A terminally ill bank manager with brain cancer has made her last wishes clear - she wants to die.

Grace Sung Eun Lee even managed to vocalise her wishes, telling her parents and the doctors tending to her: 'I want to die.'

But because the 28-year-old's parents are deeply religious and belong to a Korean Christian church in Queens, they believe that allowing her daughter to choose death over life is a sin.

The rift in beliefs has led to an agonising legal battle for the family.

Speaking with the New York Daily News, Ms Lee's mother, Jin-ah Lee, said: 'Despite all this confusion, (my daughter) wants to go to heaven. I keep telling her she can get better.'

Her daughter is currently at Long Island North Shore Hospital, hooked up to breathing tubes that are keeping her alive. She is paralysed from the neck down due to the tumour on her brain stem.

Bees at a cluster of apiaries in northeastern France have been producing honey in mysterious shades of blue and green, alarming their keepers who now believe residue from containers of M&M's candy processed at a nearby biogas plant is the cause.

Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace have seen bees returning to their hives carrying unidentified colourful substances that have turned their honey unnatural shades.

Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 kilometres away has been processing waste from a Mars plant producing M&M's, bite-sized candies in bright red, blue, green, yellow and brown shells.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun's view that the theories of evolution and the big bang are "lies straight from the pit of Hell" is getting more exposure than he might have expected, thanks to a video above that was made at a church-sponsored banquet in Georgia and distributed by a progressive political watchdog group.

The Georgia Republican is already well-known as an outspoken conservative Christian, due in part to his unsuccessful campaign to have 2010 declared "the Year of the Bible." But the latest comments have taken on an extra dab of controversy because Broun, a medical doctor, calls himself a scientist in the video and chairs the House Science Committee's panel on investigations and oversight.

America, you have become a nation of enablers and apologists for tyranny and mass murder. You condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as you celebrate your own mercenaries and torturers, even as you explain away, if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by your sons and daughters. You don't care who you kill, as long as your soldiers are paid, and your munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming.

Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, your leading intellectuals lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock this blazing gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or, god forbid, have their tenure revoked. Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they're expert at sidestepping Israel's prolific crimes, 9/11, Bin Laden's faux death or the parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election nears, they're all gung ho about candidates who back illegal wars and banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils.

For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes respectively, so there hasn't been an overwhelming mandate for any of them, but with the runner ups from the other major party often close behind, and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count, the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public life and pocketbooks. As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican. An American election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting. Every four years, we're railroaded into sanctioning endless war and bottomless corruption. If disappointed, we're then steered by our brainwashing and dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.

The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by threatening, If you don't vote for us, the Dems will take your hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crackheads and other miscellaneous losers, while the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling, If you don't vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired, diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat the details.

For the first time in Walmart's 50-year history, workers at multiple stores have gone on strike, even though their jobs are not protected by a labor union.

More than 70 Los Angeles Walmart workers from nine stores walked off the job Thursday, workers and labor organizers told The Huffington Post.

About 250 workers and supporters protested outside the Pico Rivera Walmart store, carrying signs that read, "On Strike for the Freedom to Speak Out" and "Walmart Strike Against Retaliation." The workers said their complaints about working conditions and low pay have been met with threats, suspensions and terminations.

The strikers said they plan to return to work Friday. Some of the workers will speak at LA City Hall Friday to relay Walmart's response to the strike. The strike was coordinated by OUR Walmart, a labor group backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) that defends Walmart workers' rights.

Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman told HuffPost that the protest was insignificant and claimed that less than five workers walked off the job. "This rally is just the latest publicity stunt by the UFCW to seek media attention in order to further their political agenda and financial objectives," he said. "Our stores in the community are staffed up and open for business as usual today. This event is not a factor," he added.

Walmart workers have recently filed more than 20 charges of unfair labor practices across the country with the National Labor Relation Board, according to Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart, the campaign behind OUR Walmart. The charges, mostly filed in recent weeks, allege that workers have either been fired or had their hours reduced after activity with OUR Walmart. Workers also allege that they have been told not to talk to OUR Walmart organizers and that doing so could shut down stores, leaving employees without a job, Schlademan told HuffPost.

ArcelorMittal gives government two months to find a buyer before it shuts last blast furnaces in historic industrial region

In a valley lashed by wind and rain in the industrial heartland of north-east France, steelworkers blockading the local foundry see their action as a last stand to save their jobs, their factory, their region's economy - even the entire French steel industry.

