Free Republic

Tehran Battles Plague of 'Mutant' Giant Rats with Army Snipers Tehran, the capital of Iran, is battling an invasion of "genetically mutated" giant rats. Iran has sent in sniper teams to clear Tehran's streets from the massive rodents weighting up to five kilos plaguing 26 district of the Iranian capital, the city's environmental agency said. "They seem to have had a genetic mutation, probably as a result of radiations and the chemical used on them," Ismail Kahram, Teheran city council environment adviser and university professor Ismail Kahram told Qudsonline.ir. "They are now bigger and look different. These are changes that...

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal appeals court has rejected the appeal of a man sentenced to death for killing two Oklahoma City women more than 25 years ago.</p> <p>The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Monday rejected the claims by 53-year-old Ronald Lott. Lott was convicted in December 2001 after several trial delays of raping and killing 83-year-old Anna Laura Fowler in 1986 and 93-year-old Zelma Cutler in 1987.</p>

The purple benches at San Francisco's Harvey Milk Plaza were removed Friday following growing complaint that they had become a loophole for drunks and others to avoid the city's ordinance prohibiting sitting or lying on walkways. The removal decision was made earlier this week by the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District, the community group that paid $40,000 to install the benches in 2010. "It's about time," said Dan Glazer, owner of the nearby bakeshop Hot Cookie. "They pee, they defecate and they leave their garbage there. They have no respect for the plaza or for Harvey Milk and what he...

Cockroach crawls all over NBC reporter during live shot - and he doesn't even flinch 'Don't move' is the all too familiar advice when it comes to creepy crawlies, and that is exactly what an NBC reporter did when a large red cockroach crawled over his back and shoulders during a live shot. Robert Kovacik was reporting from West Los Angeles when the disgusting bug appeared on his left shoulder, disappeared behind his back and the reappeared again on his right arm. Unflinching, the journalist carried on with his piece about a Manson-related murder spree as the cockroach climbed up...

Obama is pulling out the big guns just in time for the second presidential debate. The president has tapped his network of celebrity supporters, releasing a slew of star-studded ads on the Obama for America campaign website. At least five videos in the past few days have been posted on Obama’s campaign YouTube channel. They cover topics including early voting, gay rights, and the importance of getting out and voting (for Obama, of course.)

IRVINE – The tents have folded. The handmade signs denouncing the 1 percent are tucked away in the garage. But the 50 or so activists who gathered in the shade of a gazebo at Bill Barber Community Park on Sunday brought their same passionate spirit to a picnic potluck marking the one-year anniversary of Occupy Orange County CA. They wiggled their "spirit fingers" – silent applause – as speakers discussed some of the state propositions in the upcoming November election. They joined members of the Local Vocal Peace Choir in singing protest songs that included Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the...

The Left: An Occupy organizer admitted over the weekend that the goal of his protest group was to "overthrow the capitalist system and build communism." So the cat's out of the bag again on this bunch. Where is the outrage? The true agenda of the Occupy movement has been revealed — it's a totalitarian one. Billing itself as a spontaneous people's revolution and embraced by the media and Democrat political establishment, Occupy is really a destructive band of thugs whose goal is the violent demise of democracy. Speaking at a "People's Assembly" in Washington, former Amalgamated Transit Union local 689...

BULLETIN: Harbor Boulevard at Ball Road was temporarily closed about 2:30 p.m. as more than 200 protestors made their way toward a line of police in riot gear standing and on horseback, about a half mile from the Disneyland Resort’s pedestrian entrance on Harbor. About two dozen police on horseback and about 50 police in riot gear forced the group to turn east on Ball. People could be heard yelling: “The whole world is watching.” They also yelled at police: “Why can’t we go to Disneyland? You’re protecting the city, not your people.” Watch a live Ustream by Occupy LA...

