Free Republic

NICEVILLE · Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel has temporarily moved a boys' school and ministry he works for from hurricane-racked New Orleans to a camp near this Florida Panhandle city. It's a return home for Wuerffel. He lived in nearby Destin while attending Fort Walton Beach High School before going on to Florida, where he led the Gators to their only national championship in 1996. He then played six seasons in the NFL, including three with the New Orleans Saints.

MEMPHIS (AP) — A Memphis woman has been charged with forgery and attempted theft after trying to collect more than $1,500 in Hurricane Katrina relief money, police say. Emma Hill, 31, told a worker at an American Red Cross hurricane relief center in Memphis Friday that she lived in Gulfport, Miss., and had lost everything in the hurricane, according to the charges. However, when she returned Saturday to pick up a $1,565 check, Hill gave an address in Mississippi that was different from the first one she gave workers. Suspicious workers then called over a Memphis police officer stationed at...

Eglin Air Force Base announced plans Friday to set up a 1,000-person tent city and two 250-bed hospitals for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, probably at the same site that hosted a similar camp for Cuban refugees 25 years ago. The tent city would join a former school, a National Guard armory, a religious retreat, private homes and churches across the Florida Panhandle as shelters for people displaced by the storm that Monday devastated coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. "This is the military support to homeland security," Col. Edmond B. Keith, commander of Eglin's 96th Air Base Wing, said in...

The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Monday to consider claims that Charles Harrelson was wrongly convicted of the 1979 assassination of a federal judge in San Antonio. Announced without explanation, the justices' decision represented a third and perhaps final rejection of a lengthy appeal financed by the convicted killer's movie-star son, Woody Harrelson. The denial means Charles Harrelson likely will die in the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Colorado where he was sent after attempting to escape an Atlanta federal prison. The 65-year-old is serving two sentences of life without parole. His appeal, filed in 1997, attracted widespread attention largely because...

Did Aznar (left) deceive European allies after the bombings?Spanish authorities intentionally withheld information and misled German officials into believing the Basque separatists ETA were responsible for the Madrid bombings, according to Germany's federal criminal bureau. In the days following the March 11 terror attacks that killed 201 people in Madrid, Spain's intelligence authorities kept a tight seal on evidence related to the investigation and misled allied intelligence services by providing false information pointing to involvement by the ETA, German public television reported Tuesday. Citing a source in Germany's federal criminal bureau (BKA), the national ARD station said Spanish investigators...

F.P Report PESHAWAR: President Pervez Musharraf called upon tribal elders on Monday to swing behind the government in flushing out foreign terrorists hiding in the sensitive the tribal belt, claiming an al-Qaeda militant of Libyan descent was behind two life attempts on him. Speaking to a huge tribal jirga at the Governor’s House here, the president revealed more than 500 foreign militants were hiding in the South Waziristan Agency, saying government required all-out cooperation of tribal people for cleansing the area of terrorists. Musharraf avoided naming the Libyan suspect, who funded militants to carry out the bombings. He said: “The...

Thanks to a tip-off from area residents Saudi security forces arrest Rashood, spiritual leader of armed groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda, near Yemen border. DUBAI - A Saudi activist, allegedly a leading member of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in Saudi Arabia which is linked to attacks in Riyadh, has been arrested, a Saudi non-governmental organization said Sunday. Abdallah Ben Mohammad Ben Rachid Al-Roshood, 33, was arrested by Saudi security forces Saturday in the Bani Yalin region, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Najrane, near the Yemen border, the Washington-based Saudi Institute said in an e-mail received by the AFP bureau...

WASHINGTON, March 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Foreigners outsourced far more office work to the United States than American companies send abroad in 2003, reported the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The value of US exports of legal work, computer programming, telecommunications, banking, engineering, management consulting and other private services jumped to 131.01 billion dollars in 2003, up 8.42 billion dollars from the previous year, the report said. Data released by the Commerce Department showed that imports of such private services, meanwhile, hit 77.38 billion dollars for the year, up 7.94 billion dollars from 2002, said the report. Measuring imports against exports,...

MIAMI - DirecTV is accusing O.J. Simpson of pirating its satellite television signal. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Miami, the company demanded the former football star pay DirecTV $20,000. Federal agents removed satellite TV equipment from Simpson's house in the Miami neighborhood of Kendall during a search in 2001. DirecTV alleges the devices were "bootloaders," for unscrambling the company's signals. Simpson attorney Yale Galanter was in court Monday and did not immediately return a call for comment.

