Free Republic

<p>ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Every winter, the capital of Pakistan's Islamic republic is overrun by what is many Muslims' worst nightmare: sounds of screeching wild pigs.</p> <p>Motivated by hunger, the reviled animals descend each night from neighboring hills to feed on the garbage bins of Islamabad's most exclusive addresses — from high-end hotels to the capital's embassies and even the president's residence. On their way to feeding grounds pigs cause traffic accidents and send locals hurrying for cover. Some Islamabad residents have reportedly been injured or even killed by belligerent hogs.</p>

Every winter, the capital of Pakistan's Islamic republic is overrun by what is many Muslims' worst nightmare: sounds of screeching wild pigs. Motivated by hunger, the reviled animals descend each night from neighboring hills to feed on the garbage bins of Islamabad's most exclusive addresses — from high-end hotels to the capital's embassies and even the president's residence. On their way to feeding grounds pigs cause traffic accidents and send locals hurrying for cover. Some Islamabad residents have reportedly been injured or even killed by belligerent hogs. ... Now Islamabad officials have all but given up trying to contain the...

With wintry weather poised to swoop into the cramped outdoor quarters of Occupy Wall Street protesters, it may not be long before more campers catch what's being called "Zuccotti lung." That's what demonstrators have dubbed the sickness that seems to be spreading among them at an unpleasantly high rate these days: "It's a real thing," Willie Carey, 28, told the New York Times. With little sleep in cold conditions, cigarettes and drinks being passed from mouth to mouth, and few opportunities to wash hands, Zuccotti Park may now just be the best place to catch respiratory viruses, norovirus (also known...

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – The home base for Occupy Atlanta has tested positive for tuberculosis. The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact. “Over the last three months were have been two persons who have resided in this facility who have been diagnosed with confirmed or suspected infectious tuberculosis...

Michelle 'loves french fries, pizza,' president reveals on Leno show By Geneva Sands-Sadowitz - 10/26/11 09:54 AM ET President Obama said his wife loves pizza and french fries during his appearance Tuesday night on Jay Leno's show. Though the first lady has used her office to campaign against obesity and to tout healthy eating habits, she's OK with fattier foods in moderation, Obama said. Obama made the remarks after Leno questioned whether the first lady would be upset with her husband's Monday visit to Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, a famous soul-food restaurant in Hollywood. "Michelle — quiet as...

This are the shocking scenes that have led some people to accuse the Occupy Wall Street protesters living rough in New York's financial district of creating unsanitary and filthy conditions. Exclusive pictures obtained by Mail Online show one demonstrator relieving himself on a police car. Elsewhere we found piles of stinking refuse clogging Zucotti Park, despite the best efforts of many of the protestors to keep the area clean. The shocking images demonstrate the extent to which conditions have deteriorated as demonstrations in downtown Manhattan enter their fourth week.

It seems that Uncle Sam’s Mickey Mouse loan deal to the now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra was not only a bad investment decision, but likely a contributing factor to the company’s implosion. The new factory built with Department of Energy funds foisted fixed costs on a company already struggling through an industry shake-out, [investors] say. What’s more, the debt paradoxically made raising more money difficult. Once the government demanded priority in the event of failure, private investors were less likely to prop up the company. One Solyndra investor said that, in retrospect,''the worst thing that happened to Solyndra was the loan.''

A Concord man giving away lemonade at a farmer's market was threatened with wiretapping charges last Saturday when he refused to stop filming a police officer and a fellow vendor. Garret Ean didn't have a permit to sell lemonade, which drew the ire of the president of the Concord Farmer's Market. Ean filmed the confrontation, and continued to film when a Concord cop showed up and threatened to arrest him for wiretapping. Photojournalist Carlos Miller (who we interviewed for the November issue of Reason about the war on photography) has the story: The man, whom Ean identified as Steve Blasdell,...

BLUFF CITY, Tenn. (AP) — Bluff City officials are enjoying the extra revenue from speed cameras that have generated more than a million dollars in a little over a year, but the windfall could be short-lived. Between Jan. 1, 2010, and May 31, 2011, the cameras on U.S. Highway 11E in Piney Flats issued 39,923 citations to drivers, including now Gov. Bill Haslam, who was ticketed last year when he was caught speeding during his campaign. The tickets netted the city nearly $1.6 million — an amount equal to eight times Bluff City's total property tax collections from the last...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRjKWq4NRdkThis is going to be politically correct and albeit offensive to some but tax payer funded police DOES NOT WORK. Like other positions in government there is no incentive that exists for employees to do good most in fact tag along for free handouts from the taxpayers. Add to this liberal communists in power expect us to be solely dependent on them for assistance. Our founding fathers NEVER expected us to be fully dependent on them. This is one of the reasons we have the 2nd amendment. The other thing is that government control means more of an attachment and...

"Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday."

Records released by the Pima County Sheriff's Department this week show that the four houses served with search warrants the morning of May 5 - when Jose Guerena was shot and killed by a SWAT team - are less than four miles apart and are all connected to the Guerena family. And while initial reports were that doctors told the Guerena family that Jose had been shot 60 times, the Pima County medical examiner's preliminary report says he was shot 22 times. In its sole briefing on the incident, the Sheriff's Department said SWAT team members fired 71 rounds. Aside...

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) – Video of the SWAT raid and deadly shooting of former Marine Jose Guerena has raised many questions from 9 On Your Side viewers who wanted to know how much force police are legally allowed to use when serving a search warrant. 9 On Your Side Reporter Steve Nuñez sat down with Criminal Defense Attorney Michael Bloom to show him the raw footage of the raid. The Pima County Sheriff's Department released the video to the media on Thursday. "I'm sure everyone's reaction first of all, it's horrible," said Bloom as he watched SWAT officers fire 71 bullets...

Home / News / Local / Government and Politics Hotel sues lawmaker over unpaid birthday tab Share | * Story * Discussion Hotel sues lawmaker over unpaid birthday tab BY JAKE WAGMAN • jwagman@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8268 STLtoday.com | Posted: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 3:30 am | (19) Comments Font Size: Default font size Larger font size * * Share ST. LOUIS • When it came to paying for her 60th birthday bash, state Sen. Robin Wright-Jones turned to Capitol lobbyists to pick up the bill. And when the lobbyists didn't put up enough to cover the entire tab, Wright-Jones didn't pay...

In response to today’s revenue forecast, which estimates the state’s budget shortfall for the next two years will be about $5.3 billion, about 1,000 teachers, health care workers students and others crowded onto the Capitol steps, calling for lawmakers to end tax exemptions rather than cutting education and social programs. The rally, organized by a group called Our Economic Future Coalition, is one of several that have taken place in Olympia so far this session advocating tax increases rather than cuts in the biennial budget, though state lawmakers say that approach would be very difficult politically. Collin Jergens, a spokesman...

Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the anti: American, God, freedom, bravery, church Westboro. The church which has no affiliation to any other Baptist organization, sends members to picket funerals of military servicemen who were killed in action. This isn’t a matter of Liberals Vs. Conservatives anymore. It’s matter of being patriotic. You can be against the war, but desecrating those who fight for us to be able to even have this conversation is wrong. These soulless Westboro protesting pigs are literally sociopaths. (See video below) They are so delusional, they think god kills soldiers. Their signs such...

Dateline — Egypt: “[60 Minutes] correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, ‘Jew! Jew!’ as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday.” Powerful reporting on an important story. Two problems: It didn’t run until yesterday, and CBS didn’t run it. The quote is from the New York Post. And it was The Wall Street Journal that reported “the separation and assault lasted roughly 20 to 30 minutes.” But CBS? They sat on their own story. For five days, as reporters reveled amid giddy celebrations in Tahrir Square, and as...

MADRID (AFP) – Spain announced Friday its jobless rate surged to a 13-year record above 20 percent at the end of 2010, the highest level in the industrialized world, as the economy struggled for air. It was more bad news for an economy fighting to regain the trust of financial markets and avoid being trapped in a debt quagmire that has engulfed Greece and Ireland and now menaces Portugal. Another 121,900 people joined Spain's unemployment queues in the final quarter of the year, pushing the total to 4.697 million people, said the national statistics institute INE. The resulting unemployment rate...

“Washington, D.C.’s workers enjoy the highest salaries of any U.S. city, with a median household income of $85,198,” recently reported CNNMoney. It’s even higher for the federal workers segment of the city’s workers, with an average wage last year for federal civilian workers of $81,258 per person (per person, not per household). That’s over $30,000 more than last year’s average private-sector wage. Add the cost of benefits and pensions and the average compensation gap between federal and private-sector workers jumps to nearly $62,000 per year -- $123,049 vs. $61,051. That doesn’t mean they work the hardest or that they’re twice...

