Free Republic

Tribune Co. plans to cut 400 to 500 jobs companywide, including about 100 each at the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, the company announced Wednesday. The cuts, which amount to about 2 percent of the Chicago-based media company's workforce, are a necessary response to a weak economy and "significant declines in advertising volume at our newspapers," Tribune Company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Zell said in a memo to employees. "Unfortunately, I can't turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months," said Zell, who took the company private in an...

RICHMOND, Va., Jan. 28, 2008 – Health care for wounded troops needs to remain on the cutting edge of technology, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said during a visit to a Department of Veterans Affairs medical facility here. Dr. David Cifu, McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center medical director, tells Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia; and Sandy Cartwright, the general’s wife, about treatment facilities at the center in Richmond, Va., Jan. 24, 2008. Cartwright and Forbes visited the center to learn...

To be a "good" Muslim References -  'Palestinian' child abuse -  Evil 'Joy' -  'Blessing' Hitler -  Mourning the wicked -  Australia - Muslim land -  Jihad on all Buddhists -  Spain - Muslim land -  Europe - Muslim land -  Arabs DON'T care about 'Palestinians' -  72 virgins - Loyalty -  'Pallywood' -  (use of) Ambulances for terror -  (use of) Women for terror -  Human Shields -  Middle east background -  September 11 terror plot on London -  Myth on: 'Terrorists are desperate' -  Beheadings -  Ilan Halimi [an example of monsterous wild prolonged torture motivated by hate only] -  Muslims attacking Jews in France -  Ahmadinejad ' Islamic Hitler' -  Cutting -  'Honor killing' -  Jews & Christians as "Apes & Pigs"? - ...

BALTIMORE - The NAACP said it is cutting about 40 percent of its national staff and closing, at least temporarily, its seven regional offices to cover three years of budget shortfalls. The civil rights group will reduce its staff from 119 to 70 through layoffs and attrition to avoid draining more of its shrinking reserves, interim president and chief executive officer Dennis Hayes said. The Baltimore headquarters will remain open and still offer services provided by the regional offices, he said. "We are right-sizing our organization to meet present circumstances," Hayes told The Baltimore Sun for an article published Thursday....

A 35-year-old woman accused of throwing hot oil on her baby boy and hacking off part of his ear will most likely never have custody of her son again, a county official said. Tonya M. Edwards of Cleveland was in City Jail Friday on suspicion of endangering children, domestic violence and felonious assault. She denied cutting her 10-month-old son's ear. "I bit [his] ear by accident," she said, according to a police report. Doctors told police the wound was clearly made by a sharp object, not by teeth. The boy, Micah Belcher Jr., was in good condition at MetroHealth Medical...

CHICAGO, JUNE 5 : Nearly 1 in 5 students at two elite U.S. universities say they have purposely injured themselves by cutting, burning or other methods, a disturbing phenomenon that psychologists say they are hearing about more often. For some young people, self-abuse is an extreme coping mechanism that seems to help relieve stress; for others it is a way to make deep emotional wounds more visible. The results of the survey at Cornell and Princeton are similar to other estimates on this frightening behavior. Counselors say it is happening at colleges, high schools and middle schools across the United...

17 Pct. at 2 Schools Practice Self-Abuse Survey: 17 Percent at 2 Ivy League Schools Practice Cutting, Other Self-Abuse By LINDSEY TANNER The Associated Press CHICAGO Jun 5, 2006 (AP) CHICAGO - Nearly 1 in 5 students at two Ivy League schools say they have purposely injured themselves by cutting, burning or other methods, a disturbing phenomenon that psychologists say they are hearing about more often. For some young people, self-abuse is an extreme coping mechanism that seems to help relieve stress; for others it's a way to make deep emotional wounds more visible. The results of the survey...

Remember in the classic, biblical epic films of the 1950s, how Sodom and Gomorrah were portrayed? Drunken men with multiple piercings and bright red robes, with one loose woman under each arm, cavorting in orgiastic revelry against a background of annoying, mosquito-like music? Maybe a bone through the nose as well? Hollywood took pains to depict these lost souls in the most debauched and irredeemable manner – to justify their subsequent destruction with fire and brimstone as punishment for their great sinfulness. Guess what? Those Hollywood depictions don't even begin to capture the shocking reality of what is going on...

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel, on the forefront of nations fighting terrorist bombings, has decreased the number of suicide attacks by using methods ranging from employing Palestinian informants to asking guards to look each passenger directly in the eye. One bus company even developed a sensor to detect explosives. But experts say good intelligence, relentless military pursuit and a vigilant public - not technological innovation - is behind most of Israel's success in stopping bombers. The steps Israel has taken have a downside: They've turned many public places into virtual garrisons and put guards, by law, outside every restaurant to frisk...

I ALWAYS thought we Republicans stood for smaller government, low taxes and balanced budgets. Maybe our new slogan should be: “Giving you a bigger government, slowly.” Thirty-two years ago, I served with a governor who reminded us that “low taxes were the result of low spending.” Mel Thomson would not be happy today with the many Washington Republicans who make Bill Clinton’s balanced budgets put us to shame. In 1990 when I left Congress, we had put in place a Newt Gingrich reform for the budget called a “paygo” requirement. It said that any new legislation that called for an...

