stage pipeline of compelling new therapeutics than its had in years, drawing lots of enthusiasm from analysts and investors. Goldman Sachs (GS) recently published a report on the “10 drugs that could transform the industry” (Jan 2014), highlighting how many of these drugs have “game-changing commercial potential”, and that these drugs will help the industry “move beyond the cliff” of patent expiries. The GS healthcare team has put this “10 drug” snapshot out for the past few years and it’s always great list of inspiring therapeutics. This year’s “top 10”...

"We’ll be making a big technology announcement in June around how we are going to approach this," said H-P (HPQ +2.2%) CEO Meg Whitman at yesterday's annual meeting. Whitman argued current 3D printers suffer from speed and substrate quality shortcomings, and insisted her company has "solved both these problems."