Free Republic

CINCINNATI Two officers accused of handcuffing a 5-year-old boy after a fight on a school bus have been suspended with pay from police duties while the city investigates the allegations, authorities said. Chief Tom Streicher assigned officers Douglas Snider and Kaneshia Howell to desk work Tuesday and took away their guns, police officials said. Mekel Finch, the boy's mother, sued the police department, the bus company and the driver in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on Friday. She is asking for more than $50,000. The lawsuit claims the driver improperly detained the boy after he was struck by another child...

Most candid souls will admit that the world is in spiritual pain. Continual disregard of Fatima's warning will doom generations to spiritual bankruptcy. This is especially true in the disregard for the First Saturday devotions. The America Needs Fatima campaign is making a special effort to help Catholics remember. Our Blessed Mother has given us the means to heal and restore order, harmony and peace with a simple solution of prayer and penance, and following the Five First Saturday's specific instructions. The America Needs Fatima staff is promoting this devotion in a 425,000 prayer-card campaign. Five individual cards have been...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

China’s ‘Golden Age,’ over five crucial centuries Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune Saturday, October 23, 2004 NEW YORK As they walk through the Metropolitan Museum’s ‘‘China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 A.D.,’’ many people will marvel at the new portrait of Chinese art and culture over five crucial centuries that comes across almost instantly. The myth of a monolithic, self-absorbed China is swept aside once and for all. . In a gripping introduction (sometimes difficult to follow because it is so packed with information), James Watt, the Met curator who masterminded this unforgettable exhibition, describes the intermingling of the...

Tropical Depression Five Advisory Number 2 Statement as of 11:00 PM AST on August 13, 2004 ...Depression moving rapidly westward toward the Windward Islands... Watches may be required for portions of the Lesser Antilles by Saturday morning. Interests in the Lesser Antilles and the eastern Caribbean Sea should closely monitor this system over the next few days. At 11 PM AST...0300z...the center of Tropical Depression Five was located near latitude 9.4 north...longitude 48.3 west or about 895 miles...1440 km...east-southeast of the Windward Islands. The depression is moving toward the west near 21 mph ...33 km/hr...and this motion is expected to...

Five decades ago, Nazi case set precedent for military tribunals Connie Cass THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tuesday, July 06, 2004 - 12:00 AM WASHINGTON -- A German submarine slipped through dark waters toward New York's Long Island in June 1942, creeping so close it bumped the sandy bottom. A second settled into shallows along the Florida coast. Each sent ashore four men, who dragged crates of explosives up the beaches. They were under orders to blow up American railroads, bridges and factories. But none got the chance. All eight were arrested within two weeks. Within two months, six were executed. They...

Arsenic in Tuscany water 'five times limit' By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 26/06/2004) Britons holidaying in Tuscany this summer may be drinking up to five times the permissable level of arsenic in water without being told, The Telegraph has learnt. Although a national law limits arsenic to 10 microgrammes per litre, Tuscany used a legal loophole to pass a decree making an exception in many towns in the centre and south of the region.As a result, water can contain up to 50 microgrammes until the end of the year. Many of the towns involved, including Siena, are popular with...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Security forces have killed five wanted militants and were pursuing others after shootouts that spread over two days in the port city of Jiddah, a Saudi security official said Friday. Police cordoned off the al-Safaa neighborhood late Thursday after receiving a tip that some militants were in the neighborhood, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry. "The wanted militants started shooting, using different kinds of weapons." The ministry said three militants were killed in shooting late Thursday, and one was arrested. Media reports had earlier said two terrorists were killed and three captured. The...

Army 'can't go to war for five years' By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 25/03/2004) Britain's Armed Forces will not be able to mount another operation on the scale of the Iraq war for another five years, the Chief of Defence Staff said yesterday. Gen Sir Michael Walker told the Commons defence committee that the Army in particular would not be able to recover from operations in Iraq until 2008 or 2009. "I think we have already accepted that we cannot do another large-scale operation now," he said. "We are unlikely to be able to get to large-scale much before...

There are four planets visible to the naked eye now, and a fifth will begin to make brief appearances in the evening sky during the week of March 14. Not until April 2036 will there be another chance to readily see all five naked-eye planets at the same time in the evening.Last week I provided an overview of this great planet panorama. Here I discuss details of what to expect for each planet. NightSky Friday Visit SPACE.com each Friday to explore a new backyard astronomy feature. >>Go to NightSky Friday archive page    Images THE SETUP: The solar system seen from...

I'll retire in five years, says Mugabe, 80 today (Filed: 21/02/2004) Robert Mugabe suggested yesterday in an interview marking his 80th birthday that he would retire as Zimbabwe's president within five years. "In five years [I will be] here still boxing, writing quite a lot, reading quite a lot and still in politics," he said. "I won't leave politics but I will have retired, obviously." Mr Mugabe, 80 today, has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980. He has left his retirement plans open over the past year despite speculation that he wants a graceful exit in the...