Her parents wondered why she was always so cold. Their daughter insisted on wearing a sweatshirt, even on the sunniest of afternoons. It was strange. Probably another one of those teen fashion things, they figured. That would explain why she pulled the sleeves down over her hand and stuck her thumb through a loop she'd cut in the cuff. Just another offbeat style trend. But the girl, whose identity was withheld by her counselor for obvious reasons, was a textbook example of a bloody epidemic among American teenage girls. When these girls are identified, often by concerned friends, their parents...

Even his most ardent opponents are wont to acknowledge Justice Antonin Scalia's intellectual brilliance. If you’ve never watched his devastating fire handily blasting the drunken jurisprudence of postmodernism, you owe yourself a read some evening. It’s an irreverence that arouses the highest form of wrath: that of a left that has been not only defied, but mocked. His specialty is dismembering an opponent with his own weapon. He does it calmly and with a deftness that immobilizes any liberal mind that has been dealt such a terrifying dose of simplicity. Our $164,000 a year is buying us a lot. Contrary...

Let me preface by saying that this thread is aimed at discussing kids who are dealing with socially driven syndromes or disorders. In a thread in the very near future, we will discuss family members with special physical needs: Down's syndrome, autism, Alzheimer's, et al. There is a lot of ground to cover on this subject and it is difficult to know where to begin. All of us have heard, I am sure, that Americans (particularly children) are more obese today than we have been in the past. Are our children becoming food addicts or couch addicts? How do we...

Have you heard of "cutting"? If you're a parent, you'd better read up. "Cutting" refers to self-mutilation – using knives, razor blades or even safety pins to deliberately harm one's own body – and it's spreading to a school near you. Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses" and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films...

When The Dallas Morning News pruned its stock tables, sports results and television listings this year, a consequence of sluggish advertising revenue and sharply rising paper costs, few readers felt aggrieved enough to complain. But when the paper later staged a "Survivor"-style contest to cut a dozen of its 53 comic-strip offerings to save a precious half-page of space in the weekday paper, more than 40,000 readers voted their passions. They lobbied successfully for comic comfort food like "Peanuts" and "For Better or For Worse," though other chestnuts like "Mary Worth" and "Steve Roper and Mike Nomad" faced a grimmer...

<p>California's Legislature has a problem. Its members are preparing to gut vital programs in other parts of government. At the same time, the cost of its own operations continues to rise, modestly but steadily.</p> <p>The Senate and Assembly combined budgets of $205 million this year increased by $7.5 million over last year, about 4 percent. Lawmakers propose to increase legislative allocations by another $10 million next year.</p>

Landowners in the Santa Cruz Mountains and other forested areas of California who want to cut timber on their property will have to submit new information to the state showing the impacts of other nearby logging projects under a bill signed Sunday by Gov. Gray Davis. The bill, by Assemblyman Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, was championed by environmental groups and opposed by some in the timber industry. Under it, the State Board of Forestry will require by Jan. 1, 2005, anyone submitting a timber harvest plan to the state to include maps showing ``the location and boundaries of past, present,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is weighing reducing U.S. loan guarantees to Israel because of a fence it is building in the West Bank, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. Israel is constructing what it calls a security fence -- in parts a concrete wall and in others metal fencing -- to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians describe it as a new "Berlin Wall" that grabs territory they want to be part of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. U.S. officials said they have to consider trimming the loan guarantees because of a U.S. law...

Man Admits Cutting Dogs' Tails Off; Says He Needed To Be Entertained Dog Tails Found In Freezer Posted: 6:24 p.m. EDT May 29, 2003Updated: 7:06 a.m. EDT May 30, 2003 A 36-year-old Central Florida man admitted Thursday that he chopped the tails off five of his landlord's six dogs and then stored their tails in a freezer because he needed to be entertained, according to Local 6 News. Nelson Rodriguez was arrested after sheriff's deputies found his landlord's missing Akita-mixed dogs mutilated inside the Rodriguez's Pine Castle home. Rodriguez told Local 6 News Thursday that he cut the dog's tails...

<p>The governor of Massachusetts recently rocked that state's higher education community with a brash cost-cutting proposal: dismantle the University of Massachusetts system's Office of the President and save millions each year.</p> <p>That radical plan demonstrates just how far some leaders are willing to go to combat the debilitating budget deficits inundating nearly every level of government across the country.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - The Assembly moved slowly Tuesday to deal with a new package of budget cuts as the controller warned that lack of quick action on California's gaping deficit could force more state borrowing this summer.</p> <p>Assembly Democrats agreed to hold a committee hearing next week on a package of about $8.6 billion in budget cuts and funding shifts approved Monday by the Senate, but Speaker Herb Wesson said there was no guarantee the full Assembly would take up the legislation next week.</p>

FORT WORTH, Texas, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- American Airlines Tuesday asked its union leaders and workers to agree to $1.8 billion in cost cuts from wages, benefits and work rule changes in the face of continuing losses at the world's largest airline. AMR, American's parent company, lost $3.5 billion last year and $1.8 billion in 2001. Union leaders received letters from AMR Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Don Carty and President Gerard Arpey requesting the cost-cutting moves. Details were released after a meeting of the two sides Tuesday. American executives have said the company needs an estimated $4 billion in...