Free Republic

Eight times a week, travelers arrive at Los Angeles International Airport after a long journey from Sydney, Australia, eager to stretch their legs and spend money at tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants. These visitors, about 380 a day who spill out into the sunshine from Qantas Airlines flights and make Southern California their destination, stay in the area three weeks on average, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. They contribute $183 million a year to the region's economy. Come next month, Qantas will be taking these flights, and their multimillion-dollar economic benefit, to San Francisco, although its other 42...

Los Angeles airport officials said Wednesday that Airbus officials reneged on a promise to bring the new A380 jetliner to Los Angeles International Airport on its first U.S. test flight after the airport spent $9 million to accommodate the huge jet. Los Angeles World Airports officials claim that Airbus executives told them early last year that it would bring the A380 to LAX on its maiden U.S. flight if the airport expedited construction of a $9-million gate to accommodate the jet for an August 2006 flight, the Los Angeles Times reports. That was delayed after the jet experienced a...

A plane is reported to be in trouble in the skies of Los Angeles. The jet's landing gear is down and it has apparantly been circling for some time.

United Airlines will begin service from L.A./Palmdale Regional Airport to San Francisco on June 7, officials announced Monday. It will mark the return of commercial passenger service to the terminal adjacent Air Force Plant 42, following a brief period of limited service that ended a year ago. The twice-daily roundtrip flights will provide passengers with connections to more than 200 United domestic flights from the airline's San Francisco hub, as well as numerous flights throughout Asia, Mexico, Canada, London and Sydney, United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said. Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that owns and operates the Palmdale, Los...

JUNEAU, Alaska - About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines. "You have to live in Alaska to have this kind of outage scenario," said Gayle Wood, an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman. "This is the story of the overly ambitious eagle who evidently found a deer head in the landfill." The bird, weighed down by the deer head, apparently failed to clear the transmission lines, she said. A repair crew found the eagle dead, the deer head nearby. The power was out for less than 45 minutes...

A march for justice and against political correctness run amuck is scheduled for Feb 4 in Durham N.C.

The idea that a district attorney cannot be sued is one of those theories which, in real life, can only be stretched so far. Much of what I read indicates that not only is Mike Nifong way beyond the breaking point on that one, but that the city of Durham NC itself and Duke University itself are facing major kinds of legal liabilities in the lacrosse case. An article on Lew Rockwell's site spells out the liabilities which president Brodhead and other members of the administration and faculty of Duke face. As that article notes, Duke has legal liabilities which...

PALMDALE — Delta Airlines has proposed twice-daily flights from Palmdale to Salt Lake City and United Airlines has proposed twice-daily flights to San Francisco, under bids unsealed Monday by Los Angeles World Airports officials. Both Delta and United met the minimum requirements established in the search for an airline to provide Palmdale passenger service: at least two flights a day to a major hub in the western U.S. using 50-passenger regional jets, said Mark Thorpe, Los Angeles World Airports director of air service marketing. Officials of Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency which operates Los Angeles/Palmdale Regional Airport as...

It's official. "Nifong" is now a verb..... Nifonged is a verb that describes the railroading or harming of a person with no justifiable cause to do so, except for one's own gain. It can be used as a substitute for "screwed" and many other similar words. .... In a back-off column published this week, Sheehan wrote, "like others, I was outraged. And I wrote about it. I make no apology for that. It is not my job to wait for cases to be resolved and then walk through the aftermath and shoot the dead." I'm sure the Duke lacrosse players...

In a stunning rebuke to the North Carolina district attorney handling the Duke University rape case, the state bar today filed an ethics complaint against the prosecutor, claiming that he has made numerous press statements that were "prejudicial to the administration of justice" and also "engaged in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation." The North Carolina State Bar's complaint, a copy of which you'll find below, is filled with dozens of comments D.A. Mike Nifong (pictured at right) made following the alleged March rape of a stripper who had performed at a party attended by members of Duke's lacrosse...

You'd figure at some point to hear what Duke alumni might have to say about the events unfolding in the Duke rape case, and I seem to have found some of it, and this is some really, really good stuff: Main Discussion Forum88 Losers (the gang of 88 leftist profs who publically thanked black activists for marching/demonstrating against the Duke lacrosse teamAbout President (of Duke) Broadhead ...We all in the Duke Alumni Community should demand the immediate resignation of our spineless and repugnant president.... ...The President of Duke should resign. His conduct under fire was despicable... ...I will not give...

