Free Republic

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Harry Connick Sr., who was New Orleans’ district attorney for three decades and later faced allegations that his staff sometimes held back evidence that could have helped defendants, died Thursday at age 97. Connick died peacefully at his home in New Orleans with his wife, Londa, and children — Suzanna and musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. — by his side, according to an obituary distributed by Harry Connick Jr.'s publicist. A cause of death was not provided. Connick dethroned an incumbent prosecutor, Jim Garrison, in a 1973 election. He won reelection four times, and successfully...

Singer-songwriter and The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan has died aged 65, following ill-health and a recent hospital stay after being diagnosed with encephalitis. The musician, whose hits include 1987's Fairytale of New York and A Pair of Brown Eyes, had been unwell for some time. MacGowan also had well-documented problems with drugs and alcohol. His wife Victoria Mary Clarke said MacGowan "meant the world to me". Posting on Instagram, she wrote: "I don't know how to say this so I am just going to say it. Shane... has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese."

Lara Parker, who played the beautiful but vengeful Angelique Bouchard on the 1960s gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows,” died Thursday. She was 84. Parker died in her sleep at her home in Topanga Canyon, California, her daughter, Caitlin, told The Hollywood Reporter.

World-renowned makeup and tattoo artist Kat Von D has shared with the world that she has given her life to Jesus Christ. The 41-year-old shared a video to Instagram of her getting baptized, publicly declaring she was putting her faith in the Lord. "Katherine von Drachenberg, upon your profession of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to His Divine command, I baptize you, my sister, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," the pastor said before submerging a white robe-clad Von D.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., was involved in a car accident Tuesday morning on his way to Washington but was not injured, a Nadler spokesman said. Nadler was not driving, Fox News is told.

Two Wisconsin neighbors found a humorous way to practice social distancing when one sent the other a beer delivered by a radio-controlled (RC) car. After getting home, Eric Trzcinski had the idea of sending his neighbor a Corona beer, an intentional pun according to Fox 6 Now reports. The brew is held in place with a spare exhaust tip to the back of the makeshift delivery mobile.

Douglas Marshall Saxon (4 Jul 1950 – 13 Aug 2019) was born in Jamaica, NY to Marshall Saxon and Jacklyn Smith. He grew up mostly in and around Florida, living in Miami, Coral Gables and Hialeah. At 19 he volunteered for the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam (’68-’69) with the 1st Armored Cavalry Division, where he was a medic and tank driver. After his stint in the Army he traveled around the U.S., eventually ending up in Los Angeles, CA where he met and married the love of his life and had one daughter. Throughout his life his interests...

Andrew Sachs, who starred in the British television comedy series “Fawlty Towers” as Manuel, the earnest but bumbling waiter who was regularly recruited into the schemes of the hotel owner Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese, died on Nov. 23 at a care facility near his home in London. He was 86. The cause was vascular dementia, his son John said.

See if you can figure out what the food group categories are...

Some rodents are more than scurrying little mammals. Some rodents are auteurs. This brazen little squirrel director steals a GoPro camera and makes a video shot entirely from its point of view, giving us a private tour of the trees from up above. After snatching the camera off the ground, it takes off running and scales the tree, showing us a day in the life of the intrepid little explorer. Thankfully, the squirrel also had excellent manners, and made sure to drop the camera back down where the owner could easily grab it and share this visionary masterpiece.

This morning, a high-ranking Chick-Fil-A employee leaked the news to a small group of bloggers that the restaurant will soon open seven days a week. (Silent scream!) Historically, the famed Southern chicken chain has adamantly refused to open on Sundays, citing a conflict with its Christian values, but widespread customer demand, impending expansion plans, and a still-flagging economy have caused executives to reconsider that policy. “Our customers have been asking for this for a long time, and we just can’t say no any longer,” the source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained. The expanded hours will apply to each...

CONCORD, N.C. —A man says he was arrested Tuesday for failing to return a VHS tape that he rented in 2002. James Meyers said he was driving his daughter to school when a police officer pulled him over for a defective tail light. The officer ran Meyers' driver's license then asked him to step out of the vehicle. He said the officer told him there was a warrant out for his arrest from 2002 because Meyers had rented the movie "Freddy Got Fingered" and had not returned it.

A woman spreading the word about her new grandson accidentally texted a complete stranger on Saturday. He responded in the best possible way. Deorick Williams of Tallahassee, Fla., tells Fox 13 that his brother, Dennis Williams, started getting texts about the impending birth of a baby at a hospital in Bainbridge, Ga. "We are at the hospital. Having a baby today!" read the first, according to a Facebook post that has so far been shared 195,000 times. "Congrats lol but I think someone got the wrong number," Dennis replied. Then came a photo of newborn Cason Knox, born to parents...

"Making a Murderer," Netflix's new true-crime documentary, is as unnerving as it is addictive, in part because it is so addictive. Over the course of 10 hours. writers-directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos tell the story of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who served 18 years for a sexual assault he did not commit before being exonerated by DNA evidence. Then, just as he prepared to sue the county and police department that had put him in jail in the first place, Avery was accused and later convicted of a horrific kidnapping and murder that he insists he did not...

This Happens Five Times A Day.

A special holiday musical presentation from Union Station in Washington, DC celebrating the service and sacrifices of our nation's World War II veterans and commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

SEATTLE -- True crime writer Ann Rule, who wrote more than 30 books, including a profile of her former co-worker, serial killer Ted Bundy, has died at 83. Rule died at Highline Medical Center, south of Seattle, at 10:30 p.m. Sunday, said Scott Thompson, a spokesman for CHI Franciscan Health. Rule's daughter, Leslie Rule, said on Facebook that her mother had many health issues, including congestive heart failure. "My mom died peacefully last night," Leslie Rule wrote. "She got to see all of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren." Ann Rule's first book, "The Stranger Beside Me," profiled Bundy, whom...

I'll Have Another won the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore, Maryland. The winner of the Kentucky Derby last time out, Doug O'Neill's colt confirmed his superiority over those reopposing with an impressive display in the second leg of America's Triple Crown. Despite winning the Run For The Roses, the son of Flower Alley was sent off as second favourite with punters expecting Derby second, Bodemeister, to reverse the form with many feeling he had paid the price for setting too fast a pace at Churchill Downs. Mike Smith eased Bob Baffert's charge to the front from gate nine and...

Awhile back a friend of mine forwarded me a site where an artist had made posters of films that, title wise, we were familiar with, but there was a slight difference; they were remade as if they belonged to a different era or a different genre, the name of the movie was there, but the actors were different, the style was different, and I loved the concept. So I went forward with this theme; what if movies we were all familiar with were made a different slice of time? Who would be in it? Who would direct it? So here...

Concertgoers at the New York Philharmonic Tuesday night did not have to be musicologists to work out that the marimba was not part of the famous work. Conductor Alan Gilbert halted the performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony when the offending iPhone ringtone sounded -- and persisted -- a media contact at the symphony confirmed. Just minutes from the end of the hour and a half-long piece, Gilbert turned to the phone's owner, seated close to the front of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, according to an eyewitness account published by "Superconductor" blogger Paul Pelkonen. In the...