Free Republic

Running out of places to care for patients, London's busiest hospital emergency room shut its doors to all but the most severe injuries from outside the city for the first time in its history last week. Two trauma patients had to be diverted during the shutdown, with one patient sent to a hospital in Toronto and the other to Hamilton. The situation hit amid recent reports some London patients have had to wait as long as three days for a hospital bed to become available. "We were in a crisis situation," said Dr. Gary Joubert, chief of emergency medicine for...

The Span of War Caring for the Wounded: The Story of Two Marines by Joseph P. Shapiro Morning Edition, March 8, 2005 · Last November, 1st Sgt. Brad Kasal and Lance Cpl. Alex Nicoll were seriously injured in one of the fiercest battles of the Iraq war. Kasal and Nicoll had been with a Marine unit conducting house-to-house searches for insurgents in Fallujah. When fellow Marines entered one house, they were injured by insurgents inside. Nicoll and Kasal went in to retrieve their comrades, but soon were severely wounded themselves while temporarily cornered in a room on the bottom floor....

Breaking the Silence 20-year wait to hear their daughter speak again is over for parents of near-fatal accident victim By Clara Kilbourn The call came Feb. 4. "Are you sitting down? There's someone here who wants to talk to you." Betsy Scantlin recognized the caller, Jennifer Trammell, director of social services at Golden Plains Health Care Center. The next voice was different. "Hi, Mom." "Sarah, is that you?" "Yeah." "Hi, Dad," she said, then, slowly drawing out the words, "Happy Valentine's Day." For 20 years, Betsy and Jim Scantlin had waited to again hear their daughter's voice. Jim wanted to...

(IsraelNN.com) Sporadic exchanges of gunfire were reported in northern Gaza this morning, east of Beit Hanoun. IDF troops were engaged in exchanges of gunfire with terrorists in the area, PA sources reported. No additional information is available regarding the incident. There were no reports of injuries.

The story of Marine Staff Sgt. Robert Arellano's wound is not exactly heroic. He was sitting in a tent in southern Iraq when the 9mm handgun he was repairing went off, sending a bullet through his left leg. advertisement That's why his heart sank in spring 2003, when he heard that he would receive the Purple Heart as he recovered at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003 has surpassed 10,000, the Pentagon said yesterday in a delayed update of its casualty data. Of the 10,252 total wounded, the Pentagon said 5,396 were unable to return to duty and 4,856 sustained injuries that were light enough to allow them to resume their duties. The total is normally reported each week, but the Pentagon had not updated the figures since Dec. 22, when the number of wounded stood at 9,981. The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at...

Bullets Come Down: Help Stop Celebratory Gunfire this New Years Action AlertBrady Campaign to Prevent Gun ViolenceUnited with the Million Mom March1225 Eye Street, NWWashington, DC 20005www.bradycampaign.orgBrady/MMM is joining with America's police departments to urge Americans not to engage in what police call "celebratory gunfire" -- the indiscriminate firing of weapons into the air. On New Years Eve, scores of people will place others at risk of injury or death because of celebratory gunfire. When a bullet is fired into the air, the bullet has to come down somewhere. This holiday season, help spread the word about the dangers...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Recent Poll Reveals Most Americans Think Abortion Hurts Women CHICAGO, November 26, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A recent nationwide survey conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide has found that a majority of Americans believe that abortion is "almost always bad" for women. The findings reflect the earlier findings of an Elliot Institute poll, which found that a majority of Americans believe abortion makes women's lives worse. The poll of 1,001 Americans, conducted on behalf of Americans United for Life, found that 61 percent felt that "abortion is almost always a bad thing for a woman," whereas only 23 percent said it was almost...

An SUV jumped a curb and struck a mother as she pushed her baby boy in a jogging stroller at Ponce de Leon Avenue and Lullwater Road Monday, police said. The impact threw the woman into a nearby ravine, but left the toddler crying in the stroller where it remained on the sidewalk. Both victims are expected to be okay. Atlanta police said the accident happened just before 10 a.m. as the woman walked eastbound on Ponce de Leon Avenue. The driver, identified as 32-year-old

A drunken 15-year-old boy lost control of a BMW, slammed into a one-story house on Long Island and ran from the horror scene leaving two injured friends behind in the car, police said. The teenage driver, whose name was not released, left a nearby block party at about 10 p.m. Saturday and was traveling north on Wyandanch Road in Sayville near the intersection with Loop Drive, witnesses said.

