Free Republic

The world's unofficially most-expensive burger made its debut in London today, costing nearly $200 for patrons with enough money to visit the fast food chain that makes it. That's right, the bourgeois burger is made by Burger King. After six months in development, Burger King today launched "The Burger," a limited edition hamburger selling for $190. Chef Mark Dowding, the director of new product development and innovation for the fast food chain, says his creation targets a certain type of consumer. "I call them burger aficionados," said Dowding. But this is Burger King. Are these "aficionados" really frequenting London's fast...

Hryhory Haraschenko tells the stories feverishly, in a voice that brooks no interruption, gesticulating wildly with veined hands. He hauls out his stash of carefully bundled newspaper clippings, witness' tales and pencil-drawn maps. ... At 89, Haraschenko is among a dwindling number of Ukrainians who survived the Soviet-era famine of the early 1930s. Like other survivors and some historians, he regards the starvation -- known here as the Holodomor, or "death by hunger" -- as an act of genocide engineered to wipe out the Ukrainians. He wants it discussed, and he wants it recognized by the world. "Russia is afraid...

Pro-life advocates are launching an e-mail campaign in an attempt to save the life of a young woman injured by a drug overdose who now is facing the possibility of a court-ordered death by dehydration and starvation.WND previously has reported on the case involve Randy Richardson, who is fighting his ex-wife, the medical establishment and the court system for the life of his 23-year-old daughter, Lauren Marie Richardson."She's committed no crime and doesn't deserve to have this death imposed on her," he told the Wilmington, Del., News Journal earlier, citing the case that carries striking parallels to the 2005...

They don't have enough to eat. Five people are dead in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after a week of food riots. Unions in Burkina Faso have called a general strike to protest the high cost of grain. Food riots have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other nations. In Manila, police with M-16s have supervised the sale and distribution of subsidized grain. Hoarders have been threatened with life imprisonment. In Thailand and Pakistan, troops are guarding fields and warehouses. In Egypt, the army has been called out to bake bread. Even in the United States, a run on rice caused big-box retailers...

Al Gore, Nobel laureate, former vice president of the United States and author of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, will deliver the opening address at a conference on "Renewable Energy and Beyond," scheduled to be held at Tel Aviv University May 20-21, the university said Sunday. Gore will be arriving on a special visit to Israel as guest of the Dan David Prize. The 2008 Dan David Prize will be awarded to Gore on May 19 for social commitment to environmental protection and the prevention of a global ecological disaster, a statement from the university read. Tel Aviv...

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too MOSCOW -- Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases. Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food...

A remarkable thing happened Thursday: a press member wanted to ask Nobel Laureate Al Gore about the growing international food crisis and how it relates to ethanol and global warming hysteria. Not surprisingly, the man who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate fourteen years ago mandating the use of ethanol wasn't available, and a spokesman for his hysteria-driving Alliance for Climate Protection declined to comment. Isn't that convenient? Regardless, the good news is that press outlets continue to recognize this unholy connection, and that someone, even at the conservative New York Sun, would deign to report it (emphasis added...

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so. The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of...

North Korea 'faces food crisis' North Korea is facing a humanitarian crisis caused by acute food shortages, a UN agency has warned. The situation there was "clearly bad and getting worse", a senior World Food Programme official said, and help was needed to avert serious tragedy. North Korea has been dependent on international food aid for years. But severe flooding last year compounded its problems, devastating large swathes of agricultural land and leading to a poor harvest. WFP estimates that 6.5 million North Koreans, out of a total population of 23 million, do not have enough to eat - and...

Soaring food costs risk 'starvation and unrest' By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:41am BST 14/04/2008 The world's poorest countries face starvation and civil unrest if global food prices keep rising, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said. There have been serious disturbances in more than a dozen developing countries, including Haiti [pictured] Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Washington that "hundreds of thousands of people will be starving". "Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he said. He predicted that increasing food prices would push up the cost of imports for poor countries,...

Jonah Goldberg comments on the Russian Duma's defense of the mass starvation of Russian farmers in the Ukraine in 1932-33. They deny claims of genocide by saying that the millions who died were of all ethnic classes. "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country," the Russian State Duma resolution said.