As thunderstorms raged in the area this week, the symbolism was potent: the picket-line bonfire hissed and went out. The tent where protesters had taken refuge from the elements ditched its concrete anchors and threatened to blow away. "Let go of nothing," someone shouted as men grabbed tent poles. The others laughed.

There is little humour to be had these days outside the ArcelorMittal steelworks in Florange, where the "temporary" closure of two blast furnaces was declared permanent on Monday, with the loss of 629 jobs. Bitter jokes and anger are directed at the Indian-born, British-based Lakshmi Mittal, owner of the world's largest steelmaking company. "That man is a predator," said Edouard Martin, head of the CFDT union at Florange where he has worked for 32 years. "He's not an industrialist, he's a financier.

On the eleventh day of action against TransCanada's demolition of forest, land and family farm property in East Texas, actress Daryl Hannah joined Eleanor Fairchild to defend her farm from the heavy machinery TransCanada is using to prepare the environment for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The two ran out and put their hands up in front of the machinery.

Fairchild, who the Tar Sands Blockade describes as a "feisty 78-year-old great-grandmother," put her hands up in the air, along with Hannah, to say, "Stop!" While standing in the way of an excavator there to clear trees, she declared:

...Get off my land, period. And, I don't want tar sands anywhere in the United States.

I am mad. This land is my land and it's been our land since '83. Our home is on it. They're going to destroy the woods and also they could destroy the springs.

It is just devastating but it is also not good to have that tar sands anywhere in the United States. This is not just about my land. It's about all of our country.

It needs to be stopped...

Gasoline station owners in the Los Angeles area including Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) are beginning to shut pumps as the state's oil refiners started rationing supplies and spot prices surged to a record.

Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) stopped selling gasoline on the spot, or wholesale, market in Southern California and is allocating deliveries to customers. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) is also rationing fuel to U.S. West Coast terminal customers. Costco's outlet in Simi Valley, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, ran out of regular gasoline yesterday and was selling premium fuel at the price of regular.

The gasoline shortage "feels like a hurricane to me, but it's the West Coast," Jeff Cole, Costco's vice president of gasoline, said by telephone yesterday. "We're obviously extremely disheartened that we are unable to do this, and we're pulling fuel from all corners of California to fix this."

Spot gasoline in Los Angeles has surged $1 a gallon this week to a record $1.45 a gallon premium versus gasoline futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That's the highest level for the fuel since at least November 2007, when Bloomberg began publishing prices there. On an outright basis, the fuel has jumped to $4.3929 a gallon.

Rev. Gary Thomas, a Vatican-certified exorcist, spoke about practicing exorcisms, in which he attempts to drive demons out of someone's thought-to-be-possessed body.

"Satan has been defeated," Thomas told a multi-faith audience of 200 people in the Cook Campus Center.

He said in Catholic teachings, Jesus Christ's crucifixion signified the ultimate defeat of Satan, explaining the cross's prominence in the church.

Victoria Coglianese, secretary of the Catholic Student Association at the University, said members in her organization wanted to bring a speaker like Thomas to campus because they feel students are mature enough to handle the serious content of the visit.

"We really wanted someone that would attract a lot of people. The event holds a lot of history, [and is an] intriguing topic," said Coglianese, a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences junior.

Citing hope, confidence and thanksgiving as the central meanings symbolized in the cross and the Eucharist, Thomas said these show the positive forces that can counter demons in both the modern and the historic church.

Thomas said sins are a vessel for evil to enter the world.

The concept of sin grew unclear through time, he said, and it has become difficult to tell exactly what behavior is sinful.

The National Trust has amended a controversial exhibition at the new Giant's Causeway visitor centre.

An audio exhibit revealed how people's explanation of how the Causeway was formed developed as scientific understanding improved.

Young earth creationists believe the Causeway was formed 6,000 years ago. The vast majority of scientists say it was formed 60m years ago.

The trust says it has always supported the "scientific view" of its formation.

The Causeway is a Unesco World Heritage Site and features more than 40,000 interlocking basalt columns.

The £18.5m centre was opened on 3 July.

The National Trust decided to carry out a review of the exhibit after the creationist element provoked what it termed a "wide and mixed response".

In July, an online campaign to remove it began.

A new piece of audio, approximately 20 seconds long, now replaces the previous recording.

Graham Thompson, project director for the Giant's Causeway, said the change would clear up "any misunderstanding there may have been"