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A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination. What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica. These introduced Argentine...

PARIS (AFP) – Climate change has caused a flock of wild sheep on a remote northern Scottish island to become smaller, according to an unusual investigation published on Thursday. The study explains a mystery that has bedevilled scientists for the past two years. The wild Soay sheep live on Hirta, in the St. Kilda archipelago in the storm-battered Outer Hebrides, and have been closely studied for nearly a quarter of a century. The law of evolutionary theory says the brown, thick-coated ungulates should have got progressively bigger. Tough winters mean that bigger sheep have a better chance of survival and...

It occurs to me that zeros policy in Afghanistan is completely incoherant. How can you stop an indigineous insurgency if you can't fire at the dwellings that are shooting at you? This bozo is going to accomplish the left's stated goal of emasculating the US Military by simple incompetance. I don't know if there is a solution to this conundrum. Any ideas.

All right already. I won't call Obama a Marxist in this column. Instead, I'll point to some signs that indicate that Barack and Karl might well be soul mates. At least, they have similar attitudes about capital, labor and profits, er, surplus value. Liberals, even those of the Marxist variety, take umbrage when you point out their ideological kinship with Marxism. I suppose this dates back to the days when being a communist was tantamount to being an enemy of the United States, in that there was a global communist movement intent on -- and coming darn close to --...

ity the broadcast journalists. Just this once. They bend earnestly forward to ask questions of the Iranian president, enunciating as though he were hard of hearing—Charlie Rose, Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, George Stephanopoulos, Mike Wallace—and he shreds them. He says calmly that he is only interested in "the scientific approach" to whether or not the Holocaust happened. Returning question with question, he asks, "Did the Palestinians have anything to do with it?" and wonders why they must be "destroyed today under the pretext of the Holocaust."

KABUL — A young American soldier who walked off his remote combat outpost in a volatile region of eastern Afghanistan has been captured and is believed to be in the hands of the Taliban network headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, American military officials said Thursday. Large numbers of American and Afghan forces fanned out in eastern Afghanistan to shut down routes the kidnappers could use to transport the soldier, officials said. A senior American defense official said there had been no direct negotiations with the kidnappers but that American forces were reaching out to tribal leaders and local Afghan government officials...

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) – Former South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson is calling on Gov. Mark Sanford to cut a check from his campaign war chest to help repair the "serious damage" he has done to Republican fundraising efforts in the state. Sanford, a prodigious fundraiser, is sitting on nearly $1.69 million in his gubernatorial election account, and he still has roughly $128,000 in his congressional account, according to his most recent campaign finance reports. New financial reports are due later this month. But now that Sanford's political career has collapsed, his money is in limbo. Under South Carolina...

At Wednesday’s Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board meeting, chairman H.R. Crawford – a former District Council member and Marion Barry confidante – told fellow Board members that he has heard talk on Capitol Hill about yanking former President Ronald Reagan’s name off the local airport and returning it to its previous generic moniker: National Airport.

Americans lucky enough to still have a job are noticing something unpleasant in their paychecks: They're making less money. Employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, and the jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. Just as worrisome, wages shrank to their lowest in nearly a year. The bleak news Thursday from the Labor Department underscored one of the big threats to an economic turnaround: Rising joblessness and falling wages for those still working could send Americans back into spending hibernation and short-circuit any recovery. President Barack Obama acknowledged concern. "What we're still seeing is...

WASHINGTON -- Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands. The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago. The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among...

Will the New York City school system be compelled to commemorate Islam on Sept. 11? It has been widely reported the New York City Council passed a resolution Tuesday recommending the school system shut down to commemorate two of the most important Muslim holidays, however the reports did not note the holidays fall on Sept. 11 in some years.... Islamic holidays are set based on the lunar calendar, meaning the dates corresponding to the Gregorian calendar change each year. As first noticed by Andrew Walden, publisher and editor of the Hawaii Free Press Eid al-Adha falls on Sept. 11 in...