South Africa's pre-Mandela regime brought about one of the most racially skewed land distributions in the world. Since the collapse of apartheid in 1994, the black majority government has been trying to implement land reform, but are new injustices being created by righting past wrongs? In South Africa, one of the most intractable legacies of white-minority rule is the right to land. After the first Dutch settlers arrived in the Cape in the 1600s, they started taking over native peoples' lands. Whites gradually expropriated more and more land, and by the early 20th century, blacks had been squeezed into reservations...

Jonathan McCullum was in excellent health at 155 pounds when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt. But when he returned home to Maine just four months later, the 5-foot-9 teenager weighed a mere 97 pounds and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk of a heart attack. McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other...

A Delaware woman has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether to subject her to euthanasia. Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl. Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of the battle over Terri's life and death. As in the Terri Schiavo case, physicians have been quick to label Lauren as having a persistent vegetative state...

A convicted Nazi war criminal arrived in Italy yesterday to start a life sentence imposed in his absence for the murder and torture of prisoners in the final year of the Second World War. Michael Seifert, 83, a Ukraine-born Canadian citizen dubbed the "Beast of Bolzano", has lived in Canada since 1951. He had been fighting extradition for eight years. The former SS corporal was a guard at a prison camp in Bolzano, northern Italy - used as a transit point for Jews, Italian resistance fighters and others - in 1944 and 1945. An Italian military tribunal convicted him in...

Cashmere goats in India face starvation By AIJAZ HUSSAIN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER An elderly man belonging to the Chang-pa mountain tribe holds his Himalayan goat as his son cuts its horn that was hurting the animal's eye in Kharnak, some 185 kilometers (116 miles) from Leh, India, in this July 21, 2007 photo. More than 100,000 Himalayan goats famed for their pashmina wool or cashmere face starvation after their desert habitat was blanketed with snow, while three people died during the region's worst storms in three decades, officials said Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) SRINAGAR, India -- More...

DAKAR, Senegal - Some 45,000 people die each month in Congo as the world's deadliest humanitarian crisis has failed to improve despite five years of relative peace in the Central African nation, according to a report released Tuesday. An estimated 5.4 million Congolese died between 1998 and April 2007 because of conflict, most from the rampant disease and food shortages stemming from fighting, the report said. The study found that life is still alarmingly precarious for Congolese despite the end of the 1998-2002 conflict that pulled in armies from half a dozen surrounding countries, and the country's first free and...

Would You Eat Your Buddies in a Blizzard? Suppose you were stranded in a blizzard and were forced to cannibalize your friends. This short survey will tell you how likely you would be to eat your buddies. Note: Click onto the link provided to take this self survey. Bon appetit!

Liza Biggers blinked back tears and gently patted her brother Ethan's hand as he lay in his hospital bed, finally wearing the Purple Heart he earned in Iraq. Ethan's family had held off on the medal ceremony, hoping he would emerge from his year-long coma. When that didn't happen, his 22-year-old twin, Matt, made a phone call to make sure he received the award before he died. Last Sunday's private ceremony was a poignant moment in a tumultuous journey that began the day Army Spc. Ethan Biggers was critically wounded in Iraq. Biggers' family stopped trying to keep him alive...

Fred Thompson will pick up the support of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) tomorrow, according to two Republicans familar with the decision. For a candidate who came up empty-handed last week when three prominent Christian conservatives endorsed GOP hopefuls and is falling in both national and early state polls, the move comes at a critical time. NRLC is the most prominent anti-abortion group in the country, with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters. A spokesperson for the organization declined to comment on their endorsement decision, but Thompson was likely rewarded for his strong pro-life...

A Zimbabwean job-seeker who collapsed and died in Cape Town last week, is said to have succumbed to starvation. Adonis Musati, 23, was a police officer in Chimanimani in eastern Zimbabwe, but the economic crisis led him to South Africa to try to support his family.

Milan, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- An Italian court has denied a request by a disabled woman's father to remove her feeding tube and authorize her death by starvation and dehydration. Eluana Englaro has been a coma for 15 years after an automobile accident seriously injured her and, this year, her father asked a Milan court for permission to remove her feeding tube. This isn't the first time Englaro's case had been in court. In April 2005, the Italian Supreme Court confirmed a lower court ruling to keep her feeding tube in place. That case had also been brought by Englaro's father,...

October 4, 2007: The negotiations over the aid North Korea is to receive, in return for shutting down the North Korean nuclear weapons program, is hung up on the issue of how much the north will open its economy to the south. North Korea wants food and fuel, and lots of it. South Korea wants more trade, not just endless shipments of charity to the north. But the north does not want to reform the economy, as China has urged, because this risks making more people wealthy, and able to find out how much the North Korean people have been...

