Free Republic

© US Navy Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, the Navy’s top officer overseeing forces in the Middle East, died Saturday in what defense officials now call an “apparent suicide," CBS News reports . Stearney, who was the commander of the military branch’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, was found dead in his residence, the Navy confirmed earlier on Saturday. Paul Schlise, the deputy commander of Fifth Fleet, will assume command in his place. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating Stearney's death in addition to the Bahraini Ministry of Interior. However, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said in a...

Rosie O’Donnell Opens a New Window. ’s ex mother-in-law claims the comedian’s late ex-wife didn’t get to see her daughter before her shocking death, RadarOnline.com can exclusively report. Gayla Rounds, mother of the late Michelle Rounds Opens a New Window. , who was married to O’Donnell for three years, suggested her daughter was heartbroken over missing Dakota. “Your heart couldn’t take the fact that you couldn’t see our sweet Dakota,” Gayla wrote on her Instagram. O’Donnell’s ex committed suicide on September 11, 2017. As Radar readers know, Michelle and the former talk show host adopted Dakota years ago. The two...

It's been a given since America began industrializing in the mid-1800s that each generation would live longer than the one that came before. Since 2014, however, an alarming reversal has taken place, with life expectancy slipping each year. How can that be? The release of the U.S. mortality data has typically been a humdrum affair, with little notice by the major media. Not now. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their data for 2017. The average American can expect to live to 78.6 years, the CDC said, down from 78.7 years in 2016. But that small...

The U.S. suicide rate hit a 50-year record in 2017, contributing to a lower life expectancy for Americans that’s part of a larger downward trend. More than 47,000 people died by suicide in 2017, compared to roughly 45,000 in 2016, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC released 2017 data on mortality in the U.S. Thursday and compared 2017’s death rates to those in 1999. The age-adjusted suicide rate increased 33 percent from 10.5 deaths to 14 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2017, the CDC found. “We must address suicide as a...

Now, scientists have identified one more way that climate shapes suicide—and, worryingly, they have projected that it will only become more pronounced as suicide rates rise in a rapidly warming world. The finding has anxious implications for a world whose climate is rapidly changing. The authors project that roughly 14,000 people—and as many as 26,000—could die by suicide in the United States by 2050 if humanity does not reduce its emissions of greenhouse-gas pollution.

Every year, Nov. 20 marks the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. The solemn day highlights the lives the transgender community lost throughout the year. A total of 369 transgender men and women were killed this year. That's up more than 100 from last year, according to Jamie Lee Sprague-Ballou, founder of Las Vegas TransPride. Thirty of those deaths this year were in the United States. Three-hundred-sixty-nine cards covered a wall at a vigil hosted by Sprague-Ballou and other members of the transgender community. The cards depicted the 369 faces, along with the 369 names of their trans brothers and sisters...

Before killing himself with a drug intended for rapid and painless animal euthanasia, Richard A. Morrisett had endured a nightmare at the University of Texas in Austin. The 57-year-old tenured professor of pharmacology and toxicology was once a rising star in the College of Pharmacy – a man regarded as a first-rate research scientist and teacher during his 21 years at the state's flagship university. Morrisett's research offered new insights into alcohol-related brain disorders and alcoholism – an arcane area of research among neuroscientists. Some colleagues called him “brilliant.” Morrisett's career, however, was destroyed by a single newspaper article. Published...

What in the world has happened to us? Despite our ridiculously high standard of living compared to the rest of the world, America is a deeply unhappy place. When I was growing up, there were no “smart phones”, the Internet did not exist, if you wanted to buy something you had to actually go to a store and hunt for it, and most vehicles were pieces of junk that completely broke down after a few years. Today, we have hundreds of television channels, we have more movies than we could ever possibly watch, video games have become wildly creative and...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Nov. 1 death of Daniel Best, a pharmaceutical executive from Bay Village who led U.S. Department of Health and Human Services efforts to lower prescription drug prices, has been ruled a suicide, officials in Washington, D.C., said Thursday. Police say Best was found "unresponsive" near the garage door exit of an apartment building in Washington, D.C.'s Navy Yard neighborhood at 5:25 a.m. on Nov. 1, and was pronounced dead by medical personnel who responded to the scene. The city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on Thursday said Best died from "multiple blunt force injuries" and...

