Free Republic

A total of 3,738 nursing mothers yesterday participated in the "Sabay-Sabay, Sumuso sa Nanay" project at the San Andrex Complex in Malate, Manila, shattering the Guinness world record for the most number of women breastfeeding simultaneously. The event erased the previous Guinness record of 1,130 nursing mothers established in Berkeley, California on Aug. 3, 2002. Women from Manila’s six districts participated in the simultaneous breastfeeding program which was aimed at raising public awareness on the importance of breastfeeding in averting maternal and child diseases and mortality. The event emphasized the recommendation that infants should be breastfed exclusively up to six...

THE most vivid characters in Alan Moore's graphic novels are antiheroes of ambiguous morality and identity: costumed avengers like Rorschach, the disturbed street vigilante of "Watchmen," or the crusader known only by the letter V, who commits catastrophic acts of terrorism in the dystopian tale "V for Vendetta."With inventions like these, and a body of writing that spans nearly three decades, Mr. Moore, a 52-year-old native of Northampton, England, distinguished himself as a darkly philosophical voice in the medium of comic books — a rare talent whose work can sell solely on the strength of his name. But if Mr....

Last week, we ran a story about Vanity Fair's recent magazine cover featuring two naked actresses and one fully clothed man. Where are the naked men? the story asked. And which ones would you like to see naked? we asked female readers. Then an interesting thing happened: Men responded that women are above all that. Women, however, overwhelmingly demanded the pants of Matthew McConaughey. How can the sexes be so far apart on the bare truth?

A sticker on a bicycle that said "this bike is a pipe bomb" caused a scare Thursday at Ohio University that shut down four buildings before authorities learned the message was the name of a punk rock band, a university spokesman said. The sticker on the bike chained outside the university-owned Oasis restaurant near the center of campus attracted the attention of a police officer about 5:30 a.m., spokesman Jack Jeffery said. Police blocked streets around the restaurant and the Columbus police bomb squad came from about 65 miles away. The bomb experts hit the bike with a high-pressure spray...

A walk on the wild side is one thing, but now motorists are discovering it's a jungle out there. Frozen squirrels, amorous cows and rowdy zebra are among the hazards drivers face on Britain's roads, according to the UK's biggest insurer, Norwich Union, which yesterday revealed that freak incidents involving animals top the list of bizarre motor claims.The company has compiled a list of the "ten weirdest claims" it received last year, and at the top of the list was: "A frozen squirrel fell out of a tree and crashed through the windscreen on to the passenger seat."In second place...

WEST WARWICK, R.I. --A seventh-grader who wrote an essay saying his perfect day would involve doing violence to President Bush is being investigated by the Secret Service.The unidentified boy from West Warwick turned in the essay on Tuesday, and his teacher alerted school officials. The assignment was to write about what he would do on a perfect day.Thomas M. Powers, Secret Service resident agent in charge in Providence, said the investigation is ongoing but the essay may have been a "cry for help." Threatening the president is a felony, he said.The one-page essay also said the student wanted to kill...

What exactly do women want out of life? Regardless of the complexity of the question, the answers are readily available by the hundreds. All you have to do is pick up a magazine, newspaper or "self-help" book and all will be revealed, neatly simplified, packaged and made readily digestible for a readership with an apparently insatiable curiosity about the desires and needs of women.But how accurate are those answers? And more to the point, how reliable is the research upon which they are based?In her new book "Are Men Necessary?" (Putman; $25.95; 352 pages), New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd...

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Tobacco could be good for you.A research team led by Southern Illinois University Carbondale biotechnologist David A. Lightfoot has found that tobacco equipped with an extra gene can produce markedly larger amounts of 159 chemical compounds. Fourteen of these could become the drugs of tomorrow, fighting off tumors, treating epilepsy and Parkinson's disease - maybe even curing the common cold.The team includes Rajsree Mungur, a former SIUC graduate student now at Germany's Max Planck Institute in Potsdam, A.D.M. "Tony" Glass from the University of British Columbia in Canada and Dayan B. Goodenow from Phenomenome Discoveries Inc., a...