Free Republic

Cincinnati - Bananas flavored with a hint of another fruit could help Chiquita Brands International Inc. become the Starbucks of the produce world, the company's leader says, envisioning a larger, creamier or sweeter banana. Chiquita has taken its bananas to the research lab as part of an effort to make the fruit more appealing to consumers - and to persuade them to pay more, president and chief executive Fernando Aguirre told The Associated Press.The company would not specify flavors it is researching and declined to reveal how different sorts of bananas would be created other than to say the fruit...

MEXICO CITY — President Vicente Fox's chief of staff resigned yesterday, a stunning development that indicated the Mexican leader's most trusted staff members have become disillusioned with his administration and his wife's possible campaign to succeed him. Alfonso Durazo turned in a 19-page letter saying he objected to first lady Marta Sahagun's presidential ambitions and claiming the administration was repeating some vices of the old ruling party Fox unseated after seven decades in power. "The desire for a government to decide who the next president will be or won't be was the original sin of the old regime," Durazo wrote...

MINNEAPOLIS — So much for the customer always being right. Some retailers have decided the customer can be very, very wrong — as in unprofitable. And some, including Best Buy, are discriminating between profitable customers and shoppers they lose money on. Like a customer who ties up an employee but never buys anything or who buys only during big sales. Or one who files for a rebate, then returns the item. "That would be directly equivalent to somebody going to an ATM and getting money out without putting any in," Best Buy Chief Executive Brad Anderson said recently. "Those customers,...

ONDON, July 5 — The House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, resolved today to limit, but not forbid, the right of parents to hit their children, changing a 144-year-old law that gave parents the right to strike children as "reasonable chastisement" for misbehavior.The vote represented a victory for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who opposes an outright ban on hitting and supported an alternative proposal for physical punishment that caused neither physical nor mental harm.For those who oppose punishing children by hitting them, the debate surrounding the vote was part of a campaign to secure for children the same...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Victories in regional elections by Mexico's resurgent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have bolstered its quest to recoup the presidency it lost in 2000 following 71 years of rule, analysts said on Monday.The PRI held onto governorships in two northern states on Sunday. The crown jewel was a win in Chihuahua, where the party contested tight elections in recent years with President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN.Official results on Monday showed the main opposition PRI won in Chihuahua by a double-digit margin and by a healthy percentage in the state of Durango. The party...

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Ever since prescription painkillers such as OxyContin became the drugs of choice among dealers and addicts in Appalachia, the days of small-town pharmacists dispensing medicines from behind an ordinary counter have become a quaint memory.Now, many pharmacies have turned into virtual fortresses. Some now have bars over the windows. The most sought-after drugs are stored in vaults. The pharmacists often work behind safety glass, and some have even armed themselves. Surveillance cameras and alarm systems monitor every spot.Pharmaceutical companies have also adopted practices from the banking industry, delivering prescription pills in armored trucks protected by armed...

Beijing, China, Jul. 5 (UPI) -- The elderly Chinese physician who exposed China's attempted cover-up of the outbreak of SARS is undergoing indoctrination training, the Washington Post said.Sources told the newspaper semi-retired 72-year-old surgeon Jiang Yanyong has been under 24-hour military supervision since June 1.Jiang became a national hero last year making public the government's efforts to hide the SARS outbreak. He also is being censured for denouncing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy civilians.Authorities have threatened to keep Jiang in custody until he "changes his thinking" and "raises his level of understanding" about the Tiananmen crackdown, said one...

The Stars and Stripes flew everywhere on Sunday, but Old Glory had plenty of company in Fremont -- the flags of Italy, Qatar, Mongolia and Ireland were among 25 nations represented in a parade that's caused hurt feelings all around and raised the timeliest of questions: What does it mean to be an American? Vice Mayor Steve Cho's proposal to include flags of other nations started innocently enough two weeks ago, but angered residents who said America's Independence Day would be diluted. The controversy grew until a plan to have the Boy Scouts carry the foreign flags was jettisoned early...

SAN LUIS DE LA PAZ, Mexico -- Mexican soldiers carrying automatic weapons interrupted the U.S. Independence Day funeral of a U.S. Marine and demanded that the Marine honor guard give up ceremonial replicas of rifles they carried. Hundreds of friends and relatives packed a small cemetery for the funeral on Sunday of 22-year-old Juan Lopez, who was born in this sun-scorched farming town, immigrated to Dalton, Georgia, as a teenager and became a Marine. He was killed in an ambush in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on June 21. Maj. Curt Gwilliam presented an American flag to Lopez's widow, Sandra Torres,...

ASHINGTON, July 4 — The federal authorities, concerned about a terror attack during this summer's national political conventions, have begun a new effort to identify potential extremists inside the United States, including conducting interviews in communities where terrorists might seek refuge, government officials said.The fears about an incident during the conventions or later in the year have also led state and local officials to impose extraordinary security precautions. Persistent if indistinct intelligence reports, based on electronic intercepts and live sources, indicate that Al Qaeda is determined to strike in the United States some time this year, the officials said in...

