Free Republic

A New York City police officer pleaded guilty to attempted murder on Tuesday for firing a barrage of bullets at a car in Westchester County last year, an unprompted, drunken attack that seriously injured a 47-year-old passenger. Under a plea deal, the officer, Brendan Cronin, 28, will be sentenced to nine years in state prison in December, a spokesman for the Westchester district attorney, Janet DiFiore, said. The plea occurred in State Supreme Court in White Plains, the spokesman said. The shooting, shortly before midnight on April 29, 2014, came amid a series of alcohol-fueled episodes involving off-duty police officers,...

Death Rate Casts Shadow over Russia ----- Since Soviet Union's fall, life expectancy has fallen, and so has the birth date ----- Is the country dying of despair? ----- By Douglas Birch, Sun Foreign Correspondent OIMYAKON, Russia - A few years ago, a retired math teacher named Tamara I. Vasileve began poring through diaries and records of births and deaths in this Siberian village of 950 people... But in the 1960's, as the Soviet Union's economy began to stagnate, the number of people in their 70's, 80's or 90's began to shrink... Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in...