Free Republic

t's one of the most elegant and environmentally responsible ways to prepare your morning cup of coffee, but if you're regularly using a French press, you could be doing serious damage to your body in the long run, according to a study published in The European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. "Unfiltered coffee contains substances which increase blood cholesterol," explains study author Dag Thelle, a senior professor in the public health and community medicine department of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. "Using a filter removes these and makes heart attacks and premature death less likely."

Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value truth and accuracy in Middle East news reporting. The case involves Philippe Karsenty, a French journalist and media commentator, who was found guilty of defamation after he called for the firing of two France 2 Television journalists responsible for the Sept. 30, 2000, news report on the alleged killing of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites) will not actively seek to ban gay marriage in the United States during his second term in office, a stance certain to anger the social conservatives who helped re-elect him. The Washington Post asked Bush if he would aggressively lobby senators during his second term in office to pass an amendment outlawing marriage in all 50 states. "I do believe it's necessary," Bush said Sunday. But he went on to imply that pursuing it in the US Senate, which must approve a constitutional amendment by 67 of its 100...

It is the wish of every newspaper to cover the news, not to be the news. So by any measure, this has been an unhappy year for Le Monde, France's best known and weightiest newspaper. Since February, four books have dragged the daily, and particularly its ruling triumvirate, through the mud. And to make things worse, much of the rest of the French press has been enjoying the spectacle. Now, Daniel Schneidermann, Le Monde's longtime television columnist, has been fired for publishing "The Media Nightmare." Devoting 35 pages of the 281-page book to his own employer, the author bemoans...

With the prospect of war with Iraq just days away, senior Democratic lawmakers attacked the Bush administration for its "messianic zeal" to disarm Iraq by military force.Senators Patrick Leahy and Edward Kennedy took to the Senate floor to call on President George W. Bush to "get it right" on ridding Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction."I am concerned that as we rush to war with Iraq, we are becoming more divided at home and more isolated in the world community," Kennedy warned."Instead of persuading the dissenters at home and abroad, the administration by its harsh rhetoric is driving...

BAGHDAD, March 11 (AFP) - Baghdad's official press gloated Tuesday over the United States' failure to rally world support for its anticipated invasion of Iraq. "Developments on the international scene clearly point to the impasse in which the United States finds itself due to the defeat it has suffered at the political, moral and media levels even before carrying out its anticipated aggression against Iraq," wrote the daily Al-Jumhuriya. Anti-war demonstrations are taking place around the world, "including on the tyrannical US administration's own turf -- in Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- and in the heart...