Vermin Supreme At the Lesser-Known Democratic Candidates Presidential Forum. "When I'm President Everyone Gets A Free Pony"

On the eve of the Occupy Wall Street protests, it’s useful to take a look at its legacy. There are plenty of ways to measure the depravity that we’ve seen during the past several months, but it’s simplest to focus on the following themes: arrests, assaults, death and disease – plus the financial burden that the rest of the country has to shoulder in order to clean it all up:Number of arrests: 3,621 (via Occupy Arrests )Number of deaths: 4 – one murder, one suicide, one suspected drug overdose and one mystery.Number of sexual assaults: At least seven that have...

The Lew Rockwell site is disliked ,correctly, for a number of reasons here. However, I have found that many of the posters such as Tom Wood are gentlemen and will discuss substantive disagreements in a civil and even friendly fashion. But there are those whose combination of abuseness and vulgarity particularly towards the armed forces merit slamming. One such is Mr Gary Barnett, who appears to live a comfortable life in Montana and enjoys vilifying the armed forces. Today he posted 'Orders From On High Obeyed by Military!' I suggest every vet and member of the active forces and reserves...

National City, Calif.—A San Diego-area boxing gym that serves at-risk kids is showing what it takes to fight for what is right and to win.  A trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, March 14, 2011, to decide whether National City, Calif., may declare nearly 700 properties—including the gym—“blighted,” thus freeing the city to bulldoze these properties and make way for luxury condos among other private developments.  The trial will be held before the Honorable Steven R. Denton, Superior Court of California, Hall of Justice, 330 W. Broadway in San Diego, Calif. The Community Youth Athletic Center (CYAC) has had...

Right now, 30,000 people are gathered outside of the Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin speaking out against Republican Governor Scott Walker's attempt to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees. Our SEIU brothers and sisters stand to lose their rights as well and are speaking out in force. Use this form to send a message to SEIU members - and everyone - who have been fighting for their rights all week outside (and inside) the Capitol. We'll make sure they receive your thoughts this weekend.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made the dramatic announcement this morning that he is prepared to call in the Wisconsin National Guard to respond if there is any unrest among state employees in the wake of his announcement that he wants to revoke nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. Walker said he has not called the National Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any labor problems.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck, co-host on the The View, says that the Tea Party is like bed bugs in that they are many in number, nobody knows where they are coming from, and they are “powerful little suckers.” “Everyone thinks the Tea Party is automatically in favor of the Republicans,” said Hasselbeck during Tuesday morning’s “Hot Topics” segment. “The Republicans don’t even have control of them. They’re like bed bugs, okay? My point being–they are many in number and nobody knows where they’re coming from, but they are powerful little suckers and they took the wind out of Mike Castle in Delaware.”

ROSEMONT, Ill.- The first-ever North American Bed Bug Summit, which opened Tuesday near Chicago, attracted a sellout crowd to hear experts on the tiny biters, organizers said. That appears to be one more sign that bed bugs, once almost routed in the United States by pesticides, are back in a big way, the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald reported. "Ten years ago we got about one call about bed bugs a year, and now we get at least one call a day," Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, told the newspaper. Organizers of the two-day...

(CNSNews.com) – Sheriff Larry Dever, whose officers patrol Cochise County along the border between Arizona and Mexico, said he finds it “amazing” that the U.S. State Department would refer the recently passed immigration law in his state to the United Nations Human Rights Council for review. “Well, it’s just amazing to me,” Dever told CNSNews.com. “Course, I have about as much regard for the U.N. as I do the vermin that hides in the rocks around my house here and reaches out and tries to bite me every now and then.” The Bush administration refused to join the U.N. Human...

A motorist fired pepper spray Saturday at a group of demonstrators and counter-protesters outside a funeral for a U.S. Marine in Omaha, Nebraska, police said. The incident occurred shortly before 10 a.m. (11 a.m. ET) as members of a small Kansas church that protests at military funerals and counter-protesters stood nearly a block away from First United Methodist Church during services for Staff Sgt. Michael Bock, 26, who died August 13 in Afghanistan's Helmand province. A man in a Ford-150 pickup truck drove by, extended his arm and sprayed with a large can, police said. His vehicle was stopped a...