President Obama is pouring $13 billion into an ambitious high-speed rail project. Some say it will never make money. Some say it will. And still others say profit is not even the point. Obama's plan is "to jump-start a potential world-class passenger rail" in 10 major corridors, linking cities within the Northeast, California, Florida and other regions with "bullet trains" that exceed 110 miles per hour. State governments are in the process of applying for the federal funds. Sam Staley, director of urban growth and land-use policy at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank, said the project is risky, and...

Oh yes, he went there. We’ve been having a running debate on Twitter this afternoon about Sarahcuda and my contention that criticism of her is verboten among righty blog readers, HA’s included. This thread will be an interesting test case. Most of the heat Kraut takes will be for his contention that “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.” Didn’t Captain Hopenchange do exactly that? Well, yes and no. Granted, the most memorable line he uttered in 18 months on the trail was “Yes we can,”...

FLINT, Michigan -- Like the ex-Flint police chief himself, the people who know Brad Barksdale are shooting straight about their former comrade. Barksdale is being praised by many for the single bullet in the chest that killed a robbery suspect who shot his way into the Palace Poker Room in Burton early Wednesday morning with a shotgun. "That guy picked the wrong place to rob," said Keith Speer, veteran cop and president of the Flint Police Officer's Assocation. "He's not going to miss a target he's intending to shoot. "He's not going to take a threat lying down ... he's...

Barack Obama yesterday accused Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, of "living in the past" and indulging in Cold War thinking on the eve of his first trip to Russia as US president. Mr Obama described the former president, who remains the country's dominant political force, as someone who still has "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new". He said one reason he will meet Mr Putin, as well as Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, during his visit next week is that he wanted Mr Putin to know that "the old Cold...

Senate bill fines people refusing health coverageBy RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR – 58 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a health care overhaul bill unveiled Thursday by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines will raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which now imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage....

Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say. A Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said the going price for child bombers was $7,000 to $14,000 - huge sums in Pakistan, where per-capita income is about $2,600 a year. "[Mehsud] has turned suicide bombing into a production output, not unlike [the way] Toyota outputs cars," a U.S....

"As soon as I heard five [years], I could not hear much after, and I hurt because I felt I let you and everyone down." So wrote former sailor Steven Nary from his cell in Avenal State Prison in the middle-of-nowhere, California. Nary, now 32, had just endured a 3 ½ hour parole hearing, his first after more than thirteen years of incarceration. Despite a near perfect prison record, a long standing conversion to Catholicism, an excellent psychiatric report, almost enough college credits to graduate, numerous letters of support, several job and living offers—including one from my wife and me—and...

President Obama on Thursday called the nation's latest unemployment figures sobering, but said the economic recession is slowing. In a Rose Garden appearance with chief executives of clean-energy companies, Obama noted the average number of job losses in the current fiscal quarter has been 400,000 a month, compared with a monthly average of 700,000 in the previous quarter. "It took years for us to get into this mess, and it'll take more than a few months to get out," Obama said. A government report Thursday showed a net loss of 467,000 jobs in June, compared with a revised loss of...

Freddie Mac Gets Another $6.1B from Gov't BY STEPHEN BERNARD | AP Business Writer You have entered an invalid email address From (email):* Required NEW YORK (AP) - Battered mortgage giant Freddie Mac received $6.1 billion in new funds from the Treasury Department to help offset its mounting liabilities, according to a regulatory filing submitted Wednesday. The company could also be close to naming a new, permanent CEO, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has been operating Freddie Mac since last fall, requested the funds for Freddie Mac after the mortgage...

Financial lobby gears up effort against Obama planBy Silla Brush Posted: 07/02/09 12:35 PM [ET] A coalition of financial services interests is in the process of organizing a major lobbying campaign against the Obama administration's plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The plans are not yet final, but among the groups and firms in the discussion are the American Financial Services Association, Financial Services Roundtable, Mortgage Bankers Association and Community Bankers Association, according to two industry sources familiar with the plans. The budget could be as high as several millions of dollars to organize grassroots opposition to the plan,...

