Free Republic

LOS ANGELES — After 97 years, Our Lady of Lourdes School was closing — enrollment had dwindled to just 35 children last year at what was once one of the West Coast's biggest Catholic schools. But with a new principal who knocked on doors, offered X Box video game consoles to kids who brought in a friend, and recruited families who lost their bid in a charter school lottery, the East Los Angeles school stayed open — 132 pupils are registered for this fall. Call it educational evangelism. Roman Catholic schools are seeing years of marketing efforts starting to pay...

MOSCOW (AP) — An arbitration court in Siberia ruled Friday that British oil giant BP should pay $3.1 billion in compensation to its Russian joint venture TNK-BP over a failed attempt to form an alliance with Russian state-controlled oil company Rosneft. BP's spokesman in Russia, Vladimir Buyanov told The Associated Press that it considers the ruling by the Tyumen Region Arbitration Court unfair and will appeal it. The verdict came in response to a lawsuit launched last year by Andrei Prokhorov, a minority shareholder of TNK-BP.

HOENIX (AP) — Seven people have died in a crash on Interstate 10 near Phoenix after a semitrailer truck crossed the highway's median and struck a van head on. Carrick Cook, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, says the victims were all inside the van when the crash happened Sunday about 60 miles west of Phoenix.

Thousands of pro-democracy activists demonstrated in Morocco's largest city calling for a boycott of parliamentary elections less than two weeks away. The demonstrations comes as a parliamentary delegation from the Council of Europe noted there was little enthusiasm in the country just two weeks before the election and said there was worry about the level of participation. "I'm boycotting, how about you?" said stickers carried by many of the activists as they marched through a working class district in Casablanca.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A Venezuelan politician running to be the opposition's presidential candidate said she plans to return to a Caracas neighborhood where gunfire broke out at a campaign event.

YONKERS, N.Y. — A struggling city is trying to transform a featureless downtown parking lot into an edenic park, principally by uncovering and rechanneling part of a river that had been paved over for nearly a century. The "daylighting" of the Saw Mill River in Yonkers involves diverting part of its underground flow into a newly dug riverbed carefully designed to teem with fish and vegetation. Around it will be a tree- and flower-filled park that officials say will pulse with poetry readings, jazz concerts and sculptures that children can climb. It will be dotted with kiosks offering interactive lessons...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Netflix's video subscription service lost 800,000 customers in the third quarter —the biggest exodus in its history— even as its earnings rose 65 percent. The losses were larger than management had previously warned. The unwelcome surprise, contained in financial results released Monday, was compounded by a forecast calling for millions of Netflix Inc.'s DVD-by-mail subscribers to cancel the service in reaction to dramatic price increase that took effect last month. The bad news bruised already battered stock as the shares plunged by more than 26 percent.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico's largest electric utility is asking federal regulators to reconsider their decision to adopt a plan for trimming emissions at a coal-fired power plant that serves customers throughout the Southwest.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — A Fort Gordon soldier who appeared to be drunk and had been firing at passing cars shot and killed a sheriff's deputy, then committed suicide alongside a Georgia road, authorities said Sunday. Evidence shows Christopher Michael Hodges, 26, fired 35 rounds from his M4 semiautomatic rifle,...

SANDUSKY (AP) — Authorities say a trailer carrying 30 to 40 people on a hayride overturned in northern Ohio when the tractor pulling it drove off the road, injuring 28.

PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai's moves to make peace with the Taliban are scaring Afghanistan's ethnic minorities into taking their weapons out of mothballs and preparing for a fight. Mindful that Karzai's overtures come with NATO's blessing, and that U.S. and NATO forces will eventually leave, they worry that power will shift back into the hands of the forces they helped to overthrow in 2001. Such a peace deal won't be easy in a country with a complex ethnic makeup and a tradition of vendetta killings. With ethnic and tribal differences having sharpened during the violence of the...

BERLIN — A 650-foot ferry was ablaze in the Baltic Sea on Saturday after an explosion on the upper deck, and firefighting ships were spraying the vessel with water to keep it from breaking apart and spilling some 170 tons of fuel, officials said. There were 249 people aboard who were rescued by six ships that moved in to help after the explosion on the Lisco Gloria around midnight. Three were taken to hospitals by helicopter and another 26 were slightly injured, police said. German officials and the ferry operator said the blast was not a terror attack, but appeared...

Before 33 trapped Chilean miners can begin their passage to the outside world, still more people will join them down below to make their journey as smooth as it can be. These men – an elite group of three paramedics with the Chilean navy's special forces and 13 rescue experts with the state-owned mining company Codelco – will work in shifts during the 48 hours it could take to evaluate the men and strap them into the escape capsule for their 15-20 minute ride to the surface. And the paramedics will be empowered to change a list, already prepared, that...

WESTBURY, N.Y. — Police say a man carrying a hunting knife crept up behind an 8-year-old boy playing a video game in a New York restaurant and plunged a 4-inch blade into his back five times. Police say Evan Sachs picked the boy out at random and stabbed him five times in the back Friday night at a Dave and Buster's in Westbury on Long Island.

ROSLYN, Wash. — A dozen young people — most of them women — were taken to hospitals after overdosing on an unknown substance that may have been slipped into their drinks at a house party in central Washington, police said Saturday. All but one had been released by late Saturday afternoon, and that person was in good condition at a hospital in Ellensburg, according to police and a nursing supervisor. The investigation started late Friday when officers and Kittitas County sheriff's deputies received a report of a possible overdose victim at a Roslyn grocery store. Acting on information from the...

MILLERVILLE, Minn. (AP) -- Eight-year-old Jordyn Patrick's swim lessons recently paid off when she helped save her uncle from drowning in Lake Moses near Millerville. Dan Shea, of St. Stephen, broke his neck after hitting the bottom while diving off a dock July 16.

MARSHALL, Mich. (AP) — Officials say they've located the pipeline break that caused hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil to spew into a major river in southern Michigan

PHOENIX (AP) - Police were using helicopters and dogs Saturday to search for three convicted murderers who escaped from a northwest Arizona prison, kidnapped two semi-truck drivers at gunpoint and used the big rig to flee. Department of Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson said the men escaped Friday evening by cutting a hole through a perimeter fence at the Arizona State Prison in Golden Valley, about 90 miles southeast of Las Vegas. They should be considered especially dangerous because of the nature of their convictions, he said

LONDON (AP) — A diplomatic spat with implications for international counterterrorism escalated Saturday as Pakistan’s spy chief canceled a visit next week to London after comments by Britain’s prime minister suggesting that Pakistan exported terrorism.

RESTON, Va. (AP) - Fairfax County officials say at least eight homemade chemical bombs have shown up in Northern Virginia mailboxes and front yards since May.