Free Republic

A 3-day-old baby was fatally mauled by a pet dog in front of the child's parents at their Mira Mesa home Thursday night, San Diego police said Friday. The parents were in bed, watching TV, with their newborn son and pit bull-mix dog when the mother coughed, startling the dog, child abuse unit Sgt. Tu Nguyen said. The dog reacted by biting the baby, he said. The parents pulled the animal off and raced the child to a hospital, where he was declared dead.

Researchers at a Dallas children’s hospital aim to show that non-powder firearms such as airsoft, BB and paintball guns should be viewed as “powerful weapons” rather than toys. A study by researchers with Children’s Medical Center Dallas shows that those devices are “causing increasingly severe and sometimes life-threatening injuries in pediatric patients,” the group said on Oct. 23. They will present the findings at the American Academy of Pediatrics Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. “Non-powder guns are not toys, and an adult should always supervise their use by children,” said Dr. Nina Mizuki Fitzgerald, lead researcher of...

No matter how HORRIFYINGLY PAINFULLY TRAGICALLY AWFUL it really is, it is a MILLION times worse. Then things get *really* tough. After that, HORRIBLE things happen, and then we REALLY get screwed. Immediately following that, the BOTTOM drops out and we are all DEAD, and THEN things get HARD! Once that happens, it signifies the TOTAL collapse of EVERYTHING, and that’s when the CATASTROPHE starts! It’s the sign of the end of EVERYTHING, but after that, comes the TRAGEDY. Then times get DIFFICULT, and things get WORSE, until it’s EXCRUCIATING, but that’s just the beginning, because after that it’s all...

Mystery Cosmic Rays Zapping South Pole -- "From the Neutron Star of the Vela Supernova?" Cosmic rays zapping the Earth over the South Pole appear to be coming from particular locations, rather than being distributed uniformly across the sky. Cosmic ray "hotspots" have also been seen in the northern skies too, yet there is no source close enough to produce this strange pattern.... We don't know where they are coming from," says Stefan Westerhoff of the University of Wisconsin, who used the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole with a team of colleagues to create the most comprehensive map...

Every person emits the equivalent of approximately two tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from the time food is produced to when the human body excretes it, representing more than 20% of total yearly emissions. That is what a study by the Universidad de Almería says, confirming for the first time that human excrements contribute to water pollution, primarily with nitrogen and phosphorus. A team of researchers from the Universidad de Almería (UAL) has estimated the environmental impact of the Spanish diet and role that human excrements play in the life cycle of food. It is the first time that...

Sweden's Greens have told the prime minister that they will not work with his conservative-liberal minority as the country's politicians scramble to try and keep newly elected far-Right MPs out of the government. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and his wife Filippa. Reinfeldt appears to be heading for an historic second term Sweden has now become the third previously stable Western European country since June to be without a governing majority after elections marked by the rise of far-Right, anti-immigrant or separatist parties. Frederik Reinfeldt, the current Prime Minister, has pleaded for time and help from other mainstream parties to...

The inevitable has happened with our new July/August issue, which features two articles about climate change -- one listing the mounting evidence that its impacts are being felt right now in the North, the other daring to explore why many Northerners actually like climate change. But no one has paid much attention to those. No, what's getting all the attention -- just as we expected and intended -- is our swimsuit spread. When you want to get attention in a room full of people talking, you tend to yell. So, when we decided to dedicate an entire issue to climate...