Free Republic

BEIJING: Patients in China are swarming to acupuncture clinics to be given bee stings to treat or ward off life-threatening illness, practitioners say. More than 27,000 people have undergone the painful technique -- each session can involve dozens of punctures -- at Wang Menglin's clinic in Beijing, says the bee acupuncturist who makes his living from believers in the concept. But except for trying to prevent allergic reactions to the stings themselves, there is no orthodox medical evidence that bee venom is effective against illness, and rationalist websites in the West describe so-called "apitherapy" as "quackery". "We hold the bee,...

Iran’s new defense minister is behind past terror attacks against Americans and Israelis, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported on Monday. The Islamic Republic’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has appointed Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan as the new defense minister. Dehgan, according to a report by Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira, a senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was responsible for attacks against U.S. and Israeli forces in Lebanon in the 1980s. …

SEOUL: South Korea ordered sweltering government offices to turn off their air conditioning as two power plants stopped operations on Monday, a day after a minister warned of an imminent national energy crisis. The timing could hardly be worse with South Korea in the grip of an extended heatwave and temperatures nudging 34 degrees Celsius. One Seoul city government employee described her office as "one big dim sum basket". The heatwave is also smashing records in Japan, where the mercury hit 41 degrees Celsius on Monday. The coal-powered Dangjin III plant, with a capacity of 500 megawatts, was taken offline...

Spying scandal sets back U.S. chances for fighter jet sale to Brazil By Anthony Boadle and Alonso Soto BRASILIA (Reuters) - U.S. hopes of landing a coveted deal worth more than $4 billion to sell 36 fighter jets to Brazil have suffered a setback with recent revelations that the United States collected data on Brazilian Internet communications. When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits down with Brazilian officials in Brasilia on Tuesday to prepare a state visit to the White House by President Dilma Rousseff, the sale of the warplanes will not be on the agenda, a Brazilian source...

SINGAPORE: The latest survey by GfK, one of the world's largest research companies, has found that economy-related matters appear to be on top of the list of concerns for consumers in the Asia Pacific. Two in every five surveyed are worried about recession and unemployment, as well as inflation and high prices. At the same time, one in three said they are concerned about having enough money to live right and pay the bills. Consumers in Singapore (65 per cent), Thailand (55 per cent), China (51 per cent) and Indonesia (39 per cent) expressed their greatest anxiety towards inflation. Those...

IRS screeners continue to flag certain applications for exempt status for secondary scrutiny on the basis of name alone regardless of whether there is any evidence of political activity, an IRS employee has told a House Ways and Means Committee investigation. A transcript of the interview with a Cincinnati-based IRS employee was released today by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., M.D. (R-LA) in a letter calling on IRS Acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel to immediately cease the IRS’ apparent continued practice of targeting Tea Party applications based on name alone. …

A decade ago, gene expression seemed so straightforward: genes were either switched on or off. Not both. Then in 2006, a blockbuster finding reported that developmentally regulated genes in mouse embryonic stem cells can have marks associated with both active and repressed genes, and that such genes, which were referred to as "bivalently marked genes", can be committed to one way or another during development and differentiation. This paradoxical state—akin to figuring out how to navigate a red and green traffic signal—has since undergone scrutiny by labs worldwide. What has been postulated is that the control regions (or promoters) of...

A northern Arizona family that was lost at sea for weeks in an ill-fated attempt to leave the U.S. over what they consider government interference in religion will fly back home Sunday. Hannah Gastonguay, 26, said Saturday that she and her husband "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us" when they took their two small children and her father-in-law and set sail from San Diego for the tiny Pacific island nation of Kiribati in May. But just weeks into their journey the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving...

Under pressure to end the spate of almost-daily killings that have hit the country recently, the Malaysian government is seeking to bring back detention without trial, but with wider oversight. Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, in the first such announcement, said the powers of his office to order detention without trial might be transferred to a panel of professionals to check abuses of power. The panel, he told Mingguan Malaysia, the Sunday edition of the Malay-language Utusan Malaysia daily, would be made up of police officers, judges and public prosecutors. It would not include politicians. "(The authority to detain without...

