Free Republic

Healthcare for illegal immigrants between the ages of 18 and 64 cost American taxpayers $1.1 billion in 2000 — or about $11 per household — according to a study released Tuesday by the Rand Corp. The research, published in the November/December edition of the journal Health Affairs, put the cost in Los Angeles County that year at $204 million. "There are taxpayer implications to illegal immigration, but healthcare is not one of them," said Jim Smith, a senior economist with Rand and author of the study. "Why are we talking about healthcare when that's only $1 billion a year?" The...

Underwater landslides tallied near Puerto Rico Sid Perkins An oceanographic survey off the northern coast of Puerto Rico has found remnants of many past underwater landslides, a handful of which were large enough to have caused deadly tsunamis. Although most tsunamis are caused by earthquakes, a small percentage of the destructive waves are triggered by seafloor slumping (SN: 3/6/04, p. 152: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040306/bob8.asp). Sonar revealed the landslide remnants off Puerto Rico, says Uri S. ten Brink, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Mass. He and his colleagues report their findings in the June 16 Geophysical Research Letters....

<p>A garden where patients at the Central Teaching Hospital for Children could once stroll is now a cemetery. Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press.</p> <p>BAGHDAD, Iraq - The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, according to records at the city's 19 largest hospitals.</p>