Free Republic

Bob is quite the dog. He's becoming known for his spiral stunt to the bottom of his owner's pool, pawing and clawing and paddling his way down to the depths, and then coming up for air with his prized toy in his mouth. "He's Bob, and we've named him Bob the Amazing Diving Dog," said his owner, Kristie Navarrette. Her family took Bob in as a stray four years ago. Bob's unique trick became known to the family one summer afternoon when the pooch was poolside with his plastic toy. "I was floating one day in the pool and he...

A Muslim family was wrongly denied access to an aquatic center in Lyons last summer when employees told them their clothing violated the facility's rules, state officials said Friday. In August 2009, Mahmoud Yaqub took his wife, Faten Alaraj, and two young sons to Cermak Family Aquatic Center, 7600 W. Ogden Ave., which is run by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. - A town on New York's Long Island is using Google Earth to find backyard pools that don't have the proper permits. The town of Riverhead has used the satellite image service to find about 250 pools whose owners never filled out the required paperwork. Violators were told to get the permits or face hefty fines. So far about $75,000 in fees has been collected. Riverhead's chief building inspector Leroy Barnes Jr. said the unpermitted pools were a safety concern. He said that without the required inspections there was no way to know whether the pools' plumbing, electrical...

What used to be just tar balls are now pools of oil on Pensacola Beach. (06/28/10)

The scariest pool in the world, 55 stories above ground The "Sands Skypark" in Singapore is a pool, greenway and casino with an usual location. The whole thing sits atop not one, but three skyscrapers that make up the Marina Bay Sands hotel. The infinity pool itself is nearly 500 feet in length and features no discernible edge. So what would happen if you swam over? Don't worry, you wouldn't just plummet to the streets below. Instead, you'd fall where the rest of the water does: a basin that also acts as a filter for the water and sends it...

love the Kern River. I've probably driven there a hundred times or more over the past 20 years. But it can be a dangerous place for the young, the inexperienced, the careless, as evidenced by a sign warning of lives lost just before you enter the gorge en route to Lake Isabella from Bakersfield. Which makes this Bakersfield.com report even more sobering: Pools now claiming more victims than Kern River... So far this year there have been seven drownings in pools compared to just four in the river... So far, five local children under the age of 10 have drowned...

I am currently reading a book written by a friend about movies. He has asked me to read it and write a book review for him. While I am reading his book, I would like to get an idea of where my fellow Freepers stand as to what you think about today's movies. I have learned in my 11 years as a member of Free Republic, to trust and respect the opinions here more than anywhere else I could go to on the WWW. I guess I would have to say that your opinions reflect the truest conservative points...

Pacific NW Cover Story Growing up in Normandy Park in the mid-'70s, Jeff Wiltse spent summers at the pool. All day. Every day. And it wasn't just about swimming. There was Wiffle ball, showing off for pretty girls, trading baseball cards on the pool deck. The pool was where he had his first meaningful conversations with adults (during intergenerational games of pickleball), and Wiltse vaguely understood, even then, that the pool was more than chlorine and concrete; it was a uniquely intimate community space, "effective for overcoming the social distance that keeps people separate in most spheres of life." Decades...

They're pulled from backyard pools and bathtubs each year, tiny limp bodies, blue and not breathing. A young life can vanish quickly under water. A survivor can endure a lifetime of disabilities. Either way, families are torn apart by an almost always preventable tragedy. Standard summer companions in our desert climate, swimming pools can be deadlier for children than guns. A child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident than in gunplay, writes Steven D. Levitt, University of Chicago economics professor and best-selling author. Levitt analyzed child deaths from residential swimming pools and guns and found...

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As the EU looks set to open membership negotiations with Turkey at the end of next week, over a third of its citizens are opposed to further enlargement of the 25-nation bloc. Conducted in October and November, just months after the Union expanded by 10 countries, the poll shows that 35% of citizens are against further enlargement - with 53% in favour and 12% saying they do not know. Those against enlargement rises to 43% when citizens only from the 15 'old' member states are considered. Austrians and Germans have the highest percentages of citizens against...

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Only 1 in 5 foreigners wants to see President Bush re-elected, according to surveys taken in 35 foreign countries this summer and released Wednesday. John Kerry would win a "global election" for president in 30 of the 35 countries, including overwhelming majorities among European allies and pluralities in the nine Latin American nations surveyed. Only in Poland, Nigeria and the Philippines was Bush preferred. India and Thailand were closely divided. On average, 46 percent of respondents favored Kerry to 20 percent for Bush. One-third of those surveyed said that they had no preference or it didn't...