Free Republic

Subway on Thursday ended its drawn-out auction to sell the family-owned sandwich chain by agreeing to a $9.6 billion deal with the private equity firm that owns Dunkin’ Brands. The sale to Roark Capital, which also backs several other fast-food chains through its restaurant conglomerate Inspire Brands, brings to close an era during which Subway was owned by its two founding families for more than 50 years. “The transaction is a major milestone in Subway’s multi-year transformation journey, combining Subway’s global presence and brand strength with Roark’s deep expertise in restaurant and franchise business models,” Subway said in a statement....

Two Chinese diplomats, away from their Los Angeles consulate improperly, recently sped their vehicle past a Los Alamos National Lab guard post near classified facilities in what United States officials think was ian intelligence mission, the Washington Times has learned.The diplomats, identified as Hua Yu and Bo Lai, were on an intelligence mission that is raising new worries of Chinese nuclear spying against the United States, according to US officials familiar with the incident.Pajarito Road is the site of two sensitive facilities. One is the Critical Assembly Facility known as Technical Area 18, the other is the Plutonium Reasearch facility,...

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." Thus declared Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. In the context of this statement, the private-public distinction is employed not in politicoeconomic terms (which are, however, derivative), but in an individual, ethical sense, pertaining to the objectively correct atmosphere which one should experience in and away from the company of other men. Any rational treatise, including this one, will undertake a definition of terms prior conducting their...