Free Republic

NYPD sources confirm that Eric Garner was a player in an organized crime cigarette smuggling syndicate, Gotnews.com has learned.(snip) “Garner was setting up shop in front of the local stores and shaking down business owners and patrons as they entered,” says Cardillo. Garner would use his considerable size to strong arm largely ethnic shopkeepers and was “on the radar” of local law enforcement who had arrested him previously.

Obesity is more dangerous than smoking and will dramatically shorten the lives of millions, a landmark study has found. While smoking reduces life by an average of ten years, the research says being seriously overweight can cut life expectancy by as much as 13 years. The Foresight report, written by 250 leading scientists, says Britain's obesity crisis is so severe that it would take at least 30 years to reverse. If current trends continue, by 2050 about 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children in the UK will be clinically obese...