WASHINGTON -- Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands. The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago. The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among...

Former U.S. lawmaker and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and several other human rights activists remained in an Israeli prison Thursday after refusing to sign a deportation form that they claim is self-incriminating. In a press release from the Green Party, McKinney said the form states that the Spirit of Humanity, a Greek-flagged relief boat carrying 21 activists, medical supplies, cement, olive trees and children's toys en route to Gaza, was violating the Israeli blockade and trespassing the country's territorial waters. "We were in international waters on a boat delivering humanitarian aid to people in Gaza

The Ruzh Hallat Primary Health Care Center will provide medical services for 30,000 residents of the Humer Kwer quarter of Sulaymaniyah province. USACE photo by Mike Scheck. SULAYMANIYAH — For the 30,000 residents of the Humer Kwer quarter of this province, access to healthcare just got a lot easier with the completion of the Ruzh Hallat Primary Healthcare Center. The $540,000 construction project was managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in Iraq. The U.S. Economic Support Fund provided funding for the project, and the USACE’s Sulaymaniyah Resident Office was the on-site construction manager.Dr. Ousman Younes, the Kurdistan...

]-->Army Capt. Jason Smith listens to an infant's breathing at the last "Bring on the Docs" cooperative medical engagement at the Jassan Health Clinic in Iraq's Wasit province, June 23. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Joe Thompson, Multi-National Division - South. FOB DELTA — Soldiers serving with a medical task force here completed nearly a year's worth of missions last week, satisfied that they've helped to improve health care in Iraq's Wasit province. Soldiers from Task Force Gunner Med wrapped up Operation "Bring on the Docs" with a recent visit to the Jassan Health Clinic for a cooperative medical engagement."It...

Another Chicago area resident, Fay Hartog-Levin, a longtime Democratic activist and fund-raiser and an early career supporter of Barack Obama, was tapped Thursday to be ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Her husband, Daniel Levin, is the chairman of The Habitat Company and the founder of the East Bank Club. Valerie Jarrett, before joining the Obama White House as a senior advisor, was the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Habitat Company. Levin's cousins are Michigan Democrats, Sen. Carl Levin and his brother, Rep. Sandy Levin. A Winnetka resident, Hartog-Levin is a senior consultant at the Res Publica...

NHS trusts have for the first time barred women from routinely having elective caesareans because they cost too much. The procedure, which costs twice as much as a natural birth, will be rationed in Greater Manchester so that it is only available to women with specific medical conditions. Some top obstetricians condemn the decision, arguing that, while it will curb the fashion for choosing caesareans to reduce the pain of childbirth, it will also penalise those who opt for them on the grounds that they are safer for the mother. Caesareans have been placed on the same lists for rationing...

Any time a bunch of soldiers break into a presidential palace, pick up the president and put him on a flight to exile, as happened in Honduras last Sunday, you have a "coup." But, unlike most coup targets in Latin America's tortuous republican history, Honduras's deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, bears the biggest responsibility for his overthrow. A member of the rancid oligarchy he now decries, Zelaya took office in 2006 as the leader of one of the two center-right parties that have dominated Honduran politics for decades. His general platform, his support for the Central American Free Trade Agreement with...

At virtually any given moment, the news-cycle-driven chattering classes of politics have in the background of their computer screens or the pockets of their briefcases a Big Thumbsucking Magazine Article on a political topic that they read during periods of calm. The Big Article du jour is Todd Purdum's massive profile of Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair.Most of the buzz about the piece deals with a variety of off-the-record snarks about Palin from McCain campaign staff. Indeed, conservative columnist Bill Kristol and McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt have engaged in a public exchange of insults over alleged leaks to Purdham....

