Free Republic

He's the last man standing on refugee island and costs Australia £8m a year By Nick Squires in Sydney (Filed: 06/10/2006) He is possibly the loneliest refugee in the world and he is being maintained at a cost of £8 million a year. Mohammed Sagar has spent the past five years living in a detention camp on Nauru, a sun-baked rock in the middle of the south Pacific. He was one of 1,500 refugees from the Middle East and Afghanistan sent to the near-bankrupt republic under Australia's so-called Pacific Solution to boatloads of people fleeing their homelands. They were intercepted...

Flood made Britain into an island 'in 24 hours' By Tim Hall (Filed: 25/09/2006) Britain may have become an island after a Biblical-style flood split it from Europe in less than 24 hours, according to new geological research. The flood would have taken place between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, sweeping away hills between Britain and what is now France. The theory could rewrite British prehistory, as current text-books teach that Britain - once a peninsula of continental Europe - split from the great land mass after a long process of erosion and rises in sea levels. However, surveys of...

On Tuesday, the GOP primary in Rhode Island pits Sen. Lincoln Chafee against Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey. Whatever else may be said about Chafee, he has been a very reliable vote against obstructionist filibusters of judicial nominees. He's voted for cloture all 25 times (see details below the fold). According to Rasmussen, Chafee has pulled to within two points of Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse in his bid for re-election (i.e. 44% for Whitehouse and 42% for Chafee). Whitehouse previously had a six point lead. But Chafee must first face off against Laffey, on Tuesday. Rasmussen has Whitehouse leading Laffey 58%...

KHON TV - Super typhoon Ioke is barreling towards Wake Island It's big and packing quite a punch. Super typhoon Ioke is barreling towards Wake Island. The massive storm is churning around in the central pacific. It's packing winds of more than 160 miles per hour, a category five storm. Roy Matsuda from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center says, "it is projected to go along this track toward wake island as you can see and to reach Wake Island approximately Wednesday afternoon our time within 13 nautical miles." And because of that a team from Hawaii will head to Wake...

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy christened the amphibious assault ship Makin Island (LHD 8) in a ceremony Aug. 19 at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in Pascagoula, Miss. Silke Hagee, wife of Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Michael W. Hagee, served as the ship’s sponsor. This is the first christening to be held at the Pascagoula facility since the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. Makin Island, like other ships under construction in the Gulf Coast last year, was significantly impacted by Katrina, which ravaged the area. Through the efforts of the Post-Katrina Clean-up Team, removing debris and identifying...

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy will christen Makin Island, the newest and last ship in the Wasp-class of amphibious assault ships, Aug. 19, during a 10 a.m. CDT ceremony at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in Pascagoula, Miss. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi will deliver the principal address at the ceremony. Silke Hagee, wife of Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Michael W. Hagee, will serve as ship’s sponsor. The ceremony will be highlighted by the time-honored Navy tradition of the sponsor breaking the bottle of champagne across the bow to formally christen the ship. Makin Island is named for...

A Japanese fisherman is reported to have been shot dead by a Russian patrol boat, near a disputed island chain. Japan's foreign ministry said that, if confirmed, the death was unacceptable. It also demanded the release of three surviving men from the Japanese boat, who are thought to have been detained by the Russians on a nearby island. Both Tokyo and Moscow lay claim to the four small islands, which Russia calls the southern Kurils and Japan the Northern Territories. The ongoing dispute has prevented the two nations signing a peace treaty to formally end hostilities from WWII. The islands...

Bald Head Island | Twenty-nine immigrants left Southport by boat early Tuesday morning to build homes on this Brunswick County island. Before they arrived, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped four boats ranging in size from 24 to 34 feet loaded with the construction workers. Immigration agents took custody of the workers, many of whom by Thursday were undergoing deportation proceedings. Twenty-two immigrants were charged with illegal entry into the United States, a misdemeanor, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That means they entered the country without permission. The fate of the seven other immigrants was unknown. Meanwhile, some Hispanic...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- With 14,000 laborers toiling day and night, the first of Dubai's three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents.The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what's billed as the largest land-reclamation project in the world, the product of five years of brute hauling of millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock.On Nov. 30, the palm will open to some 4,000 residents, said Issam Kazim, a spokesman for Dubai's state-owned developer Nakheel.When fully complete by 2010, the Palm Jumeirah will be an offshore city, with some...

Sakhalin Island is a remote and sparsely populated area in the farthest east section of Russia. It sits to the north of Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido. Its ports freeze over part of each year because, well, it is so dang cold. But Sakhalin is where the future may lie -- at least for Russia's big oil. The island is about 600 miles long -- about the length of California but about one/fourth the size -- and there are an estimated 45 billion barrels of oil equivalent that lie beneath its seas. California probably has that much, too, but the...

