Free Republic

<p>The French government was dissolved Monday amid turmoil among top ministers.</p> <p>President Francois Hollande asked Prime Minister Manuel Valls to form a new government, which will be announced Tuesday...</p> <p>"The crisis in the heart of the government is clear, and it promises to be bloody," reported Le Figaro, a right-leaning national newspaper.</p>

Fingerprint scanning to be used to fight food shortages made worse by hoarding and smuggling to neighboring countries. Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, plans to introduce a compulsory "biometric card" designed to limit individuals' food purchases using a fingerprint scanner. The move, announced on Wednesday, is part of the government's latest effort to fight the oil-rich nation's chronic food shortages, which it claims result from hoarding by speculators, who resell goods at a profit, and from smuggling into neighbouring countries. This will be the second time the government has introduced a fingerprint-based system to track and limit food purchases. Earlier this...

Several million Zimbabweans left for South Africa and other countries during past economic turmoil. Now, a year after the re-election of longtime leader Robert Mugabe, the country is facing new financial hardships. Zimbabwe's unemployment rate is estimated at 80 percent, pushing many people try to earn a living as street traders.

The EU’s justice commissioner has accused internet giant Google of leading a campaign to shoot down data protection reforms. Speaking in Lyon, France on Monday (18 August), the commissioner, Martine Reicherts, said: “Google and other affected companies who complain loudly” about a recent EU court verdict on personal data are “detractors … attempting to throw a new spanner in the works”. The Luxembourg-based EU court in May ruled that Google must remove links to any content that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” or face a fine.The ruling was based on the bloc’s 1995 data protection law, which are...

Seems the Wolf of Wall Street has a few economic ideas for halting climate change. In a new documentary called “Carbon,” released online Wednesday, narrator Leonardo DiCaprio contends that trillions of dollars’ worth of fossil fuels are awaiting commercial extraction from the ground — and that if we burn them, our planet is toast. Clocking in at under nine minutes, the short doesn't mince words: DiCaprio and climate scientists argue that coal, natural gas and other carbon-based forms of energy are a "monster" that has created catastrophic surges in the earth’s surface temperature. In response, some lawmakers around the world...

California voters, who have always favored the Affordable Care Act by a large majority, now support it more strongly than ever, according to an opinion survey published Tuesday. A new Field Poll, conducted from late June to mid-July, shows that 56 percent of registered voters in the state favor the health reform law, also known as Obamacare, while 35 percent are opposed. The poll, sponsored by the California Wellness Foundation, was based on telephone interviews conducted from June 26 to July 19 – in seven languages – with 1,535 registered voters.

The White House has rejected a request to publicly disclose documents relating to the kinds of security software and computer systems behind the federal health care exchange website on the grounds that the information could "potentially" be used by hackers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a Freedom of Information Act request made late last year by the Associated Press amid concerns that Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented millions of people from signing up for insurance under ObamaCare. In denying access to the documents, including what's known as a...

In 2011, President Barack Obama famously called for “shared sacrifice” in America. Three years later, his wish might just become the Environmental Protection Agency’s command. In the coming months, Obama’s EPA will decide whether to further tighten air quality requirements, known as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. If the EPA gets its way (to which it is accustomed), the vast majority of the country, including Las Vegas and nearly all of Nevada, would fall into so-called “non-attainment” — when the EPA deems air pollution levels “persistently exceed” limits. This is up from a few isolated regions just five years...

China’s president has promised to rein in “unreasonably high” pay for executives at government-owned companies in an apparent effort to mollify public frustration at the wealth of state industry. President Xi Jinping’s announcement, carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, comes as the ruling Communist Party is pressing government officials to cut spending on limousines, banquets and other trappings of office. …

Many businesses said Obamacare is jacking up their employee health coverage costs, and they expect it to do so even more next year, two new surveys of businesses by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have found. Not all firms surveyed said the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to blame for those cost increases to date. But a majority did. About 20 percent of respondents to both surveys said they were reducing their number of workers and/or raising the share of part-time workers as a result of the ACA. "A similar proportion said they were paying less compensation per...

