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According to Gallup, 70.5% of Americans surveyed in 2012 and 2013 said they felt safe walking alone at night. This is effectively unchanged from 2011, when 71% of respondents said they felt safe. In a number of metro areas, however, far fewer residents felt safe at night. In McAllen, Texas, where Americans were least likely to feel safe, less than half of all respondents were comfortable outside of their homes after dark. Based on data gathered by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, these are the 10 cities where Americans felt the least safe.Seven of the 10 metro areas in which residents...

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer Please remember that quote as I propose what will appear outlandish — a ban on left turns on heavily-trafficked roads. Making left-hand turns is as American as apple pie. But remember, we once accepted slavery and the beating of wives and children. There’s no doubt we’re doing things today that future generations will find abhorrent. Here’s why turning left on crowded streets is one of them: Left turns are unsafe for everyone. Federal data have...

Mark.Levy@svherald.com Sierra Vista Police Department Corp. Mike Mitchell stands with his Belgium Malinois “Bones” during Thursday’s brief ceremony at the station. Bones’s new protective vest was made possible by a donation from a Tucson resident. SIERRA VISTA — Sierra Vista K-9 Officers Bones and Izzy will be outfitted with life saving bullet- and stab-proof vests, complete with their own department patch, thanks to Tucson-based Protect Police K-9 (PPK-9) and a generous, anonymous Sierra Vista donor. “Police dogs are working officers, just like their two-legged counterparts,” says Lawrence Boutte, Sierra Vista lieutenant. “They are trained to ‘serve and protect’ and...

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers have recently introduced legislation to allow for the sale of raw milk, i.e., unpasteurized milk. Their Milk Freedom Act of 2014 would make it legal for “certified dairy farmers” to sell unpasteurized milk products without harassment and criminal prosecution on the part of the FDA. If enacted, this would be a major victory for those who are health conscious and understand the grievous misperception by our medical establishment regarding the safety of raw milk. The distribution of raw milk has been banned in the U.S. since inception of the pasteurization...

Several months ago, a confusing call was placed by a Planned Parenthood worker in Houston to 911 dispatch during complications following an abortion. A 33-year-old woman continued to lose a dangerous amount of blood at the behemoth abortion mill on the Gulf Freeway as Planned Parenthood tried to circumvent the fact that the woman was bleeding out. It is likely that Planned Parenthood knew that pro-lifers would be pulling the call records to find out what had prompted the ambulance to arrive at Planned Parenthood, and wanted to obfuscate the facts for the public. But in so doing, the worker...

"It turns out that all the Titanic needed was a drone. A Montreal-based shipping company has become the first in the world to use drones to scout out ice hazards as its freighters navigate through the waters of the Arctic. The company, Fednav, has found the drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, are able to transmit crucial information back to the wheelhouse, allowing ship captains to thread their way through frozen waters and dodge icebergs, like the one that sank the iconic ship more than a century ago."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSO_HTBHLFIVideo Only

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is setting up new facilities to process driver’s license applications for illegal immigrants alone. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill, AB 60, which will allow illegal immigrants to obtain the documents beginning Jan. 1, 2015. The bill was signed along with a number of others laws seen as favorable to undocumented immigrants. As part of the driver’s license application process, immigrants will have to acknowledge that they are undocumented. But AB 60 protects applicants from criminal prosecution. The measure will provide an avenue for the state’s three to four million...

The Miami-Dade County School Board joined teachers unions and [SOME] parents Wednesday in opposition of legislation moving through the state capital that would allow designated school employees or volunteers to carry guns on campus. The board voted 8 to 1 to oppose the proposal, which would allow Florida superintendents and principals to authorize certain trained and permitted individuals to carry concealed firearms at school as a safety measure. Sen. Alan Hays, a Republican from Umatilla who is sponsoring the senate version of the bill, says the legislation is “in the interest of maintaining a safe learning environment for all of...

The Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation into the decade-long failure by General Motors to address deadly safety problems in its some of its cars before announcing a massive recall last month, according to a person briefed on the matter. The preliminary inquiry by federal prosecutors in New York is expected to center on whether G.M., the nation’s largest automaker, failed to comply with laws requiring timely disclosure of vehicle defects. The probe is the latest in a widening series of investigations of G.M.'s handling of faulty ignition switches in its Chevrolet Cobalt sedan and other cars that the...

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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) today released the 2012 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data indicating that highway deaths increased to 33,561 in 2012, which is 1,082 more fatalities than in 2011. The majority of the increase in deaths, 72 percent, occurred in the first quarter of the year. Most of those involved were motorcyclists and pedestrians. While the newly released data announced today marks the first increase since 2005, highway deaths over the past five years continue to remain at historic lows. Fatalities in 2011 were at the lowest level since...

1.Be Weather-wise Always check local weather conditions before departure- TV and radio forecasts can be a good source of information. If you notice darkening clouds, volatile and rough changing winds, or sudden drops in temperature, play it safe by getting off the water. 2.Follow a Pre-Departure Checklist Proper boating safety means being prepared for any possibility on the water. From compliance with fire safety regulations to tips for fueling up, following a pre-departure checklist is the best way to make sure no boating safety rules or precautions have been forgotten. 3.Use Common Sense One of the most important parts of...

Mayor de Blasio’s SUV was caught on camera speeding through Queens and blowing through two stop signs Thursday — just two days after he announced a sweeping street-safety plan. The mayor — who was riding shotgun on the way back to City Hall from a pothole-filling photo op — was twice clocked going 15 mph over the speed limit by a WCBS/Channel 2 news crew. The two-car caravan also ran past two stop signs without even tapping the brakes and changed highway lanes without signaling, the CBS video shows. De Blasio’s wild ride came after his pledge to personally abide...

(Reuters) - Food transportation companies will be required to adhere to certain sanitation standards to prevent food from becoming contaminated during transit under a new rule proposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The rule would require shippers and carriers to properly refrigerate food, clean vehicles between loads and protect food during transportation.

I understand the arguments for the legalization of marijuana: It can generate tax revenue. It can reduce illegal supply and demand. It can strip power from cartels and lessen crime across and at our borders. And it isn't so dangerous as other illegal drugs or alcohol. President Barack Obama even claimed one of those arguments when he recently told New Yorker Editor David Remnick, "As has been well-documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through...

One of the latest badges of greenie virtue is the mini-car. Supposedly, if you drive one of these contraptions, you demonstrate your concern for Mother Gaia and help diminish the risk that catastrophic global warming will engulf low lying coastal areas and fry the rest of us in temperatures that will be a couple of degrees higher in the next hundred years. In this worldview, people who drive around in SUVs are carelessly risking the very future of humanity. That's quite a serious risk; never mind that temperatures have failed to rise for the last 16 years as the models...

In feudal times, serfs were tied to the land—unable to leave without their overlord’s permission. In the old Soviet Union, workers were tied to their jobs—unable to leave without the government’s permission. In many insurance plans, medical services rendered outside of the network are uncovered. This becomes a problem when the network is extremely narrow, as many of the plans offered under the Affordable Care Act are. It is bad enough when the “network” is bounded by the state’s borders. It is worse when the boundary is the county or city line—as is the case with many of the “affordable”...

The clip at the rear of the trigger group shows rust from the water damage  I recently found that a Remington 700 rifle was water damaged in storage.  It was stored butt down, with a gun sock around the rifle.   The sock wicked water from near the floor up toward the action.  Outside, there was no indication that damage had been done, as the composite stock is impervious to water. The rifle has always had an excellent trigger, in the range of 1.5 to 2 lbs.   It was set up for target shooting, and did not appear to be...

President Barack Obama doesn’t spend much time worrying about his personal security, he said Friday, as he reflected on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago. “It’s not something I think about, mainly because we have a Secret Service that does an outstanding job every single day,” he said in an interview ABC News’s Barbara Walters, who was at the White House on Friday to tape her annual end-of-year special featuring the president and first lady. …