(snip) The tiny, reddish-brown parasites, which live on warm human blood, were once nearly extinct. But thanks to a growing resistance to pesticides, and an increasingly mobile human population, they’ve had a resurgence since the mid-1990s. For years, they’ve been enjoying city life, crawling out at night from all sorts of mattresses to feed. The difference now, exterminators said, is they’ve made sizable inroads into suburbia. (snip) In the past decade, most urban-dwelling bedbugs arrived on the backs of roaming college students or migrant workers from South and Central America.Once they settle and mate, their offspring will eventually set off...

Bedbugs can be found in mattresses, furniture and clothing, and they feed off animal and human blood. Insect scientists say bedbugs are appearing on a scale not seen since before World War II. High-traffic areas such as hotels, airplanes and cruise ships are especially prone to infestations. Ohio has three cities in the top 10 — Cincinnati is fourth, Columbus is seventh and Dayton is eighth.

STOCKHOLM – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is suspected of rape in Sweden, where authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest, officials said Saturday. The 39-year-old Australian denied the allegations on WikiLeaks' Twitter page, saying they "are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing."

Jeremy Sparig spent months fighting bedbugs. Now, to some people, he is like a mattress left on the street, something best avoided in these times. “They don’t want to hug you anymore; they don’t want you coming over,” said Mr. Sparig, of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “You’re like a leper.” At the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which recently had a bedbug breakout, defense lawyers are skittish about visiting, and it is not because of the fierce prosecutors. Even Steven Smollens, a housing lawyer who has helped many tenants with bedbugs, has his guard up. Those clients are barred from his office....

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Chicago - He was a political giant who rubbed elbows with presidents, prime ministers and CEOs from around the world, but Dan Rostenkowski was happiest spending time with family and friends from the old neighborhood on the city's Northwest Side. Tuesday, old Rosty, as he was known, was laid to rest. His funeral mass was at the Catholic church he called his own for his whole life, Saint Stanislaus Kostka. He died last week of lung cancer at the age of 82. Rostenkowski was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1959. He was considered Mayor Richard J. Daley's...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― A rodent expert said half of lower Manhattan's train lines are either infested with rats or show conditions ripe for attracting them. Robert Corrigan is a research scientist at the City Health Department. The City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were working to address rat problems in the nation's largest subway system. Corrigan has examined all 58 subway lines that run below Canal Street in lower Manhattan. He said 28 of them could be problematic. Rats love the rooms where trash is stored after it's collected in subway stations. Corrigan said hundreds of rats can be...

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I don’t know why I always go looking to the dark side for commentary (Progressives), probably because it never disappoints. Today I go nut picking to expose the classless, callous, cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-arse, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey poop that they are! Hallelujah! Holy crap! Where’s the Tylenol?!?! When tragedy strikes a polarizing figure on either side of the isle I sit back and observe peoples reactions. For instance when Ted Kennedy died I hopped on over to my conservative opinion sites and...

We were invited to a church group picnic today to meet friends of our son and his wife. Amidst the fun and food, the D.I.L. trots out baby pics of my son that she had gleefully pounced on as we were still unpacking at the house. Paul's friends were amazed to see proof of his wittle, cute wittle, vulnerable self as a mere babe and toddler. One young dad said to me, "It's really something to see pics of him so little and cute, because anyone will tell you that when Paul walks into a room, the testosterone level jumps...

HAZLET, N.J. (AP) - The owner of a New Jersey pest control company has been charged with animal cruelty after a squirrel was found dead in a rooftop trap. Chief Buddy Amato says a professional complex hired Critter Ridder to help get rid of the squirrel. He says a trap was set Wednesday for the animal, and no one returned to check on it. Amato says the squirrel was found "cooked to death on the hot roof" Thursday afternoon. Buck faces four counts of animal cruelty, including one that cites her for not providing the squirrel with adequate food, water...

<p>So the Parks and Recreation department is going to use a special machine to detonate some of the 100 to 150 rodents that are tearing up the grounds.</p> <p>The machine is called the Rodenator Pro. It pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels.</p>

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents used two Afghan children as shields while they attempted to emplace IEDs in a road in Farah province Oct. 18. U.S. Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment were conducting counter IED operations along a route in Golestan to ensure the safe passage of civilian traffic and ground convoys when they observed four insurgents attempting to emplace an IED in the road. Initially the Marines observed four adults and two children in a truck laden with burlap sacks and shovels. The adults began digging holes. Once the burlap sacks were removed from the truck and opened,...

