Free Republic

Orlando Sanford International Airport officials have restarted a push to hire private security forces, relying this time on a new law championed by U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park. Replacing federal Transportation Security Administration workers with contract employees would result in a more "customer friendly" operation, airport president Larry Dale said at a Tuesday news conference. But he could not say if a switch would result in lower costs because he has not seen any financial proposals from the three companies the airport has on a short list for the work. Dale originally tried to boot TSA almost two years...

Gobekli Tepe is located in southern Turkey near the modern-day city of Urfa. It contains at least 20 stone rings (circles within a circle) that date back more than 11,000 years. T-shaped limestone blocks line the circles and reliefs are carved on them. Long ago, people would fill in the outer circle with debris before building a new circle within... Ancient blades made of volcanic rock that were discovered at what may be the world's oldest temple suggest that the site in Turkey was the hub of a pilgrimage that attracted a cosmopolitan group of people some 11,000 years ago....

St Patrick's Day has always been a time when Americans have acknowledged their Irish roots, whether real or desired, by celebrating Irish culture in a variety of ways. Some say there is no better window to understanding Irish culture than language. While the Irish language has struggled to survive alongside the more dominant English language, one man from Ireland is helping to lead a modest revival in the US. Through his efforts, a growing number of Irish Americans are forging stronger ties to their Hibernian ancestors. The BBC heard from Ronan Connolly who teaches Irish language classes at Catholic University...

I have an 03 Honda Accord EX with about 155K miles on it which I've purchased recently which has had no problems until this morning: it will miss and then seems to go into a protect mode of some sort and will not run over 2500 rpm until I turn the key off and on again, then it's good for another mile or so until it does it again. Has anybody else ever seen or heard of this problem? It may actually be a problem with the on-board computer, you'd think if it was a plug or bad gas it...

There are little Prii, big Prii, plug-in Prii, racing Prii, and now – just revealed at this weekend’s Tokyo Auto Salon – there are full-fledged, fully-equipped, and very Real Toyota Prius camper vans. Starting with a new, 3rd-gen Prius, the conversion company adds a streamlined, fiber-reinforced plastic shell that expands the Prius’ interior into something that’s, well, livable! The “living area” has room for a small coffee table with booth-type seating and underseat storage which can be converted to a queen-size bed (as shown, below), with an additional “permanent” bed in the forward section (above the cockpit). At the rear...

...an article in The New York Times which reported on the discovery in Acre, only a few hours travel from the Madre de Dios Indians, of extensive, deep straight trenches, ridges and mounds dating back to pre-Columbian times, indicating a large, well-developed society. This was just the latest evidence that the Amazon, or at least parts of it, was heavily populated by well-organized societies in much the same way as the high Andes were remodeled by the Tiahuanuco, the Chavin, the Chachapoyas, the Huari, and the Incas. Over the past couple of decades the pre-history of the Americas has been...

One of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Christian burial sites in Britain has been discovered in a village outside Cambridge. The grave of a teenage girl from the mid 7th century AD has an extraordinary combination of two extremely rare finds: a 'bed burial' and an early Christian artefact in the form of a stunning gold and garnet cross. The girl, aged around 16, was buried on an ornamental bed -- a very limited Anglo-Saxon practice of the mid to later 7th century -- with a pectoral Christian cross on her chest, that had probably been sewn onto her clothing. Fashioned from...

Human and animal fossilised footprints that may be from the Bronze Age have been exposed on a Ceredigion beach. Archaeologists are racing against changing tides to record and excavate the find in peat at Borth, which gives a snapshot of a time when the shore lay further west. The team believes the footprints could be 3,000 to 4,000 years old. Staff and students from the University of Wales Trinity St David are carrying out the work. A child's footprint and the cast taken of it in the peat at Borth As well as the footprints, a line of post holes...

Your family tree just got wider. Scientists have analyzed fossils found in China, and deemed them to be from a new human species unlike any ever identified before; say hello to your long-lost cousin. The skull, originally unearthed in 1979 in the Guangxi Province of China, has only now been fully analyzed (talk about procrastination, right?). It turns out that it has thick bones, extremely prominent brow ridges, a very short, flat face, and also lacks our typically human chin. "In short, it is anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree," explains researcher Darren Curnoe to New...

