Free Republic

Detroit bus drivers say they’re fed up working in deplorable conditions — with primitive seating, daily assaults from passengers and bug-infested coaches — and they’re demanding the city take action. The drivers say their working conditions are disgusting — they have no choice but to breathe diesel fumes, passengers verbally abuse and spit on them, and they’re forced to dodge roaches, bed bugs and rodents. Those are just some of the complaints

Bed bugs are taking over Paris - and some in France just itching to blame American tourists. You may have seen the signs of the recent bed bug take over of Paris without even realizing it. Mattresses abandoned on the streets, exterminators parked outside hotels around the city, your colleagues scratching at their legs under the table... Makes you itchy just thinking about it, non? But it's no laughing matter, with Le Parisien newspaper saying Paris is in the middle of an "explosive phenomenon" right now. One property management group in the capital, RIVP, says that it's almost every day...

I have a buddy in rural Illinois who is living with and helping out his elderly mom, and he likes to cook. He cooks up a storm. They both enjoy the food. The house they are in has begun to display a very bad bedbug infestation. Both my buddy's mom and my buddy are freaking out. They don't have a lot of money but they are about to call Orkin. I stopped to think about the science of bedbugs. Both my buddy and I did a lot of online research after discovering the infestation. But I think I have a...

Some good news for Chicago: It's no longer the bedbug capital of the nation. In its annual ranking, released Tuesday, pest-control services provider Orkin said Baltimore tops its annual list of the top 50 cities for bed bugs. Chicago had been the center of bedbug action for four straight years. The list is based on data from the metro areas where Orkin performed the most bed bug treatments, both residential and commercial, from Dec. 1, 2015, to Nov. 30, 2016. Chicago ranked third this year. Baltimore moved up nine slots to No. 1, marking the first time it has made...

MONTREAL — In the basement of a public housing complex on the outskirts of downtown Montreal is a large walk-in freezer used solely to kill bed bugs. The freezer is a local solution to a problem that has been haunting the city for years and is not improving, says Melanie Sanche, head of sanitation for the public housing authority. As in many large North American cities, cases of bed bugs have exploded here in the past 10 to 15 years, and the problem is particularly acute in areas with transient populations such as students, as well as in districts with...

AUGUSTA, Maine —Officials in Maine's capital city say bedbugs were found in three city offices. ... A bedbug-detecting dog confirmed there were bedbugs in that office and in the offices of community services ... Bedbugs had been reported at two privately owned boarding houses in May. City councilors adopted an emergency law requiring tenants to alert landlords of bed bugs. Landlords must also give the city a decontamination plan.

LONDON — A plane was taken out of service by British Airways after bed bugs were found on board. The airline says two of the parasitic insects, which feed on people's blood, were found. "Whenever any report of bed bugs is received, we launch a thorough investigation and, if appropriate, remove the aircraft from service and use specialist teams to treat it — this happened in this instance," a spokeswoman for the airline told Mashable.

Kyrie Irving did not sleep tight because the team hotel did let the bed bugs bite Saturday night. "Our team said I was out with flu-like symptoms," Irving confessed to the media Monday night about his absence from Sunday's game against the Oklahoma. "It was honestly from the bed bugs from the frickin' Hilton that we stayed at." The Cavaliers stayed at the oldest hotel in Oklahoma City over the weekend ... Just imagine how freaked out you'd be if you saw friggin' five, big-ass bed bugs just sitting on your pillow," Irving told the media after Monday's loss to...

Bedbugs have apparently taken up a long-term residency in Chicago based on a new report from pest control company Orkin. Chicago topped Orkin's "Top 50 Bed Bug Cities" list for the fourth year in a row. In all, fourteen cities in the Midwest made the list, more than any other region, according to Orkin. The pests were spotted in multiple cities in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky. Orkin based its findings on the number of bedbug treatments employees conducted between January and December of 2015, according to the pest control company. The list includes both residential and commercial treatments. [Snip]...

Thanks to Obama’s open border policies there are now hundreds of thousands of cases of Chagas Disease in the United States today. Chagas disease also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). It is found mainly in endemic areas of 21 Latin American countries. The disease is transmitted to humans by contact with feces of triatomine bugs, known as ‘kissing bugs.’ Chagas disease is spread by the Kissing Bug in Latin American countries. Chagas often leads to a fatal condition known as Chagasic cardiomyopathy. The National School for Tropical...