A son of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, has been captured by Pakistani forces, one of Pakistan's leading newspapers reported today. The Urdu-language Jang daily said Khalid al-Zawahri was arrested in an operation yesterday against al-Qaeda suspects in South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous area bordering Afghanistan. The report, quoting diplomatic sources, said Khalid was handed over to US custody soon after the arrest and flown out of Pakistan. Military and government officials declined to confirm or deny the report.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House has sought to portray Libya's promise to abandon weapons of mass destruction programs as affirmation of President George W. Bush's hardline strategy on arms proliferation and suggested the U.S.-led war in Iraq helped convince Moammar Gadhafi that he should act. Some arms control experts, however, pointing to what is known about how and when the agreement came about, say that Libya's turnaround offers proof the United States should shift tactics in dealing with North Korea, Syria and others. "The president is trying hard to portray this as a victory for his strategy," said Joseph...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - More than 6,600 ballots in next week's mail-in elections in four Broward County cities have been returned to the elections office because they were sent to people who no longer lived at addresses listed in county voter rolls. Election Supervisor Miriam Oliphant's office late last week finished sending out 100,000 ballots for Nov. 4 mail-in elections by voters in Southwest Ranches, Deerfield Beach, Pompano Beach and two neighborhoods near Cooper City. About 2,500 residents have voted. Beside the undelivered ballots, another problem appeared Tuesday when several residents of Pompano Beach and Deerfield Beach reported receiving...

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - The state revoked the license Wednesday of a doctor accused of causing one of the nation's largest hepatitis C outbreaks, with at least 99 patients infected and one death. In a settlement with the state, Dr. Tahir Javed did not contest allegations that he used unsanitary practices at his Fremont Cancer Clinic, where many of his patients contracted hepatitis C in 2000 and 2001. State officials alleged those practices included reusing syringes. At least 81 lawsuits have been filed against Javed on behalf of his former patients. Javed is now a health minister in Pakistan. Last...

MADRID, Spain - Police have arrested several suspects on orders of a Spanish judge who is investigating al-Qaida links, the government said Thursday, a day after he issued the first known indictment against Osama bin Laden in the Sept. 11 attacks. The Interior Ministry said the arrests were made in the southern region of Andalusia and elsewhere in Spain, but it gave no details. News agencies and the Web site of the El Pais newspaper said three men were detained and that they are linked to Tayssir Alouni, a journalist for the Arabic-language TV station al-Jazeera who is under arrest...

INDIANAPOLIS Sept. 10 — As Gov. Frank O'Bannon lay in a coma following a stroke, Indiana's lieutenant governor took over as acting governor amid uncertainty over whether to formally transfer authority to him. State lawmakers on Tuesday held off invoking a process spelled out in the state constitution for formally handing power to Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan. However, Republican Sen. President Pro Tem Robert Garton said he and Democratic House Speaker Patrick Bauer could initiate the process, perhaps as early as Wednesday. Doctors said O'Bannon, 73, had evidence of brain damage and that it was too soon to say whether...

DDN | Director: Total loss unknown WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE | By thievery, carelessness, or both, America is losing artifacts of its aviation heritage. The United States Air Force Museum once stored the aging wooden pattern used to cast the engine that enabled aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright to achieve the first powered flight in 1903. It's missing. Ten artifacts, ranging from camp regulations to a notebook, entrusted to the museum from survivors of World War II prisoner-of-war camps. Also missing. Bombs, bomb fuses, guns, a "urine collection device" from the Apollo program and a camera lens from the...

NEW ORLEANS — A judge declined yesterday to throw out the Marine Corps' case against a conscientious objector from Seattle who claims he is being court-martialed because he publicly criticized the war in Iraq. Navy Judge John A. Maksym also denied Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk's lawyer access to Marine files on who else may have been absent without leave and how they were punished. Funk's lawyer, Stephen Collier, had noted at a hearing Monday that a Marine sergeant said the Marines wanted to make an example out of Funk, a Marine reservist, who attended anti-war rallies and criticized certain training...

Voter rolls in Broward and Miami-Dade counties are bloated with nearly half a million people who have never cast a ballot, a Herald investigation has found. They comprise 25 percent of the rolls, a troubling proportion that invites fraud and inflates election costs, possibly by millions of dollars. Election officials blame the ''motor-voter'' law, which made voter registration easier and purging the rolls more difficult. New legislation aims to clean up the rolls with better technology, but Florida lags two years behind a 2004 deadline. And in Broward, the elections office does not aggressively pursue voters who leave town but...

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) - A woman who went to Iraq to serve as a human shield during the war faces thousands of dollars in federal civil penalties. She says she'll go to prison rather than pay. Faith Fippinger of Sarasota was told in a letter from the U.S. Department of Treasury that she broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border, violating U.S. sanctions that prohibit American citizens from "virtually all direct or indirect commercial, financial or trade transactions with Iraq." Fippinger, 62, who learned of the March 20 letter when she returned home May 4, owes the United States...

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 12, 2003 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that American officials may stop attending NATO meetings in Belgium because of a law that allows "spurious" suits accusing American leaders of war crimes. Rumsfeld said the United States will withhold any further funding for a new NATO headquarters building here until the matter is resolved. He spoke during a press conference following the NATO defense ministerial. The problem stems from Belgium's Universal Competence Law. Under this law, U.S. Central Command chief Army Gen. Tommy Franks has been charged with war crimes for his actions in Operation...