Research by Dr. Christopher Noto and a team of paleontologists published this week in the international journal Palaios describes recently discovered fossils from the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago) of Texas that show evidence of attack by a new species of giant crocodyliform (croc-relative). Bite marks on fossil bones provide a rare glimpse of predatory behavior that indicate this animal was a top predator that regularly consumed turtles and even ate dinosaurs... For most extinct species, scientists can never directly observe such predatory behavior. Paleontologists must resort to other, indirect indicators. Bite marks on fossil bone are a great...

Hand axes, small handheld stone tools used by ancient humans, could have served as the first commodity in the human world thanks to their durability and utility. The axes may have been traded between human groups and would have served as a social cue to others, Mimi Lam, a researcher from the University of British Columbia, suggested in her talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting here on Feb. 18. "The Acheulean hand ax was standardized and shaped, became exchanged in social networks and took on a symbolic meaning," Lam said. "My suggestion was that...

El Caminito del Rey (English: The King's little pathway) is a walkway or via ferrata, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in the district of Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to Camino del Rey. In 1901 it became obvious that workers at the hydroelectric power plants at Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide for transport of materials, and for the inspection and maintenance of the channel. Construction of the walkway took four years and it was finished...

Two sons of US property mogul Donald Trump have come under fire after pictures emerged of them posing with the corpses of African animals during a hunting trip. Donald Junior and Eric Trump spent a week in the Zimbabwean bush in August 2010, and are pictured standing next to trophy kills of a Cape buffalo, a waterbuck, a leopard, a civet cat, a crocodile and a kudu.

When it comes to the homestead, high gas prices hits us hard. If the farmers pay higher fuel costs, they are going to pass that cost on to consumers. We have to buy hay for our livestock. The farmers we buy from will raise the hay prices to cover their added fuel expenses. This in turn, has small livestock owners like ourselves, selling off breeding stock.

Starting on Monday, the fare is going up from 25 cents to 50 cents. But Metro pass holders and those who purchase commuter books will receive discounts. The fare increase is needed to help cover the line's operating costs. Until now, Angels Flight has relied on donations to make up the difference.

Two Slovak children were suspected of burning down a large gothic castle in eastern Slovakia when their experimentation with smoking went wrong, police said on Sunday. Police were investigating two boys on suspicion that they set grass at the foot of the Krasna Horka castle on fire on Saturday when they tried to light up cigarettes... "A unit sent to the site found that two local boys aged 11 and 12 were trying to light up a cigarette and because of careless use of safety matches, they set grass at the castle hill on fire," Mesarova said. The castle subsequently...

Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-level technology. But in fact, they're so ingenious that it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time -- it was the Bronze Age -- humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps. The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder. "The stroke of brilliance was the wheel-and-axle concept," said David Anthony, a professor of anthropology at...

Ongoing hostilities in Syria are now placing the remarkable ancient monumental ruins of Palmyra in the line of fire. Since the violence that erupted in Syria nearly one year ago -- a war that has so far left thousands dead and become one of the world's biggest stories -- the damage to the country's ancient cities and cultural sites as a result of the conflict has remained largely unknown. One report to surface last week, however, tells the story of Palmyra, where residents say the Syrian Army has set up camp in a citadel that overlooks both the modern city...

Not surprisingly, these paintings attract tens of thousands of visitors every year. However, there is another aspect to this art that often escapes attention, but which is now providing scientists with fresh insights into our recent evolution. Instead of studying those magnificent galloping horses and bisons, researchers are investigating the symbols painted beside them. These signs are rarely mentioned in most studies of ancient cave art. Some are gathered in groups, some appear in ones or twos, while others are mixed in with the caves' images of animals. There are triangles, squares, full circles, semicircles, open angles, crosses and groups...

(WXYZ) - Ford Motor is stepping up to help the victims of the recent wave of tornadoes. The Ford Motor Company Fund is donating $75,000 to the American Red Cross and the Dare to Care food bank in Louisville. Ford employees are expecting to raise another $25,000 through donations to help their neighbors. The money will be used to help victims of the tornadoes in southern Indiana and Kentucky. Other employees are volunteering their time to help victims rebuild in southern Ohio.