Free Republic

CHICO, Calif. — Chico police are looking for help to find a suspect they said tried to grab a 12-year-old girl Sunday night. It happened in the 100 block of East 12th Street around 8:30 p.m. Police said the girl was walking with her family's dog when a man tried to grab her. The dog started growling at the suspect and snapped at him, and the suspect did not harm the girl, according to officials. Officers said the suspect ran away westbound toward Park Avenue. Police got a call from the girl's mother about the incident. The suspect is described...

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. -Punta Gorda police were called to Higher Power Outfitters at 1826 Tamiami Trail because someone found two grenades while cleaning out a nearby home. The person who found the grenades brought them to the store for destruction, and the store owner called the police. The Lee County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad said the grenades were live and were able to make the grenades safe. They will take the grenades back to their facility to destroy. The man who found the grenades said they found them in an old chest that belonged to a family member who recently...

I get this message when I try to donate online: Your connection is not private Attackers might be trying to steal your information from secure.freerepublic.com (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more NET::ERR_CERT_WEAK_SIGNATURE_ALGORITHM

A Washington Post analysis puts Murphy near the top of the list. Murphy has said he doesn't want higher office at this time. Sen. Chris Murphy’s name is near the top of a list of potential Democratic challengers for the 2020 presidential race, according to a recent analysis by the Washington Post. Murphy appeared third on the Fix’s list behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Here’s part of what the Post had to say on Murphy: He's also got clear progressive bona fides — on gun control and fighting Trump — without seeming like too much...

Every three days Nathan (not his real name), a 27-year-old venture capitalist in San Francisco, ingests 15 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide (commonly known as LSD or acid). The microdose of the psychedelic drug – which generally requires at least 100 micrograms to cause a high – gives him the gentlest of buzzes. It makes him feel far more productive, he says, but nobody else in the office knows that he is doing it. “I view it as my little treat. My secret vitamin,” he says. “It’s like taking spinach and you’re Popeye.” --snip -- Young developers and engineers, most...

The North Marin Water District says it is dumping close to 290,000 gallons of water out of an abundance of caution after someone broke into the water tank and possibly contaminated it. Just before 6 p.m. Friday the alarm system at a North Marin Water District tank did exactly what it was designed to do, according to General Manager Drew Mcintyre. "We immediately went up to the tank and noticed that somebody had cut through the chain link fence, cut the lock that gains access to the stairs and then also cut another lock on top of the tank that's...

In an unexpected escalation that was not the result of Israel's angry response to Friday's UN vote which passed a resolution condemning the country's settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, and which the US refused to veto, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday called on French Jews to leave their country to protest a Paris-hosted conference planned for next month aimed at restarting Palestine-Israel peace talks, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth has reported.

.... The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Explosives Division (EXD) has a solution. EXD has funded research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to continue development of the Incident Management Preparedness and Coordination Toolkit (IMPACT), a geospatial tool designed to enhance situational awareness, communication, and collaboration during and for security events. This tool was originally funded by the DHS Office of Bombing Prevention to help bomb squads assess impacts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Since its original release, IMPACT has expanded its capabilities to provide tools to assist in active shooter planning, downwind hazards from the...

A 32-year-old man was shot at least twice by Waco police officers Tuesday after he ran from a U.S. Marshals task force and displayed a handgun, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said. Jonathan Tucker Gober ran from officers serving a warrant for a felony parole violation about 4:30 p.m., and the pursuit ended with the shooting behind a house near the intersection of 30th Street and Lyle Avenue on Tuesday afternoon. “The officers were attempting to arrest that individual on a felony parole violation for a felony counterfeiting charge, and while doing so, that male produced a cocked handgun...

Vandals used a permanent marker to write the words “Die pigs” on the passenger side of a crime scene tech unit belonging to Waco police while it was parked in a restaurant parking lot at 1615 W. Waco Drive about 11 a.m. Saturday, Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said Sunday. He said the vehicle is not a police officer’s unit. It was operated by a civilian employee, who was inside the restaurant. Swanton did not say whether the unit was on an investigation at the time. He did not comment on whether investigators link the incident to recent shootings of police...