Two condemned multiple murderers, including a convicted serial killer, apparently committed suicide within hours of each other on the nation’s largest death row, according to California officials on Monday.

Men are being attacked far too often for being men. A society which attacks its own men is self destructing. We must start by insisting that each man who is a victim of this is heard and not ignored. And maybe then fairness to all will reemerge: https://freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity.com/2018/11/05/212/

Tala and Rotana Farea, the sisters from Saudi Arabia whose bodies were found taped together in New York City's Hudson River last week, were said to have preferred suicide over returning to their home country According to police. Dermot Shea, chief of detectives for the New York City Police Department, said "sources" in Virginia, where the Farea sisters had previously been living, informed investigators ...(snip).. would "rather inflict harm on themselves and commit suicide than return to Saudi Arabia."

Authorities are investigating the death of a Ferguson protester’s son as a suicide, although a message on social media posted by his mother has sparked assertions that it was a lynching. Melissa McKinnies, who was active in the St. Louis suburb after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, posted the Facebook message, saying “They lynched my baby.” The message, which Facebook later removed, began trending on social media sites such as Twitter and Reddit, causing people online and in the community to press officials for more answers about the death of 24-year-old Danye Jones. His body was...

He was a feminine boy, averse to manual work, who was "annoyingly subservient" to superior officers as a young soldier and had nightmares that were "very suggestive of homosexual panic." The mass killings that he later perpetrated stemmed in part from a desperate loathing of his own submissive weakness, and the humiliations of being beaten by a sadistic father. What is believed to be the first psychological profile of Hitler commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services, a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, was posted this month by Cornell University Law Library on its Web site (www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/donovan/hitler/). Although declassified...

A vote could be coming soon on a proposed doctor-assisted suicide bill in New Jersey. The New Jersey Assembly has voted down an assisted suicide bill three times to date, the last time by only one vote. There have been changes in membership since the last election but strong opposition remains. Marie Tasy of the New Jersey Right to Life Committee warns the assembly bill is dangerous and a recipe for elder abuse, such as allowing a family member or caregiver to obtain the lethal drugs and to convince the patient to consume them.

Last week the founder of the ‘Pink Pistols’ Douglas Krick committed suicide following a long-term battle with depression. Yesterday, Doug’s mother made a public Facebook post announcing the loss. (Transcription at link)

At least 19 people were killed and dozens injured at a college in the Black Sea region of Crimea on Wednesday when a student went through the building shooting at fellow pupils before killing himself, Russian law enforcement officials said. Eighteen-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov turned up at the college in the city of Kerch on Wednesday afternoon carrying a firearm and then began shooting, investigators said. His body was later found in the college with what they said were self-inflicted gunshot wounds. There were no immediate clues as to his motive in mounting such an attack, which recalled similar shooting sprees...

Every year, nearly 45,000 people in America kill themselves. That is more than twice the number that die in homicides, and the numbers are increasing. There is one group in particular causing this spike - white, middle aged men. India Rakusen goes to Montana, where suicide rates are double the national average, to find out what drives so many of these men to despair and taking their own lives. "Every year, nearly 45,000 people in America die by suicide. That's over double the number of homicides. In the last 20 years, suicide rates in most western countries have fallen, but...

Support from family and community appear to shield Latinos from rising suicide rates. ... experience illustrates a “suicide paradox,” experts say. Even though Latinos face economic disadvantages and other stress in their lives, their suicide rate is about one-third that of non-Hispanic whites, both in Texas and nationally. Experts attribute the relatively low suicide rate among Latinos to the culture’s strong family and community support systems, which appear to provide some degree of protection. In Texas, the suicide rate among non-Hispanic whites has been steadily increasing during the past 16 years, from 13.4 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2000 to...

snip Rosmann, an Iowa farmer, is a psychologist and one of the nation’s leading farmer behavioral health experts. He often answers phone calls from those in crisis. And for 40 years, he has worked to understand why farmers take their lives at such alarming rates – currently, higher rates than any other occupation in the United States. snip Last year, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that people working in agriculture – including farmers, farm laborers, ranchers, fishers, and lumber harvesters – take their lives at a rate higher than any other occupation. The...