Free Republic

I took a picture of the table of cases around the world. I would post it here if I remembered how or if there is an easy way to do it. So I will type it. There is something glaring missing in the list. China (includes Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macao)- 79,251 South Korea - 3,150 Italy - 1,128 ICCS (International Conveyance Cruise Ship) - 705 Iran - 593 Japan - 226 France - 100 Singapore - 98 United States - 62 German - 57 There are 10 more countries in the list all are consecutively lower. Lowest being Canada...

WASHINGTON, March 8, 2011 – A commission created to improve diversity among military leaders has issued 20 recommendations its members say will make the military better reflect the composition of the United States in its ranks. The Military Leadership Diversity Commission, created as part of the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, issued the findings yesterday of its 18-month research with recommendations for how the Defense Department can improve the promotion of women and minorities at a time when the nation is expected to become increasingly diverse. “The armed forces have not yet succeeded in developing a continuing stream of leaders...

The California Nurses Association has taken on powerful people before, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators from both major parties, and has scored resounding wins. In each showdown, the 86,000-person union made full use of its key advantage – the appeal of its members' professions – while pressing hard for policies that benefited nurses. This election year, the union is putting its powers to the test as it challenges its most well-funded opponent to date, billionaire Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who is wasting no time fighting back. That the union is leading the anti-Whitman front so far speaks volumes...

LONDON (Reuters) - If the numbers 13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5 ring a bell, it might be because you have been reading "The Da Vinci Code". Dan Brown's bestseller uses that series -- a mixed-up version of a sequence of numbers brought to the Western world by a 13th century Italian mathematician -- as a clue to a secret Swiss bank account. As Brown's book, and the film, turned into a global entertainment phenomenon, the work of Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa was given a new lease of life for millions of people. Not so for Elizabeth Miller. The technical analyst had long been a...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has dropped the fight against one of his most vocal critics, deciding to stop battling the California Nurses Association over hospital staffing ratios. Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed a motion late Thursday on behalf of the governor's office that withdrew the state's appeal of an earlier court ruling. In June, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge ruled that the administration erred when it issued an emergency order a year ago seeking to delay a first-in-the-nation law requiring hospitals to provide more nurses. The governor's office filed an appeal shortly after with the state 3rd...

SACRAMENTO -- A Sacramento judge dropped contempt proceedings Thursday against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying his reissuing of regulations delaying tougher nurse staffing standards in hospitals was not a willful attempt to violate a court order. In a written order, Judge Judy Hersher said she accepted statements from the governor's attorneys that administration officials believed that reissuing the regulation would not violate an injunction knocking down the regulations. "Disobedience alone ... is not enough; such disobedience must be willful...," Hersher said. "The court is confident that respondents' misperceptions have now been corrected and the readoption of the emergency regulation will not...

Public school administrators say they need more money. They say they don’t have enough money to provide the classroom instruction required by the state. Administrators could well be right about the need to increase funding for instruction, but they’re dead wrong about needing more money. A study commissioned by the Governor’s Business Council finds annual operating costs increased $11 billion dollars from 1997 to 2004. Only $6 billion of this increase can be accounted for by enrollment growth, inflation, and increased costs associated with a growing population of economically disadvantaged students. Yet public schools spent an additional $5 billion above...

SACRAMENTO - In a significant blow to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Sacramento superior court judge ruled Friday that he illegally delayed a state law requiring California hospitals to raise staffing ratios to one nurse for each five patients. Judge Judy Holzer Hersher also issued a preliminary injunction canceling Schwarzenegger's emergency delay, a move administration officials quickly vowed to fight. The judge made her decision after the attorney general's office and California Hospital Association argued that she was overstepping her authority. The attorneys also argued that invalidating the governor's emergency action would endanger public health as well as hospital industry finances....

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered a major potential setback Thursday when a judge tentatively ruled that he illegally blocked a law boosting the number of nurses needed to staff California's hospitals. Sacramento County Judge Judy Holzer Hersher ruled tentatively in favor of a preliminary injunction to lift emergency state regulations that stopped the law from taking effect Jan. 1. Hersher's ruling represents a possible victory for the 60,000-member California Nurses Association, which has protested the governor's decision in numerous public settings for months. The union nurses have marched on the Capitol, flown message-trailing planes over the governor's home...

Everywhere the governor goes these days, the loud, angry nurses seem to follow. Members of the California Nurses Association stood up as Schwarzenegger was speaking at the Sheraton Grand on Thursday and unfurled a banner reading, "Stop the Power Grab." A week earlier, they protested as the Republican governor and a group of Hollywood stars arrived for a Sacramento movie premiere. The California Highway Patrol pulled one nurse out of the theater audience for questioning after spotting her hospital uniform. The CNA plans to fly an anti-Schwar-zenegger banner over the Oscar ceremonies in Hollywood on Sunday night. Officials of the...

I Will Give You Shepherds: Addressing the Priest Shortage    FAITH FACTS Issue: Is there a priest shortage? What is being done to address shortages where they occur? What can be done to increase the number of candidates for ordination? Response: There is some debate as to what constitutes a priest shortage. Some compare current ratios of priests to faithful with ratios from other eras, though some say that demand for priests has diminished to the point that the ratios are not comparable. Others contend that "priest shortage" is a slogan used by those who seek structural change in...