Most people want to know: Have I turned into a "Jesus nut" after leaving Connecticut for Texas five years ago? Not really - but I have some keener observations about US culture, sharpened by living in Texas. Skip the rest if you don't have an open mind. Most of the comments on this forum about refugees going home out of disgust with the West are amusing, esp from my perspective of being an American with a college education, successful career & loving, stable family. All of these things are granted by God through his means and a lifetime of hard...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - One person was shot and killed and five others were injured in a shooting on Wednesday that unfolded across multiple locations in Mesa, Arizona, the Arizona Republic newspaper reported on its website.

The mother and father sit at the kitchen table in their Idaho farmhouse, watching their son on YouTube plead for his life. The Taliban captured 26-year-old Bowe Bergdahl almost three years ago, on June 30th, 2009, and since that day, his parents, Jani and Bob, have had no contact with him. Like the rest of the world, their lone glimpses of Bowe – the only American prisoner of war left in either Iraq or Afghanistan – have come through a series of propaganda videos, filmed while he's been in captivity. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607#ixzz34APXclT2 Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone...

Pratt & Whitney said Monday it is cooperating with authorities after federal agents arrested a former employee for trying to ship documents to Iran related to the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The East Hartford defense contractor, the sole manufacturer of the aircraft's engine, declined to comment on how Mozaffar Khazaee, 59, slipped thousands of pages of documents, diagrams, blueprints and technical manuals out the door before he was laid off in August along with hundreds of other employees. Federal authorities arrested Khazaee at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Thursday before he could board a plane...

All EMS Wear Bulletproof Vests Due To Increased Crime In Area BELLPORT, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – A Long Island volunteer emergency medical service worker was injured after the ambulance he was riding in was shot at. As WCBSs Sophia Hall reported, a bullet went through the back window of the South Country Ambulance as volunteers were responding to a call in Bellport Tuesday night. Broken glass sprayed through the back of the ambulance, officials said.

North Texas prosecutors say a 37-year-old man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for serving as the ringleader of a group that stole more than 800 cell phones in a scheme that netted some $1.5 million. A Tarrant County jury on Wednesday convicted Rashad Elqutob of a theft charge and for engaging in organized crime. The Arlington man, originally from Kuwait, was an employee of AT&T who acquired a vast inventory of cell phones from AT&T, RadioShack and another company. Other workers stole the phones and then sold them to Elqutob for about 10 percent of their value....

(Reuters) - A U.S. judge ruled on Monday the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" crime-fighting tactic was unconstitutional, dealing a stinging rebuke to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who vowed to appeal the ruling. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin called it "indirect racial profiling" because it targeted racially defined groups, resulting in the disproportionate and discriminatory stopping of tens of thousands of blacks and Hispanics while the city's highest officials "turned a blind eye," she said. "No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life," Scheindlin wrote in her...

The Newtown Middle School student won $2,000 as the runner-up. A Connecticut eighth-grader who misspelled the correct answer to a "Jeopardy!" question and lost money over it says he was cheated. Thomas Hurley III correctly answered the Final Jeopardy question about the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln. But Thomas spelled it "emanciptation" and was ruled out by host Alex Trebek. He bet $3,000 of his $9,600 in winnings and finished well behind a rival who amassed $66,600. "I was pretty upset that I was cheated out of the final 'Jeopardy!' question," he told The News-Times of Danbury. "It...

An appeals court ruled Tuesday that the city's Board of Health exceeded its legal authority and acted unconstitutionally when it tried to put a size limit on soft drinks served in city restaurants. In a unanimous opinion, the four-judge panel of the state Supreme Court Appellate Division said that the health board was acting too much like a legislature when it created the limit, which would have stopped sales of non-diet soda and other sugar-laden beverages in containers bigger than 16 ounces (473 milliliters). Bloomberg "confident" soda ban will be upheld

Major Didier Pericou told The Times of Europe, "When we first went out in the helicopter looking for the body, we saw numerous vultures without realizing what they were doing." Pericou added that the incident has reignited calls from local farmers to allow hunting of the birds. The Times reported that Pyrénéan farmers have been demanding the right to shoot the birds, known as Griffon Vultures, because they've been attacking sheep and cows. But the species is protected in France and has lost access to its normal diet of carcasses due to European health and safety regulations.