The Tourism and Sports Ministry is planning to make it compulsory for all foreign tourists to have travel insurance before entering the Kingdom because unpaid bills are putting a huge strain on cash-strapped public hospitals in major destinations, particularly Phuket. However, some tourism-business operators warn that this measure might keep away travellers as well as tarnish the country's image. In a telephone interview with The Nation, Tourism and Sports Minister Somsak Pureesrisak said the ministry was readying to implement the regulation to cut down on foreign tourists' unpaid medical bills that cost the country more than Bt200 million annually. Somsak...

The 15-strong team working on Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents spent a ten day gap between filming partying on the beach and drinking, as well as relaxing in a five star hotel. They had been filming the BBC3 series, which follows teenagers on their first holiday abroad without their parents, who can secretly watch them. But filming was reportedly scrapped when the three boys they were focusing on realised what was happening. With ten days left before filming for the next documentary started, the crew decided to spend their time partying, spending their time on a yacht and in bars....

FBI agents and other officials protected James "Whitey" Bulger as he roamed free for decades. Is there a statute of limitations on corrupting the system?Occasionally, there is more eloquence in a single word than in a string of finely crafted statements. Today was one of those moments as James “Whitey” Bulger stood and listened while that one word — guilty — was repeated 31 times in federal court in Boston: guilty of multiple counts of racketeering, extortion, drug dealing and, most importantly, guilty of 11 murders. A jury sat for 35 days of testimony, listened to 72 witnesses, heard about...

MANILA - The Philippines said Monday it would insist on being allowed to use more US military assets to protect its sea territories, when talks on expanding a defense pact start this week. Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said the longtime allies had already agreed in principle to allow a bigger US military presence in the Philippines. He said the talks would focus on the rules for the greater presence, and the Philippines wanted to ensure the deal helped build its defence capabilities. "We stand ready to tap every resource, to call on every alliance, to do what is necessary,...

MANILA, Philippines -- A powerful typhoon battered the northern Philippines on Monday, toppling power lines and dumping heavy rain across cities and food-growing plains. The storm left at least two people dead and 44 missing. (MORE: Typhoon Utor Forecast) Typhoon Utor, described as the strongest globally this year, slammed ashore in mountainous eastern Aurora province with sustained winds of 175 kilometers (109 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 210 kph (130 mph). Footage from ABS-CBN TV network showed a woman swept away by a raging river in neighboring Isabela province. The woman waved her hands for help as...

(Reuters) - Japan should delay a planned hike in the sales tax in order to ensure that the economy emerges from deflation, said Nobuyuki Nakahara, a former Bank of Japan board member and close confidant of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Nakahara told Reuters the sales tax hike, scheduled in April, should wait until the autumn of next year, when inflation will likely have taken root. "(The scheduled tax hike) would have a serious negative impact similar to the Bank of Japan's 2006 exit from quantitative easing and zero interest rates," he said. He also warned that the pursuit of fiscal...

Lee Daniels, director of "Lee Daniels' The Butler," can't seem to keep his charges of racism straight. I always thought that a sure sign of racism was how much rural whites love to see black people "perform." But now Daniels is claiming that he had to stock his latest film with white actors out of the fear that, unless he did, rural whites would not want to see a film starring only black people: The new movie “The Butler” has a unique political feature: Portrayals of five U.S. presidents. (Robin Williams plays Dwight Eisenhower, James Marsden portrays John F. Kennedy,...

Japan’s temperature hit 40-degrees over the weekend, reaching a record high in 6 years and claiming the lives of four people. Back in August 2007, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported two cities reaching an all-time high of 40.9 degrees. Last month also caused more than 700 people hospitalized and one dead because of heatstroke. On Saturday, two senior citizens from western Japan passed away due to the intense heat. A 66-year old man and an 84-year old woman were both reported to have collapsed in the fields. The weather bureau warned 39 prefectures early Sunday of another past-35 degree temperature....

There's a new biography of Charles Manson out this month -- which seems like the last thing America needs, in light of the reams of print that have already been devoted to the wannabe pop star who led his "family" to commit nine murders in the summer of 1969, terrifying Los Angeles. And yet Manson: The Life of Times and Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn is riveting, a thoroughly researched biography that manages to be a breezy page-turner. Even those who've already read extensively about the Manson murders and their aftermath may find new insight into the pint-sized West Virginia-born...

