Free Republic

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A lawyer for suspended NFL star Michael Vick told a bankruptcy court today that the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback has lined up a construction job for when he gets out of prison. Vick, 28, appeared in court for the first time in his bankruptcy case to explain to a judge how he plans to emerge from his financial problems. Before the hearing began, he turned around to wave and smile at family members sitting in the courtroom. He is expected to testify before the proceeding wraps up on Friday.

When walking around Bayou La Batre, it might be wise to buckle up. City leaders have passed an ordinance making it illegal to wear sagging pants that expose a person's skivvies or too much skin below the waist. The fishing village last week joined a host of other cities and state governments — from the Chicago suburbs to the state of Georgia — that have imposed or considered similar bans on low-hanging pants in public. But how low is too low?

2 brothers fatally shot 15 years, 2 blocks apart As he lay dying in ’94, 1st bade 2nd goodbye BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE As Toboris Molden lay dying from a gunshot wound on a February night 15 years ago, he took care to say goodbye to his grandmother, his mother and his two younger brothers. The youngest brother was Anthony Jackson, named for his father and just a year old at the time. On Wednesday, their mother again grieved the loss of a son. This time it was Jackson, who was 16. Little Rock police found him and...

Lutherans sure love screwing with bulbs. Especially ones at St. Olaf College. The dynamic minds won the national Rube Goldberg competition. This is seriously the coolest science competition in the nation. All those years playing Mouse Trap don't compare to the video you are about to see. Watch the video on their website.

INTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn. - International Falls has recorded its snowiest winter on record. The National Weather Service says the border city has recorded 124.2 inches of snow this winter. That tops the old record of 116 inches set in 1995-1996. The nearly 9-inch dump from this week's snowstorm pushed International Falls over the edge. The Minnesota-Ontario border area has been pummeled with snowstorms this winter.

A teen and the parents of two elementary school boys face child endangerment charges after officials at the youngsters' school reported the pair had smoked marijuana. State trooper RaeAnn Hickok, the school resource officer for the Central Square school district, was called March 24 to investigate an incident of possible marijuana use by two pupils at Cleveland Elementary School. Hickcok's investigation revealed the boys, ages 7 and 8, had smoked marijuana after finding it at their home. On Tuesday, troopers charged James M. Tysco, 33, and Christine M. Miczek, 34, both of 387 Whipple Road, Bernhards Bay, with endangering the...

San Diego County agent and blogger Jim Klinge revels in exposing the greed and excess blamed for the housing crunch.Sometimes the truth hurts. Real estate salesman Jim Klinge doesn't care. Cruising through the sunny hills of Carlsbad in a massive silver Mercedes-Benz, he looks like any other pitchman of the California dream. But Klinge, 50, has become a notorious Internet chronicler of the real estate crash in north San Diego County, where he has lived and worked for decades. Rather than downplay the greed and excess that caused the region's travails, he revels in exposing them. He surveys the wreckage...

Shooting suspect surrenders; victim in stable but critical condition WEDGEFIELD — A 31-year-old man was shot once in the back early Tuesday night on Praylou Road and airlifted to a Columbia hospital about an hour later. The 26-year-old man suspected of shooting him surrendered to deputies while talking on the phone with them, and was taken into custody shortly thereafter. Henry Brooks Jr., of 79 Sally St., was in critical but stable condition at press time, said Sumter County Sheriff Anthony Dennis, after a Life Net helicopter flew him to Palmetto Health Richland. Aaron Alexander Barnett, 26, of 160 Praylou...

Sofas in yards and on open porches would be outlawed under a proposal designed to relieve Minneapolis neighborhoods of tackiness. "Our city can either look good or it can look tacky, and tacky is not what we want," said City Council President Barbara Johnson before the council's regulatory committee approved the measure banning upholstered furniture and mattresses outdoors. Council Member Cam Gordon, who represents some University of Minnesota neighborhoods, unsuccessfully argued for exempting open porches from the ban. He said people relaxing on porches create a good atmosphere that puts more eyes on the street. Existing nuisance controls could be...

The U.S. Air Force is dismissing a theory that a mysterious light in the sky this past weekend was the result of a Russian rocket booster burning up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. Hundreds of people from several states including Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina reported a strange flash of light in the sky and a booming noise Sunday night. According to the "Daily Press" officials at the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California say whatever caused the lights and noises "was not the result of a manmade trackable object." The center tracks thousands...

