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A Florida vegan mother has been found guilty of murdering her 18-month-old son after only feeding him raw fruits and vegetables. Sheila O’Leary, 39, is facing life in prison after a jury convicted her Wednesday of murder and a string of child abuse charges over the 2019 death of her toddler, Ezra O’Leary, the News Press reported. Her little boy weighed just 17 pounds — seven pounds below average — when his parents noticed he had stopped breathing. O’Leary and her husband, Ryan O’Leary, told police that Ezra followed a strict vegan diet — but that he was also breast...

A woman in Kuwait found the way her husband ate his peas to be such a “shocking sight” that she filed for divorce after they had only been married for a week. The woman decided that her husband’s habit of eating peas with bread instead of a fork was an issue that they could not work out. That’s not the only recent divorce that has nothing to do with infidelity, abuse or communication issues. Another woman recently filed for divorce because of the way her husband squeezes toothpaste. “We are always arguing,” she reportedly told her lawyer. “I keep telling...

Newly proposed federal regulations aimed at the snack foods and drinks served in the nation's schools could come with a hefty price tag. The American Action Forum estimates the regulations, which include caps on serving sizes and calorie counts, will cost schools $127 million and require more than 926,000 hours of paperwork. Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the institute, says the proposals amount to yet another unfunded federal mandate for state and local governments, "at a time when many of their budgets are still struggling." The Food and Nutrition Service regulations would be administered by the U.S. Department...

I’m pretty critical of Senator John Hoeven at times, but he deserves credit for going to bat against federal overreach on school lunches. New federal guidelines that, among others things, limited calories in school lunches rankled parents and school administrators across the nation. It was a one-size-fits-all policy for a nation full of students who have very different nutritional needs.Now, thanks to the work of Senator Hoeven (who teamed up with Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor), the calorie restriction is no more, though just for the 2012-2013 school year. So it’s a temporary reprieve, for now. From a press release sent...

Annika Eriksson, a long-time Swedish chef revered for her school lunches, has been squelched. Has she made errors? Are her meals contaminated? Has the quality of her ingredients slipped? No, none of the above. The trouble stems purely from the fact that her meals are too good. Yes, you read that right. She’s exceeding expectations. She bakes fresh bread every day. She offers 15 different vegetables at lunchtime. She knows it pleases the students to have choices. This is her crime because, you see, other schools don’t have the same benefits in the Falun district in Sweden. (This is called...

WEST HARTFORD —— The beef is there, but where's the pickle? That's the question students at Hall High School have been asking on hamburger day in the cafeteria since the food services department made menu changes to meet new school lunch rules from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Students are "outraged over the removal of pickles and salt from the cafeteria at Hall to meet nutrition guidelines," student representative Kendall Teare told the school board last week.

House Republicans say new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines aimed at forcing students to eat fruits and vegetables are a failure because students across the country are simply tossing the healthy fare into the trash. "[T]here remains great concern with the amount of food waste generated at school cafeterias, much of it brought on by requiring students to take fruits and vegetables rather than simply offer them," Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.), Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) and Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) told USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter sent Thursday. "This is a waste of federal, state and local funds and...

Government-approved school meals as a model for the family dinner table? Responding to concerns that students are throwing away the healthy food on their cafeteria trays, the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledged that adapting to the changes "may be challenging at first, as students are introduced to new flavors and foods in the cafeteria." But the government also says parents can help school make the taste-transition easier: "We know that many parents are already making changes at home to help the whole family eat healthier," the USDA blogged on Monday. "We recommend reviewing school menus with kids at home and...

A mother in Hoke County complains her daughter was forced to eat a school lunch because a government inspector determined her home-made lunch did not meet nutrition requirements. In fact, all of the students in the NC Pre-K program classroom at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford had to accept a school lunch in addition to their lunches brought from home. NC Pre-K (before this year known as More at Four) is a state-funded education program designed to “enhance school readiness” for four year-olds. The mother, who doesn’t wish to be identified at this time, says she made her daughter...

President Barack Obama annoyed the Chinese government, embarrassed the Japanese government and called Americans “lazy” at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Hawaii, held over the weekend. The diplomatic strike-out was accomplished by Obama during a trip that his aides hoped would portray him a global leader worthy of re-election in 2012. The trip’s absence of significant trade, investment or security deals, and Obama’s frequent claims that President George W. Bush reduced the nation’s standing in the world, created an opportunity for his domestic rivals to deride his trans-Pacific diplomacy. International media broadcast a U.S. government report on Saturday that...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - First lady Michelle Obama led toddlers at a New Orleans daycare center in calisthenics and read them a book about a mouse that eats green peas, bidding to get America's children eating better and exercising more. Obama stretched, jumped and marched in place before reading to the children who gathered in a classroom with their parents and teachers at the Royal Castle Child Development Center. The center focuses on preschoolers from families with moderate and low incomes.

While we're fighting with our own, the queen is out there flaunting her wealth again while Americans "eat their peas."

C’mon, IRS. “Stop coddling the super rich.” Contrive to successfully extract the taxes they already owe.Mr. Buffett, I barely want to waste my breath on your blatant hypocrisy.And, Mainstream Media (by which I mean the NYT, which ran Buffett’s obnoxious op-ed in the first place), WHERE ARE YOU?From NewsMax: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett triggered a major debate over taxes recently when he wrote in The New York Times that he should be paying more to the federal government. He called on Washington lawmakers to up tax rates on the rich.But it turns out that Buffett’s own company, Berkshire Hathaway, has...

unnngh...

President Barack Obama told an audience on the first stop of his bus tour that his original deficit reduction plan could have solved the nation’s debt problem “tomorrow” but House Speaker John Boehner walked away from the deal. “The fact of the matter is that solving our debt and deficit problems simply requires all of us to share in a little bit of sacrifice, all of us to be willing to do a little bit more to get this country back on track and that’s not too much to ask,” Obama told a crowd in Cannon Falls, Minnesota on Monday.

This will be the icon of 0bama's shark-jumping moment.

President Barack Obama will hold a press conference tomorrow at 11 a.m., his second in a week, according to a tweet from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. Obama will face questions on the ongoing negotiations to raise the debt limit and lower the deficit.

Speaker John Boehner told a closed gathering of House Republicans on Tuesday morning that he was “pissed” over being unable to reach a “grand bargain” with President Barack Obama to make sweeping entitlement changes in return for an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. But Boehner also accused Obama of failing to lead on the impending crisis over boosting the $14.3 trillion debt limit, according to people inside the GOP meeting. But while Boehner was trying to rally his Republican troops Tuesday morning, he did warn them that they will quickly lose leverage in the debate as the country grows...

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