Free Republic

A seven-year-old has broken down crying as she took the controversial lead of a Rio de Janeiro carnival parade. Julia Lira became the youngest drum corps queen in memory, but her role has sparked much debate in Brazil. A judge had earlier over-ruled objections from a child rights agency that said it was inappropriate given the carnival's sexual focus.

WASHINGTON - Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't take into account the gorillas — Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University...