(snip) ...but federal staffers, along with millions of state and local public employees, won't get the tax holiday included in legislation that jumped a procedural hurdle in the Senate on Monday. At the same time, those federal workers, the ones covered by the Civil Service Retirement System, are facing a two-year pay freeze, as are most government employees. (snip) The result: About 426,000 federal workers covered by CSRS would pay more in taxes next year, while most Americans pay less. That doesn't sound fair to Joseph A. Beaudoin, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. "Offering relief...

Hell Seriously Breaks Loose With Bill O'Reilly On The View (Whoopi, Joy Behar Walk Off The Set) Today Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the set after getting in a heated argument with guest Bill O'Reilly, who said, "Muslims killed us on 9/11." Before she left, Whoopi screamed, "That is such bu*l*hit!" The tension began the moment O'Reilly walked on and didn't great the panel with the customary handshakes hugs, and instead, fist-bumped them. Joy asked him, "Do you have OCD or germ-phobia?" Shortly thereafter, he needled Whoopi about her standoffish body language, and then intimated—with some incredibly creepy...

Ironically, a major focus of the speeches at the "One Nation" hate rally was the need for "Green Jobs" along with plenty of rhetoric accusing conservatives of not caring about our environment.

I am looking for recipes for a good cookout meat this Saturday. Anyone?

A patient, believed to be having a stroke, says an officer with the Chattanooga Police Department blocked her husband from taking her to the emergency room at Erlanger Wednesday night. Aline Wright is a cancer survivor, amputee and a newlywed. Wednesday night she began to show signs she was having a stroke. "I started feeling some left arm numbness and a facial droop," said Aline. "It appeared to me that I was probably having a stroke." That's when her husband of four days, Jesse Wright, put her in the car and rushed her to the Erlanger Medical Center. Wright knows...

Currently, Muslims are attempting to build “a Mega-Mosque” near the site of the World Trade Center — to celebrate the murder of 3,000 Americans by Muslims on 9/11/01 by installing a mosque near Ground Zero as Islam’s way of claiming victory over America. Having a mosque so near the site of Islam’s worst attack on America, where their call to prayer will echo out into the streets where thousands of people ran for their lives on the day “The Religion of Peace” decided to prove, yet again, how peaceful it really is would be beyond shameful. It’s an absolute disgrace....

Leadership: This week Spain decided it wasn't going to be the next Greece. It launched tough fiscal measures, and pitched "green" programs and public union raises over the side. Seems there are some lessons here. Spain, a latecomer to democracy and the welfare state, has agonized for years about its place on the Continent. Wanting to be a European welfare state, it imitated its neighbors. It spent like they did, but it couldn't match their productive capacity. Instead, it found itself looking like Greece, a country with a stunted private sector and a bloated public sector. Any effort to balance...

Italy Tanks 5%, As PIGS Turn In Another Huge Down Day Gregory White May. 6, 2010, 11:54 AM Greek debt contagion continues to wreak havoc on European markets today, with several PIIGS indices getting whacked today. Italy's FTSE MIB, down over 5%: Spain's IBEX, down over 3%:[snip]

Roubini: 3 Out Of The 4 PIGS Will Get Creamed Vincent Fernando, CFA May. 6, 2010, 5:58 AM Nouriel Roubini, speaking to la Repubblica, explained that Portugal and Spain are most at risk of Greek crisis contagion. Italy is actually 'at a reasonable distance' from the problem. Still, “You have to be careful to not stop here [for Italy]... There are still serious problems like public debt and lack of competitiveness. Perhaps there's at least one contrarian play in the PIGS.[snip]

A powder nick-named "Pixie Dust" is being used to save the limbs of war heroes who have been wounded in Afghanistan. Surgeons have already used the dust to save several soldiers so badly mutilated that they were at risk of amputation. Made from pig bladders it has the ability to help the human body grow new tissue to replace large areas of a leg or arm destroyed by blast damage.

FAIRMONT, Minn. (AP) — Authorities say a southern Minnesota man was drunk when he allegedly went into a barn and stabbed 29 pigs. Twenty-three-year-old Curtis Lee Adams of Winnegago faces burglary, cruelty to animals and other charges in last week's incident at the Wiechman Pigs hog barn. All 29 pigs had to be euthanized. Authorities say he had blood on his knuckles and smelled of pigs and pig manure when he was found in the barn early April 27. According to authorities, he told a deputy he could remember drinking at a bar and falling asleep in his truck, then...