With the deaths of a number of celebrities over the past couple of weeks — most notably Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson — there’s been a media feeding frenzy that hasn’t been seen since the untimely death of Princess Diana in 1997. Wes Pruden aptly calls it America’s Princess Di moment. Fawcett’s death at the age of 60 was sad but expected, as she was fighting a particularly nasty form of cancer. Jackson’s death at age 50 caught everyone by surprise because, despite his frail appearance over the past few years, he was gearing up for a new tour, set...

EIGHT operations in the Lothians are cancelled every week because of equipment failures, bed shortages and staffing levels, it has emerged. In the last year, 420 elective procedures were cancelled, a significant rise on previous years. The ERI suffered the most cancellations, with hundreds also being postponed at the Sick Kids, the Western General and St John's Hospital in Livingston. Critics said not enough bed space was provided in hospitals for times of need, although NHS chiefs pointed out that the cancellations equated to little over 0.5 per cent of all operations in the area – 65,000 operations in total...

Over 850,000 copies sold! #1 on the NYTimes Bestseller List for 12 out of 13 weeks!Buy it… read it… live it!“Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

The blogosphere is in an uproar today over the latest kerfuffle regarding the sometimes-sickeningly sweet relationship between U.S. president Barack Obama and the media, and most especially the Washington, D.C. media coterie that seems to surround and protect Mr. Obama in a blanket of exceedingly favorable new reportage. News reports breaking today, by Politico.com and others, are again highlighting this questionable relationship — which in this case seems to be that the Washington Post has been attempting to create “salons” in the home of Post publisher Katharine Weymouth in which lobbyists could pay from 25,000 to 250,000 dollars for what...

Did the Senate Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions (HELP) Committee figure out a way to provide most Americans with health insurance coverage for a lot less money than anyone thought possible? That's what a quick read of some news items seems to suggest. But it's not exactly true. The AP is reporting that the HELP committee has brought the CBO score of their revised health-care bill down to $600 billion, and that the new bill will cover 97% of America's legal population. The first version of the bill was scored at $1 trillion, and was projected to only cover about...

Debby Smith, the woman who President Obama hugged during yesterday's town hall meeting and promised to help after she described her difficulties getting treatment for a tumor, "is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama's political operation within the Democratic National Committee" who "obtained her ticket through the White House." One can only imagine what the press would have to say if the Bush White House had done something as cynical. To sum up, during the session, Obama received questions from an advocate of a socialized, or single-payer health care, a representative of the liberal activist group Health Care for...

Obama's Overseas Abortion Promotion Hurts Efforts to Help Poor in Peru Washington, DC -- When President Barack Obama ditched the Mexico City Policy and resumed sending taxpayer dollars to groups that perform and promote abortions overseas, he did more than just expand abortions. Obama's move has hurt groups who are helping poor people in other nations, such as Peru. See http://www.LifeNews.com/int1253.html

The big news of the morning is a new version of the Senate HELP Committee's health-care reform bill that seems to have everyone confused. The short version is this: CBO estimates that by 2019 the bill will cover 21 million people at a cost of $597 billion. But -- and this is important -- the HELP Committee's bill doesn't include the Medicaid expansion, because Medicaid is under the sole jurisdiction of the Finance Committee. But if Medicaid is expanded to 150 percent, it will cover an additional 20 million at a cost of about $1 trillion. Add in the savings...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The King of Pop had a fan in the White House. President Barack Obama described himself as a longtime follower of Michael Jackson, the legendary performer who died June 25 at age 50. "I grew up on his music — still have all his stuff on my iPod," Obama said in an AP interview Thursday, adding that Jackson "will go down in history as one of our greatest entertainers." At the time of his death, the pop icon was preparing a series of comeback concerts to overcome years of sexual scandal and financial calamity — a troubled...

