Free Republic

ORANJESTAD, Aruba Jun 15, 2005 — The father of a 17-year-old Dutch youth who last was seen with a missing Alabama teenager near an Aruba beach is filing suit Wednesday to demand he be allowed to see his jailed son, police said. The move comes the day after Aruban police came up empty-handed in a new search of a swampy beachfront popular with lovers. They were acting on information from a former security guard who said the Dutch boy and two Surinamese brothers may have lied to police about where they took 18-year-old Natalee Holloway. The three were detained for...

June 14, 2005 — Aruba authorities released two former hotel security guards detained after Natalee Holloway went missing, and one of the men said three others arrested in the case have lied about their actions the night she disappeared. Holloway has been missing since the early morning hours of May 30, the day she was to return home to Alabama after a five-day chaperoned trip to the Caribbean island. The two guards were taken into custody after the three other young men told officials that after partying at a local bar, Carlos 'n Charlie's, they dropped Holloway off at her...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Whether it's blue or spotted or striped, the standard issue hospital gown is drafty and revealing. It's embarrassing for just about anyone who's spent a night in a medical center. But for modest Muslim women, it's an unthinkable indignity. When officials at Maine Medical Center discovered many Muslim women were so ashamed they were canceling doctor visits, the hospital took action, redesigning the standard gown to provide extra coverage for patients who want it. The new hospital gowns have been available for several weeks. "I have witnessed their misery and how bad they feel about it....

<p>San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, New York Yankees stars Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield and three other major league baseball players received steroids from a Burlingame nutritional supplement lab, federal investigators were told.</p> <p>The baseball stars allegedly got the illegal performance-enhancing drugs from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative through Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal weight trainer and longtime friend, according to information furnished the government and shared with The Chronicle.</p>

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 25 — Mel Gibson's provocative new film, "The Passion of the Christ," is making some of Hollywood's most prominent executives uncomfortable in ways that may damage Mr. Gibson's career. Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood's most prominent figures are also Jewish. So with a furor arising around the film, along with Mr. Gibson's reluctance to distance himself from his father, who calls the Holocaust mostly fiction, it is no surprise that Hollywood — Jewish and non-Jewish — has...

Recently Dr. Nick Fitterman gave a patient a 25-minute physical after she had waited 45 minutes to see him. This was unusual, he said, in that many of the 3,800 patients he treats only see him when they are sick. Fitterman is sick of that. So he has made what he says was a difficult choice: to cut his Huntington practice back to 600 patients, and charge them each a $1,500 annual fee to continue using his services as of September. Routine doctors' visits and services will continue to be covered by insurance payments, but the extra payment allows the...