Free Republic

Unrest over food shortages spreads through the country SAN CRISTOBAL/BARINAS, Venezuela, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Hungry mobs ransacked a food collection center, and a supermarket in Venezuela's western Andean state of Merida on Thursday and reportedly even slaughtered cattle grazing in a field as unrest over food shortages spread through the country. An opposition lawmaker from Merida, Carlos Paparoni, said four people had died and 10 were injured in the chaos over the last two days, but he did not specify the circumstances. Four years of recession and the world's highest inflation have plunged millions of Venezuelans into poverty, and...

There's a lot of debate about the future of labor in America: Will manufacturing ever come back? Will automation be a job destroyer? Will we all be freelancers working from home, shifting from gig to gig every 6 months?It's all interesting to think about, but if you want to place one solid bet on the future of jobs in America, this chart would be a pretty simple place to start.Regardless of where the economic cycle is, health care jobs just keep going up in a straight line. Image: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=CES6562000101 The chart is even more impressive when you look at healthcare...

Together with Thaksin of Thai, Than Shwe and his cronies shamelessly attended the sham show of the Buddhist summit in Burma. The Burmese despotic leader is a Buddhist, but not for the maintenance of genuine Buddhism. Realizing very well that he has committed tons of wrong-doings in his life, he is desparate to pray for himself during his numbered days. One of his sins is clearly that he orders or turn a blind eye on his military thugs who disrobe Buddhist monks and send them to prisons with hard work sentence without any proper judicature. How cruel he is! A...

OPINION   WHAT ON EARTH HAS HAPPENED TO CANADA?   by Chris Leithner                Once called the "Switzerland of the North", as late as 1968 it was the world's second-richest country. Today, in terms of GDP per capita ($29,300), it ranks ahead of Australia ($27,500) and Britain ($26,400) but just below the G7 average ($30,100) and well behind the U.S. ($35,200). Accompanying ? one is tempted to say causing ? Canada's relative economic decline has been the rise of many and various interventionist schemes: high taxes, big deficits, growing debt, nationalisation of "key" industries, attempts to control consumer prices,...