KARACHI, September 15 (PNS): Sitting in a black sedan, four agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) watched intently as a posse of Pakistan military intelligence and police officials climbed a narrow staircase to enter a second floor apartment of a four-apartment building in Karachi's posh residential district of Defence Society early morning on September 11. The raiding party had specific information from two Yemenis arrested in another raid a few hours earlier that a "bunch" of al-Qaeda suspects was hiding in the Defence Society apartment. As the uniformed and plain clothes intelligence operatives and policemen barged...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First there was the girl who fell off her bike fleeing a flying cicada. Then a boy trying to swat a cicada out of the air with a baseball bat instead hit his friend in the nose. The final straw came when another child hurt his hand trying to squish a cicada under a car's tires. Dr. Ray Baker of Cincinnati Children's Hospital was convinced -- cicadas can be a safety hazard to children. Starting this week and lasting into June, billions and possibly even trillions of cicadas will emerge across much of the eastern half of...

Four British soldiers have been injured when they came under attack while patrolling a village in south-east Iraq. "We can confirm that UK patrols came under fire while patrolling the village of Qal at Sahil in the Maysan province," a ministry spokesman said. "The patrol returned fire after receiving fire from heavy machineguns and a rocket-propelled grenade," the spokesman said, adding the injured soldiers were from the Second Light Infantry. The four soldiers, whom the spokesman declined to identify, were admitted to the Shaibah military hospital near Basra where they were being treated for "non-life-threatening injuries", the spokesman said. The...

Much more of a success off the court than on it, Anna Kournikova might be making a permanent move to a life outside tennis. Kournikova, a 22-year-old Russian, told the London Evening Standard on Monday that she plans to quit tennis early next year and devote herself to becoming an actress and TV awards presenter. "Acting and presenting are definitely things I enjoy doing," Kournikova, who was in Monte Carlo hosting the World Music Awards, told the newspaper. "I'd love to appear in something like 'Sex and the City' or 'Friends.' I get offered lots of those sorts of jobs,...

Bryant accuser's injuries 'obvious' Friend says she was hurt, 'no question' Sarah Lombardi, 17, of Eagle, a friend of the woman who has accused Kobe Bryant of sexual assault, says she has handled a flood of calls from the news media asking for interviews. By Chris Frates and George Merritt, Denver Post Staff Writers EAGLE - The alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant sexual-assault case suffered obvious physical injuries that are still apparent three weeks after the incident, a friend told The Denver Post on Monday. "She had been hurt, there's no question about it," said Luke Bray, a high...

WASHINGTON - Highway deaths reached the highest level in 12 years in 2002, but the number of injuries dropped to a historic low, according to new government statistics. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that 42,815 people died in auto accidents in 2002, an increase of 1.5 percent from 2001. At the same time, the number of injuries dropped, from 3.03 million in 2001 to 2.92 million in 2002. NHTSA said the differences may be explained by safer vehicles and more people wearing seat belts, leading to fewer injuries in lower-speed crashes. People wore seat belts about 75...

Jessica Lynch: Modern myth? by Mona Charen Have you heard of Army Sgt. Casaundra Grant? Probably not, because her story has been largely ignored by the press. She's a 25-year-old single mother who lost both of her legs during the Iraq War when she was accidentally pinned under a tank. Her 2-year-old son "prayed for her legs" the first time he saw her stumps. Sgt. Grant is upbeat and grateful to be alive, reports the San Antonio Express-News, but is this really the way we want to fight our wars, with young mothers coming home in wheelchairs? (By the way,...

Translation from Hebrew to English by me: Rishon Le Zion: A father and son are injured lightly and moderately from a gas leak explosion in the kitchen of their home.

SACRAMENTO, June 19 — Across the country, the cost of workers' compensation insurance is soaring at the highest rate in nearly a decade, adding yet another heavy burden on businesses and the struggling national economy. The governors of Florida, West Virginia and Washington have called special sessions of their Legislatures this year to find ways to contain costs, and elsewhere, thousands of bills on workers' compensation have been introduced. Advertisement The system covers 127 million workers nationally but is regulated state by state, with no federal oversight. Unlike with Medicare and Medicaid, Congress has no role in the regulation of...