RAPE CASE Blacks aren't judging Nifong Community leaders await next step after dropping of charges FRANCO ORDOÑEZ fordonez@charlotteobserver.com While scrutiny of the Durham district attorney's handling of the Duke lacrosse case intensifies, key members of the county's influential black community still back the prosecutor, though cautiously. The district attorney, Mike Nifong, dropped rape charges Friday against former players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann after the 28-year-old accuser said she was unsure whether the players had penetrated her. The move spurred outrage against the district attorney for continuing a case many legal experts say has completely unraveled. But several...

BRODHEAD CALLS FOR NIFONG TO STEP DOWN AS PROSECUTOR Online Update: 12/22 Staff Reports Posted: 12/11/06 In response to Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's decision Friday to drop charges of rape in the Duke lacrosse case, President Richard Brodhead questioned Nifong's conduct and called for the district attorney to relieve himself of his duties in the case. Brodhead said Nifong's decisive public statements about the rape allegations and subsequent decision to drop the charge call into question of the validity of the remaining charges that have been brought against three members of the 2005-2006 men's lacrosse team--kidnapping and sexual offense....

LOS ANGELES - A one-month-old baby has been checked and cleared by a Los Angeles hospital after being put through an airport X-ray machine. Authorities at Los Angeles International Airport say an inexperienced traveler mistakenly put her grandson through a carry-on luggage screener. A startled security worker noticed the shape of a child and immediately pulled the baby out. A spokesman for LAX says the incident Saturday was an innocent mistake. In 1988, an infant in a car seat went through an X-ray machine at the airport.

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A disgruntled union plans a one-day walkout at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday, one of the year's busiest travel days. The Engineers and Architects Association, which represents more than 7,500 city engineers, architects and other professionals, said it was planning small, targeted strikes at different city departments on different days in the weeks ahead, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. About 200 union members work at LAX. A two-day August strike failed to get union members the pay raises they sought. EAA members, who have worked two years without a contract, rejected a city...

  Dog At Large!April 7, 2005 The Devil once made an offer to former Clinton lackey, Sandy Berger.  The Devil visited Berger's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you,” the devil said. " I’ll get you a top level security clearance; I’ll give you your 15 minutes of pathetic fame; I’ll make you the best liar in the world and I’ll let you get away with being a despicable scumbag. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, their children's souls and your country’s soul rot in hell for eternity." Berger...

About 300 protesters demanding unionization for hotel workers were arrested Thursday in a carefully choreographed, peaceful demonstration that shut down part of a busy thoroughfare near Los Angeles International Airport. The arrests came after months of coordination between national hotel workers' unions, labor leaders, immigrant groups and police, who advised the organizers on how to proceed without endangering public safety. "We hope to get better benefits, like health insurance coverage for our family, better wages, a lighter workload and respect, because right now we are being treated like slaves," said Evelina Alvarez, 55, a Mexican national and housekeeper at the...

DURHAM - One of three people who saw the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case at the crisis center where she first reported being sexually assaulted kept notes of her observations, defense lawyers said in a motion filed in court today. In the early hours of March 14, the accuser was taken to Durham Access Center because she reportedly met the criteria for involuntary commitment, defense lawyer Brad Bannon wrote in the motion filed in Durham County Court today. While there for 40 minutes, the accuser interacted with three women on the center's staff, the motion says. Gerri Lomuriel...

Abu Hamza, the militant, London-based Muslim cleric, maintained close contact with the leadership of al-Qa'eda during the years when it operated a worldwide terrorist network from Afghanistan, according to FBI files. Documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph state that Hamza, the former imam of Finsbury Park mosque, north London, dealt personally with Abu Zubeidah, Osama bin Laden's director of operations. Zubeidah, a Palestinian who is now in US custody, communicated bin Laden's instructions and messages from his hideout in Afghanistan to al-Qa'eda cells around the world. Hamza had the power to refer recruits to Zubeidah for "leadership training" in Afghan...

The United Nations announced Wednesday it has imposed sanctions on a man with dual Canadian and Sudanese citizenship who allegedly worked with Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaeda's one-time operations chief in Afghanistan. The UN Security Council committee in charge of anti-terrorism sanctions against al-Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban added Abu Sufian Al-Salamabi Muhammed Ahmed Abd Al-Razziq to its sanctions list on July 31. The move follows joint action taken in July by the U.S. State Department and Treasury Department. Abd Al-Razziq was deemed a terror risk, which immediately blocked all assets he has that are reachable by the U.S. government. The...