Free Republic

President George W Bush campaigned up and down a small rural stretch of the heartland yesterday, desperately seeking to shore up his position in a once safe region where Republicans are registering the first prickles of concern about his record - and his chances. With just a week to go before voting, Mr Bush focused his fire on Wisconsin and Iowa, two mid-western states that have become pivotal to his chances. He lost both narrowly to Al Gore in 2000 but now badly needs to win them as an insurance policy, given the state of play in Ohio and Florida,...

Putin: Ally or Terrorist? by William F. Jasper Counting Vladimir Putin as an ally against terrorism ignores his career in the murderous KGB/FSB and his ongoing support for terrorist regimes and organizations. ‘‘Lena Goncharuk, aged 38, said that she was the only one to survive out of a group of six who were ordered out of the cellar where they had been hiding and shot at point blank range. Resting in her hospital bed, her voice barely rising above a whisper, she said she had survived only by pretending to be dead." So reported Paul Wood from the Chechen border...

Every species seems to come and go. Some last longer than others, but nothing lasts forever. Humans are a relatively recent phenomenon, jumping out of trees and striding across the land around 200 000 years ago. Will we persist for many millions of years to come, or are we headed for an evolutionary makeover, or even extinction? According to Reinhard Stindl, of the Institute of Medical Biology in Vienna, the answer to this question could lie at the tips of our chromosomes. In a controversial new theory he suggests that all eukaryotic species (everything except bacteria and algae) have an...