Free Republic

Wealthy Chinese couples are implanting their embryos into American women so their children can be born as US citizens, The Post has learned. The service is provided by a surrogacy agency, Patriot Conceptions, which operates between China and the US and has been accused of hiding details of who the biological parents are from surrogates. Women who carry babies for the agency are recruited informally through social media and collect between $60,000 and $120,000 dollars for their services. The children are then swept off by their parents to be raised in China, where it is seen as a status symbol...

That $53,000 for the Mac Pro on the high-end is a lot of money for a computer, but there will be buyers. There doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion about the lower, more practical, workstation price points -- which are common to Windows workstations too. Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR When considering the Mac Pro price, context is key. Context is what's lacking in nearly all of these conversations. If the Mac Pro is compared to build-your-own hardware or an iMac, it is indeed more expensive. But, compared to Windows workstation pricing, the jokes and arguments fall...

Ali al-Hilli is a happy man. He has a wife and three kids, a prosperous business and -- this is the important part -- a Hummer. -snip- Hummers in Baghdad are symbols of much more besides: increasing security, returning normality and a yearning for the trappings of sovereignty. Al-Hilli allowed that there was something else, too, a little more indefinable, which in Arabic is hasad thukuri, and which in English will be translated later. -snip- "It helped that in Kadhimiya we didn't have such a bad opinion of the Americans," Ali al-Hilli said. "People often asked the soldiers to stop...

It's All About Rice Cookers 2008-06-03 Never mind that state media still demonize anything marginally capitalist. In North Korea, nothing shouts "status" like a smuggled kitchen appliance. RFA photo Cuckoo rice cooker, Seoul. SEOUL—In tightly closed, pathologically secretive North Korea, nothing says “status” in 2008 like a smuggled South Korean rice cooker. And it seems even cadres in one of the world's last bastions of communism have developed a preference for high-end brands. The most popular rice cooker in affluent, arch-rival South Korea is the Cuckoo, a Korean homonym for the sound of steam escaping from a pressure valve...

Keeping it wheel with rims DANTE SPELLER’S gleaming, 20-inch rims sparkle in the sun like diamonds. The chrome monsters jack up the gray Mazda Millenia parked in the driveway of his Portsmouth home. Speller, 24, an Army security officer, spent $3,500 to decorate his tires with custom chrome. He’s invested more than $8,000 on after-market accessories, including five TVs, a DVD player and stereo system. Now he is eager to move on to the crown jewels of rims: 21 inches or more. “The biggest rims are the prettiest,” he said. These days, chrome wheels are big business, transforming ordinary auto...