Regional nuclear war could trigger mass starvation 13:17 03 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service Rob Edwards A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause one billion people to starve to death around the world, and hundreds of millions more to die from disease and conflicts over food. That is the horrifying scenario being presented in London today by a US medical expert, Ira Helfand. A conference at the Royal Society of Medicine will also hear new evidence of the severe damage that such a war could inflict on the ozone layer. "A limited nuclear war taking place far away...

Harare admits land reform has failed as the deadline passes for the last white farmers to leave their land. Zimbabwe's bakeries have shut and supermarkets have warned there will be no bread for the foreseeable future as the government admitted that wheat production had collapsed following the seizure of white-owned farms. The agricultural ministry announcement that the wheat harvest is only about a third of what is required, and that imports are held up by lack of hard currency, came as a deadline passed today for the last white farmers to leave their land or face prosecution for trespass. The...

PHILADELPHIA, PA, September 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As is the custom in the United States, the first Sunday of October will be honored by US Catholics as Respect Life Sunday.  In honor of this, Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the United States' Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has issued a statement to be made available at all parishes nationwide.  The statement calls for US Catholics to "again pray for - and renew their resolve to bring about - a culture of life and an end to the killing of innocent human beings, especially...

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Police stopped villagers from slaughtering and eating a giraffe that strayed into the outskirts of the capital amid chronic food shortages caused by an economic crisis, the official media reported Saturday. The adult giraffe was believed to have wandered from nearby farmland. Wildlife authorities took the giraffe away after police kept a crowd from killing it "for the pot," the state Herald reported. Zimbabwe is suffering shortages of meat and basic foods in an economic meltdown that has left it with the world's highest official inflation—nearly 7,000 percent. Independent estimates put real inflation closer to 25,000...

Pope Rules Patients in Permanent Vegetative State May Not be Denied Artificial Nutrition and Hydration Response to certain questions raised by US Conference of Catholic Bishops concerning artificial nutrition and hydration By John-Henry Westen VATICAN CITY, September 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In most hospitals in North America, families of patients in permanent vegetative state are asked if they wish their family member to have their artificial feeding tube removed. According to a definitive ruling by the Vatican made public today, the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration from such patients is immoral. The ruling from the Vatican's Congregation for the...

Starvation deaths in North Korea have returned to 1990s levels. That means over a thousand people a week dying from lack of food. Over a million people died during the 1990s food shortages. This time around, the shortages are caused by government refusal to allow in food that must have its distribution monitored (making it difficult for the government to divert the food to the army or private sale). The government also took its time with the current round of nuclear disarmament talks, delaying shipments of food from South Korea. These have just arrived and are being distributed. Meanwhile, North...

Brain-Damaged Man "Awakened" After Six Years of Semi-Consciousness By Elizabeth O'Brien NEW YORK, August 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A severely brain-damaged man who was in a minimally conscious state for six years has recently regained new levels of awareness and physical capabilities after receiving electrical brain implants. The unnamed 38-year old man had his head repeatedly kicked during a mugging in 1999 and was left unable to talk or move properly. In addition, he was kept alive on a feeding tube.In a study led by Dr. Nicholas Schiff of Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in New York, researchers...

CLEARWATER, FL, July 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A North Country Gazette exclusive alleges, with evidence, that Michael Schiavo, who ordered the starvation of his wife Terry Schiavo in 2005, has a history of hostility towards co-workers, stalking women, vindictiveness and general unprofessional behavior. Last year, the Gazetter reports, Schiavo was involved in a complex tangle of accusations against co-workers at the Pinellas County Jail. The first alleged incident occurred on July 31, when co-worker Diane Cross illegally gave prescription medication, a muscle relaxant called Robaxin, to nursing supervisor David Richardson in order to alleviate his extreme back pain. Schiavo did...

Kevorkian speech protested Bobby Schindler, brother of the late Terri Schiavo, has launched a petition drive to persuade the University of Florida (Gainesville) to rescind its invitation to convicted killer Jack Kevorkian to speak on campus Oct. 11. “It is unacceptable for the University of Florida to give a platform to Jack Kevorkian, a man who willfully helped take people’s lives, some of whose only ailment was depression, and pay him $50,000 to spread his violent message of ‘mercy killing’ to the students of the University of Florida,” Schindler’s petition states.Schindler heads a nonprofit group called the Terri Schindler Schiavo...

