Free Republic

A 60-year-old Boca Raton man is facing federal charges of helping to pack, mark and ship Florida spiny lobster illegally to Hong Kong, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Eric Burman pleaded not guilty last week to the charges. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release, as well as a criminal fine of up to $250,000. Through a Pompano Beach business he owns, Burman “was engaged in the wholesale commercial seafood industry, including the export of live Florida spiny lobster to the seafood market in China,” the U.S....

Those with a diet low in protein likely to gorge on carbohydrates and fat Proportion of protein in Western diets has dropped - which could account for obesity levels Poeple must eat enough protein to satisfy appetites, scientists say Protein is essential for the healthy growth and repair of body tissues Over the past 60 years the proportion of protein in Western diets has dropped, and researchers suggest this could account for soaring levels of obesity.

PepsiCo Canada has launched “Doritos Roulette,” a new flavour edition in which most of the chips are nacho cheese flavored, while others are insanely hot. Consumers are calling the chips “dangerous” and “a solid slap in the face” and hundreds of people are posting videos of themselves eating the chips on YouTube. “Aside from the spice, these chips look and taste just like a regular Nacho Cheese Dorito,” according to a review by the blog The Impulsive Buy. “So you really have no idea what you’re going to get until you pop it in your mouth.” The new flavor was...

Health officials offer health tips to general publicAbu Dhabi Health Services’ (Seha) experts warn people who are fasting to refrain from overeating as it could lead to severe health problems. Overeating, following a 15-hour-long fast, is common and doctors always advise people to eat nutritious and easy to digest food in proper quantities. “Although Ramadan is a month of exercising self-restraint, some habits such as excessive eating after iftar, which is against the very principle of the holy month, may lead to severe health problems,” said Dr Mouza Al Kuwaiti, Health Education Committee Chair of Seha’s Ambulatory Healthcare Services (AHS)....

A young Saudi has established a company selling camel's milk in the United States, despite the animals reportedly being the source of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus. According to a report in a Los Angeles newspaper, Walid Abdulwahab, 23, set up the company as part of his class project at the University of Southern California. The lighthearted slogan of his company, Desert Farms, is "Make every day a humpday." Supplied by seven small camel farms, most of them owned by Amish, the Santa Monica-based company recently sold camel milk of $100,000, as it spreads its claims of nutritional...

NEW YORK -- There's just no stopping "Jaws." Joey Chestnut scarfed down 61 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win his eighth consecutive championship, barely beating Matt Stonie at the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island on Friday. The main course? That came just before the contest, when the 30-year-old Chestnut proposed on the event stage, just steps from the beach, to longtime girlfriend Neslie Ricasa, who said yes. Stonie, who was second in 2013 with 51 dogs, again was the runner-up with 56. Tim "Eater X" Janus was third with 44. While it...

RIFLE, Colo. — Many stores and restaurants are telling people not to bring their guns inside, but one western Colorado restaurant not only embraces the practice of packing heat, it encourages its customers to carry openly — and its waitresses do, too. As she takes your order at Shooters Grill in the town of Rifle — yes, Rifle — waitress Ashlee Saenz carries a pad, pen and a loaded Ruger .357 Blackhawk revolver holstered on her leg, Old West style. It's loaded, and she knows how to use it

 I Am an American!             I was born an American. Unlike my grandparents, I was born in the greatest nation in the history of the world. Being born here didn't make me a real American. That took time. I became an American, slowly and decisively over my entire life. I learned to be an American, through experiences, and knowledge, and witness. I remember moments in my life that brought me to the realization that being born here, in America, is one of the the greatest blessing I had been given. As a young boy, I watched as my...

An Albertville man shot and killed a black bear that wandered into his yard Tuesday evening, according to the Wright County Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff’s Office got a call about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday from a resident of the 10000 block of 64th Street NE. in the northwest metro community, saying that a bear had come up to the sliding-glass door in the resident’s back yard. A sheriff’s deputy spotted the bear near another residence a few blocks away, on the other side of a park and wooded area. Then a gunshot sounded, and the deputy saw the bear run into...

The Habit Burger and In-N-Out lead the pack. Chick-fil-A also has lots to squawk about. Turns out nobody’s loving it. The standard McDonald’s hamburger — the one that claims to satisfy “billions and billions” — finished dead last in a new Consumer Reports taste test. The Hamburglar’s favorite meal earned a score of just 5.8 out of 10 from the magazine’s readers, putting it far behind West Coast chains The Habit Burger Grill and In-N-Out Burger, which scored 8.1 out of 10 and 8 out of 10, respectively. The top fast food burger available locally was Five Guys Burgers and...