Reeling from a criminal probe into the Florida GOP's finances, Republican leaders finally got a peek Wednesday at the spending habits of the man at the center of the long-running scandal: Jim Greer. The ousted party chairman charged nearly $500,000 to his American Express card to eat well and live well: spa treatments, flowers, flights, fine hotels and pricey restaurants. In a month ending in March 2008, he spent $41,421.31 in Las Vegas, Washington and Beverly Hills, according to billing statements obtained Wednesday by The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times. Greer's spending is just a sliver of the $7...

KIRKUK, Iraq — Of all the calamities war has loosed upon Iraq, pigs are not among the most obvious. Yet, there they are, across a growing swath of northern farmland, a scourge of feral swine risen from the reeds to root among the furrows and wreak havoc on the fields. “We farmers don’t even want to plant anymore because the pigs just eat it all,” said Abdullah Abdullah, a farmer southwest of Kirkuk whose fields have been trampled by swine. “And this animal, he is not just eating like other animals. He also destroys.” In better times their numbers were...

A 13-year-old Yemeni girl who was forced into marriage died five days after her wedding when she suffered a rupture in her sex organs and hemorrhaging, a local rights organization said Thursday. Ilham Mahdi al Assi died last Friday in a hospital in Yemen's Hajja province, the Shaqaeq Arab Forum for Human Rights said in a statement quoting a medical report. She was wedded the previous Monday in a traditional arrangement known as a "swap marriage," in which the brother of the bride also married the sister of the groom, it said.

Is the United Kingdom in danger of being exiled to the island of misfit debtors? For most of the past year, anxiety about overextended governments has focused on the southern European countries derisively known as the PIGS -- for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. But the PIGS may soon have company. U.K. officials this week released a budget that was short on cost-cutting details. Silence on that unpopular subject was hardly surprising, given the U.K. economy's slow recovery and the political jockeying ahead of a national election that is expected to take place in early May. The move wasn't the...

...while these top earners are a small percentage of the overall congressional work force, their numbers are growing at a rapid rate under the Democratic Congress. The number of staffers earning within the upper 3 percent of House salaries — currently $163,358 or more — has increased by nearly 39 percent in the past four years....

And surprise-surprise, it has nothing to do with the Euro - it is, once again, to bail out bad speculative bets made by banks: "If the country is not stabilised, the next problem will be the banks," Ackermann in a speech to an academic audience on Wednesday, adding that German banks had "billions in the fire." So once again we have banksters literally putting a gun to government heads and threatening them. When does this stop? It's not like Deutsche Bank (and the rest) didn't know Greece was cooking their books and holding debt off balance sheet! They sold them...

A man with learning difficulties was 'tormented to death' after being bullied by yobs for more than a decade, neighbours claimed today. David Askew, 64, dropped dead after he tackled thugs who broke down his gate and invaded his garden. Neighbours said Mr Askew had been targeted before he was found dead at his home in Hattersley, Greater Manchester, last night. One neighbour said he had been 'tormented to death - like bear baiting'. Residents criticised police and officials for not supporting Mr Askew and his brother Brian and mother Rose, who was wheelchair-bound. Officers were called to the address...

Greek consumer group has called for a boycott of German goods as a festering row between the two countries over the euro grows. Greece's Consumer Institute demanded Germany admit 'we are no crooks' after a German magazine blasted the country as 'cheats'. The new trade war came as Angela Merkel admitted the euro is in 'a difficult situation' for the first time. She spoke as German magazine Focus ran a cover image of the armless Venus de Milo somehow raising her middle finger under the headline 'Cheats in the euro family' to suggest that Greece deliberately misled EU peers to...

Simon Johnson: Goldman Is About To Be Blacklisted And Possibly Banned In Europe Joe Weisenthal Feb. 15, 2010, 6:45 AM MIT professor Simon Johnson raises some provocative scenarios in regards to Goldman's participation in Greece's scheme to obfuscate its debt levels. In particular, he expects a full audit of the company, and perhaps some kind of ban: If the Federal Reserve were an effective supervisor, it would have the political will sufficient to determine that Goldman Sachs has not been acting in accordance with its banking license. But any meaningful action from this direction seems unlikely. Instead, Goldman will probably...