Most pastry kitchens are tiny. A convection oven; a proofing rack; a giant Hobart mixer, looking like a squat, gunmetal-gray R2-D2; a long prep table (in marble for chocolate, if you're lucky) for tarts or laminated dough or maybe a few plated desserts; more speed racks, stacked high to make the most of any available space. Instead of imagining a French patisserie, think Das Boot. And that's if there's a pastry kitchen at all. Often there isn't: The space in any restaurant kitchen is at such a premium that the tables and ovens tend to be taken by the savory...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday said he opposed boycotting the Sochi Olympic Games despite new Russian anti-gay laws, instead urging nations to wave rainbow flags during the opening ceremonies to show support for gay rights. “That'd be pretty embarrassing for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Schumer said on MSNBC's “Morning Joe.” “Let our athletes participate but still make a stand.” In June, Putin signed a law banning gay “propaganda” and imposing fines on those holding gay pride rallies. The law has generated an international backlash ahead of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has called...

Vid at link

An Imperial, Missouri woman was charged with burglary, first-degree assault and armed criminal action after she snuck into a house late Friday and repeatedly stabbed the homeowner during a burglary. The home owner’s son came downstairs during the attack and held the woman, Christina Fudge, at gunpoint until the police arrived. ... Deputies said she had been drinking liquor before the incident and was depressed over a child custody battle. She told officers she was stealing keys so she could drive over to her ex-boyfriend’s house in Iron County to murder him, his sister and her husband.

(Reuters) - Japan's core machinery orders fell in June and companies expect them to fall further in the current quarter, another sign that government stimulus has yet to boost capital spending as debate intensifies over how to address massive and growing public debt. Weak capital spending is a source of concern for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who faces a tough decision on whether or not to go ahead with a sales tax increase to lift revenues and is reportedly now considering a cut in corporate taxes. The 2.7 percent fall in core orders, which excludes those of ships and electric...

Existing conventional modes of transportation of people consists of four unique types: rail, road, water, and air. These modes of transport tend to be either relatively slow (i.e., road and water), expensive (i.e., air), or a combination of relatively slow and expensive (i.e., rail). Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods. Hyperloop is also unique in that it is an open design concept, similar to Linux. Feedback is desired from the community that can help advance the Hyperloop design and bring it from concept...

SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's income disparity narrowed in 2012 from a year earlier, data showed Tuesday, apparently as the prolonged economic slump dented the growth in earnings of those in the top income bracket. South Korea's income distribution ratio, a key barometer of the country's earnings equality, reached 5.76 points last year, falling slightly from 5.88 points tallied in 2011, according to the data by Statistics Korea.

A growing number of Chinese couples are choosing to go to South Korea for their wedding photo shoot. The bride sits patiently as her makeup is applied and her tiara fixed in place. After choosing the South Korean company to shoot their pre-wedding photo online, Yang Candi and her fiance have travelled to Seoul from their home in China. "In China, the photo shoots are more likely to be in traditional Chinese style or European style. Compared to those, South Korean photo studios are very simple and express their own stories. So it was unique." These photo shoots are big...

Fifty years from now, when college students read about the history of America’s criminal-justice system, August 12, 2013 may turn out to be one of those watershed moments: a day when America took a hard look at the human costs of its criminal-justice policies — and began to reverse course. This morning, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin delivered her decision in Floyd, et. al. vs. the City of New York, in which she blasted the NYPD’s practice of stopping-and-frisking people and ordered the appointment of an independent monitor. Meanwhile, in California, Attorney General Eric Holder announced this afternoon that the Justice...

SEOUL, Aug 12 — General Motors Co. has begun gradually cutting its presence in South Korea after mounting labour costs and militant unionism triggered a rethink of its reliance on the country for a fifth of its global production, three individuals familiar with GM’s thinking said. The US automaker’s plan, which already appears to have been put into action with recent decisions to shift production of newer models away from South Korea, highlights complaints from both local and foreign carmakers about rapidly rising wage costs in the world’s seventh-largest exporting nation. “We need to make sure we mitigate risk in...

Rachel Maddow has joined in in the left-leaning-media boycott of calling the Washington Redskins by its official name, instead awkwardly referring to the team as the “R-Word” throughout a recent segment. The MSNBC host called the actual name of the team “painfully racist.” Maddow picked up on Samoan congressional delegate Eni Faleomavaega’s practice of referring to the team as the “R-Word.” (Faleomavaega has been on the forefront of the push to force the team to change its name.) Maddow also referred to the Redskins as the “Washington R-Word NFL team,” the “Washington, D.C., football team,” and once as “the Washington...

