Free Republic

(JTA) – If New York City’s mayor won’t stop weddings in Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhoods from happening, the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said Wednesday that he will. “If the mayor is not doing any enforcement actions, then the state will,” Cuomo said at a news conference, according to the New York Post. “We’ve had superspreader events in New Rochelle with the Jewish community, we’ve had them in the Catholic community. The virus does not discriminate by religious or racial lines, right? This is an equal-opportunity situation. So we police it in every circumstance.” The governor’s comments come after New York City...

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkish bookshops have a best seller, but some of them are hesitant about giving it too much display. It's "Mein Kampf." The popularity of Adolf Hitler's book, filled with anti-Jewish diatribes and dreams of world domination, is puzzling some Turks. Does it reflect rising anti-Semitic or anti-Western sentiment in Muslim Turkey? Or anger over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and the war in Iraq (news - web sites)? Is it a backlash against the country's moves to join the European Union (news - web sites)? Or does it simply offer a cheap thrill? At least two new...

POTSDAM - German researchers have located a gene that makes some people loathe cabbage and spinach in all their forms, and discovered that the same gene often protects people from obesity. The German Institute for Food Research in Potsdam near Berlin said the gene makes some people extraordinarily sensitive to the bitter substances phenylthiocarbamid (PTC) and propylthiouracil (PROP). Most people swallow those substances with a smile. The scientists, led by Wolfgang Meyerhof, investigated how the gene affects human taste receptor hTAS2R38. People who cannot taste PTC and PROP tended to eat fattier foods and become overweight, so a single gene...

Schroeder May Cancel Italian Vacation After Insult [Loud Blondes] July 8 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder threatened to cancel his vacation in Italy planned for next week, after an Italian official opened a new rift between the two countries' governments by insulting German tourists. Stefano Stefani, a junior minister for tourism in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, called Germans ``uniform and loud blonds who invade Italian beaches'' in a letter published in the newsletter of his party, the Northern League. They take part in ``belching contests after consuming pantagruelian quantities of beer,'' he said. Schroeder's vacation plans are...