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 23 terrorist plots against the United States have been foiled. This report updates a November 2007 report from the Heritage Foundation that described 19 plots that had been foiled to date since 9/11. Less than two years later, the U.S. has foiled four more plots aimed at Americans. While some trials have ended in mistrial and charges against some suspects were dropped, significantly more individuals have been convicted and sentenced for their crimes. These victories make the case for continued U.S. vigilance against terrorism around the globe. While these particular attacks have been disrupted, the...

Barbecue, fireworks, flag-waving. Beyond that, the 4th of July doesn't amount to much anymore. Truth, Justice and all that other good stuff....blah, blah, blah. Yeah, whatever. Should "Independence Day" Be Renamed "Government Dependence Day?"

The U.S. is ready to join the rest of the world in a climate pact for the first time in history,

Some 100 years before the Nazis rose to power, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) ominously wrote that "we owe the animals not mercy but justice, and the debt often remains unpaid in Europe, the continent that is permeated with Foeter Judaicus...it is obviously high time in Europe that Jewish views on nature were brought to an end...the unconscionable treatment of the animal world must, on account of its immorality, be expelled from Europe." That such words became prophetic under the umbrella of a secular religion of nature that was Nazi Germany, colored by an environmental totalitarian view during the 1930's...

As a political writer and blogger, I applaud the decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court that effectively made Alan Stuart Franken the junior senator from Minnesota for the next six years. Of course, it’s not such a good thing for Republicans, considering that the Democrats have added another body to their already huge majority. But Franken in the Senate will pay dividends for both the party and us bloggers far into the future, as long as he remains above ground and has the ability to open his mouth — all the better to stick his foot in it. Al Franken...

A review of travel and financial records showed that Gov. Mark Sanford did not spend public money improperly when he visited his mistress, the chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Reginald Lloyd, said this afternoon... Mr. Lloyd said that between an economic development trip to Brazil and Argentina a year ago, which is when the governor said the affair turned sexual, and the recent visit, Mr. Sanford saw the mistress, Maria Belen Chapur, three times in New York, on trips that had been paid for by either the governor himself or a third party. In one case, Mr....

Washington, DC -- President Barack Obama has named Douglas Kmiec, the Pepperdine University law professor who has become a key impediment to pro-life Catholics as the ambassador to Malta. The move is sure to spark opposition in Catholic circles given Malta's strongly pro-life stance.

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- The British Medical Association reaffirmed its opposition to assisted suicide at its annual conference yesterday. Despite an attempt by MPs to legalize the practice or allow so-called suicide tourism, doctors rejected a call from BMA member Kailash Chand to change its long-held views. Chand hoped to get the BMA to support a position allowing assisted suicide in cases where a patient is terminally ill and has the mental capacity to consent to killing himself. Doctors also rejected calls to support a position against prosecuting physicians who break the law by participating in an assisted suicide. The...

Tuesday night on Hugh's program, we discussed the Vanity Fair article about Sarah Palin and why, eight months after the election, Palin still arouses such fury amongst liberals and so many rank-and-file Democrats. ...

First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia, along with her mother, Marian Robinson, will join President Obama when he travels to Russia, Italy and Ghana next week. The First Couple will meet with Pope Benedict XVI on July 10 at the Vatican.The White House announced in May that Mrs. Obama would visit Ghana -- and only recently confirmed that she will be with the president for the entire swing. The president will deliver two major speeches during the trip -- in Moscow, on U.S.-Russia relations, and in Accra, before the Ghanaian parliament. Not all details about Mrs. Obama's...

The NHS was told today to stop relying on charities to fill funding gaps after figures revealed many trusts would not pay the full cost of electric wheelchairs for disabled children. Freedom of information figures obtained by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign found children were subject to a postcode lottery in terms of equipment. Statistics from 54% of NHS trusts in England and Scotland revealed that disabled children in England are forced to wait five months on average for a wheelchair. The worst performing primary care trust (PCT), East Lancashire, in the north-west of England, had an average wait of two...