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Lawmaker's warning: Vote in New Orleans race could tip taxman U.S. actor/comedian Bill Cosby makes a face during a rally for voting rights of displaced residents in New Orleans April 1, 2006. Many citizens scattered across the country since Hurricane Katrina may be unable to vote in the city's April 22 mayoral election, according to rally organizers. REUTERS/Lee Celano BATON ROUGE, La. When New Orleans residents scattered about the country by Hurricane Katrina cast their ballots in the mayor's race, they'll be giving state tax collectors a way to locate them. One Louisiana lawmaker says he wants people to know...

If you’ve seen the movie “Minority Report” and marveled at the transparent computer screens used by Tom Cruise, you’ll appreciate what German researchers have concocted in their labs: entirely transparent OLED (organic light emitting diode) pixels. The researchers, located at the Technical University of Braunschweig, are claiming the development to be a world’s first. Their approach is to use transparent TFTs (thin-film transistors) made of a 100-nanometer-thick layer of zinc-tin-oxide, which transmits more than 90 percent of visible light. Such transistors are more often made of silicon, which is used for LCDs (liquid crystal displays) but is highly absorptive in...

Unmanned aerial vehicles have soared the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq for years, spotting enemy encampments, protecting military bases, and even launching missile attacks against suspected terrorists. Now UAVs may be landing in the United States. A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday heard testimony from police agencies that envision using UAVs for everything from border security to domestic surveillance high above American cities. Private companies also hope to use UAVs for tasks such as aerial photography and pipeline monitoring. "We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United...

From Anchorage it takes 90 minutes on a propeller plane to reach this fishing village on the state's southwestern edge, a place where some people still make raincoats out of walrus intestine. This is the Alaskan bush at its most remote. Here, tundra meets sea, and sea turns to ice for half the year. Scattered, almost hidden, in the terrain are some of the most isolated communities on American soil. People choose to live in outposts like Dillingham (pop. 2,400) for that reason: to be left alone. So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up...

RFID: Europe Wants to Tag You From the desk of Elaib Harvey on Sun, 2006-03-12 20:45 Am I the only one who is a tad concerned about the new RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) Policy for Europe? I hope not. This year data retention legislation was introduced by the European Parliament and now we have the execrable Viviane Reding at a major conference in Hanover burbling about the Commission’s new consultation on the electronic tagging technology. Given that Commission Press Releases are normally bland to the point of ennui the following is quite something, “But their power to report their...

New Yorkers, get ready for your closeup. The NYPD is installing 505 surveillance cameras around the city - and pushing to safeguard lower Manhattan with a "ring of steel" that could track hundreds of thousands of people and cars a day, authorities revealed yesterday. .. The NYPD also has applied for $81.5 million in federal aid to install surveillance cameras, computerized license plate readers and vehicle barriers around lower Manhattan, Kelly said. .. But don't expect the NYPD to install its cameras without battling the New York Civil Liberties Union. The watchdog group's associate legal director, Chris Dunn, questioned the...

You might expect to see cameras taking pictures of beautiful scenic shots at a park. But installing surveillance cameras to prevent lewd behavior would be a first for the city. Last year, nearly 300 people were cited for indecent exposure in various Metro parks. So common are the complaints, it's earned Cedar Hill a reputation. "This is about families taking their children to feed the ducks in the afternoon and being accosted by men doing things that you and I wouldn't even talk about on TV,” said Metro councilman Michael Craddock. But that hasn't stopped the talk at city council...

I just broke down and bought a 26 inch HDTV/LCD Monitor. This thing has everything. DVI/PC/AVI/Svideo. Two inputs and outputs for everything, 800 to 1 contrast ratio, Game modes, Stereo. I'm watching TV in the lower right corner while surfing the net. Walmart actually had one I could afford...sort of. It’s a PC monitor. It’s a TV monitor. It’s the only screen you’ll ever need – the IT-23M1U LCD IT-TV. The possibilities are amazing. Work on your PC and watch your favorite TV show or DVD at the same time, courtesy of multi-screen functions. Or enjoy the wide-screen TV via...

BAGHDAD, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A female Western journalist was kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday and her translator killed, police said. They said she was on her way to a meeting with a Sunni Arab leader when a car carrying an unknown number of gunmen blocked her vehicle in the Adel district near Malik bin Anas mosque in west Baghdad. The gunmen shot dead her driver, an Iraqi journalist who also worked as her translator, abandoned their car and drove off in hers. There has been a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq over the past few months...

A former U.S. Senate majority leader says he never agreed to let the Bush administration eavesdrop, without court approval, on phone calls that cross U.S. borders. Democrat Tom Daschle contradicts President Bush, who says Congress granted him the authority in legislation authorizing the use of force against al-Qaida after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post Friday, Mr. Daschle says lawmakers granted the president extra powers to pursue al Qaida, but specifically turned down a White House request to use those powers inside the United States. President Bush last week confirmed he secretly...