Cedar Rapids, IA (LifeNews.com) -- Terri Schiavo's brother Bobby Schindler appeared at a campaign stop over the weekend for Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback. Schindler said he supports the Kansas senator's presidential bid because he respects the life of both the born and unborn -- something all politicians should embrace. Schindler had endorsed Brownback previously (http://www.lifenews.com/nat2983.html) but promised to campaign for him over the weekend as he emphasized his pro-life views and opposition to human rights abuses. Terri's brother told the audience that the need for him to campaign with Brownback or support one political candidate when all should embrace...

FEW people in Africa would get to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff last weekend - because most have neither television nor electricity. That's just as well, because they would be aghast at LiveEarth's bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective, the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa. Britain's former Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, recently said that the rest of the world cannot aspire to the UK's standard of living because:...

PEACHTREE CITY, Georgia, July 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Marine candidate who nearly drowned four years ago in boot-camp met his death after his family agreed to let doctors remove his feeding tube. "He smiled all week [since the tube was removed]. It was the first time. He seemed so happy, not in pain," his mother, Melia Isaac said of her son, who had been reduced to a comatose or minimal conscious state. "I'm going to wonder for the rest of my life if I did the right thing. But I believe I did. He didn't have much of a...

LifeNews.com Note: Carrie Hutchens is a former law enforcement officer and a freelance writer who is active in fighting against the death culture movement and the injustices within the judicial and law enforcement systems. I was reading ABC News', "Pulling the Plug: Ethicists Debate Ramirez Case," by Dan Childs, ABC News Medical Unit (June 28, 2007) and found it interesting how the defense is still up. No case is ever like Terri Schiavo's. There is always an alleged difference, with similarities downplayed or outright denied. Might that be because people are starting to realize that an innocent woman was wrongly...

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS -- A North Richland Hills woman accused of letting her 78-year-old husband die of malnutrition and dehydration surrendered to Tarrant County authorities Thursday night, police said.Lowesta Ann Halliburton, 43, was free Friday after posting $50,000 bail. She is expected to be charged with injury to the elderly by omission, a first-degree felony. If convicted, she faces life in prison and a $10,000 fine.Her common-law husband, Richard Hoye, died May 21 at their home.Halliburton has said that police targeted her because of the couple's 35-year age difference and the fact she is black and Hoye was white.

Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) -- New draft guidelines in Australia put together by a national health committee say that comatose and incapacitated patients like Terri Schiavo should not be denied food and water. The new guidelines are voluntary and are aimed at helping health care workers and families. A committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council published the guidelines which say that medical personnel should presume that a patient wants food and water when their decision is unknown. That was the problem in the Terri Schiavo case -- her family and former husband Michael disagreed about whether she would...

Phoenix, AZ (LifeNews.com) -- Arizona resident Jesse Ramirez was severely injured in a car crash in a May 30 car accident and a legal battle ensued over the man's life. It pitted his wife and family against each other over whether his life support should be maintained but now Ramirez has awaken from the coma appears to be on the road to recovery. Ramirez, 36, suffered traumatic brain injury in the accident and he had been in a minimally conscious state for just over a week when doctors told his family he may never recover. His wife made the decision...

Springfield, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Terri Schiavo could have called it a day after Terri was starved and dehydrated to death by her former husband over a two week period. They endured constant international news coverage and waged a discouraging battle in the courts that left their daughter and sister with no hope. Instead, Terri's parents Bob and Mary, brother Bobby and sister Suzanne pressed on. Not wanting the same fate to befall other disabled patients, they reworked the foundation they created to help Terri and organized it to assist other incapacitated or minimally conscious patients. Since they...

I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by the decisions made by the judicial establishment in matters related to the case of Terri Schiavo. Yet, it's hard to believe that the judges who sealed her fate continue to receive accoloades: Florida honors judges who advocate killing the disabled, elderly and vulnerable. The alma mater of Michael Schiavo, the estranged husband who battled in the courts for years in order to secure a court order to kill his wife, is honoring retired Circuit Court Judge Susan F. Schaeffer, the judge who assigned Probate Court Judge George W. Greer to be the executioner...

