Free Republic

It might have been easy to miss this detail in the report of the Hamas attack on an Israeli school bus on 7 April, in which a 13-year-old boy and the bus driver were injured (the boy severely). Hamas used a state-of-the-art Russian-design antitank missile, the 9M133 Kornet (NATO designation AT-14 SPRIGGAN), to attack the bus. Israeli officials confirmed that the hit on the school bus was achieved using laser guidance, and that the missile was launched from two miles away. The account of the attack indicates that the bus was stopped (and had just offloaded most of its 50...

The females of the first family made the list of the 1,000 most popular baby names, says a new report, but the president did not. Michelle, the first lady's name, and those of her daughters, Sasha and Malia, appeared on the list released Wednesday by the Social Security Administration, The New York Times reports. Sasha, at 353rd, hasn't changed much in rank in the past few years. Malia jumped to 345th most popular baby name last year from 400th in 2007, while Michelle dropped from 94th to 103rd. Other names proved popular because of their association with celebrities. Hillary jumped...

Heat Waves Follow Hottest Six Months on Record With record-breaking heat around the country, fish--and the people that love to catch them--are suffering. Not only is the fun of sitting out in the summer sun on a boat, on the shore or standing in a river beginning to lose some of its appeal, but these high temperatures are also stressing out fish, prompting midday fishing bans (in Montana), bass that won't bite (in Florida), and potentially later and smaller salmon runs (in Oregon and Washington). This summer's heat is coming on the heels of an announcement in July from the...

Bloody past is catching up with Liberian despot By David Blair in Calabar (Filed: 02/07/2005) After impoverishing his country, killing thousands and stealing a fortune, Africa's most notorious fallen tyrant is facing a rising clamour for him to face justice. Charles Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia, benefits from asylum in Nigeria despite being the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant and an indictment on 17 counts of war crimes. Charles Taylor: Africa's most prominent fugitive A life steeped in bloodshed has not prevented Taylor from enjoying Nigeria's official hospitality and a grace-and-favour residence in a government lodge in the...

Brain disease could be 'catching' November 06 2003 at 06:54AM By Maggie Fox Washington - Swiss researchers said on Thursday they found infectious proteins in the muscle tissue of patients who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and said the finding may suggest the rare and fatal brain disease could be passed on during standard surgery. The study, published in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also raises the question of whether mad cow disease N bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) N might be passed on in muscle tissue and not simply in brain, lymph and spleen tissue....