Free Republic

Driving through Naypyidaw, the purpose-built capital of Burma, it could be easy to forget that you’re in the middle of one of south-east Asia’s poorest countries. On either side of the street, a seemingly endless series of giant detached buildings, villa-style hotels and shopping malls look like they have fallen from the sky, all painted in soft pastel colours: light pink, baby blue, beige. The roads are newly paved and lined with flowers and carefully pruned shrubbery. Meticulously landscaped roundabouts boast large sculptures of flowers. The scale of this surreal city is difficult to describe: it extends an estimated 4,800...

The archbishop of Atlanta had a plan to resolve the space crunch at his cathedral: He would move out of his residence so priests could move in, and then he would build himself a new house with donated money and land.

She looks like any old bag lady scavenging for cast-offs in the rubbish as the world looks the other way. But this is no ordinary woman - she is Olga Onassis, 90, a woman linked by marriage to one of the richest dynasties in the world. She has now fallen, like her country, on desperate times. She is a regular at a church soup kitchen in the Greek capital Athens and roots around in the overflowing garbage containers of the city for clothes.

It is not rumor, it is not wild conjecture, it is not racism, and it was a creditable news report out of India early last week that fixed the cost of the Obama trip to India at 200 Million dollars a day. The Obama administration seeing the PR nightmare this could turn into after the November 2 midterm election rebuke of the president’s Socialist agenda and Socialist ideology rushed to neutralize the negative impact of the news report by calling the report rumor and by attacking anyone who repeated this report as enemies of the president. But fact is this...

A recurring theme of the Obama White House is "sacrifice." The president has repeatedly stressed the need for us to tighten our belts. He has informed us, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ..." During the campaign, his wife told us that we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. Shortly after the election, the president said that "[e]verybody's going to have to give. Everybody's going to have to have some skin in the game." This emphasis...

Kim Jong-il's 17 Villas Satellite Overview of Kim Jong-il's Bong-hwa Villa at Bong-hwa Reservoir, Samsuk District, Pyongyang Locations of Kim Jong-il's 17 Villas Illustration of markings: top row: exclusive residence of Kim Jong-il (left) food processing facility (right) middle row: guard post (left) banquet hall (2nd from the left) fishing pond (right) bottom row: both are approach roads

With six weeks to go before unveiling the $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas, Steve Wynn already is planning a second full-scale, $1.4 billion megaresort on the former Desert Inn property, Wynn Resorts Ltd. revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.......

©Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley Altar Egos The top 10 worst and wackiest Hollywood nuptials by Kat Giantis MSN Entertainment On the whole, the rich and famous suck at marriage, but they're masters at getting hitched (granted, some have had a lot of practice). Most celebrities take a liberal approach to nuptial spending, creating the illusion -- at least for a little while -- that happily ever after is possible. Take Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt . When they tied the knot, their million-dollar, ultra-private ceremony included 50,000 flowers, loads of brown sugar candles imported from...