Compulsory sex education for five-year-olds will be demanded today by government advisers on teenage pregnancy, as an essential step towards halving the under-18 concep tion rate by 2010. The teaching of sex and relationships in primary schools is not progressing fast enough to prepare children for the earlier onset of puberty, the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy will warn ministers in its annual report. The advisers have been encouraged by a 10% reduction in the teenage conception rate since 1998, and they attribute part of this improvement to more confident teaching of personal, social and health education (PSHE) in...

Five year battle to oust Hamza revealed By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor (Filed: 02/07/2003) Abu Hamza, the radical Muslim cleric, was able to use a mosque as a base for extremist activities for almost five years after the first complaints against him, it was revealed yesterday. Abu Hamza A report by the Charity Commission on its decision to ban the claw-handed imam from the Finsbury Park mosque in London disclosed how he had thwarted attempts to eject him since May 1998. Hamza turned the building into a headquarters for Islamic fundamentalists hostile to western values. Yet it was not...

A couple from Marina del Rey were among the five people who died Friday when a light plane crashed into an apartment building in the Fairfax district, relatives said Monday. Tony Vinatieri, 42, and Bonnie Vinatieri, 41, had joined the flight to Sun Valley, Idaho, because the pilot, Jeffrey T. Siegel, was a contractor who wanted to show them houses he had built there, John Vinatieri of Napa said.

Oregon voters have rejected a temporary income tax surcharge -- handing a major victory to the state Libertarian Party, which led the fight against the proposed tax hike. On January 28, in a statewide referendum, voters rejected Measure 28 by 55%-45%. Had it passed, the initiative would have raised taxes by $725 million over three years. "We are very happy tonight," said Oregon LP Executive Director Richard Burke, as the magnitude of the anti-tax vote became clear. "We were very surprised by the margin." Just eight days earlier, a statewide poll by Portland's KATU Television had said the vote was...

East Timor in flames after five die in student riots By Kathy Marks in Sydney 05 December 2002 East Timor was placed under a virtual state of emergency yesterday, with a curfew in the capital, Dili, after student riots in which up to five people were killed and the Prime Minister's house was burnt down. The anger erupted after police shot dead a demonstrator, according to witnesses. Hundreds of protesters looted shops and set fire to buildings, leaving part of the city in smouldering ruins. Witnesses said police fired into the crowd, but the number of deaths was unclear. One...

A Commentary by Dr. Doug Rokke Former US Army's DU team health physicist Former US Army's DU Project Director 10-14-2 Expected US Casualties From War A Commentary by Dr. Doug Rokke Former US Army's DU team health physicist Former US Army's DU Project Director 10-14-2 The upcoming battle Gulf War II will result in casualties that include: * killed in action * wounded in action * killed in accidents * and additional casualties that do not show up until after the completion of hostilities. During the Gulf War between 1990 and 1991 the United States military incurred: 467 individuals wounded...

KARIN LAUB, Associated Press WriterFriday, September 27, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/09/27/international1405EDT0651.DTL (09-27) 11:05 PDT JERUSALEM (AP) -- When Israeli helicopter gunships zeroed in on the chief Hamas bomb maker, he was stuck in traffic in Gaza City's most crowded neighborhood at a time when students were pouring out of two nearby elementary schools. Despite the clear risk to civilians, the pilots slammed two missiles into Mohammed Deif's Mercedes. The tally: two dead bodyguards and 35 wounded bystanders, including 15 children. Deif, wanted by Israel for more than a decade, escaped with moderate injuries. Israel's desire to settle scores...

America's New "Sucker Punch" Strategy Patrick J. Buchanan September 25 2002 Inherent in the Natural Law right of self-defense is the right to strike first if one's life is in peril. If a criminal demands your money at gunpoint, you have no moral obligation to inquire if he also intends to kill you before shooting him. People have an innate sense of this right. Americans thus rallied to the side of Bernie Goetz, the "Subway Vigilante," who, threatened by thugs with screwdrivers demanding five dollars, dropped all four in that subway car in the style of Wyatt Earp. Nor is...

By agreeing to allow the unconditional return of weapons inspectors, Iraq has done well to expose – sadly, not halt – the Bush administration's unstoppable agenda. This gesture by Iraq was not so much a "stunning turnabout" – as the media characterized it – but a culmination of a plain (and quite reasonable) attempt by an economically desperate Iraq to tie the return of inspectors to the lifting of sanctions. This failed! Its predictably disgruntled response confirms that the Bush administration doesn't want Saddam to roll over, but wants, very plainly, to sock it to Saddam! During his address to...