Free Republic

Pro-China WHO boss Tedros is key figure in Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. “Scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra, a town in the South West Zone of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,” Amnesty International is confirming. The human rights organization verified “photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.” Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s director for east and southern Africa, “confirmed the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day laborers in no way involved in the...

HUGE ECONOMIC NEWS THIS MORNING— China moved to reduce tariffs on US cars from 40% to 15% in the latest sign of their willingness to negotiate a trade deal with President Trump.... ...Despite the Deep State DOJ’s best efforts to ruin the trade deal and punish Americans China is committing to a new trade agreement with the Trump administration.

China is sending conciliatory signals as U.S. and Chinese negotiators meet in Washington to try to head off a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Beijing has dropped an anti-dumping investigation into imported U.S. sorghum, which it had accused the United States of unfairly subsiding. It has also given approval for a U.S. private equity firm to buy Toshiba’s memory chip business. Those gestures could suggest a thaw with the U.S. as trade talks went on for a second day Friday in Washington. “China has come to trade,” Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, told reporters....

Athens, Ga. - A new University of Georgia study has found that select varieties of sorghum bran have greater antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties than well-known foods such as blueberries and pomegranates. Researchers measured polyphenolic compounds, which naturally occur in plants to help fight against pests and disease, and found that the black and sumac varieties of sorghum have significant levels of antioxidants. Many fruits also contain these compounds, they said, though sorghum bran may prove to be the richest and cheapest source. “Since most human chronic disease states are associated with chronic inflammation and high oxidative stress, a food ingredient...

Why do many food plants contain cyanide? In murder mysteries, the detective usually diagnoses cyanide poisoning by the scent of bitter almonds wafting from the corpse. The detective knows what many of us might find surprising — that the deadly poison cyanide is naturally present in bitter almonds and many other plants used as food, including apples, peaches, apricots, lima beans, barley, sorghum, flaxseed and bamboo shoots.There's a reason that cyanide exists in all these plants, and it is — to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes — evolutionary, suggests Kenneth M. Olsen, PhD, an assistant professor of biology in Arts &...

In Southern Appalachia, sweetnin' refers to sugar in its various forms, including white sugar, brown sugar, honey, and sorghum syrup. For almost a century following the introduction of sugar sorghum to the United States in 1857, sweet sorghum -- popularly known in the region as "sorghum molasses" -- was the sweetnin' of choice. [Vintage pictures.]

One sure sign of a genuine specimen of folk cuisine is an abundance of old family recipes which are generally similar but differ in details. Stack Cake is the real thing -- you can collect as many "authentic" recipes for stack cake as you would like. Stack Cake is made of 6 to 8 layers of cake with an apple-based filling between the layers. A common apocryphal story is that it originated as poor-folks' wedding cake, with several guests each contributing a layer.

LUBBOCK, Texas - Sweet sorghum is grown in the U.S. for cooking and livestock feed. But the tall plant also might help at the gas pump. A sugary sap inside the plant's stalk, which grow as tall as 12 feet, can be turned into a potent biofuel, and experts and companies are studying its potential with hopes that farmers will want to plant more of it. Ethanol made from the stalk's juice has four times the energy yield of the corn-based ethanol, which is already in the marketplace unlike sweet sorghum. Sweet sorghum produces about eight units of energy for...