Free Republic

AUSTIN, Texas — Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next mission: taking oil companies to court “for knowingly killing people all over the world.” The former California governor and global environmental activist announced the move Sunday at a live recording of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast, recording here at the SXSW festival, revealing that he’s in talks with several private law firms and preparing a public push around the effort. “This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades, that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create cancer, and were hiding that...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – While getting to the gym can be a challenge in itself this winter, members of the LA Fitness in Roseville have had more serious problems to deal with. On Sunday, city police responded to a call involving 10-15 people fighting at the gym’s Cleveland Avenue location. It started all on the basketball court over a call and escalated, moving into the main fitness area. “People were actually throwing two and a half, five, 10 pound weights within the building,” said Police Lt. Lorne Rosand. This recent fight is just part of a bigger problem. Police say the...

Andreas Krieger, born Heidi Krieger, competed as a woman in the 1986 European Championships in Athletics. She ultimately won a gold medal in the shot put event. Coaches of the East German team SC Dynamo Berlin doped Krieger systematically with anabolic steroids that changed her body forever. “I still say today that they killed Heidi,” Kreiger said. “It’s difficult to say whether I would be Heidi today or not but I could have decided on my own ... I was thrown out of my gender.” In the 1970s, the East German government planned to use performance-enhancing drugs to dominate Olympic...

Their faces painted heavy with make-up, teenage girls in short, tight blouses and long petticoats loiter in squalid alleys, laughing and gesturing to potential clients who roam Tangail town's infamous red light area in the early evening. There is no shortage of men looking for "company" in Kandapara slum, a labyrinth of tiny lanes—lined cheek-by-jowl with corrugated iron shacks—a few hours drive northeast of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. But with rates as low as 50 taka (60 U.S. cents), the need to attract as many customers as possible is desperate - prompting a rising, yet dangerous, trend of steroid abuse among...

Answers to key questions as Bonds begins legal journey By Mark Fainaru-Wada and T. J. Quinn Updated: December 6, 2007 When Barry Bonds walks into the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Friday, it will be only the beginning of an unpredictable legal odyssey. A few days after the fourth anniversary of his BALCO grand jury testimony, Bonds will surrender to U.S. marshals, go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of being arrested and later appear in court to enter a plea on four counts of perjury and one of obstructing justice. Outside the courtroom and all over the United...