The teenagers weren't thinking about last-minute holiday purchases when they pulled into the Montgomery County shopping mall two days before Christmas. Instead, one of the teens later told police, the group went to the crowded mall to randomly shoot someone. All four, including a 14-year-old girl, are members of the Bloods street gang in Prince George's County, authorities said. Two of them opened fire in the parking lot of Westfield Wheaton Shopping Centre when they spotted members of a rival gang, police said. In announcing the arrests yesterday, county police said the four were being held on charges of attempted...

As Diane Guzman left home Wednesday to take her children to school, tears began streaming down her face when she saw that her Tahoe's back window was shattered. Then she and her children noticed police lights up and down her block and in the neighborhood. Guzman, who lives in the 4900 block of 59th Street, was one of about 130 vehicle owners victimized overnight by vandals who randomly shot out windows in the southwest quadrant of Lubbock. Most of the vehicles targeted were SUVs. Some blocks had vehicle after vehicle with shattered windows. Most reports were concentrated in the area...

Hundreds of anti-war protesters have demonstrated amid heavy police security in the US city of Denver where the Democratic national convention is set to kick-off on Monday. It was the first in a series of protests by the group Recreate 68, whose name echoes the anti-war protests outside the party's convention in Chicago in 1968. Al Jazeera spoke to five protesters about why they were marching, and their hopes that those attending the convention would listen. Robert Joyet, Denver, Colorado I'm here to try to give a voice to the voiceless. The Democrats are supposed to be the party that...

We heard it through the grapevine - Queens has a purple pigeon. The royal-hued bird wasn't born that way, though. Someone with a sick sense of humor - or a problem with pigeons - painted him purple. "Itwas terrible," said Joe Mora, an animal lover who rescued the birdThursday from a Long Island City playground, where onlookers were gawking at the oddly-colored columbine. "It looks like this was done intentionally...it could have been blinded," Mora said. He tried coaxing the lethargic bird to eat while asking anyone and everyone for advice on how to clean paint from its feathers and...

The Democratic National Convention's Aug. 24 interfaith service in Denver is supposed to be about unity. But to a Washington, D.C., coalition that supports nontheistic views, it's about division. The Secular Coalition Group, a lobbying organization for church-and-state separation, is pushing to get an atheist on the speaker list, and contends the service is divisive because it alienates nonreligious Democrats at a time when the party needs to unite to support the presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. "We can all hold different beliefs," said the group's executive director, Lori Lipman Brown, "but we can still come together as patriotic Americans."...

The cleanliness of most NHS hospitals in England is threatened by frequent invasions of rats, fleas, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches, a report claims.

MARSHALL, Texas (AP) - An animal protection group on Friday rescued more than 200 animals, including 26 hissing cockroaches and two bearded dragons, from an eastern Texas home. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said the animals were still being counted Friday night. The group was acting under the authority of the Harrison County Sheriff's Department and had gone to the property on a warrant regarding medical neglect. Besides the cockroaches and bearded dragons, the animals included 68 dogs, 16 rabbits, 15 guinea pigs, 13 gerbils, seven doves, two dwarf hamsters, two hedgehogs, an opossum and a...

'Cockroaches on operating tables during surgery' at RNS A parliamentary inquiry into Sydney's Royal North Shore (RNS) hospital has heard a claim of live cockroaches being killed on operating theatre tables during surgeries. A submission from retired RNS doctor Henry Sleye Hughes also claims some of the hospital's operating tables are so old, one broke in two while a patient was anaesthetised. New South Wales Health Minister Reba Meagher was the first witness to front the inquiry, set up after 32-year-old Jana Horska miscarried in the hospital's emergency room toilets after waiting two hours for treatment. Ms Meagher has told...