Organizing for Action, the advocacy group born from President Obama’s reelection campaign, has a simple message for its 35 million Twitter followers as it seeks political support for the White House's climate agenda. That’s one of several OFA climate-related tweets Monday ahead of a series of events the group is holding Tuesday in support for Obama’s climate plans. The group, in a press release, said OFA volunteers are “holding events nationwide [Tuesday] to hold members of Congress accountable for their positions on climate change.” Obama’s plans rest almost entirely on administrative actions that don’t need congressional approval, including carbon regulations for power...

A handicap ramp in front of a Fountain family's house is in the middle of a neighborhood squabble. Vincent and Heidi Giesegh say their neighbors are threatening legal action if they don't remove the ramp. They say the next door couple is worried that the ramp will hurt the value of their home. The Giesegh's say they need it for their 16 year old daughter Kirsten who has Cerebral Palsy. "As she goes into her spastic modes, we could just tumble down the stairs and both of us could get massively hurt," said Heidi Giesegh. The Giesegh's neighborhood doesn't have...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of significant changes in the Justice Department’s pursuit of mandatory minimum sentences highlights a new willingness on the part of the Obama administration to engage on issue of race. It’s the second public policy area touching on race where Holder — the nation’s first African American attorney general — has flexed his muscles in recent weeks. Just last month, he said Justice would challenge voter ID laws adopted in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Holder’s actions come in conjunction with President Obama's recent...

At least one rocket was fired towards the Israeli resort city of Eilat on Monday night. Sirens were heard throughout the city shortly before 1:00 a.m. Local residents reported hearing explosions following the sirens. The Iron Dome anti-missile system, which was just recently deployed near Eilat, reportedly intercepted the rocket before it could explode in a populated area. There were no reports of damages, but three people suffered shock. Two of them were treated by paramedics and the third was taken to the Yoseftal Hospital in the city. The IDF and the police are searching the area to determine whether...

George Zimmerman should be disarmed. If ever a man deserved to be shunned by society, it is pudgy Georgie Zimmerman. And in some quarters, he is. Unfortunately, there are enough of his ilk around – the big guns who run the National Rifle Association, conservative talk radio Obama haters and others – who quickly and emphatically drew the besieged Floridian into their warm and fuzzy protective cocoon of right-wing fanaticism. The ink was not even dry on the long-delayed Zimmerman arrest warrant when the NRA brass leaped to his defense because he fulfilled their classic gunfighter role model — a...

If you oppose President Obama, if you don't like him, you MUST be a RACIST! You're criticizing him because, as a racist Rethuglican, you can't STAND having a black man in the White House! Unless of course you're a DUmmie. Then you have free rein to criticize Obama all you want, because, as a progressive, ipso facto, you CANNOT be a racist, and you're only criticizing him because he's let us down by not being progressive enough. That's about the size of things in DUmmieland. And the DUmmies are too dense to see their DUbble standard--as we'll see demonstrated...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid isn’t the only high-profile Democrat who has suggested the United States will eventually transition to a single payer health care system. The Nevada lawmaker generated headlines Friday for predicting that President Obama’s health care law is the first step to phasing out insurance-based health care. In 2007, while governor of Kansas, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated flatly in a speech at Harvard: “I’m all for a single payer system eventually.”

According the San Jose Mercury News, the bills being heard in the state senate on August 12 would create a database of all ammo purchases in the state, "make it crime to have a gun that's not locked up when it's not being carried, and extend the time for which someone is banned from owning a firearm after making a violent threat." On August 13, another slate of bills will come before the State Assembly. These would ban all semi-automatic rifles with a detachable magazines, would "make it a crime to leave a gun unlocked when you're out of the...

On February 19, 1777, aboard the warship Warren, which was anchored outside of Providence, R.I., ten American sailors and marines serving in the war met in secret. They determined it was their patriotic duty to blow the whistle on wrongdoing that they witnessed by their commanding officer who was Commodore Esek Hopkins (1718–1802) of the Continental Navy. Hopkins was from a very powerful family and his brother, Stephen Hopkins (1707–1785), was a former governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Hopkins Esek (1718–1802)Hopkins had participated in the torture of captured British sailors. The allegations were...

