Free Republic

Dr. Dean Lorich, a trauma surgeon, was found dead with a knife in his torso in his E. 96th St. apartment on Dec. 11, 2017. An acclaimed trauma surgeon was found dead, with a knife in his chest, by his 11-year-old daughter Sunday in his Park Ave. apartment, police said. Investigators were treating the death of Dr. Dean Lorich as an apparent suicide, sources said. “He was under some personal stress,” a police source said. The surgeon was home with his daughter, police said, adding there were no signs of forced entry at the tony Upper East Side apartment...

Star Wars fans at a Burbank theater went to the Dark Side when a screening of “The Last Jedi” played without sound for 20 minutes. Moviegoers were ready to stage a new rebellion when an AMC Theater in Burbank either could not or would not restart the 10 p.m. showing of the film. ... Burbank police were called to the theater at about 10:21 p.m. to disperse “an unruly crowd.”

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — A Middletown mother of nine has died of a heroin overdose, and police want to give her young children a better Christmas. Police were called to a house on Yankee Road on Wednesday and found Jimeta Sanders, 31, unresponsive on the kitchen floor. Authorities said she was shooting heroin with her “supposed ‘friends,’ who then in turn left her to die in front of her nine kids.” Police said the “friends” – described as two males -- then stole her money and left the home, telling the children they were leaving to buy a 2-liter of soda....

McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna has been selected as chairman of the executive board of the Special Prosecution Unit for the State of Texas. Special Prosecution Unit was founded in 1984 to combat the growing gang violence in Texas prisons. Since then, SPU has expanded to include not just the prosecution of felony criminal offenses that occur inside our prisons and juvenile justice facilities, but also the civil commitment of sexually violent predators. "I am proud of the great work we are doing for the citizens of McLennan County. I am honored to receive, and am humbled by, the...

The publisher of The New York Times Co. is stepping down after 25 years and will be succeeded by his 37-year-old son, the Times announced Thursday. Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. will retire as of Dec. 31 but will remain as chairman of the board of directors, the Times said. His son and current deputy publisher, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, will take over as publisher. “It is the greatest honor to serve The Times — and the people who make it what it is — as the next publisher,” the younger Sulzberger, known as A.G., said in a staffwide email. Sulzberger praised...

A plumber died Thursday after he was trapped beneath a home where he was working in Flower Mound. Enco Plumbing identified the worker as Christopher Corbet in a statement Thursday evening. Corbet had tunneled under a home in the 6300 block of Eagle Creek Drive to try to fix a leak. Neighbors say the soil collapsed, trapping him. Another plumber ran for help, but neighbors say there was nothing they could do. "It was helpless to go in after to get him," said neighbor Matt Lane. The couple who owns the home was inside at the time. Lane said they...

More than a quarter of California schoolchildren between 12 and 17 believe their peers see them as “gender nonconforming,” meaning those boys are perceived as more feminine and the girls as more masculine, according to a new study that is among the first of its kind in the U.S. The study made public Wednesday found that the 27 percent of California children perceived as gender nonconforming are more than twice as likely to experience psychological distress, such as bullying, as their gender conforming counterparts. The study did not find that gender nonconforming children have statistically significant higher levels of suicide,...

The 8th Congressional District of Arizona is holding a special election for the U.S. House of Representatives on April 24, 2018. Primary elections will be held on February 27, 2018. Candidates have until January 10, 2018, to file nominating papers.[1] The election is being held to replace Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who resigned on December 8, 2017, after acknowledging that he had discussed possible surrogacy arrangements with female staffers.[2 ] Democratic Party Democrats Brianna Westbrook[3] Republican Party Republicans Chad Allen[4] Travis Angry[4) Bill Harbeck[4] David Lien[5] Phil Lovas - Former State Representative[6] Steve Montenegro - State Senator[7] Christopher Rippey[4] Jon...

Asim Krasniqi watches anxiously as the Adriatic Sea creeps ever closer to his beach bar in Albania, a country faced with an alarming pace of coastal erosion. “I’m nostalgic for how this place used to be,” the septuagenarian told AFP wistfully, remembering when this beach in Qerret, to the west of the capital Tirana, was bigger and “many more” foreign tourists came. “Today everything is degraded,” he said.

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - A 3-year-old Phoenix girl who had been fighting for her life has died and police say her mother’s boyfriend is to blame because he got “frustrated” with the toddler. Officers arrested Sidney Michael Landers, 33, on suspicion of child abuse Monday morning. That charge will likely change now that the little girl has died. According to Landers’ court paperwork, doctors at Phoenix Children’s Hospital told police the child was on life support and her prognosis was not good. According to the toddler’s mother, Landers was out and about with the girl “for the majority of the...

