Free Republic

NEW YORK - The ACLU withdrew Saturday from a program that allows federal workers and military personnel to contribute to charities because it requires participating nonprofit groups to check their employees' names against a government watch list of suspected terrorists. The American Civil Liberties Union called the Combined Federal Campaign's policy unconstitutional and said it would reject more than $500,000 in donations from the program rather than submit to the requirement, which was instituted under the Patriot Act, said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director.

On June 28, 1974, Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina, chemists at the University of California, Irvine, published the first scientific paper warning that human-generated chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could cause serious harm to Earth's protective ozone layer (Molina and Rowland, 1974). They calculated that if CFC production continued to increase at the going rate of 10%/year until 1990, then remain steady, CFCs would cause a global 5 to 7 percent ozone loss by 1995 and 30-50% loss by 2050. They warned that the loss of ozone would significantly increase the amount of skin-damaging ultraviolet UV-B light reaching the surface, greatly increasing skin...

While coalition forces will do their utmost to kill or capture terrorist leaders here, the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan are the wave of the future, said Army Lt. Gen. David Barno. Barno, commander of Combined Forces Command, Central Asia, also said operations in Afghanistan have not been limited by the war in Iraq. "We have a robust capability here that continues to do daily work against critical targets – Osama bin Laden, Al Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Gullbaden Hekmatyar," he said. "Those are very important targets here in the theater, and we have assets going after them on a daily...

<p>After Thanksgiving passes, the march to Christmas begins — with the Salvation Army ringing bells outside shops and television reruns of Scrooge constantly reminding all of us that the season is about giving as much as receiving. In Washington, autumn 'tis the season for the Office of Personnel Management's so-called Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). Federal employees should take a second look before contributing this year.</p>

Earthgrains to Pay $5.25 Million Penalty and Phase Out Refrigerants That Damage Ozone Layer 7/31/03 11:41:00 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk Contact: Environmental Protection Agency, 202-564-7842, ENRD, 202-514-2007 WASHINGTON, July 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency today announced a settlement that resolves significant ozone-depletion violations that occurred in the United States. With this settlement, the United States has taken a major step in protecting the ozone layer worldwide by eliminating from the earth's atmosphere harmful refrigerants, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that leak from industrial appliances and have been a major cause of...