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The city of Fort Worth has reached a $50,000 settlement with a deaf man who claims his nose was broken during a November 2007 traffic stop as he tried to explain to an officer he could not hear. Fort Worth police Sgt. Pedro Criado said settlement Wednesday did not include any admission of wrongdoing on the city's part. The city also released the police dash camera video of the traffic stop. On Nov. 30, Christopher Ferrell, 43, was pulled over for speeding, police said. Criado said Thursday he did not know where the traffic stop occurred. Ferrell’s attorney said his...

COB ADDER, Iraq – Soldiers from the 3rd Sustainment Command’s 7th and 287th Sustainment Brigades worked side by side as they hosted Operation Voice of Hope Dec. 11 on Contingency Operating Base Adder. Members of the Muthanna Provincial Reconstruction Team and the 7th Sust. Bde.’s Civil Military Operation’s group worked together to host Iraqi girls from the Al-Amal School for the Deaf and assist them by diagnosing hearing impairments. Lt. Col. Allan White, 287th Sust. Bde., medical operations officer and audiologist conducted the tests using a standard audiometer.My goal today is to see what these children’s needs are,” said White....

England is currently deciding whether or not to legalize the use of embryo selection to produce deaf babies to accommodate deaf couples who want their children to share their soundless world. When Thomas Lifson reported this in AT, he expressed shock that such things could be permitted. I was shocked too---until I realized that this, and much worse, is the logical consequence of our legalization of abortion. Rightly or wrongly, our legal system regards death as the greatest possible injury that one person can inflict on another. Any injury that is not likely to cause death, however degrading or disfiguring to the...

The New York Archdiocesan Deaf Choir "signed" a song for Pope Benedict XVI Saturday at a seminary outside New York, where the pontiff blessed some 50 children with disabilities and visited students. The 81-year-old pontiff rose and applauded the choir of 15, accompanied vocally by the Cathedral of Saint Patrick Young Singers, after they had finished their song, "Take Lord, Receive." "God has blessed you with life and with differing talents and gifts," Benedict said in a short speech to the crowd of around 50 families of children with disabilities. "Sometimes it is challenging to find a reason for what...

2/15/2008 - MANAS AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan (AFPN) -- Airmen from the U.S. Central Command Air Forces Band "Live Round" found themselves in front of an unlikely audience Feb. 13, when they visited Bishkek's Boarding School for the Deaf. The visit was part of the band's outreach efforts during their eight-day trip to Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan. Band members delivered toys and candy as well as a musical performance for the students. Although music doesn't seem like it would be logical fit at the school, it is actually an important part of the curriculum for the more than 360 students there....

An 11-year-old boy from Britain, who was deaf for nearly 10 years, was suddenly cured when a thick piece of cotton popped out of his ear, according to a report in the Daily Mail. Jerome Bartens was diagnosed as deaf in his right ear when he was just two-years-old. Click here to read the full story and see pictures Over the next nine years, he struggled to live a normal life as a young boy — but everything changed when he felt a sudden pop in his right ear while playing a game of pool with friends. He put his...

Freakonomics One year from today, a new president moves into the White House. This president will be eager to carry out any number of plans — including, surely, plans to help the segments of society that most need help. Extending a helping hand, after all, is one of the great privileges and responsibilities of the presidency. But before charging ahead with such plans, the new president might do well to first ask him- or herself the following question: What do a deaf woman in Los Angeles, a first-century Jewish sandal maker and a red-cockaded woodpecker have in common? A few...

Some hard-of-hearing patients in England are having to wait more than two years for an NHS hearing aid. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) used the Freedom of Information Act to discover just how long the waits were. It found that ten trusts were not treating patients within a year, in spite of the Government’s target being 18 weeks. The worst offender was Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, where patients had to wait 125 weeks for an aid after first seeing their GP. The average wait was 22 weeks in the 99 primary care trusts (PCTs) across the...

A federal appeals court ordered a San Francisco judge on Friday to reconsider his ruling requiring United Parcel Service to give its deaf employees a chance to compete for jobs as drivers of small delivery trucks. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13-2 that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson had used the wrong standard in his 2004 decision that UPS was discriminating against deaf people with safe driving records by refusing to consider them for commercial driving jobs. Henderson allowed the plaintiffs to show that they were qualified for the jobs based on their driving records, and failed...

