Free Republic

Shandong - Police in Shandong China received a call reporting that a body was floating in one of the province's rivers on July 11. The Shandong police dispatched a team of their finest officers to recover the body that turned out to be an inflatable sex doll. According to RocketNews24.com, the Chinese language news site Sohu, reports that the team of 18 officers worked frantically for nearly an hour to rescue what looked like a lady in distress. News about the heroic rescue attempt spread and a crowd of about 1,000 curious, excited and anxious spectators gathered at the scene....

Minutes south of Interstate 10 and Sealy, the pastures along FM 1458 are their own silent world in the morning. Mists lift to reveal black cattle, brown and spotted horses, snow-white egrets underfoot in lush green grass. Then a concrete mixer comes churning down the blacktop. Just up the road is a small subdivision. More are sure to come as city dwellers, including weekenders and retirees, move out in search of a quieter, simpler life — and relief from city traffic. Although the gradual influx may bring greater changes in the long run, what disturbs residents most is the planned...

TEXAS CITY — A massive superhighway that Texans have protested at public hearings statewide drew heated opposition among Galveston County residents, who said they feared the toll road would cripple the local shipping industry and do nothing to improve insufficient hurricane evacuation routes. The Trans-Texas Corridor would wind from Laredo to Corpus Christi, wrap around the western edge of Greater Houston, parallel Interstate 59 through East Texas and leave the state in Texarkana. But residents at a public hearing Thursday night in Texas City questioned the real purpose for the road, which would also be part of a national Interstate...

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

FEW issues find common ground among right-wing conservatives and left-of-center liberals. But the so-called "NAFTA Superhighway," potentially stretching from the Mexican border to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn., is apparently one of them. Across the political spectrum people have worked themselves into a frenzy over a massive futuristic transportation project that may simply be a figment of their imagination. Talk of a new north-south Texas toll road to accommodate extra truck traffic coming from Mexico has renewed bipartisan passion about the feared superhighway. There is almost a conspiratorial edge to some critics who are convinced that the "Trans-Texas...

WASHINGTON - A new Texas road being planned to accommodate truck traffic between the United States and Mexico has riled Ohio members of Congress who fear it's the first phase of a "NAFTA Superhighway" that would be used to funnel cheap imports to the Midwest as it links Mexico, the United States and Canada. Texas and federal highway officials deny that a proposed North-South toll road running parallel to Inter-state 35 is part of a planned international superhighway, and say there are no plans for a transcontinental road. They insist the new thoroughfare would merely handle some of the extra...

WASHINGTON – There are mixed signals coming from Mexico about the fate of a proposed mega-port in Baja California for mainly Chinese goods that would be shipped on rail lines and "NAFTA superhighways" running through the U.S. to Canada. The port at Punta Colonet, planned as a major container facility to transfer Asian goods into America's heartland, got at least a temporary setback when a Mexican businessman announced a competing project in which he was seeking to secure mineral rights in the area. Gabriel Chavez, originally one of the principal movers behind the port plan, now says there are significant...

/begin my translation Depressed Market due to Bad Chinese Goods Life of N. Koreans We find out the life in N. Korea from N. Koreans who came to China. People do not go to work because government cannot give out food rations. The authorities cannot come down strongly on them, either. N. Koreans mainly use Chinese products, but many of them turn out to be health hazards, leading to boycotts. For example, lipsticks can cause fever, and skin to be peeled off. Brazier can cause rashes and itching. Worse, one newly-wed couple died after eating apples in 2005, or children...

Articles - Publication Date 9.1.2003 Bye-Bye To 'Buy American'? --------------------------------------------------------Today's U.S. consumer marketplace is a melting pot of people, products and paychecks. Manufacturers need to ask: Does 'Made in America' matter to their customers anymore? By David Drickhamer Editor's Note: This is the fourth installment of a seven-part series that details the strategic and often gut-wrenching shifts taking place in manufacturing. It appears in the September 2003 issue of IndustryWeek. IW will introduce a new installment each month throughout the remainder of 2003. Wal-Mart's story is as all-American as they come. It grew from a regional chain in the 1960s...