Free Republic

It’s no wonder Americans don’t trust the government. Sandwiched between ideological zealots at the IRS and the EPA and massive corruption at the Veterans Administration, the public is being exposed to the consequences of bureaucracies running wild. President Obama is adding to the public’s discontent with the government. Obama’s high profile lies about his health-care plan and his insistence that there is “not even a smidgen of corruption” regarding the IRS targeting Tea Party groups are most certainly adding to the public’s distrust of government. According to a recent CNN poll, only 12 percent feel the government can be trusted...

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.

When Europeans came to the Americas, they brought some nasty diseases — smallpox, cholera and typhus, to name a few.But one pathogen was already there. And it likely traveled to the shores of South America in a surprising vessel.By analyzing DNA from 1,000-year-old mummies, scientists have found evidence that sea lions and seals were the first to bring tuberculosis to the New World. The sea animals likely infected people living along the coast of Peru and northern Chile, a team from the University of Tubingen in Germany reported Wednesday in the journal Nature."We weren't expecting to find a connection to...

Dr. Kent Brantly, the Samaritan’s Purse doctor who contracted Ebola while caring for patients in Liberia, will be released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta today after completing his recovery from the deadly virus.

Islamist groups seized the headquarters of the Libyan army's special forces in Libya's second city Benghazi after days of fighting, as a huge blaze raged at a fuel depot near the capital's airport. An Islamist and jihadist alliance announced the capture Tuesday of the main military base in the eastern city in a statement which was confirmed by an army official. He said jihadists of Ansar al-Sharia, blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Washington, were among the groups. Intense fighting in Benghazi for the past week has claimed about 60 lives since Saturday, medical officials in the city said. "Special...

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is putting off thousands of tourists who had planned trips to Africa this year, especially Asians, including to destinations thousands of miles from the nearest infected community such as Kenya and South Africa. The bulk of the cancellations are from Asia, which has had its own share of health crises, but visitors from the United States, Brazil and Europe have also scrapped their plans or delayed trips, they said. Besides tourism, Ebola fears are also hitting business travel and investment events in Africa, threatening the continent's image as a rising economic star.

Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS), Col Eric W. Dennis, has ordered soldiers deployed at the borderlines in Bomi and Grand Cape Mount counties, Western Liberia, to shoot any individual/s crossing into the country from neighboring Sierra Leone under the cover of darkness. DCOS Dennis issued the order on Friday to the commander of the platoon-size detachments of soldiers deployed in those counties. The soldiers are under orders to shoot on sight those who violate President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s mandate ordering all borders closed in the wake of the spread of the Ebola virus across the country....

The woman had been in Sierra Leone, Africa, and left earlier this month. Leone is one of several countries in West Africa with known cases of Ebola. The woman was a teacher and had no known exposures to Ebola.

Armed men attacked an Ebola isolation ward in the Liberian capital Monrovia overnight, prompting 29 patients to flee the facility, witnesses said Sunday. 'They broke down the doors and looted the place. The patients all fled,' said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack and whose report was confirmed by residents and the head of Health Workers Association of Liberian, George Williams. Meanwhile, a Nigerian man was today at the centre of an Ebola health scare on the Spanish Costas, which contains an estimated British population of more than 82,000.

West Africa’s deadly Ebola epidemic is probably much worse than the world realizes, with health centers on the front lines warning that the actual numbers of deaths and illnesses are significantly higher than the official estimates, the World Health Organization said. So far, 2,127 cases of the disease and 1,145 deaths have been reported in four nations — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — the W.H.O announced Friday. But the organization has also warned that the actual number is almost certainly higher, perhaps by a very considerable margin. “Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of...

Canada will donate doses of its experimental Ebola vaccine to the international community and the World Health Organization will help determine who receives it, a federal official says. The Canadian government expects to donate 800 to 1,000 doses of the experimental Ebola vaccine developed at the National Microbiology Laboratory. On Wednesday, Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, who represents Winnipeg, where the National Microbiology Laboratory is located, said the WHO, advised by experts, will decide how to strike a balance on who gets the vaccine Canada offers to the international community. "This is a decision that will be made by experts and...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday reported 128 new Ebola cases and 56 deaths in West Africa in the two days to August 11, raising the death toll from the worst ever outbreak of the disease to 1,069.

Anytime I hear negative comments on the decision of Nigeria to ban homosexuality and gay marriage, my body develops goose pimples. I have made efforts at trying to rationalize why a man with his six senses, working at optimal level, will engage in animalistic actions and still make efforts at justifying such, hiding under the fallacious canopy of human right. Procreation, as designed by the creator, is meant to be carried out between a male and a female, and this had been the norm for generations. However, with some persons deciding to behave like animals; in fact, going below the...

<p>The United States of America is not for black people. We know this, and then we put it out of our minds, and then something happens to remind us. Saturday, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., something like that happened: An unarmed 18-year-old black man was executed by police in broad daylight.</p>

AIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The circumcision season among Kenya's Bukusu ethnic group brings a festive atmosphere: music, food and free-flowing beer. For the uncircumcised men from other tribes in the area, however, it is not time to party, it's time to flee. At least 12 men from other tribes have been forcibly circumcised since the start of the circumcisions in August, according to police and local authorities. Others have sought refuge in police stations to avoid the knife's cut. The Bukusu ethnic group prefers traditional circumcisions using simple tools and no anesthesia. But tradition can be disastrous.

Donations from West mask ‘US$60bn looting’ of Africa August 11, 2014 Opinion & Analysis Mark Anderson WESTERN countries are using aid to Africa as a smokescreen to hide the “sustained looting” of the continent as it loses nearly US$60 billion a year through tax evasion, climate change mitigation, and the flight of profits earned by foreign multinational companies, a group of NGOs has claimed.Although sub-Saharan Africa receives US$134 billion each year in loans, foreign investment and development aid, research released last week by a group of UK and Africa-based NGOs suggests that US$192 billion leaves the region, leaving a US$58...

The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in west Africa continues to evolve in alarming ways, with no immediate end in sight. Many barriers stand in the way of rapid containment. The most severely affected countries, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, have only recently returned to political stability following years of civil war and conflict, which left health systems largely destroyed or severely disabled. Lack of capacity makes infection control difficult This lack of capacity makes standard containment measures, such as early detection and isolation of cases, contact tracing and monitoring, and rigorous procedures for infection control, difficult to implement. Though...

The Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja on Sunday announced new procedures for worshippers at Masses to check likely spread of the Ebola virus. The procedures which include the administration of the Holy Communion on the palm of the faithful as against placing it on the tongue of the recipient, was announced by Rev. Fr. Moses Jimbili, at SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Nyanya. Jimbili told parishioners at the church that the measure was a directive by the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, His Eminence, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, as check on the spread of Ebola disease. Another change in the church’s practice...

A two-year-old boy from a remote village in Guinea was 'patient zero' in the deadliest-yet Ebola outbreak, epidemiologists believe. The boy from the village of Meliandou, Guéckédou province, suffered with fever, black stools and vomiting for just four days until he died on December 6. Seven days later, his mother died too, followed by his three-year-old sister, who fell sick on Christmas Day and was dead before she could see the New Year. Guéckédou sits by the borders with both Sierra Leone and Liberia. In a region where borders are porous, it gave the Ebola virus a route into three...