Pigs are dispensable; or, at least, so says the Ministry of Defence, which yesterday owned up to detonating more than 100 of the poor sow-and-sows in its bid to improve the lot of soldiers blasted by roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is enlightened attitude that cannot be said to be shared by our European neighbours, who were last night on the brink of endorsing the biggest pig-rescue mission in history. Of course, in this case, the PIGS in question are not animals but countries – or, to be more precise, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. In crisis talks...

This looks pretty bad for both Goldman and Greece, as if things could look worse. According to a scathing piece in Der Spiegel, European statisticians in Luxembourg have had a very difficult time getting proper Greek economic and financial data for years. Worse yet, Goldman Sachs appears to have been helping Greece take advantage of a European regulatory loophole in order to understate its deficits: Der Spiegel:

Dow Surges Tripe Digits As Greek Market Explodes Higher Joe Weisenthal Feb. 9, 2010, 9:41 AM Last week we joked that the Shanghai Index was the index to watch. Actually, what you should be watching is the Athens Index. The Dow is up triple digits on the open, because Athens just did a huge move. Why? There's no actual news, just a major sentiment swing and a belief that some kind of bailout must be at hand

The European Commission has placed Greece's economic policies under an unprecedented level of oversight within the eurozone. Analyst Peter Zeihan discusses the implications and mounting pressures for France and Belgium. Click link to play video.

IQALUIT, Canada (Reuters) - Europe's deepening debt crisis leapt to the top of the agenda of a meeting of G7 finance leaders in the Canadian Arctic on Friday amid fears that Greece's fiscal sickness was already infecting its peers. Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, host of the top-level meeting, said officials from the seven rich industrialized countries had already started talking about Europe's problems, and there was particular concern about the situation in Greece. "I think we have to be very mindful of the potential failure of domestic economies and of the persistence of some toxic assets in some banks,"...

Prepare For Black Wednesday All Over Again As Europe Looks Like 1992 Gregory White Feb. 5, 2010, 4:28 PM This past week has seen Europe swing from one crisis to the next as attention shifted from a flailing Greek government to Portugal's bout with debt. At the center of this storm is the European Central Bank which has to make key decisions about how it deals with its Euro member states and whether it is willing to bail them out. Europe has not been faced with such a crisis since Black Wednesday, when the exchange rate mechanism which held together...

HIGHLAND PARK, Texas, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- The release of three pot-bellied pigs in the hallways of a high school in Highland Park, Texas, was likely a senior prank, officials say. School district officials said Friday's episode at Highland Park High School ended with rumors of one of the released swine being fatally injured during his school visit, serving as a reminder of the possible fallout from student pranks, The Dallas Morning News reported Saturday. University Park Animal Control confirmed all three pigs were all alive and well after being captured. Dallas County Animal Control was holding the pigs, two...

Miss Piggy, the famed porcine muppet, knew a thing or two about mirrors. In fact, she was seldom without one. She may have been vain, but she was also one smart pig, given that researchers regard the ability to use a mirror as evidence of complex cognition. Now, it turns out, Miss Piggy isn't the only clever porker. Real pigs also understand the value of their reflection, according to new research, putting them in an elite group of animals. A team of animal welfare scientists at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom placed eight domesticated pigs (Sus scrofa),...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that pigs in a commercial herd in Indiana have tested positive for swine flu, making it the first time the virus has been found in such hogs. The USDA said it discovered four tissue samples that tested positive for the virus using its swine surveillance program. The sample was collected in late October, and the USDA said the pigs as well as the people caring for the animals have recovered. Last month, tests confirmed that several show pigs at the Minnesota State Fair contracted swine flu, also known as the H1N1...

U.S. Capitol Police have rejected PETA’s plan to bring live pigs to the Capitol because of swine flu fears. In an Oct. 23 letter to the animal-rights group obtained by The Hill, Capitol Police cited a recommendation from the D.C. Health Department and said it was rejecting PETA’s request “due to significant health concerns about the possible spread of the H1N1 virus.” The letter also cited “nuisance concerns” with the plan by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to bring a group of pigs and gallons of swine urine and tons of manure to Capitol Hill.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Susan Atkins, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson whose remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world, has died. She was 61 and had been suffering from brain cancer..." Debra Tate, the slain actress's younger sister, told the parole commissioners Sept. 2 that she "will pray for (Atkins') soul when she draws her last breath, but until then I think she should remain in this controlled situation." Debra Tate noted that she would have a 40-year-old nephew if her sister had lived..." Atkins married twice while in prison....