Free Republic

Just another modern media version of our boys in the trenches, produced by the boys on the ground.

An Italian television chef has been suspended after he horrified animal lovers and TV station managers by praising the delights of cat meat during a show. Beppe Bigazzi enraged animal rights experts around the country when he gave advice on preparing ''tender, white cat meat'' in a portion of the programme usually reserved for advice about nutrition. The 77-year-old is a co-presenter on Italy's version of Ready Steady Cook called La Prova del Cuoco (The Cooks' Challenge). ... During the show Mr Bigazzi said he had often eaten cat meat and found it ''tastier than other animals'', adding: ''I can...

TOKYO – A body was found inside a wheel well of a Delta Air Lines plane after it landed in Tokyo from New York, and Japanese authorities Monday were trying to identify the man. The body of the apparent stowaway was clad only in a long-sleeved, plaid shirt and jeans, police at Narita International Airport said. A mechanic found the body lying inside the landing gear compartment of the Boeing 777-200 during maintenance after Delta Flight 59 landed Sunday night, police official Zenjiro Watanabe said. "All we know is that he must have sneaked in just before departure, because it...

<p>WARREN, Mich. – A man who walked into a Michigan diner with a 5-inch knife stuck in his chest ordered a coffee and complained only about the cold weather.</p> <p>The 52-year-old man, who has not been identified, called a 911 operator in Warren on Sunday night to ask that an ambulance be sent to Bray's, an eatery in neighboring Hazel Park.</p>

MOREHEAD -- Two men were arrested and jailed after they stole a lizard and tried to pawn it for alcohol, according to police. David Martt, 44, of Hillsboro and his son, 18-year-old Harley D. Martt of Morehead, were charged with theft by unlawful taking under $500 on Dec. 16 after allegedly taking a bearded dragon from a Morehead veterinary clinic and then trying to pawn and trade the reptile for liquor. According to reports, the men entered Eagles Landing Pet Hospital in Morehead Wednesday afternoon. While one man attempted to make an appointment for a puppy, the other wandered around...

BEIJING (Reuters) – A man who killed and ate what may have been the last wild Indochinese tiger in China was sentenced to 12 years in jail, local media reported on Tuesday. Kang Wannian, a villager from Mengla, Yunnan Province, met the tiger in February while gathering freshwater clams in a nature reserve near China's border with Laos. He claimed to have killed it in self-defense. The only known wild Indochinese tiger in China, photographed in 2007 at the same reserve, has not been seen since Kang's meal, the Yunnan-based newspaper Life News reported earlier this month. The paper quoted...

A man is thought to have frozen to death in the garden after getting locked out of his home on one of the coldest nights of the year in Scotland. Donald Martin, 35, died in hospital after being found unconscious in his garden on the island of Lewis on Saturday afternoon. Reports suggest he had earlier been on a Christmas night out with work mates. Mr Martin was taken to hospital by ambulance after being discovered by a neighbour in Kennedy Terrace, Stornoway, at around 1pm on Saturday. He died a few hours later. Mr Martin, an electrician, was apparently...

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I'm not saying this is the way it should go, but for me, it went bourbon as a young man, irish whisky as the taste developed, and then nestled into the scotch as the palate matured and settled down to a sipping type restraint. Glenmorangie as the everyday benchmark, Laiphroaig for the smoky flavor, and Lagavulin for the best of that.

A wedding photographer has been ordered to reimburse a couple after a judge described photos of their big day as "woefully inadequate". But they were so unimpressed with the 400 snaps he took, only 22 of them were approved. The cutting of the cake was missed and most of the shots were poorly lit and crooked, with heads chopped off and guests not looking at the camera. Mr Day said: "Some of those memories we will never get back again. "(Mr Bowers) is the Don Quixote of wedding photography - he just doesn't believe that he can't do it." (Wonky...

Part Pimp, Part Rockstar, All Scum bag. 13 pics from Libya's dress-me-up dictator paperdoll.

Yeah, it's hard, it's smooth, it's driving, it's the blues.

Gunmakers at Knight’s Armament Company made this concept gun as somewhat of a “joke,” building it in their spare time after work. It was designed to have the ergonomics of a chain saw, and the firepower of a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). It’s based on the idea that heads up displays no longer require a gun to be held up to the face for aiming. Theoretically, this type of grip could be applied to many different weapons in the future. Vid on link.

BAR HARBOR, Maine – Police said a homeowner in Maine used a beer to entice an intoxicated intruder to leave. The intruder apparently didn't realize that it was a nonalcoholic beer. Bar Harbor police said the homeowner awoke early Monday to find 22-year-old Scott Cote in the bedroom and used the beer to convince him to carry on. Police said they found Cote breaking into cars a short time later and arrested him after he fled into some woods. Police arrested Cote on charges of burglary, criminal mischief, operating a motor vehicle after revocation and violating the conditions of release.

44am UK, Tuesday July 14, 2009 A German chef has blown off his hands while experimenting with a Heston Blumenthal-style cooking technique. ... The man, identified only as Martin E, was working on a recipe involving liquid nitrogen when there was "a huge explosion", according to the Berliner Morgenpost. One of the 24-year-old's hands was instantly torn off by the force of the blast, while the other was later amputated in hospital. The chef, a follower of "molecular gastronomy", had disappeared into the bathroom with a bottle of liquid nitrogen. ... He reportedly said afterwards he had been trying to...

BERLIN (Reuters) – A badger in Germany got so drunk on over-ripe cherries it staggered into the middle of a road and refused to budge, police said on Wednesday. .... Police discovered the nocturnal beast had eaten cherries from a nearby tree which had turned to alcohol and given the badger diarrhoea. Having failed to scare the animal away, officers eventually chased it from the road with a broom.

Lisa Kantorski took the call from the person who claimed to be a front-desk clerk about a gas leak in their hotel ... She frantically relayed the information to her husband, Mark, an Indian River County deputy. ... pranksters — whose tricks are sweeping the nation. The unknown protagonists dupe otherwise rational people into doing outrageous things, including driving trucks through storefronts and breaking hotel windows to test fire alarms.

<p>A man trashed his hotel room near Orlando International Airport this week after he got a call from someone posing as a front-desk clerk who told him to smash his windows because of a gas leak.</p>

As a French nuclear submarine arrived off the coast of Brazil to join the effort to locate the black box from Air France Flight 447 on Thursday, aviation experts stressed the necessity of recovering those cockpit recorders in order to learn what exactly brought down the Airbus A330 and the 228 people on board. In past inquiries into airline disasters, investigators have been able to figure out the cause by piecing together clues from the wreckage itself, sometimes without information from the black box. But after 10 days of searching, the authorities combing what's believed to be Flight 447's crash...

RECIFE, Brazil – Brazilian divers found a large tail section from an Air France jet on Monday, one of the biggest pieces yet recovered from wreckage that is helping narrow the search for Flight 447's black boxes. A U.S. Navy team is bringing in high-tech underwater listening devices to detect pings from the data and voice recorders. Brazilian and French military ships that have so far recovered 16 bodies and large amounts of plane wreckage searched amid a sea of floating debris, finding the tail section with Air France's trademark red and blue stripes. Brazilian military officials reduced the number...