Free Republic

An aspiring model who recently moved from her native Thailand to pursue her dreams in the Big Apple said she is 'lucky to be alive' after a brutal beating in the subway by a deranged mugger last month.

ADELAIDE, Australia – A British teenager who was found dehydrated and freezing after 12 wintry days lost in Australia's wilderness said he wrote farewell notes to his family and expected to die of starvation. Jamie Neale, 19, told Australia's "60 Minutes" television program Sunday that he was "a total idiot" to venture unprepared into the Blue Mountains, 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Sydney...

In what may be the biggest understatement since "Houston, we've had a problem" echoed through the cosmos 38 years ago, a Sauk Rapids man said today from his hospital bed that he's lucky to be alive after being struck by a freight train. Christopher Gilhoi, 30, was lying between the tracks when the train, "traveling slower than usual," ran over him Saturday night as he walked home from an evening at the bar with friends. Gilhoi said he remembers almost nothing from the incident, chalking up his foggy memory to the concussion he suffered and being "relatively drunk" at the...

On April 12, a Wednesday, a boulder-size concrete block was hurled at my car as I passed the Janie Poe public-housing complex on Central Avenue in Sarasota's Newtown. [The predominantly black neighborhood north of downtown.] It narrowly missed the windshield and, after swerving out the way of oncoming traffic, I hotheadedly pulled a U-turn back toward the 15 or so youths -- who appeared to be 12- to 18-year-olds -- standing in front of and just beyond the wall of an apartment at the edges of Janie Poe. I turned into 23rd Street and called 911, and several of the...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - David Copperfield has magically escaped getting robbed. The 49-year-old illusionist was walking with two female assistants to their tour bus after his show Sunday at a performing arts center when four teens pulled up in a black car, a police report said. Two armed robbers allegedly got out of the car and demanded the group's belongings. One woman handed over $400 from her pockets and the other gave up her purse with 200 euros, $100, her passport, plane tickets and a cell phone. Copperfield refused to empty his pockets, the report said. Copperfield says he...

May 7, 2005, 11:18PM 'Thanks for not shooting my son'By RICK CASEYCopyright 2005 Houston Chronicle After hearing from Rambo wannabes that I should have blown away the tattooed, drug-addled man who crashed into my house at 11 o'clock one night in February, the e-mail from Syble Asaf was arresting.It's not every day a mother thanks you for not shooting her son."I was reading an article Wednesday evening and realized it is my son you were writing about," she wrote. "I am very sorry for what he did to your family. As equally I am grateful you did not shoot him."Police...