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TONGREN, China - A Tibetan monk crouched in the quiet courtyard of a nearly deserted monastery and bitterly recalled the words he and his fellow monks have been forced to recite every year at government-organized classes: "I love this country." The "patriotic education classes" have been imposed on the monks for the past decade, but the young monk in the centuries-old Rongwo monastery still can speak his own mind to a journalist. "We want freedom," he said. "We want the Dalai Lama to come back to his land." The monastery is located in the valley town of Tongren, in Qinghai...

Grab bag; a rare picture of Kerguelen from space (usually cloud-covered) and a nice picture of Bryce Canyon. Sorry I missed last week. If you click the Kerguelen picture, you get a 250-meter resolution version. Even though there have been surveys, supposedly there are still places on Kerguelen that have never been visited by a human being in recorded history. Bryce Canyon from Bryce Point

BOISE, Idaho – Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote has died. Robert Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made couch potatoship possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday. In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime. The National Academy of Television...

I have a few questions about living in Alaska...

Electrical device is likely behind the interference. A mysterious "dead zone" in Oakland Park has rendered dozens of remote-control car locks impotent over the past several weeks. In a five-block area of warehouses and small businesses near Dixie Highway and Floranada Road, nobody can explain why the gadgets fail to work. Motorists have had to get into cars the old-fashioned way -- with a key. "It worked at home, it worked at church, it worked everywhere else but here at work," said Lynne Masters, whose attempts to unlock her car by remote have been stymied in the so-called dead zone....

Coalition Forces Deliver Cement to Remote Afghan Village An irrigation canal, built with the cement, will supply water for drinking and for the crops. By Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Pete CasianoProvincial Reconstruction Team - Gardez PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Sept. 5, 2006 -- The 3rd Brigade Support Troops Battalion’s Civil Affairs Team in coordination with the Gardez Provincial Reconstruction Team delivered more than 1,200 pounds of concrete to a remote mountain village in Paktya Province. The Coalition forces stationed in Gardez traveled with the Paktya Director of Irrigation to the remote mountain village of Azghana. The cement will be...

U.S. Air Force Maj. Kurt Workmaster, Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team physician assistant, checks the blood pressure of an elder in the Paryan District, Afghanistan, July 16, 2006. Three medics from the Panjshir PRT treated more than 200 patients during the Medical Civic Action Program, or MEDCAP, which was coordinated at the invitation of Panjshir Director of Health Dr. Jellani. U.S. Air Force photo by Air Force Tech. Sgt. John Cumper Medics Visit Remote Afghan District Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team treats more than 200 patients. By Air Force Capt. Joe Campbell Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team PANJSHIR PROVINCE, Afghanistan, July 25,...

AKASHAT, Iraq (Feb. 28, 2006) -- In the battle to win the confidence and trust of the Iraqi people, Marines from 6th Civil Affairs Group guide the way. Once a city has been swept free of insurgents by coalition forces, these Marines are charged with providing aid to Iraqis to improve their quality of life and help them rebuild. Cpl. Michael C. Kissiah, Jr., of Charlotte, N.C., has come to the forefront to provide aid to the thousands who reside inside this city, located in western Al Anbar Province. The 24-year-old’s duties routinely take him to this city to deliver...

Remote front line in the war on bird flu In a small laboratory in a Budapest suburb, scientists are developing a vaccine which could prevent a global pandemic Daniel McLaughlin in Pilisborosjeno Sunday October 30, 2005 The Observer The road from Budapest meanders through forested hills and quiet villages, before reaching a neat yellow building guarded by an old man in a boiler suit and a barking alsatian. This is the unlikely front line in the global war against bird flu. At this laboratory, Hungary is leading the fight against the H5N1 virus, which has arrived in Europe after killing...

RED DEVIL, Alaska, Aug. 22, 2005 – Air Force engineers brought a gift of light to this remote Alaskan village last week. In the small village of Red Devil, 250 air miles west of Anchorage, air travel is the sole means to enter and leave the town. The 4,750-foot gravel airstrip lined with orange cones is essentially the town's lifeline to the rest of the state. This lifeline was significantly strengthened Aug. 17 when airmen from the 611th Civil Engineer Squadron, based at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, installed a runway lighting system. Red Devil, along with 62 other communities,...

Today I propose we the American people (Freepers) start voting with our remotes. Allow me to explain. We are at war with an enemy that seeks our total destruction. In order to defeat this enemy, we the American people must reach a common bond with a common purpose and that being total Victory. While this war may last decades, we cannot loose unless we do not stay united. However, if we are divided from internal struggles, there is a chance our civilization will be destroyed and replaced with a Muslim culture. The most dangerous internal struggle I see today is...

Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...

A security flaw that could let an attacker remotely crash computers running Windows exists in several versions of the operating system, not just Windows XP. Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack that exploits a problem in the Remote Desktop Protocol, Microsoft said in an advisory on Saturday. RDP is a protocol that enables remote access to Windows systems. Because of a flaw in the way Windows handles remote desktop requests, an attacker could crash a PC by sending a malformed remote request, Microsoft said. The advisory was released after the security researcher...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Yale University researchers say their study that used lasers to create remote-controlled fruit flies could lead to a better understanding of overeating and violence in humans. Using the lasers to stimulate specific brain cells, researchers say they were able to make the flies jump, walk, flap their wings and fly. Even headless flies took flight when researchers stimulated the correct neurons, according to the study, published in the April 7 issue of the journal Cell. Scientists say the study could ultimately help identify the cells associated with psychiatric disorders, overeating and aggressiveness. Biologists have long known...

RED LAKE, Minn. (AP) - The Indian reservation where 10 people died in a shooting spree Monday is located in a remote area of northern Minnesota, and is home to one of the poorest tribes in the state. About 5,000 people live on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, almost all of them American Indians. The Red Lake Chippewa Tribe itself has about 9,400 enrolled members. The reservation is about 240 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, and the town of Red Lake is about 75 miles south of the Canadian border. Nearly 39 percent of the families on the reservation...

During Tsunami Remote Viewing primitive tribes in Andaman Nicobar Islands of India Staff Reporter January 02, 2005 Indian Military personnel is finally reaching the remote islands of Andaman and Car Nicobar. There is massive devastation especially in Nicobar Islands. The inhabitants in these islands consists of tribal and non-tribal mainstream population. Thousands of people are dead and the coastal areas just evaporated. The total population before Tsunami of these tribes was approximately 28,000, which accounts for about 9% of the total population of these Islands. The other 91% population consists of mainstream settlers and the military personnel. The rescue teams...

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!

Link post: to alert interested readers to the image and thread in the FR "chat" section. Please post all comments on that thread. Geology Picture of the Week, February 22-28, 2004: Mount Belinda Eruption

Click image for full-size version; click article link or read text below for explanation.

On Sunday 16 February, the Zaytoun neighbourhood east of Gaza City was rocked by an explosion that killed six members of the Hamas military wing, the Izz Eddin Al-Qassam Brigades, and wounded a seventh, writes Mohammed Najib. Early reports suggested the blast was caused by a car bomb which had detonated next to the group. However, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza told JTIC that the men had been killed while preparing to test an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that exploded next to them without warning. "The Qassam Brigades members who were killed bought the UAV through an Israeli Arab and...