New England Sun-Times

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, whose net worth exceeds $100 million, is a fervent proselytizer on behalf of “ conscious capitalism .” A self-described libertarian, Mackey believes the solution to all of the world’s problems is letting corporations run amok, without regulation. He believes this so fervently, in fact, he wrote an entire book extolling the magnanimous virtue of the free market. At the same time, while preaching the supposedly beneficent gospel of the “conscious capitalism,” Mackey’s company Whole Foods, which has a $13 billion and growing annual revenue , sells overpriced fish, milk, and gourmet cheeses cultivated by inmates in US prisons. The renowned “green capitalist” organic supermarket chain pays what are effectively indentured servants in the Colorado prison system a mere $1.50 per hour to farm organic tilapia . Colorado prisons already grow 1.2 million pounds of tilapia a year, and government officials and their corporate companions are chomping at t...

  The modern diabetes epidemic is caused, not by a virulent pathogen, but by the spread of an even stealthier invader: the Western lifestyle. As people around the world have begun to eat less healthily, lead more sedentary lives, and live to older ages, adult onset diabetes (type 2 diabetes) has become common in places where the disease was previously unknown. Between 1985 and 2002, the number of people with diabetes grew from 30 million to 217 million, and this figure is expected to exceed 366 million by 2030. But the epidemic has not been even-handed. Even accounting for differences in lifestyle, some populations have been hit particularly hard. Mexicans and Latin Americans, for example, have nearly twice the chance of developing diabetes that non-Hispanic white Americans do. New research addresses these disparities. Scientists announced that they'd discovered a gene that helps explain the difference in diabetes risk among many populations. In a strange twis...

  NEW YORK--A Panera Bread restaurant manager in Manhattan is out of a job after graphic video surfaced showing him punching a female employee and knocking her to the ground. In the video posted on YouTube, the woman throws a bag of chips onto the ground and screams before the manager hits her twice. According to the user who uploaded the video, the woman had been thrown out of the restaurant, but came back and that's when the punches were thrown. "You might wanna say she hit him first, but really he had full control over her the entire time, was throwing her around, I think she gets one slap in that was louder than it was painful," a witness told Gawker . Panera later issued a statement about the video: "Today there were reports of a physical altercation between two associates at our Park Avenue South Bakery-Caf. We have a zero tolerance policy for violence and worked swiftly with authorities to investigate. The associates who were determine...

by Mark Freeman     The Florida State Attorney's Office has released video of suspended Florida State Quarterback De'Andre Johnson punching a woman at a bar last month in Tallahassee.   According to Calkins sister station WTXL, the incident occurred on June 24th and one day later, the 19-year old was suspended indefinitely by the team for violating team rules. On June 30th Johnson turned himself in to the Leon County Sherrif's Office after a warrant for his arrest was issued. The incident occurs at about the 30 second mark in the video below: Johnson was expected to compete for the starting quarterback job at Florida State along with incoming Notre Dame transfer Everett Golson, and junior Sean Maquire.