Free Republic

Ambulance response times during life-threatening emergencies jumped in the last year, according to revealed data — as the FDNY blames ongoing staffing and recruiting troubles. Average ambulance response time to life-threatening emergencies jumped more than 34 seconds from eight minutes and 14-seconds in the 2024 fiscal year to eight minutes and 48 seconds for the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year running from July 1 through November, according to the mayor’s management report. The FDNY goal is to bring ambulance response times to such calls to under seven minutes, the report said. The response times have creeped up in...

When a group of young Israeli women were woken up at 6:30 a.m. on October 7, they had no idea they would be making history as the first female armored crews in Israel, and perhaps the world, to participate in active battle. In an interview with Channel 12 this week, the combat soldiers spoke of thundering along main roads to get to some of the 20 southern Israeli communities that came under massive assault that morning, running down terrorists, and securing breaches on the border with the Gaza Strip. One of the officers in the unit, identified as Hagar, told...

With winter ahead and a gas crunch in Europe, the demand picture appears promising. But demand destruction could be imminent as prices climb higher, some experts are warning. Higher energy prices will also fuel even higher inflation, which poses a significant threat to demand. The current energy market picture is looking good for oil bulls. International benchmark Brent crude passed the long-anticipated threshold of $80 per barrel on Tuesday, though it’s since slipped back down to trade at $78.47 as of Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. in London. West Texas Intermediate was trading at $74.73 per barrel around the same time....

**SNIP** Air-fried felt like a safe place to start, especially once I noticed the flurry of Old Bay seasoning being sprinkled onto each batch. I grabbed a set of two on a toothpick, declining the extra roll in even more Old Bay (I’m at work here). The cicadas, once pale, were now golden and browned, their signature eyes turned black from the heat. I popped one into my mouth. Not bad! Certainly not buggy. The entire critter crackled in my mouth like a piece of earthy popcorn. I caught a subtle nuttiness underneath the crunch, almost reminiscent of a roasted...

They’re laying off the sauce. Chick-fil-A will limit the number of condiments allowed per customer amid an industry-wide supply shortage, the firm said. The fast food joint, headquartered in Georgia, sent customers nationwide an email Monday declaring that customers will now get just one sauce per entrée, two per meal and three per order of 30-count nuggets, according to KSL.

The White House House argued Tuesday the United States was not experiencing a gas shortage after the Colonial ransomware attack, but a “crunch.” “We know that we have gasoline, we just need to get it to the right places,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday at the White House.

How utterly pathetic. This Muslim-pandering, virtue-signaling, cringe-inducing ad from Nestle is so blatantly over the top in its sickening political correctness and Islamophilia that it will make you heave: "Fatima" celebrates how American she is with a Nestle Crunch bar.

When he heard about the possibility that Michelle Obama and the government nutrition police were putting the screws to Cap'n Crunch, my oldest son asked me to help him make his opinions known. Together, we made this video, in which he discusses the many upsides to the good Cap'n and his sugary manna. Pay attention, Michelle.

Former basketball star John Amaechi is considering legal action against a bar in Manchester's gay village that refused to let him in. The 39-year-old said a doorman at Crunch on Canal Street described him as "big, black and could be trouble". Mr Amaechi, who was out with friends on Friday, has complained to the council and demanded an apology from the bar. Crunch said entry was refused on safety grounds and called the allegations "outrageous and unfounded". Mr Amaechi's office has written to the club to seek an explanation for why he was refused entry. 'Issues of bigotry' "I want...

"...The four patrol cars that were following it crashed against each other and all five cars were destroyed..."

The UK is heading for an "energy crunch" after new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea dropped 57pc in the first half of this year. A report by Oil & Gas UK, the industry group, showed that companies are cutting back on new projects as costs rise and funding is scarce during the recession. Investment in the industry fell to £4.8bn last year, down £1.2bn over the last two years, and it could drop below £3bn next year. The report estimates that £5bn a year is needed to maintain exploration.