HOUSTON - She was thin, vivacious, and lost, looking for her mother in a city she couldn't even locate on a map. The girl from Chiapas was headed to Topeka, Kan., where her mother - an illegal immigrant - was working. But she found herself instead at the Mexican consulate in the dusty border town of Douglas, Ariz., as one of a growing number of children crossing the border alone. "I asked her if she knew where Topeka was, says Michael Escobar Valdez, the Mexican consul general in Douglas. "She responded, 'Not exactly.' But that didn't matter, she said, because...

Mexican President Vicente Fox said during his visit to the Midwest last week that the U.S. policy of apprehending and deporting illegal immigrants violates the human and economic rights of those immigrants. Americans can be forgiven for rolling their eyes. That's pushing the notion of victim-hood a bit too far. Those being apprehended and deported are, after all, illegal immigrants. They broke the law to get here, and, when caught, they should be sent back home – pronto. To argue otherwise is to deprive the United States of the right to preserve its own sovereignty. During the rest of his...

AUSTIN – Texas is believed to be the first state in the country to use electronically collected fingerprints to clear Medicaid patients for treatment when they arrive at the doctor's office or emergency room. In a pilot program begun this spring, "finger images" – as state officials call them – have been scanned into microchips implanted in new plastic Medicaid ID cards issued to people eligible for state-funded health care. A scanner at a doctor's sign-in desk views the patient's finger and quickly compares the information stored in the card. The pilot program was ordered by the Legislature and Gov....

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged the largest-ever gathering of business leaders at the United Nations to help fight global poverty by fighting the ``scandalous subsidies'' rich countries give their farmers.Declaring that poverty is ``morally and ethically unacceptable,'' Lula said business must join governments and civic groups to ensure that millions do not go to bed and wake up hungry. They must change a world in which 24,000 people die everyday because they have nothing to eat, he said.``I would like to see you engaged in a campaign to free all human beings from...

YOU have to admire Robert Mugabe's chutzpah. First he makes life so miserable for Zimbabweans that busloads of them emigrate. Then he asks the fugitives to send money home to prop up the regime that drove them out in the first place. Gideon Gono, the governor of Zimbabwe's central bank, has been on a world tour to persuade expatriate Zimbabweans to wire money home using official channels. Most remittances are currently sent through informal channels. For example, a Zimbabwean nurse in London pays money into a friendly businessman's offshore account, who then asks his cousin in Bulawayo to pay an...

co-defendant in the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer accused of aiding terrorism, worked with an associate of Osama bin Laden to draft an October 2000 call to Muslims worldwide to fight Jews and "kill them wherever they are," the defendant's lawyer acknowledged yesterday in court.The lawyer, Kenneth Paul, conceded in his opening remarks to the jury that his client, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, had helped write the call, or fatwa, because he was angry about surging clashes at the time between the Israeli government and the Palestinians.Mr. Paul said the trial, being held in Federal District Court in...

Maryland fire marshal's officials said they have begun a statewide investigation into what they say is a common and dangerous practice among bartenders who pour potent alcohol on a bar and then ignite it to start a round of drinking games. The fiery spectacle, meant as a harmless thrill and which does not damage the bar top, has the potential to injure patrons, Southern Region Deputy State Fire Marshal Duane Svites said. < SNIP > Drinking games come in many forms, but Svites said he's aware of one in which a bartender lights the bar before patrons pick up shot...

BERKELEY, Calif.  -- Residents of this left-leaning city will have a chance to vote in November on whether they think prostitution should be a crime. An advocacy group announced Wednesday it had gathered nearly 3,200 signatures, about 1,000 more than needed to get the initiative on the ballot. The measure would have little more than symbolic value, since it wouldn't undo laws against prostitution. But Robyn Few, head of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, said a win at the polls would send an important message. "What we're trying to do is build a groundswell here in California," she said. Berkeley...

LAVE, Peru — On a morning in April, people in this normally placid spot in Peru's southeastern highlands burst into a town council meeting, grabbed their mayor, dragged him through the streets and lynched him. The killers, convinced the mayor was on the take and angry that he had neglected promises to pave a highway and build a market for vendors, also badly beat four councilmen. The beating death of the mayor may seem like an isolated incident in an isolated Peruvian town but it is in fact a specter haunting elected officials across Latin America. A kind of toxic...

software engineer for America Online stole the Internet provider's customer list — some 92 million names — and sold it to an on-line marketer, setting off a torrent of unsolicited commercial e-mail commonly known as spam, federal authorities said today.The engineer, Jason Smathers, 24, of Harpers Ferry, W. Va., and the on-line marketer, Sean Dunaway, 21, of Las Vegas, Nev., were charged with conspiracy and face prison terms of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000 if convicted, said David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.Mr. Smathers, who has...