Women become progressively happier as they age, according to a health survey conducted in England. They have higher rates of poor mental health than men throughout much of their lives, until over the age of 85, when women’s overall happiness increases and men’s decreases. With the exception of the elderly set, women were more likely than men to have poor mental health at nearly every age. Overall, 21 percent of women reported mental health problems, compared to 16 percent of men. The change that occurred over a lifetime—leading to less mental health concerns among women—was likely due to the specific...

Norway on Wednesday completed its transition to digital radio, becoming the first country in the world to shut down national broadcasts of its FM radio network despite some grumblings. As scheduled, the country's most northern regions and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic switched to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in the late morning, said Digitalradio Norge (DRN) which groups Norway's public and commercial radio. The transition, which began on January 11th, allows for better sound quality, a greater number of channels and more functions, all at a cost eight times lower than FM radio, according to authorities. The move has...

POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — Point Pleasant Mayor Brian Billings was 10 years old when the Silver Bridge collapsed on Dec. 15, 1967. He will be on hand Friday at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the tragedy. Billings tells MetroNews his message will be clear. “We can’t let this ever go by without remembering, whether it’s 10, 25, 50 years from today, what took place in our city and what was enacted to work towards preventing things like this from happening across our country,” he said. Forty-six people died when the bridge between Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio fell...

BISBEE – The students digging beneath the stands at Bisbee’s Warren Ballpark have unearthed a few artifacts that provide a glimpse into what life was like for fans of the century-old ballpark: firearm cartridges, broken glass bottles, bus tokens. Robert Schon, an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, leads the archeological dig, which includes both high school and college students. He said he started the project to establish a better picture of what the local economy looked like during the early 1900s. “You sort of equate going to the ballpark with drinking beers and that sort of...

Officials at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Wednesday dismissed the significance of a letter written by the site’s Muslim keyholder in which he vowed not to receive US Vice President Mike Pence as irrelevant, since the man is not an official of the church and does not represent it. A spokeswoman for Pence, who is due next week, said the vice president has not reached out to plan a visit to the church at this stage, and a church official said no visit had yet been planned. Adeeb Jowdeh al-Husseini, the Custodian of the Keys to...

A flagship liberal Orthodox synagogue in New York will stop congratulating same-sex couples on their weddings following a complaint by the Orthodox Union. The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx will no longer announce the weddings of its LGBT members in its newsletters in accordance with a policy dictated by the OU, the largest association of Orthodox synagogues in the United States. The policy was set out this month in response to complaints from other member synagogues, which take a harder line on opposing same-sex marriage. Orthodox Jewish law, or halacha, prohibits same-sex marriage, and Orthodox rabbis are not...

Jury selection is underway in the trial of Darien Allen, the former Passaic housing authority chairman and city school district employee who is charged with dealing cocaine and possession of an illegal handgun. Allen, 47, is due back in Superior Court on Tuesday morning for a second day of jury selection with Judge Sohail Mohammed presiding. More than three years after his arrest, Allen will get the chance to defend himself against drug-dealing and weapons charges that could send him to prison for 10 years or more. "He maintains he is innocent of all the charges," said his attorney, Miles...

Dominick White has a bleak but clear-eyed view of his Atlantic City home in a public housing project known for crime and drugs. “I grew up in a bad neighborhood,” he said. “I’m trying to beat the odds and get away, and not become a statistic.” On Monday morning, White will start training for a career as a construction worker, a move that could be a life-changer for him and 14 other young city residents. They were selected for a 12-week program that will teach them construction skills, and then connect them with jobs at the Hard Rock Hotel &...

A former inspector for the federal government now diagnosed with a terminal 9/11 illness is battling with the Labor Department for his workers’ compensation benefit.  Dale Henderson, 59, was a compliance inspector with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on 9/11.  He’s been diagnosed by government doctors with interstitial lung disease — one of several illnesses linked to exposure to hazardous materials on 9/11 or at Ground Zero.  Henderson’s 9/11 illness was acknowledged by the World Trade Center Victims Compensation Fund — which awarded him a $300,000 payout when he first got sick.9/11 asbestos debris lawsuits cleared by N.Y....

A man who swiped an elderly woman’s house with phony documents did time for the crime — but an appellate court is letting the city off the hook for processing the paperwork that let the ex-con make himself at home.   A Brooklyn appeals court has ruled that a judge was right to toss a lawsuit brought against the city by Jennifer Merin — whose Queens abode was filched by a criminal who filed a fraudulent deed.   Merin, 74, had sued the city for not catching the forgery when the paperwork was first filed, but lost on appeal when the court...