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle. Ballard’s stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations,...

Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him. "I ain't never been so scared," says Williams. Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn't real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf. "I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can't hear! I can't hear!" Officers...

FORT WORTH -- A store cashier struck a deaf customer in the head with a crowbar after he mistook the man's silence for rudeness and disrespect, police said. The cashier, Ricky Benard Young, 20, is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The customer, Cody Goodnight, 31, suffered "a large knot" on his head during the incident, which occurred Saturday at the Family Dollar Store at 4117 E. Lancaster Ave. "I can't believe someone would hit him for not speaking," said Goodnight's mother, Kay Goodnight. "When you're deaf, you don't make a point of starting conversations with people." Young's...

Pfc. Patti Angel, a food service specialist from Grand Junction, Colo., from Company F, 203rd Brigade Support Battalion, serves Soldiers their meals from a mobile kitchen trailer at Combat Outpost Cleary. Photo by Sgt. Natalie Rostek, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs. COMBAT OUTPOST CLEARY — Pfc. Patti Angel faces communication barriers no amount of waiting in line or talking into a phone can help. Her parents are deaf. Keeping in touch back home is already tough for deployed Soldiers with friends and family members who can hear. Not being able to use the conventional means of...

After laying siege to a house for five hours, police gave a final warning before storming the house where a gunman had been reported inside. A police dog rushed upstairs and, finding a woman in bed, proceeded to sink its teeth into her arms. But as armed officers surrounded a terrified Sonia Pellow, they realised two things. First, she wasn't a gunman. Second, she was deaf and had been sleeping throughout the entire stand-off. Yesterday Miss Pellow, 36, was still too afraid to return to her home in Hayle, Cornwall, after the ordeal, which followed a hoax call to police...

For a number of years now, a great deal of discussion has taken place among scientists and in the popular media about the genetic engineering of children. Will it soon be possible, for prices widely affordable at least to the upper-middle class, to guarantee that children have a high IQ, or excellent athletic ability, or be over 6 feet tall, or have blond hair and blue eyes? Is it right to commodify children in this way, and have parents choosing options as they do with cars? And wouldn’t it be boring to live in a world someday where almost everyone...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's only liberal arts university for the deaf could lose its accreditation unless it addresses concerns about weak academic standards, ineffective governance and a lack of tolerance for diverse views, an education oversight group warned. Gallaudet University was rocked by student demonstrations last fall that shut down the university for several days and forced the board to revoke the appointment of a new president. Afterward, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education said it was delaying a decision on whether to renew the school's accreditation because of concerns raised during the protests and because of a...

CBS/AP) EAST MEADOW, N.Y. It has taken a week, but the East Meadow School District is now telling its side of the controversy involving a deaf boy who wants to bring a service dog to class. East Meadow has prevented 14-year-old John Cave from bringing his dog Simba to the W. Tresper Clarke High School. The family has the state's Human Rights Commission looking into the case. East Meadow Superintendent Robert Dillon says the boy's parents have "repeatedly rejected" efforts to discuss the boy's wish to bring his service dog to school. In a statement released late Tuesday, Dillon says...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Gallaudet University has turned to former student with national credentials to lead the school until a permanent president can be selected. The school's board of trustees has announced that Robert Davila will serve as interim president beginning Jan. 2, when Irving King Jordan steps down after 19 years. Davila, who graduated from Gallaudet in 1953, says he worried about getting into Gallaudet while attending the California School for the Deaf as a 12-year-old boy. He taught at Galluadet for 17 years beginning in 1972. He also served as vice president of the National Technical Institute for the...

At least 16 Ramsey County deputies and correctional officers are being investigated for allegedly keeping a jailed deaf man incommunicado by denying him an interpreter or communication device, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said Friday. The 16 are still on duty, but Fletcher said he is looking into how they dealt with Douglas Bahl, an internationally known deaf advocate who was arrested Nov. 17 in St. Paul for running a red light. "We are taking this very seriously," said Fletcher. "Mr. Bahl seems very credible. If one or more of our employees have failed to act in the appropriate way, we will...

One of my dance students sent me this last week and I was in tears watching it. It's beautiful on its own, but what makes it so heart wrenching is all the dancers are deaf-mutes. And no, there are no special effects, those are real arms.