Ferguson is not just about systemic racism—it's about class warfare, and how America's poor are held back ill the recent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, be a tipping point in the struggle against racial injustice, or will it be a minor footnote in some future grad student’s thesis on Civil Unrest in the Early Twenty-First Century? More Feds Will Perform Another Autopsy on Michael Brown NBC NewsHungry Heroes: 25 Percent of Military Families Seek Food Aid NBC News'We Have Had Enough': Ferguson Rally Remembers Michael Brown NBC NewsFerguson Protesters Guard Stores From Looters Huffington PostWestboro Baptist Church's Plan To Protest Robin...

The cost of a product that half the world’s population needs multiple times a day, every month for approximately 30 years, is simply too much.When I got my first period, I was in the most embarrassing place my then-11-year-old self could have imagined: my grandparents’ house. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just put on extra pairs of underwear and threw them away one-by-one, scrunched at the bottom of the bathroom trash bin, as I bled through them. Finally, with nary a pair of panties in sight, I was forced to tell my mother. I have never been...

Disease is the absence of health. Although many diseases still have the potential to end our life we have found ways to combat them and avoid the deadly pandemics of the past. History tells us between 75 and 200 million people died in Europe during the middle years of the 14th century. It took just six years to sweep across the continent and reduce the population by at least 1/3. Those who survived were emotionally and financially destroyed. Because of modern medicine and a clearer understanding of the how and why of epidemics we are at much less risk of...

The agency's needless new ozone standard could cost Americans $270 billion annually. In a town famous for inaction, Washington is gearing up to take action on a major policy issue. But there's a hitch: The outcome could be the most expensive regulation in the nation's history, possibly tanking the economy and costing jobs at a time when businesses, manufacturers and families are making a comeback. Later this year, the Environmental Protection Agency will decide whether it should tighten the air-quality standard for ground-level ozone. There are several things about this possible new standard that are alarming. No single regulation has...

As a result of YOUR efforts, we WILL repeal every word of Obamacare!

... In a study published in 2012, researchers asked national infectious disease experts in 30 different countries whether or not they thought climate change would affect infectious disease patterns in their countries. The majority agreed. Nevertheless, it’s unclear whether these beliefs are driven by good science, or, as Malcolm Gladwank argued way back in 1995, a guilt-driven “idea of disease as a punishment for wickedness.” It’s true that West Africa, where the latest and most catastrophic Ebola outbreak is currently raging, has faced unequivocal environmental changes in recent years. The International Food Policy Research Institute published a report in 2013,...

President Barack Obama's administration is contacting 310,000 Obamacare enrollees starting Tuesday to warn them that they must verify they are U.S. citizens or legal residents -- or their benefits will be cut off. In letters being delivered in English and Spanish, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services instructs the enrollees to provide additional documentation regarding their citizenship or immigration status by Sept. 5. Without that documentation, their health insurance plans will be rescinded Sept. 30. The recipients of these letters are people who have not responded to five to seven previous attempts to obtain their documents, according to a...

With no explanation, Brian Brookman last month lost the bank account for his pawn shop. He had no idea why. Brookman says his store in Grand Haven, Mich., never had been in trouble with federal or state officials. And being in the pawn industry, he was required by law to get a city license every year. “If there was ever a problem, they wouldn’t renew my license,” Brookman, a former police officer and Army veteran, told The Daily Signal. After researching his case on the Internet, Brookman says he concluded that his banker, JP Morgan Chase, closed the account because...

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii. — As Congress remains gridlocked on more than 200 bills related to climate change, U.S. Pacific Command is forging strategies with partner nations in the region to mitigate the security effects of global warming. “You can’t deny the fact that there are military consequences going on as a result of storms,” said Brig. Gen. Mark McLeod, who headed PACOM’s Logistics, Engineering and Security Cooperation directorate for two years until transferring to the Pentagon this summer. “Seventy percent of the bad storms that happen in the world are in the Pacific,” he said. “Call it climate change, call...

The University of California at Davis Medical School recently received a five-year, $1 million grant from the American Medical Association, which gives the school’s medical students the option to become primary care physicians in just three years through the establishment of a new program called Accelerated competency-based Education in Primary Care. Despite some concerns, as medical student Ngabo Nzigira admitted in a recent Capital Public Radio interview, “I thought, ‘Oh man, you want me to put the intensity and stress that is medical school in four years, you want me to condense it down to three years. I’m not sure...