Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2007 – Veterans health care facilities have a friend in a newly formed nonprofit organization. The Gerald T. Parks Memorial Foundation’s mission is to support veterans, past and present, by providing funds to help repair and develop military and Veterans Affairs health care facilities, one of the foundation’s chairmen said. “We have just begun our initial project,” Terri Pendleton said. “We received our (nonprofit) status on June 28. Since then, we have contacted the Dorn VA Hospital in Columbia, S.C., as well as the outpatient clinic in Rock Hill.” Both of the facilities have provided the...

FORT HUACHUCA — In the 1880s, a cavalry troop change-of-command ceremony on Brown Parade Field consisted of many solders on horseback. The days of horse-mounted soldiers are about gone, except for a few memorial or special units. So, it was that a small group — less than a squad — took part in the handover of the command of B Troop, 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Memorial) on the parade field Thursday. Dressed in the blue wool uniforms troopers wore in the late 1880s, at a time when the 4th Cavalry was stationed on the post, honorary Capt. Rodney T. Preuss...

Mitt Romney is said to be troubled by Mormonism's polygamous past. No mentions however about that whole black people being directly descended from Cain thing. Brigham Young, the 2nd Prophet of the Mormon sect said: "You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, sad, low in their habits, wild, and seemingly without the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind. "Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of...

Old vaccine hits TB like a blast from the past 21:00 12 March 2007 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie A vintage BCG vaccine developed in the 1920s may be due a comeback after researchers found it offers better protection against modern tuberculosis strains than the current BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin). TB kills nearly two million people every year. The BCG vaccine is a live, non-pathogenic strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis – the bacterium that causes TB. It is still given in some developing countries, where meningitis caused by the bacterium is a threat to children. However, BCG has lost favour with regard...

Skeleton crew digs up the past The skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon lord has been recovered as the hunt for buried treasure continues at a city allotment site. The removal of the seventh Century body follows the discovery of a rare ceremonial brass bowl on the site at Palmerston Road, Woodston, Peterborough. The priceless Coptic bowl, which was made more than 1,300 years ago in the Mediterranean, has led historical experts to conclude they had discovered the grave of an extremely wealthy Anglo-Saxon – probably a prince or a powerful warlord from the ancient kingdom of Mercia. Excavation by archaeologists from...

Delving deep into Britain's past By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News Neanderthals probably made this hand axe from Swanscombe in Kent Scientists are to begin work on the second phase of a project aimed at piecing together the history of human colonisation in Britain. Phase one of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) discovered people were here 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Phase two has now secured funds to the tune of £1m and will run until 2010. Team members hope to find out more about Britain's earliest settlers and perhaps unearth their fossil remains. They...

BAGHDAD — With all its history, Dhi Qar province in southern Iraq is looking toward the future. It’s scheduled later this month to become the second of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be transferred to provincial Iraqi control. This means Coalition security forces will pull back and let the local provincial Police and Iraqi military handle security of the province, a key step for the eventual withdrawal of Coalition forces from the country. Both Coalition officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have said they hope to have all 18 of the country’s provinces under Iraqi control by the end of...

Source: University of Washington Released: Mon 07-Aug-2006, 15:10 ET Ancient Bison Teeth Provide Window on Past Great Plains Climate, Vegetation Scientists have devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes in America's breadbasket, the Great Plains.The third molar from a bison jawbone grows to 3 inches in length and has several times more surface area than a quarter. Newswise — A University of Washington researcher has devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes...

Col. Ra'ad, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division Iraqi Army commander, leads American Soldiers through one of the few excavated areas in the Hatra ruins July 14. Ra'ad, whose brother-in-law work on the site in the 1970s, gave his endorsement to a coalition iniative to build a protective fence around the 2,000-year-old site to keep out looters. Story and photo by Sgt. Rachel Brune101st Sustainment Brigade,101st Airborne Division AL HADR -- Even as he is mired in the present concerns of coordinating logistics for Q-West Base Complex, Capt. Jesse Ballenger, 153rd Field Artillery Brigade, has one eye on the future,...

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (July 2) - In this village settled by thrifty Pilgrims, you can still buy penny candy for a penny, but tourist Alan Ferguson doubts he'll be able to dig any 1-cent pieces out of his pockets. He rarely carries pennies because "they take up a lot of room for how much value they have." Instead, like so many other Americans, he dumps his pennies into a bucket back home in Sarasota, Fla. Pity the poor penny! It packs so little value that merry kids chuck pennies into the fountain near the candy store, just to watch them splash...