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A defense attorney got a little over two weeks more today to review the evidence in the case of an undocumented day laborer who police said set an Englewood neighborhood on edge last summer by torching several cars and a house, then two more cars weeks later. Marco Antonio Rene has been held on $2.5 million bail in the Bergen County Jail since his June, 2012 arrest. The INS has placed a retainer on the Guatemalan citizen for deportation purposes once the case has been resolved. Rene has been in the country illegally since 2010,...

Hillary Clinton, speaking at the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco Monday night, botched the name of civil rights icon Medgar Evers. The former secretary of state and first lady was recounting the story of one of her mentors, lawyer John Doar. "In 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi, John stepped between angry protesters and armed police to prevent a potential massacre after the murder of Medgar Evans," said Clinton, who was referring to Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist who was murdered while walking into his home on June 12, 1963. Watch the video below:

This summer, thousands of fast food workers around the nation walked off the job, demanding to be paid $15 per hour for work that traditionally pays about half that. As Wendy's striker Kaye Smith told NY1 recently, "I have to live with my mom ... because I wouldn't be able to support myself on $7.25, you know?" We can debate whether her living arrangements are Wendy's responsibility any more than they are that of New York's landlords or grocers. Either way, Smith's is a novel concept of unskilled jobs in America. Fast food wages have never been expected to support...

Of course, it was self-defense, but not by George Zimmerman. Let's forget blackness, racism, neighborhood watches and location for a moment and simplify the story. Let's say a person spots someone he has a perceived beef with; maybe this person doesn't like the way the other guy looks, or the way the other guy looked at someone else, or doesn't want him around his neighborhood, or this person is just out for trouble. Now this person follows the other guy slowly in his car for a while, ultimately getting out and confronting him. Maybe he even pushes the other guy...

France’s campaign in Mali exposes Europe’s unpreparedness for 21st-century war. WITH WELL-ARMED radical Islamist insurgents closing in last winter on Mali’s capital, Bamako, French President François Hollande suddenly decided to defend Western civilization. Plunging in the polls as the most unpopular French president since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, he just might have had ulterior motives; diverting hostile public opinion at home with a military escapade abroad is a tried and true tactic for floundering chiefs of state. Be that as it may, French troops, mainly Foreign Legion, began deploying to Mali in Operation Serval on January 11....

President Obama’s surprise decision last summer to use executive authority to halt the deportation of some immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children won raves from advocates stung by the defeat of similar legislative proposals in Congress. Since then, the administration has granted more than 400,000 of those young immigrants temporary waivers to live and work in the United States, making Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals one of largest legalization efforts in decades.

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Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was on Morning Joe today to discuss amnesty. The far left New York Senator told the audience there has to be amnesty: “I think we’re going to get a bill and I think Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell know it’s the right thing to do… I think the economic Republicans are for this strongly… We’ve always said, and that includes the Gang of Eight, one thing, that bottom line is there has to be some path to citizenship.” Thank you Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

DENVER - Mail-in ballots for recall elections for two state senators will be tossed out after a judge ruled Monday to use a constitutionally-set deadline for candidates to allow more access to the ballots. Judge Robert McGahey considered a lawsuit brought by Libertarians last week alleging they were wrongfully denied the ability to get a candidate on the Sept. 10 recall elections for Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, and Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo. The constitution says that candidates can get on a ballot by turning in enough valid signatures within 15 days of election day, which would make mail-in...

August 13, 2013 Tuesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Dt 31:1-8 When Moses had finished speaking to all Israel, he said to them,“I am now one hundred and twenty years oldand am no longer able to move about freely;besides, the LORD has told me that I shall not cross this Jordan.It is the LORD, your God, who will cross before you;he will destroy these nations before you,that you may supplant them.It is Joshua who will cross before you, as the LORD promised.The LORD will deal with them just as he dealt with Sihon and Og,the...

As with most things his administration does, I’m sure Obama will be shocked when he reads in the newspapers about the State Dept. declaring a $10 million bounty on the head of what it calls an “enemy of Islam.” From a State Department Press release: The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attacks today in Baghdad. These attacks were aimed at families celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The terrorists who committed these acts are enemies of Islam and a shared enemy of the United States,...

<p>Just Us Coffee Roasters Co-op in Nova Scotia isn’t the kind of business that seems ripe for an employee revolt. The worker-owned co-operative serves up fair-trade organic coffee, pays above minimum wage and offers employees perks such as health bene�ts, profit-sharing and money to buy shoes.</p>