Along a gritty stretch of Harrison Street just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway, cars and trucks zoom past in a whoosh of hot air and and blowing dust. Horns blare, sirens scream and every few minutes a city bus rumbles past, belching exhaust. In the background, the skyline rises like a mountain range of glass and steel. This is the urban jungle -- teeming with crowds, booming to a cacophony of sound, alive in a whirl of motion. But look closely. There -- along the sidewalk -- an Eastern cottontail rabbit hops down the cracked concrete. It perks its...

Pigeon Fans Charged in Deaths of Raptors ASSOCIATED PRESS May 25, 2007 LOS ANGELES – Pigeon fanciers in California and two other states were accused of shooting, clubbing and gassing federally protected hawks and falcons, authorities said yesterday. A 14-month undercover investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service led to charges being filed against a Texas man on Wednesday, three Oregon men on Monday and seven Southern California men earlier this month. The men were accused of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by taking or attempting to take a protected bird. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of...

New Orleans, La. -- Today, after learning that New Orleans plans to poison rats living in the city as part of its "Rat Busters" program, PETA fired off a letter to Mayor Ray Nagin urging him to work with PETA to develop a humane, effective program to permanently reduce the rat population instead. PETA points out that poisoning rats is not only cruel but also ineffective. Rats from surrounding areas will simply move in to fill the void left by those who were killed, and as long as habitats such as abandoned buildings and food sources such as garbage are...

A new textbook is teaching Palestinian kids to hate Israel and think of fighting Israelis as a holy Islamic duty, according to an Israeli media monitoring group. The textbooks, published in December and distributed in the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian students, deny Israel's existence and teach kids — many as young as 11 — that Palestinians are in the midst of a holy war between Muslims and their enemies, according to a Palestinian Media Watch report entitled "From nationalist battle to religious conflict."

Seattle Times Eastside bureau Neighbors in the Kirkland area had complained to public-health officials for years that one reclusive homeowner was living in a filthy home infested with rodents, which the man sometimes fed. On Monday, a King County deputy found the decomposing body of a man at the home on Finn Hill, an unincorporated area near Kirkland. The house was filled with rodents, feces and garbage. The medical examiner has not identified the man, but the health department and neighbors believe he is Thomas H. Stone, 67, who had lived in the home with his mother for some time...

An aggressive squirrel pounced on a 4-year-old boy in an attack last week in Cuesta Park in Mountain View. The attack happened as the boy's mother unwrapped a muffin during a picnic. Ironically, efforts to curb the behavior may have exacerbated the squirrels' aggressive tendencies, Muela said. This summer, the city installed new trash receptacles featuring metal tops with a latch that makes it nearly impossible for an animal to rummage through the can in search of food. Increased park ranger patrols and flier distributions cautioning against feeding the animals might have further cut the squirrels' food supply, prompting them...

A PREVIOUSLY unknown group called the Mahdi Army today threatened to target Christians in the Gaza Strip unless the Vatican apologised for comments made by Pope Benedict XVI. "All the crusaders in the Gaza Strip will be targets, all crusader meeting places will be targets, including churches, institutions and their homes" until the "cursed and unholy Vatican apologises to Muslims", it said. "We will strike all those who protect them with an iron fist," said the group in a statement handed out in Gaza City, alluding to an increased security force presence around Palestinian churches. In a traditional blessing on...

The Non-Aligned Movement demanded at a summit in Havana that Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza, release jailed Palestinian officials and repair damage caused by its military operations. A draft declaration to be adopted by leaders of the NAM countries also expresses "grave concern about the deterioration of the situation ... in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, as a result of the unlawful policies and practices being carried out by Israel." Ministers preparing the full summit, which starts on Friday, agreed late Wednesday on a document that condemned Israel for what they called "the continuing killing and injury...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic senators will try to present a no-confidence measure on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the full Senate on Wednesday in an effort to persuade President Bush to sack the outspoken Pentagon chief, Democratic aides said. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California was the first to move publicly on the measure, which will be attached to a defense appropriation bill, but Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is expected to offer the proposal. Democrats in the House of Representatives are likely to offer a similar proposal, a senior Democratic aide said. The Senate's Republican leadership may prevent...