Ex-soldier fights to make Japan remember its past By Colin Joyce in Tokyo (Filed: 07/06/2006) Japan's amnesia over its militarist past is being challenged by a compelling documentary film which suggests that the Japanese army breached the terms of surrender in 1945 by leaving soldiers to fight on in China. The Ants, to be released next month, records the struggle of the Japanese veteran Waichi Okumura to put atrocities on record and to tell the story of the forgotten soldiers left behind in China. Now 81, Mr Okumura revisited Shanxi province where he fought, including a pilgrimage to the place...

Jefferson can find hope in past caseFriday, May 26, 2006 Lolis Eric Elie "There are two sides to every story," Congressman William Jefferson said Monday. I doubt anybody would disagree with that general sentiment. But unanimity may have been lost when the New Orleans Democrat tried to apply that platitude to the specifics of his own situation. We've heard only the FBI's side, but it's pretty compelling. The feds say they have a videotape showing Jefferson accepting a $100,000 bribe. They also say most of that money ended up in Jefferson's freezer. Two of Jefferson's former associates have pleaded guilty....

FORT HUACHUCA — Soldiers of the 69th Signal Company returned home after nearly a year in Iraq where they put in a number of communication infrastructures. The 142 men and women of the unit — most of whom are cable dogs, individuals who install communication lines — stepped off the charter aircraft at 8 p.m. Thursday, concluding a trip from Kuwait to Arizona. Waiting for the ramp to be put up to the plane, soldiers of the 11th Signal Brigade, to which the 69th belongs, were as anxious to see their fellow soldiers get off the commercial airliner as probably...

Remains of past emerge from the dark - Ancient buddhist stupas discovered in bihar districts SANTOSH SINGH A mound discovered recently at Turki in Bihar’s Vaishali district. Telegraph picture Patna, May 7: A forgotten chapter of ancient history is emerging, slowly and silently, in Bihar with Patna’s KP Jaiswal Research Institute identifying as many as 70 Buddhist stupas, 50 of which remain buried underground. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) approved project plans to document all the stupas by September this year, said director of the institute Vijay Chaudhary. Buddhist texts indicate that when the Buddha died, he was cremated...

My web site JunkScience.com celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 1, 2006. To mark the event, this column spotlights 10 big junk science stories of the last 10 years. In no particular order, they are: 1. The most toxic manmade chemical? That’s what some called dioxin, a by-product of natural and industrial combustion processes and the “contaminant of concern” in the Vietnam-era defoliant known as Agent Orange. Billions of dollars have been spent studying and regulating dioxin, but debunking the scare only cost a few thousand dollars. Keying off Ben & Jerry’s claim on its ice cream packages that “there...

"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. "It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of...

Argentina unearths forgotten past By Daniel Schweimler BBC News, Buenos Aires Workers renovating a plaza in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, have stumbled across a forgotten cemetery. It was used by early immigrants in the first half of the 19th Century. The bodies have rested under what today is a neighbourhood plaza It was called the dissident cemetery since it was used by the Protestant and Jewish communities who were not allowed to bury their dead in the Roman Catholic cemeteries used by the majority of the population. The find has excited experts keen to learn more about their country's...

Clues lead to a shared past / Newly discovered 4th-century ceramics show Korean influence Kazuya Sekiguchi and Hiroshi Tanaka / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers The recent discovery of Sueki unglazed ceramics at an archaeological site in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, has experts rethinking the chronology of early exchanges between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The discovery revealed that the production of Sueki wares began in Japan in the late fourth century, 20 to 30 years earlier than archaeologists had believed, indicating that people from the Korean Peninsula who produced the ceramics arrived in Japan around the same time. Horseback riding and...

Reformist Writer Dr. Kamel Al-Najjar: "If the Muslims are Serious About Presenting the Radiant Face of Islam… They Must… Acknowledge Their Dark Past" In January 2006, the Austrian-Iraqi Association for Development held its first conference on extremism and terrorism around the world, in Vienna. The conference was attended by Arab, Muslim and European researchers, intellectuals and diplomats. In the closing statement, the participants made the following recommendations: to present the humane and rational side of Islam which calls for co-existence and acceptance of the other; to condemn all forms of violence and terrorism; to promote dialogue and cooperation among all...

Shaken but Not Stirred: Rock formations reveal past quakes' size limit Sid Perkins Dozens of precariously balanced rocks in southern California tell a story just by standing there: Earthquakes that have occurred on nearby faults in recent millennia haven't exceeded magnitude 7. Researchers developing seismic-hazard maps for that and other areas are pondering how such rocky evidence might best be incorporated into their next round of updates. STILL STANDING. Analyses of this 1.3-meter-tall stone southeast of Riverside, Calif., and other precariously balanced rocks suggest that recent earthquakes on nearby faults haven't exceeded magnitude 7. J. Brune, et al. The Elsinore...