Free Republic

The world's most expensive burger is available at just one restaurant in West London, England, once a week — but it will eventually be available to order via a hotline. The fine ingredients of what is called simply 'The Burger' include Wagyu beef, white truffles, Pata Negra ham slices, Cristal onion straws, Modena balsamic vinegar, lambs lettuce, pink Himalayan rock salt, organic white wine and shallot-infused mayonnaise in an Iranian saffron and white-truffle-dusted bun.

A $175 Hamburger, is prepared at The Wall Street Burger Shoppe in New York May 13, 2008. The Wall Street Burger Shoppe just raised its price from $150 to assure its designation as the most expensive burger in the city as determined by Pocket Change, an online newsletter about the most expensive things in New York. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

Forget talk of a recession - a new $175 burger has set the city's gold standard for conspicuous consumption. Literally. The Richard Nouveau - from the Wall Street Burger Shoppe, natch - comes topped with a blizzard of real gold flakes, plus 25 grams of black truffles, a seared slab of foie gras and an aged Gruyere typically reserved for a high-class cheese tray.

Steel your stomach for 'world's biggest burger' There's super-sizing, and there's super-sizing - and then there's this gut-busting attempt at a record-breaking hamburger. This not-so-fast food weighs in at a hefty 134lb for the burger, slapped inside a 50lb bun, and needs to be ordered 24 hours in advance. And any diner giving in to temptation - or taking up the challenge of tucking in - will be hit by a bill for $350. The mighty meal - dubbed "The Absolutely Ridiculous Burger" - is being served up at Mallie's Sports Bar and Grill in Detroit, Michigan. Owner Steve Mallie...

TRENTON, N.J. The Topps Meat Co. on Saturday expanded its recall of frozen hamburger patties that may be contaminated with the E. coli bacteria and sickened more than a dozen people in eight states. Topps said it was recalling 21.7 million pounds of ground beef products distributed to retail grocery stores and food service institutions throughout the United States, up from the 332,000 pounds it recalled on Tuesday. The recall represents all Topps products with either a "sell by date" or a "best if used by date" between Sept. 25 this year and Sept. 25, 2008. The Elizabeth-based company said...

Ladies and gentlemen: David Hasselhoff.

Fast-food chain McDonald's is testing a bigger high-end Angus burger that costs a little bit more for the extra weight, according to a published report Wednesday. The Chicago Tribune said the new Third Pounder is currently available only in about 600 restaurant locations in Southern California. At one-third of a pound, the burger is the biggest on the McDonald's (Charts) menu at outlets where it is being tested. It is also the most expensive sandwich, priced at $3.99, the paper said. America's most amired companies The paper quoted McDonald's franchise owner Scott Frisbie as saying that he approached the company...

(AP) ST. LOUIS -- In the past few months, McDonald's Corp. announced it would push healthy meals like salads while Wendy's International Inc. said it would fry foods in a healthier oil with less trans fats. And CKE Restaurants Inc.? The operator of Hardee's and Carl's Jr. unveiled a jumbo-sized cheeseburger smothered in sliced steak. "I think the health craze is happening mostly among journalists," said Andrew Puzder, CKE's president and chief executive. A lean man with an athletic build, Puzder laid out CKE's decidedly un-health-conscious business strategy during the company's annual shareholders meeting Tuesday in St. Louis. The key...

McDonald's is paying premiums, and Wal-Mart is making demands. And, with the impending reopening of the Japan market, we're likely to see premiums equaling those producers enjoyed last fall for source- and age-verified cattle. -Troy Marshall of Seed Stock Digest If NAIS goes through McDonald's and other big buyers will stop paying premiums to farmers that offer Animal ID and Trace-Back. Everyone will be required to provide that service of trace-back so there will be no incentive for buyers who want trace-back to pay for it as stands with the existing market driven system. NAIS is a great way for...

Several Martinsville High School students say teachers stopped their calls to 911 while a fellow student was choking, because cell phones aren't allowed on campus. Witnesses tell police the victim was rushing to finish his lunch before leaving the cafeteria, because you can't bring food outside. That's when they say he started choking, went into cardiac arrest, and died at the hospital. Multiple 911 calls went out from Martinsville High School. Witnesses say Jesse Tucker choked on a hamburger. Paramedics rushed the 15 year-old freshman to the hospital, where he later died. "It's really hard to grasp the fact that...

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A cow that escaped a slaughterhouse dodged vehicles, ran in front of a train, braved the icy Missouri River and took three tranquilizer darts before being recaptured six hours later. News of the heifer's adventures prompted a number of people to offer to buy the animal. The black, 1,200 pound heifer jumped a gate at the packing plant at around 5 a.m. Thursday and apparently wandered through residential areas. Police received reports at about 9:30 a.m. that it was in the middle of a busy intersection. Police tried to catch the cow, and had her wedged...

Earlier this year the Food and Drug Administration's Obesity Working Group issued its "Calories Count" report urging the FDA to work with restaurants to disclose the number of calories in the products they sell," according to an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. "But that's not good enough for some grinches in Congress. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) and Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D) plan to re-introduce bills requiring chain restaurants with more than 20 outlets to list calorie counts either on menu boards or printed menus." In "Government Gets Fat Fighting Obesity," Cato policy analyst Radley Balko writes: "The...

