Free Republic

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – A man is facing charges in Palm Beach County after authorities said he purposely damaged an LGBTQ Pride crosswalk by doing burnouts in his truck. Dylan Brewer, 19, of Clearwater, is accused of damaging the Delray Beach mural on the evening of Feb. 4. Video released by the Delray Beach Police Department shows the driver of a pickup truck, with a large flag on the back, performing burnouts in the intersection, located at Northeast First Street and Second Avenue. Police said in a news release that the “reckless action caused significant damage to the streetscape painting,...

Alexandra was working in the public health emergencies unit in a major north-eastern American city when the first wave of the pandemic hit. Although her job was in public health policy research, and not treating Coovid-19 patients on the frontlines of the healthcare system, she recalls the spring of 2020 as a blur of 24-hour shifts. Beginning last March, Alexandra estimates that she and her colleagues worked the equivalent of three full-time years in 12 months. (Her name has been changed to protect anonymity.) “There was no overtime, there was no hazard pay,” Alexandra recalls.... ...Some public health workers, including...

Nurse Chris Prott's knees jump, his heart races, his mouth goes dry and his mind floods with dark memories when he talks about working in the Milwaukee VA Medical Center's intensive care unit (ICU) during pandemic surges. Prott shares a struggle common to many of the military veterans for whom he has cared for years: symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Prott was among a half dozen ICU staffers who told Reuters of symptoms such as waking from nightmares bathed in sweat; flashbacks to dying patients during the pandemic's fear-filled early days; flaring anger; and panic at the sound of...

Woody Harrelson has revealed that he had dinner with Donald Trump - and it left a bad taste in his mouth. The actor told Bill Maher on Friday's edition of Real Time that he was put off his food by Trump's 'narcissism'. 'I had to walk out halfway through, smoke a joint, just to steel myself for the rest of the thing,' Harrelson recalled. 'It was brutal.'

Too many missions and too few pilots are threatening the ‘readiness and combat capability’ of America’s unmanned Air Force, according to an internal memo. The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of drones is being strained to the “breaking point,” according to senior military officials and an internal service memo acquired by The Daily Beast. And it’s happening right when the unmanned aircraft are most needed to fight ISIS. The Air Force has enough MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. It just doesn’t have the manpower to operate those machines. The Air Force’s situation is so dire that Air Combat Command (ACC),...

Oklahoma recently saw the destructive power of an EF5 tornado, but in the aftermath of the devastation, we've also been witness to the incredible resilience of the human spirit. Moore, OK resident Jack Haden survived the storm but found that his 2003 Ford Mustang wasn't quite as lucky. As you can see in the image above, the tornado's 200+ mph winds did quite a number on the car, but while most people would have likely called their insurance company and scrapped the car, Haden had other plans. After finding the car and seeing that its V6 still fired up, Haden...

It may be time for White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to make a career change—again. At least that’s what many in Washington are saying, according to Mediaite columnist Joe Concha. The former journalist seems to have lost his patience with the White House press corps, Concha wrote Wednesday, pointing to three incidents in the past few weeks where Carney has become combative with seasoned reporters during the daily briefings. …

US musician Art Garfunkel has been located in the US ending a search for the star which began after he failed to show up for a concert in Gothenburg in western Sweden on Friday. "We lost track of him in Gothenburg," ticket agent Julius Malmström confirmed to the Sydsvenskan daily after the star failed to show for a second gig in Malmö on Saturday evening. Garfunkel was due to perform as part of a touring concert entitled "Night of the Proms" alongside Anastacia, Måns Zelmerlöw and John Miles, but shortly before he was due on stage the veteran crooner disappeared....

"Young professional women may not relate to the financial struggles their Millennial peers are protesting against during the Occupy New York movement. After all, these ambitious go-getters are working as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and advertising executives, blessed with great salaries, health benefits, and paid vacation. But these women understand the protestors’ frustration and unhappiness over the fact that their lives aren’t supposed to turn out this way. This is why a growing number of young professional women who seem to “have it all” are burning out at work before they reach 30."

Chinese White Collar Workers Are Burning Out At Five Times The U.S. Rate Vincent Fernando, CFA Sep. 26, 2010, 5:49 PM As droves of Americans look for work, those still employed face heavy workloads and frequent bouts of burnout. Well, China's modernizing in this regard as well, and in fact its white collar workers are experiencing a burnout rate which could be five times as high as in the U.S. China Daily:There are more depressed professionals than it appears on the surface, and they make themselves heard on online forums and bulletin boards such as douban.com. Here, dozens of groups...

"At our recent Reform & Resurge Conference in Seattle, my good friend Pastor Darrin Patrick from The Journey in Saint Louis spoke frankly of the burden that pastoral ministry is. I have pushed myself to the edge and over the edge of burnout throughout my nearly ten years in vocational ministry. Subsequently, I have been doing a great deal of research that I am compiling in hopes of not only improving my own life but also the lives of the leaders at Mars Hill Church and the churches in our Acts 29 Network." ~Mark DriscollPart 1 — Some Statistics The...

Karl Rove to Resign At the End of August By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter August 13, 2007 4:00 a.m. Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political adviser, is resigning as White House deputy chief of staff effective Aug. 31, and returning to Texas, he said in an interview with Paul Gigot, editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. (See related editorial1.) [nowide] 'THE MARK OF ROVE' Read the editorial2 by The Wall Street Journal's editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, on his interview with Karl Rove. Mr. Rove, who has held a senior post in the White House since...

If we all go out and vote for peace candidates and get our friends to vote, and if our votes are really counted, it's no contest. There'll be a change in the Congress, and then we'll just have to keep building so we can get a president who won't send our soldiers to fight a war based on lies. We should have thrown the bastards out years ago. Let's do it now! Give Peace A VOTE!

A Spanish mother has taken revenge on the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him alight. He died of his injuries in hospital on Friday. Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, had been sent to jail for nine years in 1998, but was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar, 30 miles south of Alicante, on the Costa Blanca. While there, he passed his victim's mother in the street and allegedly taunted her about the attack. He is said to have called out "How's your...

Thanksgiving germ buffet odds takers

The first call came in to the U.S. Capitol early in the morning. A Capitol Police officer was too sick to work. Soon, another officer called with the same problem. Then another. And another. By the end of the Columbus Day weekend, more than 70 officers charged with protecting Congress had called in sick. It was the largest number of Capitol Police officers who ever had "banged in." Many of them say they really were sick -- an illness brought on by fatigue. The continual elevated terror alerts have meant weeks and weeks of 12-hour shifts, little vacation and fewer...

Last March, after an exhausting nine-month schedule, the White Buffaloes, a boys Danville soccer team coached by John Wondolowski, won the prestigious California Soccer State Cup. That was when Wondolowski got the news. He was out and would not be asked back to coach this season. The players needed someone to develop their skills and move on to the next level. So the Mustang Soccer League was bringing in a professional coach. The kicker? The kids on the White Buffaloes were 11 years old. Professional coaches for kids who are still in grade school? Absolutely. In the Bay Area parents...

Employees facing downsizing get sick more often, a large-scale study shows  The harder you work and the more stressed you are, the sicker you get, a large-scale Dutch study has confirmed. And if you're threatened with downsizing, you get sick even more often. The research, part of the long-term Maastricht Cohort Study, involved 12,140 people - more than half of whom were followed over three years. Results were recently released by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, which financed the work. "A large percentage of absenteeism is caused by infections," wrote Dr Danielle Mohren of Maastricht University, who led...