German hospitals are increasing security to protect doctors and nurses from violent attacks by migrants who are unhappy with the medical treatment they are receiving. Critics are warning that German taxpayers will end up paying billions of euros to provide healthcare for a never-ending wave of asylum seekers. This is in addition to the billions of euros already being spent to provide newcomers with food, clothing and shelter. In addition to the massive economic and social costs, as well as the burden of increased crime, including a rape epidemic, Germans are now facing the risk of being exposed to exotic...

A Long Island man accidentally set his rental car ablaze in an effort to kill bed bugs, police say. Authorities say 44-year-old Scott Kemery poured rubbing alcohol on the bed bugs because he thought it would do the trick. Then, he lit a cigarette, setting himself and three cars on fire. "He said he had bedbugs in the car, and someone told him if he saturated them with alcohol, it would kill them," Det. Sgt. Edward Fitzgerald told Newsday. "So he went and bought some alcohol, he poured it all in there and he sat in his car and lit...

Friends no longer visit Kafi Ahmad's small apartment in Syracuse. Her home health aide stopped coming. And the maddening insect bites persist. Ahmad, 63, said she has "no life'' since bedbugs infested her high-rise apartment in December. She has endured welts from swollen insect bites all over her body. After 14 years in her apartment, Ahmad fled to a homeless shelter for three nights in February to escape the bedbugs. The insects "bite me and pinch me,'' she said. "My life no good.'' Bedbugs, which started attracting notice in Syracuse a decade ago, are not known to carry disease but...

Cue the pro-vaccine crowd's b.s. arguments as to why this is doesn't matter and we should all keep taking the risk shooting up our children in the hopes this won't happen to us. Via Daily Mail: A five-year-old girl has died in hospital three days after developing a strain of the flu that she was vaccinated against – as a deadly outbreak of the virus continues to sweep across the country. Keira Driscoll was prescribed steroids and a nebulizer at a Quick Care clinic after she started feeling unwell with a cough and a fever at her home in Clark...

A federal customs official at New Jersey's Newark International Airport says that they are not trained or equipped to face passengers who might be infected with Ebola. ... The agent, who wanted to stay anonymous, noted that no doctors or CDC personnel had been assigned to his airport for any flights from Africa or countries with connecting flights to Ebola effected areas. ... This unnamed Customs agent isn't the only one saying that few are prepared for Ebola. A nurses union recently contradicted the CDC's Dr. Thomas Frieden who claimed that all of America's hospitals are ready for Ebola. The...

Border Patrol Agent and National Border Patrol Council #3307 Vice President Chris Cabrera said that “nothing” has been done to secure the border in the event the Ebola virus spreads to Central America, and that the apprehension rate on the border was down to about 30% . ... Cabrera continued his criticism of the upper management of the Border Patrol, saying, “What needs to be done is we need to have our agents in the field where they belong, we need to stop cutting our manpower and stop cutting our hours and get our guys out there on the front...

A Colorado couple are suing the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa, alleging that the resort had a bedbug problem and failed to tell them about it last year when they stayed at the hotel. Aaron and Sharon Tucker of Aurora County, Colorado, booked their stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on July 30, 2013, and were not told about a bedbug infestation, they said in the lawsuit. The couple claim they suffered from bedbug bites during their stay from Aug. 24-31, 2013, and claim they continued to be bitten after returning home, ... A search through bedbugregistry.com found...

Full Title: Bedbugs spotted at least 21 times on subways in August, say sources — MTA hiring expert to review efforts “We’ve never had sightings to this magnitude,” said Joe Costales, a chairman with Transport Workers Union Local 100. “We’ve had isolated incidents in crew quarters, but it’s no longer an isolated scenario. It’s throughout the system.”

Like human beings, who use the New York City subway system for transportation between two destinations of an unwalkable distance, the bedbugs found on three N-line subway cars earlier this week were just using the train to get around the city. Their destinations included the lockers of MTA employees and the home of one conductor. Along with fumigating the infested trains, including a fourth train on the N-line, the MTA has sent a bug-sniffing dog to inspect the remaining cars. The most worrying detail about the MTA's bedbug infestation, though, may be that the conductor who found one of the...

The Architect of the Capitol took emergency measures Wednesday to handle a bed bug problem in a Senate Office Building, including closing off a restroom for a couple of days with yellow police tape. So watch out Senate aides and tourists approaching the sixth floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Bedbugs are not easy to shake. The trouble began prior to a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing held Wednesday in which some attendees—lobbyists, presumably—employed people to wait in line for them. This is a common practice and sources tell us it falls under the jurisdiction of the Rules Committee...