Free Republic

* First Lady has introduced new rules that saw companies limited in what products they could advertise on signs, vending machines, cups and menu boards on school grounds * Food industry spent nearly $150 million in 2009 on marketing in schools, 93 percent was promoting drinks * Schools now require drink companies to promote their diet sodas or water on signs and scoreboards, rather than full-calorie options like Coca-Cola and Pepsi * Michelle Obama's Let's Move program is now in its fourth year Students returning back to school after the summer vacation are finding out what First Lady Michelle Obama's...

<p>Guns and ammo are selling at a feverish pace in and around St. Louis as violent clashes continue between protesters and police in nearby Ferguson, Missouri.</p> <p>"People are coming in with fear in their eyes and they're saying they need something to protect their house," said Steven King, owner of Metro Shooting Supplies, a gun shop in the St. Louis suburb of Bridgeton. "They're scared to death."</p>

A promotional image for Anonymous’s #OpFerguson.David, a.k.a. Pharoah, doesn’t hold a political office or opine for CNN. But this week, the 14-year-old hacker mounted what might have been one of the more personally damaging attacks against Ferguson, Mo.’s embattled police department: the name — and the address, and the Social Security number — of St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. That’s not all. Pharoah, a self-proclaimed member of the loosely affiliated hacker collective Anonymous, has also obtained the name and Social Security number of a Ferguson police officer he believes was involved in 18-year-old Michael Brown’s fatal shooting last...

One of the dividing lines between liberals and conservatives has always been the understanding of how economics works. Conservatives know how economics works; the force of supply and demand as well the true value of work. Liberals are like children who see the last twenty dollar bill in their mom’s wallet and say “Yippee, we’re rich! Let’s go to McDonald’s.” Last week the child-like liberals dropped their “I’m-so-intelligent-because-I’m-on-television” masks and let us see how dumb they really are. Led down the path of stupid is as stupid says, Savannah Guthrie reported that a Minnesota restaurant has added a new line...

I can't be the only one who has been pre-approved for the Quick-Silver Card,then I get in in the mail,a week later I am Pre-Approved for another one.So I applied for the second one,I was approved!,then today,I got my approval for another Quick-Silver Card!,I guess Capital One has so many millions of customers that they just cannot maintain their records to the extent where they finally stop sending pre-approvals for the same cards we already received.

Via the Daily Caller, you would think an eyewitness account of the disappearance of the last American POW in Afghanistan would be easy money for a publisher. But sometimes there are higher considerations. While the U.S. Army weighs whether to bring charges against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was freed earlier this year after spending nearly five years as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan, six of his former platoon mates are shopping proposals for a book and movie that would render their own harsh verdicts… “I’m not sure we can publish this book without the Right using it to their ends,”...

Half of the Vladivostok was assembled in Russia, then towed to France.The evening attraction in Saint-Nazaire this summer is watching Russian sailors practise their marching drill along the quayside.Some 400 Russian ratings are living in the western French port, awaiting delivery of their controversial new command-and-control ship, the Vladivostok. By day the sailors receive instruction at an on-shore facility run by the Vladivostok's builders, STX France. This week they have finally been allowed on board the vessel for the first time. At the end of the afternoon they return to the Russian navy ship which serves as their sleeping-quarters. The...

The Ukrainian hryvnia just made a new low against the U.S. dollar. On Tuesday, one dollar bought 13.4 hyrvnias, with the hryvnia losing more than 4% against the dollar just today. The latest drop in the currency comes amid reports that Russia is sending a convoy of 280 humanitarian aid trucks into Ukraine, according to Reuters.

Find Them Before They Spoil the Bunch As a business owner and/or manager, you work hard and spend a considerable amount of time and money on hiring the right people. Prior experience, references and whether or not the person will fit into your company's culture are all things that must be carefully examined. If you're thorough and do your homework, chances are the person will likely work out. But what happens six months, a year, or 5 years down the road when things take a turn for the worse? Employees—especially those on the fast track—work hard to stand out and...

One of President Obama’s top national security aides said Tuesday that the president did not take criticism from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over his handling of foreign policy personally. “I think their relationship is very resilient,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN. “They’ve been through so much together.”

Although investors hang on every comment by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen to get insight on the direction of interest rates and what it means for the economy and asset prices, the real power to determine U.S. interest rates may be in the hands of China, according to Lombard Street Research. Facing an overvalued currency that is hurting corporate profits and slowing growth, China appears ready to dump its $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds to drive U.S. interest rates up and strengthen the dollar... (snip) China tried to slow the fall of the dollar by increasing its holdings in...