Gordon Ramsay Announces End of Kitchen Nightmares June 23, 2014 Over on GordonRamsay.com, your source for all kinds of Gordon Ramsay news and updates, the British chef says the time has come for him to put a fork in Kitchen Nightmares, which began ten years ago, we're guessing, with a bunch of yelling and a handful of inept U.K. restaurateurs. The chef discussed his franchise with Deadline recently, and said that he intended to "turn it upside down, reposition it and maybe hand the position over to someone else one day." This doesn't mean the end for Hell's Kitchen, MasterChef,...

The idea that eating cocoa-rich, dark chocolate may offer greater health benefits than milk chocolate is not new. Cocoa is loaded with compounds called polyphenols that have been shown to help our bodies fend off inflammation and maybe even improve our moods. And now a small study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association offers evidence of another possible benefit: improving vascular health by increasing blood flow. Researchers studied patients with peripheral artery disease, or PAD, which affects about 20 percent of adults older than 70 in the U.S. and other Western countries. People who have PAD can...

In California, a legal skirmish has erupted over strawberries — or rather, over strawberry breeding. To be absolutely precise, the battle is about strawberry breeding at the University of California, Davis. This is more important than it might sound. More than half of all strawberries in the supermarket trace their ancestry to breeding plots at UC Davis. The strawberry breeders at UC Davis, who've led that program for decades, are leaving the university to carry on their work at a new private company. The California Strawberry Commission, which represents farmers, is now suing the university, accusing it of betraying a...

Just for the San Francisco Gay Pride 2014, Burger King introduced a new burger: the Proud Whopper.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says acrylamide in food potentially increases the risk of developing cancer for consumers in all age groups. The authority has launched a public consultation on its draft scientific opinion about the substance. Acrylamide is a chemical compound that typically forms in starchy food products such as potato crisps, chips, bread, biscuits and coffee, during high-temperature processing (above 150°), including frying, baking and roasting. […] Acrylamide has previously been linked to cancer. In 2002, Swedish researchers found the compound by coincidence and had a strong suspicion that acrylamide was a carcinogenic agent. But EFSA acknowledges...

WESTWOOD (CBS) – A truck carrying 7,000 pounds of lobster slammed into an MBTA rail bridge in Westwood early Tuesday morning, sparking a fire and huge problems for commuters. The driver of the 13-foot tall Ryder rental truck tried to clear the 10-foot, 6-inch East Street overpass around 4:50 a.m. and failed. The truck burst into flames after the crash. Surveillance video captured the impact. “As a result of impact, a small fire started in the air-conditioner compressor that is positioned near the roof of the truck,” Westwood police spokesman Paul Toland said in a statement. “The fire was quickly...

The sweet foods we crave to relieve stress have been shown to cause obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Short of a ban on sugar refinement, how can we break the habit?The race against obesity continues apace. Last week, for instance, the bid to save New York's sugar addicts, by banning large bottles of soft drinks, fell flat. Meanwhile a small study published in the journal Neuroscience Letters discovered receptors for stress hormones in taste buds. This could help explain why people end up preferring sweeter foods in times of trouble. "Stress and sweet are obviously linked. We've known...

Burger King is celebrating gay pride with a message on its Whopper wrappers. The fast-food chain says it will post a video online Wednesday that shows scenes from a San Francisco location where it sold a “Proud Whopper.” Customers were not told what is in the burger, which comes wrapped in rainbow paper. Once opened up, a message inside the wrapper states, “We are all the same inside.” The idea is that the Proud Whopper is no different from the regular Whopper, despite its colorful packaging. The marketing effort is part of Burger King’s push to connect with customers in...

Baptiste Dubanchet is cycling 3,000 miles from Paris to Warsaw, only eating food that has been thrown out, in protest against the food we waste. The Local Germany met him to see how he lives off “dumpster-diving.” Baptiste, from Tours in France, said his objective was to denounce waste by only eating food thrown away by supermarkets, bakeries and restaurants. Travelling by bicycle, the 25-year-old's carbon footprint will be close to zero at the end of the trip. “I do not pay for any of the food I eat. The only thing I take is water,” he told The Local....

Paiute Deadfall Trap The Paiute is a very quick trigger mechanism. It is also fairly easy to set. Unlike the Figure-4 trigger, it uses cordage. Examine the photos carefully and you will get an idea of how this trigger works. The bait is placed on a long thin horizontal bait stick. This bait stick is held at both ends by friction. When the bait stick is moved, it slips off of the short trigger stick that the cordage is tied to (wrapped around the vertical stick). This allows the weight to fall. Be careful to place the deadfall so that...