UNITED STATES, May 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The three front-runners in the Republican presidential primary repudiated Congress’ intervention to save the life of Terri Schiavo, the Florida brain-injured woman who died of court-ordered dehydration and starvation in 2005 at the behest of her husband who was then living with another woman. Front runners Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain, and former Gov. Mitt Romney were all asked in the debate moderated by MSNBC: “Terri Schiavo: Should Congress have acted or let the family make the decision, the husband?”Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who is campaigning on his pro-life conversion responded...

The UN’s Tyrant-Friendly Bureaucracy By Roger Bate Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Saturday’s vote putting Zimbabwe in charge of a human rights body doesn’t make it any easier to take the body seriously. Over the weekend, the 53 member countries of the UN’s Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) elected their new chair. The head of such commissions is rotated on a regional basis, and it was Africa’s turn. Against objections from the U.S. and Europe, the nations voted 26-21 (with three abstentions) in favor of Zimbabwe. According to the BBC, “Zimbabwe's Environment Minister Francis Nheme will now become chairman of the...

Seoul - A North Korean general cracked a joke about US President George W Bush at the start of military talks on Tuesday with South Korea that takes aim at president's unpopularity for being mired in the Iraq war and other issues. "I read a political joke, called 'Saving the President,' on a US internet site a while ago," Lieutenant General Kim Yong Chol told his South Korean counterpart as they opened three days of meetings at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Koreas, according to pool reports. "US President Bush, distressed by the Iraq...

The parents of a baby that died of starvation after being fed a vegan diet have been found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and first degree cruelty to children. Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31, will get an automatic life sentence for the death of their 6-week-old infant, Crown. After being fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice, he weighed only 3 1/2 pounds when he died. The Fulton County jury deliberated the case for about seven hours. Prosecutors said it was a chilling case of murder by starvation, a painful and prolonged death....

LA PAZ, Bolivia: President Evo Morales said Thursday his government would not pay Swiss mining giant Glencore International AG for nationalizing its Bolivian tin smelter earlier this month because the company illegally purchased the plant and failed to invest in its upkeep. Glencore has threatened to seek international arbitration to recover its investment in the Vinto smelter, located on a high Andean plain 180 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of the capital of La Paz. Morales nationalized the plant Feb. 9 and has refused to reimburse its former owners, saying Glencore should instead pay Bolivia for failing to upgrade the smelter's...

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Those who were born in Year One of the Russian Revolution are now entering their 10th decade. Of the intellectual class that got its vintage laid down in 1917, a class which includes Eric Hobsbawm, Conor Cruise O'Brien and precious few others, the pre-eminent Anglo-American veteran must be Robert Conquest. He must also be the one who takes the greatest satisfaction in having outlived the Soviet "experiment." Over the years, I have very often knocked respectfully at the door of his modest apartment ("book-lined" would be the other standard word for it) on the outskirts of Stanford University,...

A Crest Hill man and his daughter admitted in court Monday that they starved their dog to death in plea deals that sent the father to prison and led to probation for the young woman. Mark Obidowicz, 44, pleaded guilty to aggravated animal cruelty, a felony that carried a maximum 3-year sentence. He was sentenced to a year in prison. Nicole Obidowicz, 19, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor animal cruelty. She was sentenced to 24 months of conditional discharge, a type of probation, during which she cannot own an animal. She also was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service....

The Government has admitted it is allowing elderly people to battle against starvation in care homes and hospitals, years after being alerted to the scandal by charities. Ivan Lewis, the health minister, conceded that some elderly people were given a single scoop of mashed potato or served meals with plastic cutlery "best suited to picnics". His remarks, made to a local Birmingham newspaper, went on to admit that a single scoop of mashed potato "masquerades as lunch every day". "Plastic cutlery has its place at a summer picnic but not for everyday use. Yet some older people are still being...

Neandertals' tough Stone Age lives Bruce Bower Neandertals that 43,000 years ago inhabited what's now northern Spain faced periodic food shortages and possibly resorted to cannibalism to survive, according to a new investigation. CAVE FINDS. A block of sand and clay from El Sidrón cave in Spain holds Neandertal foot bones (left) and ribs and a backbone (right). Rosas These Neandertals evolved shorter, broader faces with a less pronounced slope than northern European Neandertals did, say Antonio Rosas of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and his colleagues. Since 2000, the researchers have recovered more than 1,300 Neandertal...