A Civil War cannonball spent 30 years as a doorstop, until historians linked it to other Civil War finds in the town. Former postman David Windmill, 62, found the ball when he was working at the post office in Church Square more than three decades ago. He said: "The old post office was being pulled down and they were putting a new sorting office in. One of the builders found it and was going to throw it away, but I stepped in and took it home, and it's been a doorstop since then. "At a Christmas party, I got talking...

In a heart wrenching scene in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire, hot oil is poured in a boy’s eyes so that he can earn more as a blind beggar. But does this happen in real life too? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has ordered an investigation into the alleged child beggar mafia in Mumbai after the PMO received the clipping of a British tabloid newspaper article about healthy limbs of beggar children being amputated from a farmer-turned-Methodist preacher from Somerset in the United Kingdom. On January 24, The Daily Mail published an article Real Slumdog Millionaires: Mafia Gangs Crippling Children...

Russia's keenness to keep the writer out of Ukrainian hands has been ridiculed – but such chauvinism is hardly uniqueNews that the Ukrainians are claiming the great 19th century writer Nikolai Gogol as their own because he was born and bred in their territory has been reported with evident amusement – not least because it has so irritated Russian spokespersons. Yet is it so foolish? Nations care very much about the esteem in which they are held by other nations, and a literary pantheon confers more prestige than any Olympic medal table. "The chief glory of every people arises from...

Minnesota's epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases climbed to a new high in 2008 with a total of 17,650 new cases. That's 3.5 percent more than the 16,428 new cases reported in 2007, according to the Minnesota Health Department's annual report on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. The number went up despite a significant drop in gonorrhea. The vast majority of new cases were chlamydia, 14,350 in all, said Peter Carr, director of the department's STD section. The number climbed 7 percent from the previous year, the continuation of a 13-year trend of ever higher rates of infection. Chlamydia cases have more...

Eric Childs launches home-brewed fermented tea that he hopes will start a revolutionA few years ago, Eric Childs’ boss gave him a bottle of fermented Kombucha tea when he complained of feeling sick, and soon, he got “really into it.” After talking to 23-year-old Childs about Kombucha for a few minutes, I felt myself getting really into it, too. Childs says that drinking the nutrient-rich tea has given him more energy, boosted his metabolism, cleared up his skin and cured the terrible heartburn he used to take medication for. “My personal philosophy about Kombucha is that it works with the...

A 911 dispatcher had to tell a woman how to unlock her car on Sunday. A woman called Kissimmee police to say she was locked inside her car at the Walgreen's on John Young Parkway near Poinciana. "My car will not start. I'm locked inside my car," the unidentified woman said.

Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. cannot charge three teenage girls who appeared in photographs seminude traded by classmates last year, a judge ruled Monday.

Reigniting international interest in Oman’s long maritime heritage and emulating the fabled feats of one of the country’s most renowned mariners, the legendary Sinbad, an Omani sailor has become the first Arab ever to sail non-stop around the world. Sailing as a crewman onboard the 75-foot trimaran 'Musandam', 33-year-old Mohsin Al Busaidi was welcomed home by thousands of his countrymen waiting dockside when his yacht anchored in the historic trading port of Muscat on Friday for the first time in 76 days. Setting out on 08 January, Al Busaidi sailed over 24,000 nautical miles crossing the Southern Ocean and passing...

Ever seen a traffic warden doing a pole dance on duty? Excited over that she and her colleague have got another parking violator, an enforcement officer got too excited and started doing the pole dance, that too for not less than 1 minute and 12 seconds, resembling a victory celebration. As her colleague filled out the necessary paperwork, the unidentified warden raised her arms in the air and danced. She then chose to ditch the rumba - for her pole work, the Daily Mail reported. The drama started when the two traffic wardens approached a white van parked illegally. Unaware...

JEDDAH – Women’s coffee shops are no longer just meeting places for friends or refuges for a moment’s escape from the daily routine. Instead, according to some, they have become the haunts of university students and schoolgirls playing truant to indulge themselves in smoking shisha pipes and cigarettes, with women using the locations as impromptu job agencies, and matchmakers seeking willing bribes. Behind the walls of women’s coffee shops, some say, all sorts of things go on. Salwan Abdullah, a 24-year-old university student, recalls the first time she was invited by a student friend to go to an all-female coffee...