Former US President to Monitor PA Elections 00:55 Dec 06, '05 / 5 Kislev 5766 (IsraelNN.com) Former US President Jimmy Carter is expected to arrive in the region ahead of the Palestinian Authority (PA) elections in January. Carter will head the election supervisors who will be responsible for ensuring the election is held in a fair and transparent fashion. Also expected to join the foreign observer force is former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Friday, November 11, 2005 16:24 IST JNW HEADLINE NEWS PA: Israel may not monitor our compliance By Ryan Jones November 11th, 2005 The Palestinian Authority objects to Israel being able to directly monitor its compliance with signed agreements to prevent the smuggling of terrorist arms into territories under its control, particularly the recently Jew-purged Gaza Strip. Ongoing dispute over Israel's insistence on being able to watch the Rafah Crossing along the Gaza-Sinai border via live video feed is holding up a deal on reopening the crossing. Their track record of non-compliance notwithstanding, the “Palestinians” are adamant the cameras would be...

Tomorrow (22 September) the Christian Science Monitor has a story by Alexandra Marks entitled “A louder drumbeat for independent Katrina probe.” The Monitor is one of the nation’s ten best papers. But the article entirely misses the point. Senators Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton also missed the same point. The article featured a photograph of them with a caption referencing their “calls” for such a “commission.” Why do we have a Congress. Let’s review. When the First Congress met in 1789, it had certain obvious duties. Write the first laws. Provide for the first officials and judges. Pass the first...

Overview: According to the document released by the Iranian government, a polling station for the presidential elections in Iran was located near me in Tucson, Arizona at the Southern Arizona Association for Visually Impaired (SAAVI). I drove there around 9am and the receptionist confirmed that, indeed, voting would be from 3pm-7pm. I arrived back on the scene around 4pm with my camera and notepad in hand and entered the polling station. After a brief look around, I asked the man in charge, the “poll monitor,” if I could interview him about the polling process, telling him that I am a...

On April 22 I was presented with the 2005 Media Award by the New Jersey Family Policy Council at their annual banquet. While honored to receive such recognition, upon deeper reflection, I can’t help but ask myself the question: Was there no one else more qualified? Is there really such a dearth of professional, family-friendly journalists in newsrooms across our state that the Family Policy Council felt compelled to award a businessman moonlighting as a columnist? Apparently the answer is yes. A University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy study found that journalists who were surveyed picked Democrat John Kerry...

<p>Though the war on terror continues, the U.S. government has left the public completely exposed to the aftermath of a radiological attack. There is no better evidence of this than the actions of the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS is very focused on interdiction, government continuity and infrastructure protection, but it has not yet prepared for civil defense, which is the protection of civilians in time of war or disaster.</p>

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!

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR IS REPORTING THAT A SOVIET "TEST KIT" WITH SARIN SAMPLES WAS FOUND BY IRAQI ARMY PERSONNELL, BUT THAT MORTARS FOUND NEAR IT SHOWED A POSSIBLE INTENT TO WEAPONIZE IT. !!!! BREAKING NEWS: NPR REPORTS SARIN GAS POSSIBLY FOUND IN FALLUJAH. EMBEDDED NPR REPORTER ANN GARRELS REPORTS A MARINE UNIT IN FALLUJAH FOUND WHAT THEY BELEIVED MAY BE SARIN GAS. GO TO    AGAIN, GARRELLS SAYS THAT THE EXPERTS HAVE NOT EXAMINED THE FIND AS OF YET. WE'LL UPDATE ON THIS AS WE HEAR ANYTHING. New rebel tactics emerge in Fallujah. Marines faced a tough fight...

The 2004 presidential election has come and gone with nary a hitch. The problems that mired the 2000 election, some of them real but most of them fabricated, were practically nonexistent this go-around. Of course, there were a few blips and minor kinks that surfaced, but we can rest assured that these too will be corrected. Why? Because our electoral system is a certified thing of beauty. It places accountability at the local level, thereby empowering citizens to effectively police themselves and solve any unique problems that only they can diagnose. Score another one for our Founding Fathers. The only...

"About 60 mainly European election observers have taken up their posts in six states, including Florida and Ohio, saying they hope their presence will serve as a "preventative to the shenanigans" during voting tomorrow." .................The OSCE rules do not allow observers to do much more than make sure that local rules are followed. If they see someone burning ballots in the alley, they are not permitted to interfere. Nor are they supposed to criticize the army of lawyers, negative advertising or simplistic campaign speeches that many of them seem to find jarring. Nevertheless, the observers hope their presence will serve...