Free Republic

Venezuelan Hospitals Cope With Violence Staff and agencies 21 April, 2006 By IAN JAMES, Fri Apr 21, 3:50 AM ET CARACAS, Venezuela - Victims reach the emergency room soaked in blood and dazed — wheeled in on stretchers, carried in people‘s arms, some still walking with the last of their strength. An elderly man shot in a robbery, a young man sprayed with gunfire, a woman who took a stray bullet in the head while on her way to church. The government says it is making progress on the problem, but a series of particularly heinous murders sparked protests earlier...

BEIJING, March 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Chinese official has recommended to parliament that the country begin experimenting with euthanasia as a precursor to legalization. Zhao Gongmin, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, claims that public opinion strongly supports the practice, with supposed surveys showing as much as 80 percent support. “I think it is only a matter of time for euthanasia to become legal,” Zhao said, according to a Shanghai Daily report. “Therefore, we should allow some experiments on the local level for the purpose of accumulating experience.”“Conditions are not ripe yet for nation-level legislation on euthanasia, but...

MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Russians could suffer a shortage of their national tipple next week because a bureaucratic mix-up has brought every vodka distillery in the country to a halt, producers say. Distillers have been waiting since January 1 for tax authorities to send them new excise stamps -- the anti-counterfeit stickers that by law must be attached to every bottle of vodka. "We are selling vodka left over from last year but those stocks are getting smaller all the time," said Vera Bragina, a spokeswoman for Russia's Smirnov Trading House. "The situation is pretty much under control but if...

Our political leaders keep telling us to fear the avian flu, and in one sense they're right: We should all be scared to death about how much damage our political leaders will do responding to the avian flu. Whatever the risk, some good will come out of this public alarm if we use it as an opportunity to understand why the U.S. is now so poorly armed to cope with a deadly flu outbreak. The reason is that our political class has spent the past 30 years driving the vaccine industry out of business with its own virus of over-regulation,...