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – After a year in which it nearly lost its compass, the campaign against climate change heads into 2009 needing top-level political commitment, creative thinking and a deep well of money. Next year holds a big dream: by its end, the world will have forged a treaty in Copenhagen to shrink global warming from mankind-threatening juggernaut to manageable problem. Unprecedented in scale and complexity, this accord, due to take effect from 2012, will rein in the greenhouse gases that stoke global warming and throw a lifeline to poor countries exposed to mutated weather patterns. But realising this...

--------SNIP------------- As the Detroit three weather a year that would test any company's worst-case scenario, Ford Motor is by most measures in the least precarious position. Ford borrowed $23.4bn in late 2006, managing to build a cash cushion before the credit crisis hit. While General Motors faces rising financial losses and a pullback of car loans by GMAC, the financing arm it co-owns with buy-out group Cerberus, Ford reported a profit of $159m from financial services in the third quarter. ------SNIP------------------

BELGIUM’s Fortis is this weekend poised to become the first large continental bank to fall victim to the credit crunch, as the global chaos continues with Bradford & Bingley and American savings giant Wachovia both teetering on the brink. The Belgian central bank and the country’s regulator are paving the way for a bailout of the huge banking and insurance group, which has a £540 billion balance sheet and a market value of £12 billion. In Britain, the fate of Bradford & Bingley will be decided today. Fren-etic talks between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the...

MIDDLEVILLE, Mich. -- It was around midnight one evening in November when Aaron Wissner shot up in bed, jolted awake by a fear: He wasn't fully ready for the day when the world starts running low on oil. Yes, he had tripled the size of the garden in front of the tidy white-clapboard house he shares with his wife and infant son. He had stacked bags of rice in his new pantry, stashed gold valued at $8,000 in his safe-deposit box and doubled the size of the propane tank in his yard. "But I felt panicky, like I needed more...

PARIS (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday announced an overhaul of pensions perks for half a million mainly public sector workers, seen as a key test of his government's reform drive. He promised that the so-called "special regimes" -- which allow state rail and power employees and some other categories of worker to retire early and on higher pensions -- will be reformed in the next "few months". "It is a question of fairness," Sarkozy said in a policy speech before journalists. Two waves of pension reform, in 1993 and 2003, left the system of perks untouched for...

Employers in some unlikely places say they're having trouble filling jobs. Factory managers in Ho Chi Minh City report many of their $62-a-month workers went home for the Tet holiday in February and never came back. In Bulgaria, computer experts are in such demand they can't be bothered to answer the want ads of a Los Angeles movie studio. And in Peoria, Caterpillar Inc. (CAT ) is struggling to train enough service technicians. The problem in each case: not enough people who are both able and willing to do the work for the posted pay. "We've got a global problem...and...

Environment: Whatever happened to the rain forest? The virtuous cause seems to have become an endangered species with the totemic rise of global warming. Maybe that's the lesson. Not too long ago, the news was atwitter with stories of rain forest bio-jewelry, rain forest vegetable leather, rain forest acai juice, rain forest wisdom and Rainforest Cafes with Chicken Monsoon or Amazon mushroom burger repasts amid a lot of parrot noise. Don't forget Ben & Jerry's Rainforest Crunch ice cream. A few years ago, Amazon rain forest stories full of cuddly animal images drew big publicity for environmental groups like the...

Scientists use quantum gravity to describe the universe before the Big Bang.Scientists may finally have an answer to a "big" question: If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what could have caused it to happen? Using a theory called "loop quantum gravity," a group led by Penn State professor Abhay Ashtekar has shown that just before the Big Bang occurred, another universe very similar to ours may have been contracting. According to the group's findings, this previous universe eventually became so dense that a normally negligible repulsive component of the gravitational force overpowered the attractive component, causing...

SOUTH PASADENA - Massage therapist Colleen Ronnberg had just left work in her Ford Mustang to drive home for lunch. She says she turned on her signal, stopped at an intersection, looked both ways and turned onto Pasadena Avenue. But somehow her car collided with an 84-year-old woman who was riding a motorized three-wheeled scooter across Pasadena at Hibiscus Avenue. Although a sheriff's deputy later estimated that Ronnberg was driving 5 mph, the other woman was knocked out of her scooter, hit her head and died Wednesday, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said. Ronnberg is very sorry, still shaken and...