<p>IF YOU TOOK every failed, trendy educrat idea, packaged them in a school and put radical animal-rights activists in charge of it, you'd end up with something like the Humane Education Learning Community -- a K-6 charter school approved by Sacramento's San Juan Unified School District.</p>

13:29 25Jul2003 RTRS-REUTERS SHOWN BODIES BY US OFFICIALS, CORRESPONDENT SAYS LOOK LIKE SADDAM SONS 13:32 25Jul2003 RTRS-BODIES HAVE UNDERGONE "FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION", U.S. MILITARY SAYS 13:33 25Jul2003 RTRS-U.S. OFFICIALS SAY NO EVIDENCE SADDAM SONS COMMITTED SUICIDE 13:37 25Jul2003 RTRS-Reuters sees Baghdad bodies, look like Saddam sons BAGHDAD, July 25 (Reuters) - Officials from the U.S.-led administration in Iraq showed independent journalists two corpses on Friday that Washington says it is sure are the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons. "I've been shown the bodies and they do appear to be those of Uday and Qusay," Reuters correspondent Andrew Marshall said from a...

KASSEL - Prosecutors Thursday said they have filed a murder indictment against one of two gay men who met in an Internet chat room, where it allegedly was agreed that one of them would kill and devour the other. And in a stunning new development, prosecutors in Kassel said they are broadening the investigation to include some 430 other persons believed to have been involved in the Internet gay cannibalism chat room that led to the death of a 42-year-old man in March 2001. Prosecutors are convinced that the victim, a computer analyst from Berlin, agreed to be killed and...

<p>Former Burger King cook Joshua Arbuckle has been charged with aggravated assault for supposedly spitting on the hamburger he prepared for a Pennsylvania state trooper.</p> <p>Arbuckle, 18, was tied to the crime after a four-month police investigation that included DNA analysis, Clarion County District Attorney Mark Aaron said yesterday.</p>

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Two police officers were hospitalized on Thursday after one found broken glass in his hamburger at a McDonald's restaurant in Tampa, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said. The two deputies had stopped at the McDonald's for dinner. One deputy began bleeding from his mouth and found shards of broken glass under the bun of his hamburger, a spokesman for the sheriff's office told reporters. He was in stable condition at a Tampa hospital. The other deputy, who also ate a hamburger, was taken to the same hospital for examination. It was not clear if he had...

Health officials have suggested that it be made illegal to sell junk food to children. They want a ban written into a new health law to meet concerns about child obesity. A minimum legal age for being able to eat such food is one of a number of ideas floated in a Ministry of Health discussion document that aims to restrict children's access to food considered unhealthy. Other possibilities include restrictions on the number, size and location of outlets selling certain types of food. One group wants soft drinks, pies, sweets and chocolate included in the controlled category.

New from McDonald's: the McAfrika burger (don't tell the 12m starving) Andrew OsbornSaturday August 24, 2002The Guardian McDonald's has been accused of extreme insensitivity after releasing a new sandwich called the "McAfrika" in Norway, one of the world's richest countries, at a time when 12 million people are facing starvation in southern Africa. The launch of the new hamburger has infuriated the Norwegian equivalent of Christian Aid and the Norwegian Red Cross and generated a storm of bad publicity for the American fast-food giant. The concoction of beef, cheese, tomatoes and salad in a pitta-style sandwich is said to be...

Jews Worldwide Bombard* I.D.F. Soldiers with Pizza An Internet Site Allows People From All Over the World to Send Pizza to Soldiers in the Field -- and the Interest is High I.D.F. soldiers out in the field have been suprised in recent days, but the surprise introduces a new trend: without any prior warning a box of pizza suddenly arrives. Behind the pizza boxes is an internet site that was set up by a group of reserve soldiers. The site, http://PizzaIDF.org, offers supporters of Israel throughout the whole world the opportunity to join the war effort in the territories and...

Thursday, 1 August, 2002, 14:53 GMT 15:53 UK Hubble sees 'space burger' Cosmic recipe: Hidden star, glowing gas and dust By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor It has been called a hamburger in space but in reality it is a star caught during a very brief phase in its evolution. The latest object to be imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope is a sun-like star nearing the end of its life. It has already expelled large amounts of gas and dust and is on its way to becoming a colourful, glowing planetary nebula. The peculiar shape results...

Hamburger Helper You can bet a lot of grills sat cold this weekend after the Department of Agriculture announced a nationwide recall of 19 million pounds of beef -- the second largest in history. With 19 people sick from E-coli contaminated meat, nobody felt much like a hamburger.The truly unfortunate thing about the latest recall is that it didn't have to happen. We've long had the tools to cut back on foodborne illnesses, but government agencies, egged on by groups like Public Citizen, have made it difficult to safely enjoy that steak tartare.According to the Centers for Disease Control,...

<p>FREMONT - A Clyde woman claims a Wendy’s chicken sandwich "exploded" onto her face and hands and caused severe burns.</p> <p>She filed suit against the fast food chain yesterday in Sandusky County Common Pleas Court.</p> <p>In the lawsuit, Toledo attorney Samuel Bolotin alleges that a defect in the design of the chicken sandwich and the failure of Wendy’s employees to warn patrons of the risk of the sandwich’s exploding warrant a judgment against the company.</p>