Free Republic

Venezuela’s leaders aren’t taking the ongoing McDonald’s french fry shortage in their country too well. Publicly sponsored news outlets, government officials, and even the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, have all responded to McDonald’s unthinkable french fry shortage, which spans all 100 outlets in the country, by publicly criticizing the chain, and its french fries. One of the loudest responses came from Telesur, a state-sponsored news outlet, which wasted no time in getting to what it views as the heart of the issue. The outlet published a story headlined, “McDonald’s joins economic war against Venezuela,” not-so-subtly suggesting that the lack of...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A man was shot after an apparent argument over fast food in the city’s Northern Liberties section early Monday morning. The two men were in a parked car near the intersection of 2nd and Callowhill Streets, eating fast food when an argument broke out over french fries, according to police. The two men got out of the car, started fighting, and investigators say that’s when one of them pulled a gun and shot the other. The victim was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital in critical condition. Witnesses tell police the shooter drove off in a silver Mercedes....

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Canadian police were on the search on Monday for a brazen thief who snatched a take-away meal while making a naked run past a fast food restaurant's drive-though window. An employee of a Langley, British Columbia, Wendy's restaurant was handing food to a customer waiting in her car when a naked man ran between them, taking off with her fries, and leaving little evidence behind, according to police. "Other than an age range, neither woman could provide further description," police said in a press release.

TWO MEN are being put on trial by the military this week because they answered their consciences. Pablo Paredes and Kevin Benderman refused to accept the lies they were told about the U.S. war on Iraq. Refused to accept the racist dehumanization of the Iraqi people. Refused to participate in the violence of the most lethal military machine in the history of the world. Refused to go to war for oil and empire in Iraq. Paredes, a third class petty officer, refused to board his Navy ship bound for the Persian Gulf, bringing 3,000 Marines to the battlefield--to kill and...

THE charred body of a 22-year-old man who died while trying to get a photo of an erupting volcano on France's Indian Ocean island of Reunion was recovered today after a difficult high-altitude operation, police said. Alexandre Thiault, a student from the island's capital of Saint-Denis, was killed late yesterday after the cooled lava he was standing on crumbled away and he fell into a crack on the side of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano. Firemen who extracted his body today said the Frenchman probably died of asphyxiation from the poisonous gases inside. His body was burnt beyond recognition...

<p>Exile Mohammad Vakilifar runs down a Paris street yesterday after setting himself afire to protest the roundup by French authorities of Iranian dissidents opposed to the Islamic regime. He survived.</p>

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress picked on the wrong country when it replaced "French fries" with "Freedom fries" on its menus to protest France's opposition to a possible U.S.-led war in Iraq, according to a Belgian fry expert. Michel Mes, who runs the website www.belgianfries.com, said that fried potatoes were invented in Belgium, not France, and were only referred to as French fries in the United States. "Of course, in good food tradition, the French claim to be the inventors of our beloved fries," he writes on the website. "Anyway, we modest Belgians don't mind the French claim, because...