Free Republic

Midnight on St Mary Street in Cardiff and everything is exactly as expected. Half a dozen young women slump in a gutter, men urinate outside a health-food shop and, as hordes stagger between nightclubs, someone lifts up a blow-up doll with a sex toy protruding out of it. The street smells of urine and lager, police struggle to break up a fight outside the Walkabout bar and a paramedic bundles a comatose girl on to a wheelchair. But it's a quiet night for 20-year-old Naomi Jenkins. She has 'only' drunk three shots of peach schnapps, cider and three shots of...

A high-profile conversion begs the question: what are these women seeking that they could not find under liberty? Very recently Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, journalist Lauren Booth, embraced the faith after what she described as a “holy experience” in Iran. Based on what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has described as the brutal, totalistic character of Islam, one is obliged to ask why any modern career woman would opt for conversion to the Muslim religion. After all, as so many autobiographies of Muslim women note, the religion bans anything that is fun (“haram,” or forbidden). No chewing of gum, no bicycle riding, no...

Changes in the way dentists are paid mean they effectively have no financial incentive to give appropriate treatment, the Commons Health Select Committee said. Under the new contract, dentists receive an agreed annual sum rather than being paid for each individual treatment. The committee found the number of dentists extracting a decaying tooth rather than carrying out a more complicated procedure had increased. As a result, the volume of more complex work like crowns, bridges and dentures has fallen by 57%. Evidence presented to the committee also suggested that patients were being pushed unnecessarily into the hospital system. A survey...

Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care. Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist. Patients have been told they must either pay privately or return in April when the new work year begins. People suffering from toothache have been advised...

More than seven million patients have been unable to see an NHS dentist for almost two years. Most of those denied access have paid for private care instead, says Citizens Advice. But almost three million have gone without treatment altogether, claims the charity. The figure includes thousands of children and is much higher than Government estimates. The charity is calling today for Primary Care Trusts, the bodies responsible for dentistry in England and Wales, to step up funding to improve care for NHS patients. It cited the case of a low-income pensioner given emergency dental treatment in a hospital in...

Police: Unlicensed Dentist Operated on Immigrants Last Update:5/2/2007 12:24:51 PM Web Editor: Bernie O'Donnell CARROLLTON, Ga. (AP) -- Authorities have arrested an illegal immigrant on charges that he ran an unlicensed dental practice out of his home in Carrollton. Ernesto Estrado is accused of performing procedures on hundreds of illegal immigrants who were too afraid to go to a licensed dentist. Authorities say the man used pliers, box cutters and etching blades he bought at a hardware store to pull teeth, fill cavities and create dentures. Authorities searched his home and found prescription painkillers, hypodermic needles and a ledger that...

My Way Man Accused of Dental Work in Garage Apr 25, 9:53 PM (ET) WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A man was held Wednesday on charges that he performed dental work on customers without a license in his "filthy" garage, authorities said. Roger Bean, 60, was arrested Tuesday and held on $6,000 bond. Bean performed denture fittings and made false teeth in his garage, charging just $200 for a full set of dentures, a procedure that typically costs more than $2,000, authorities said. But he was not licensed to practice in Florida. Palm Beach County Sheriff's detective Don Zumpano...

Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday major policy changes are needed because the Iraq war has divided the nation "almost as much as Vietnam." "So there's no doubt that our country is in much more danger now from terrorism than it would have been if we would have done what we should have done and stayed in Afghanistan," he said on the campaign trail with his son, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Jack Carter. The former president said the Bush administration made a "terrible mistake" by invading Iraq and diverting troops from Afghanistan. Jack Carter criticized his opponent, Sen. John Ensign,...

ROCHDALE, England, May 2 — "I snapped it out myself," said William Kelly, 43, describing his most recent dental procedure, the autoextraction of one of his upper teeth. Now it is a jagged black stump, and the pain gnawing at Mr. Kelly's mouth has transferred itself to a different tooth, mottled and rickety, on the other side of his mouth. "I'm in the middle of pulling that one out, too," he said. It is easy to be mean about British teeth. Mike Myers's mouth is a joke in itself in the "Austin Powers" movies. In a "Simpsons" episode, dentalphobic children...

BRITS MOCK BUSH INAUGURATION Thu Jan 20 2005 23:05:29 ET Editors of major London newspapers wasted no time mocking President Bush's inauguration address. Assorted splash headlines will greet readers on Friday morning: "BUSH: HAVE I GOT NUKES FOR YOU, George Bush pledged all-out global war on terrorists and tyrants," headlines the STAR. "POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE, The band played Hail to the Chief. A 21-gun salute sounded. Then, protected by a bullet-proof shield, President George Bush repeated his message to the enemies of democracy," screams the INDEPENDENT. MORE The TELEGRAPH slapped: "DEFIANT BUSH DOESN'T MENTION THE WAR, President George W Bush...

President George W Bush campaigned up and down a small rural stretch of the heartland yesterday, desperately seeking to shore up his position in a once safe region where Republicans are registering the first prickles of concern about his record - and his chances. With just a week to go before voting, Mr Bush focused his fire on Wisconsin and Iowa, two mid-western states that have become pivotal to his chances. He lost both narrowly to Al Gore in 2000 but now badly needs to win them as an insurance policy, given the state of play in Ohio and Florida,...

Appeal to the International Criminal Court Press release - France had taken a courageous position against the war in Irak, before the United States took actions against this country. President Chirac reacted with good common sense, as a world in Peace is the most preferable and constructive, and he was relayed by millions of pacifist demonstrators in the first few weeks of 2003. This did not stop George W. Bush, President of the USA, from sending his troops and, since one year and a half, from ravaging the country as we know it today. All this under the pretext of...

A LEADING Army officer entrusted with secrets about al-Qaeda was the sex slave of a Miss Whiplash for 26 years. Military attaché Ian Talbot, 54, paid £800 for torture sessions in which he was trussed in rubber tights, corsets and a leather mask. The bondage-crazed Brigadier spent more than £100,000 on kinky sex sessions. In a series of secret visits spanning almost three decades, Talbot forked out a fortune to be tortured and ritually humiliated by the vice girl. And last month he even had to be warned off by Scotland Yard for harassing her after she had tried to...

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (Reuters) - A company associated with a group that believes extraterrestrials created mankind claimed Friday that it had produced the first clone of a human being. The company, Clonaid, announced it had created a healthy baby girl who was a clone of the 31-year-old American woman who gave birth to her. No proof was provided for the claim. "I'm very very pleased to announce that the first baby clone is born," Clonaid director Brigitte Boisselier, a former research chemist in France, said at a news conference in Hollywood, north of Miami.