Updated with information about the Wal-Mart that was damaged Sunday night.Sunday night’s unrest in Ferguson left the QuikTrip at 9420 West Florissant Ave. a burned wreckage. At the moment the company has no plans for rebuilding or even a process for how to make that decision; it has never faced a similar situation. QuikTrip spokesman Mike Thornbrugh said there have been “no discussions whatsoever” about whether to rebuild. Instead, the Tulsa-based company, which had 2013 revenue of $11.2 billion, is focusing on its employees and customers, he said. Thornbrugh said the cost of the damage had not yet been assessed,...

“MY SPIRIT IS BROKEN” Will the New Statin Guidelines Do More Harm Than Good? Part 1: A $29-billion-dollar-a-year industryWhen he was nearing the end of his career, Henry Gadsden, then-CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, gave an interview to Fortune magazine in which he said that he regretted that he couldn’t sell drugs to healthy people. He said his dream was to be able to peddle his company’s wares to everybody, like chewing gum giant Wrigley’s. Mr. Gadsden’s dream soon began to come true. A few years earlier, Japanese biochemist Doctor Akira Endo surmised that a compound that could inhibit the...

Towards the end of July a would-be illegal immigrant to the UK, a stowaway who had clung underneath a coach for 200 miles from Calais to Norfolk, was killed when the coach's driver accidentally reversed over him. One cannot help feeling sorry for the poor chap, illegal or not. This news emerged in conjunction with that of a group of illegal immigrants first caught by the French border police while they were trying to leave Britain and smuggle themselves into France, and then returned to Dover. Several Facebook users left comments to the effect that, with all the illegal...

Part 1: My Spirit is Broken: Will the New Statin Guidelines Do More Harm Than Good? “You use them or you die.” This is what a doctor told Sulette Brown, a psychotherapist from Oklahoma, when she balked at taking statins, after she’d been rushed to the emergency room for a heart attack. Since that night, her life has changed in ways she could not have imagined.

Majority of the Inspectors General find themselves unable to perform their duties to audit the federal government Inspectors General (yes, that’s the plural) are considered watchdogs for the government. Their jobs primarily focus on “uncovering waste, fraud, and mismanagement”, which is an important function to keep government programs and agencies in check. A serious breach of trust is evident, therefore, when 47 of 73 Inspectors General pen a letter to Congress describing “serious limitations on access to records.” That’s 64% of the total watchdogs who express such concerns.

Attracting about 125 college graduates a year won’t do much to stop an annual exodus of nearly 40,000. But the corporate welfare arm of Michigan government is happy about spending $126 million for that result. James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, questions the assertion made by a state official that a Michigan Economic Development Corporation program is helping reverse a “brain drain.” Paula Sorrell, the Senior Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital for the MEDC, made her pitch for how her organization is helping stop the exodus of young college graduates...

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- One of the largest ranches in the U.S. and an icon for Texas horse and cattlemen has been listed for $725 million, marking the end of a decades-long courtroom battle among the heirs of cattle baron W.T. Waggoner, who established the estate in 1923. The estate includes the 510,000-acre ranch spread over six North Texas counties, with two main compounds, hundreds of homes, about 20 cowboy camps, hundreds of quarter-horses, thousands of heads of cattle, 1,200 oil wells and 30,000 acres of cultivated land, according to Dallas-based broker Bernie Uechtritz, who is handling the sale...

There will be a gun turn in event in Benton Harbor, Michigan, on Saturday, 23 August,  2014.  While these events are commonly labeled with the propaganda term "buyback" the guns were never owned by the people attempting to buy them. The event will be held at Berrien County Health Department Environmental Health building, 2106 S. M-139, Benton Harbor; and the Niles Berrien County Health Department office at 1205 N. Front St.  The event is scheduled to run from 10 am to noon. People often turn up early at these events. The incentive for the gun turn in is a...

* TrueNorth is being hailed as the world’s first neurosynaptic computer chip because it can figure things out on its own * Modern processors have 1.4 bn transistors and consume up to 140 watts but the IBM chip contains 5.4 bn transistors and uses just 70 milliwatts * Richard Doherty, the research director of tech research firm Envisioneering Group, hailed IBM's chip as a ‘really big deal’IBM has developed a computer chip which it says will function like a human brain in a giant step forward for artificial intelligence. TrueNorth is being hailed as the world’s first neurosynaptic computer chip...