Free Republic

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday signed legislation allowing physician-assisted suicide for certain terminally ill patients, making Illinois the 12th state to enact such a law. The measure, known as the End of Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, or Deb's Law, lets doctors prescribe a lethal dose of drugs that eligible patients may self-administer. Springfield's State Journal-Register reported that the law takes effect in September. Under the statute, adults must have a terminal illness expected to result in death within six months, as confirmed by two physicians. Patients must have the mental capacity to make medical decisions, be...

President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said late Wednesday that men like senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner are "disposable," but it would cross the line for the special prosecutor to go after first daughter Ivanka Trump. "Jared is a fine man, you know that," Giuliani said on Fox News. "Men are disposable. But a fine woman like Ivanka? Come on." The former New York mayor appeared on Sean Hannity's show to attack special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Moscow.

The European Commission Monday (4 November) tabled measures to reduce the use of thin plastic bags by 80 percent, with about 710,000 tonnes of them being thrown away each year. Each EU citizen use almost 200 such bags—below 50 microns in thickness—yearly and, for the most part (89 percent of the time), throws them away after just one go. The practice is causing “enormous environmental damage,” said environment commissioner Janez Potocnik. He said the bags are a symbol of our “throwaway” culture, as the bags take hundreds of years to degrade “yet we only use them for a few minutes.”...

The Bush administration has ear-marked $20 million in its 2009 budget toward the US Department of Energy's efforts to design nuclear power plants in the 250-to-500 megawatt range as part of its Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP). The money marks the first substantial commitment to building the new plants since President Bush announced the program in February 2006. The latest nuclear plants designed for US domestic use have capacities about 1300 megawatts. GNEP, which now includes 21 member countries, hopes to begin construction of its first reactor in a country currently without nuclear power in 2015, saying the plants will...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - For years, disposable cameras have been a magnet for last-minute photographic whimsy, encouraging all manner of embarrassing pictures from weddings and other social events. Watch out: There's now a disposable video camera. The $29.99 pocket-sized digital video cameras are able to capture up to 20 minutes of video and sound. CVS Corp. stores, which has exclusive rights to sell them, will process the camera for $12.99 and return a DVD; users also can e-mail video and video greeting cards. Pure Digital Technologies Inc. developed and designed the camera with just three buttons. One starts and stops...

Latin America: The past week's high political turmoil in Ecuador is about more than oil or bananas. It's about a terrifying descent into instability that could hit every country in the hemisphere. The turmoil in the tiny South American country shows no sign of ending. Another president was thrown out — the third in a decade. His successor is widely regarded as an ignorant weakling. And no one thinks he's going to last. After all, Ecuador has had seven presidents since 1995. Maybe that's why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turned her attention from a milestone NATO treaty signing in...

My first trip to the former Soviet Union was in 1984, in the "bad old days" before perestroika forced the Iron Curtain to part and the gates of freedom to open. I had come to visit refuseniks, to teach Torah, to conduct clandestine weddings, to strengthen the hands and hearts of the heroes who bravely took on the Communist bear. Though I would depart Russia with just my carry-on bag, I shlepped two huge suitcases into the country. They were filled with a multitude of items either unavailable or illegal in the USSR: chocolate, a mezuza, Hebrew primers, tapes of...

<p>A Texas grocery chain has decided to stop selling disposable DVDs, a product that outraged environmentalists and apparently didn't sell too well, either.</p> <p>About 20 H-E-B grocery stores in the Austin area sold the EZ-Ds, vacuum-sealed movies that, once opened, play for 48 hours before a chemical reaction on the surface of the discs renders them unplayable.</p>

<p>Angry at Disney's plans to sell disposable DVD movies, environmentalists plan to dump their grievances on CEO Michael Eisner in a massive phone protest Wednesday.</p> <p>Hundreds of students from around the country will call Eisner to discourage the sale of these throwaway DVDs, and urge the company to abandon the product, according to the protest's organizers.</p>