"Grottoes" (grottos?) can be both natural, man-made, or man-modified. Searching for grotto images finds many of these categories. This one struck me as pretty impressive, on the island of Malta. I had to shrink the image a bit; click on it for the full-size image. The second shot is of the notable tourist attraction Blue Grotto of Capri, Italy. There are a lot of pictures on the Web of this place; I couldn't find what I felt was a great one. The glow of the underwater illumination is pretty good; it appears that there is a considerable photographic challenge in...

Much as I might like to do something OTHER than volcanoes eventually, they keep doing interesting things! Two pictures from this site: New eruption on Aoba volcano, Vanuatu In November 2005, a mild eruption built a cinder cone lake in Lake Voui, a lake inside crater of Ambae volcano on Vanuatu. Below is what it looked like on January 9. The picture below was taken on May 28. I say there's some interestin' chemistry going on in that thar lake.

"Weather Disaster of Historic Proportions" Could Strike as Early as This Year... The northeast U.S. coast could be the target of a major hurricane, perhaps as early as this season, according to research announced today by the AccuWeather... Hurricane Center. "The Northeast is staring down the barrel of a gun," said Joe Bastardi, Chief Forecaster... "The Northeast coast is long overdue for a powerful hurricane...not a question of if but when." ... "If you examine past weather cycles that have occurred in the Atlantic, you will see patterns of storms," added Ken Reeves, Expert Senior Meteorologist and Director of Forecasting...

Did humans decimate Easter Island on arrival? 19:00 09 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes Early settlers to the remote Easter Island stripped the island’s natural resources to erect towering stone statues (Image: Terry L Hunt)The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival. Easter Island has often been cited as the classic example of a human-induced ecological catastrophe. The island – one of the most remote places on Earth – was...

Stone Age tribe kills fishermen who strayed on to island By Peter Foster in New Delhi (Filed: 08/02/2006) One of the world's last Stone Age tribes has murdered two fishermen whose boat drifted on to a desert island in the Indian Ocean. The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range. Sentinelese tribesmen prepare to fire arrows at the coastguard helicopter after the fishermen's murder They are believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world to remain isolated and...

Though this picture isn't from the Web site below, the first picture I found of this waterfall is from the Web site below. The second link is Amazing Planet's picture of Chamarel Falls. Amazing Planet has a lot of great nature photography, and I may borrow a couple more from there in the future. Amazing Planet Chamarel Falls, Mauritius In other news, the link below is to the USGS site for Augustine volcano (Alaska). They have a Webcam located on Augustine Island itself. Every now and then (it refreshes every 30 minutes), you can get a glimpse of the...

ATHENS, Greece - British and Greek archaeologists are preparing a major excavation on a tiny Greek island to try to explain why it produced history's largest collection of Cycladic flat-faced marble figurines. Artwork from barren Keros inspired such artists as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore but also attracted ruthless looters. Now experts are seeking insight into the island's possible role as a major religious center of the enigmatic Cycladic civilization some 4,500 years ago. Excavations will run April through June. "Keros is one of the riddles of prehistoric archaeology," said Peggy Sotirakopoulou, curator of the Cycladic collection at the Museum...

TIKRIT, Iraq (Army News Service, Jan. 6, 2006) – U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) met with Soldiers from his home state and local Iraqi leaders during a visit to the northwestern Iraqi city of Tal Afar Jan. 4. Reed was hosted by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, headquartered at Forward Operating Base Sykes. After receiving an operational update from the regiment, the former Army Ranger met with several troopers from his home state. Reed’s visit surprised one of his constituents, Pfc. Christopher Wright, a 20-year-old tank crewman from Ashaway, R.I. “I was pretty surprised when my first sergeant came to...

BAGHDAD (Army News Service, Nov. 30, 2005) -- Task Force Baghdad Soldiers found multiple weapons caches on an island in the Euphrates River Nov. 28. Military officials had been monitoring suspicious activity near the Euphrates River southwest of Baghdad for a couple of weeks. When conditions were right, Soldiers from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division sprung into action. “The timing was right to attack the target,” said 2nd BCT Commander Col. Todd Ebel. “The pieces of the puzzle fit close enough.” Bombs, rockets, grenades found Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment secured the objective and discovered three...

A community council issued an urgent plea to the Anchorage Assembly a few days ago: Please stop a plan to make radioactive materials in our neighborhood. Al Swank, who owns two houses along Delaney Park Strip, wants to manufacture radioactive medical tracers there. The material, a radioactive isotope, is injected into patients to locate cancer and is used in conjunction with PET scanners. Swank and some experts say producing these medical tracers is safe and won't harm anyone. But the South Addition Community Council's concerns prompted state health officials to adopt emergency rules Tuesday. And an Anchorage Assembly member has...