Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States beginning Wednesday will add a third Predator drone to patrol its border with Mexico, allowing authorities for the first time to monitor the entire stretch of land separating the two neighbors using the unmanned aircraft. The latest drone joins two others in covering the 2,000-mile (3,200 kilometer) frontier which runs across the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, the US Department of Homeland Security said. With immigration a hot-button issue ahead of looming midterm elections in November, US President Barack Obama earlier this month signed a 600 million dollar bill aimed at...

Salazar's 5-year-old son was attacked and severely mauled by a cougar that tried to drag the boy off a well-used hiking trail and into the woods in the Sandia Mountains outside of Albuquerque. The story was so frightening that it made national news. "People would say that it was just an accident. That it was extremely rare, just a rare accident." ...Convinced that three attacks in three months didn't qualify as rare... In 2006 and 2007, there were nine reported ... In 2008, there were 40 reported encounters before the attack on her son in May. This led her into...

A former teacher already accused of the sexual molestation of three Waco schoolchildren now faces another charge of indecency with a child based on information from a fourth child. Fernando Antonio Campos, a Mexican national who has been in McLennan County Jail on an immigration hold since his arrest March 17, received the new charge Friday. Although he cannot be released because of the hold, his bonds top $900,000. In an affidavit requesting the new charge, police said a girl told her mother about an incident in December 2008. The mother contacted police and the girl said in a forensic...

STANTON – A man who two teen girls said was trying to take cell phone pictures of them outside a library – just feet from a sheriff's substation – was found to have pornographic images of minors in his phone, authorities said. Alejandro Lorenzo Contreras, 24, was trying to talk to two underage girls outside of the Stanton Library on Tuesday afternoon, said Lt. Jim England of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

ATLANTA, GA—DR. ADAM WAYNE LEBOWITZ, 50, of Decatur, Georgia, was sentenced today by United States District Judge Richard W. Story on charges of producing child pornography and attempting to coerce and entice a minor to engage in unlawful sex acts. LEBOWITZ was convicted of the charges by a jury on February 25, 2010, after a seven-day trial. United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said of the sentence, “As a doctor, this defendant took an oath to ‘never do harm’ to anyone. He not only violated that oath, he sexually violated children and then published his violation on the Internet, victimizing...

The 57-year-old man charged with 10 murders in the Los Angeles "Grim Sleeper" case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades but was never sent to state prison despite the recommendation of probation officers, court and jail records show. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested for burglary, car theft, firearms possession and assaults. But his crimes never were considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state's DNA database, authorities said. "He's danced to the raindrops for a long time without getting wet," Detective Dennis Kilcoyne, head of the task force...

Air Force leaders are working to build a new pilot culture in the service, creating a career track designed to turn officers without prior flying experience into operators of remotely piloted aircraft such as the MQ-1 Predator. Officially institutionalized in June as Undergraduate RPA Training, the new course evolved from an experiment nearly two years in the making—called a beta test—which indicated that the syllabus will likely need to continue evolving. A handful of officers have already passed the beta test to learn how to fly RPAs, and were awarded special wings recognizing their achievement. Some of those pilots are...

Air Force officials released their basing decision for the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper ground control stations June 21. The final bases approved by the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force are: Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. and Ellsworth AFB, S.D. "The Air Force uses a deliberate, repeatable and transparent process to address basing needs. These bases are the right locations for the next set of MQ-1/9 ground control stations," said Kathleen Ferguson, the deputy assistant secretary for installations. "They will provide the Air Force with the right kind of synergy for training purposes." The MQ-1 ground...

ELKO, Nev. — A Twin Falls woman convicted of forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts was sentenced Monday to life in prison. Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November after a week-long trial in Elko County, Nev., District Judge Mike Memeo’s courtroom. With the conviction, Taylor faced a mandatory life sentence, and Memeo set parole eligibility after 10 years, the minimum sentence. If released on parole she must register as a sex offender and will be under lifetime supervision. The district attorney’s office did not offer a plea agreement in...

A top rugby player has been banned from coaching children after luring two underage girls into lesbian relationships. Tricia Brown, 31, will not be able to interact with teenage or child rugby players under the ban imposed by the Australian Rugby Union, the Courier Mail reports. But Ms Brown will be permitted continue playing rugby and is expected to play in the World Cup later this year. "Having finalised that review, ARU has decided not to impose any playing ban on Tricia Brown," said the rugby body’s spokesman Peter Jenkins. The investigation came after Ms Brown was earlier this year...

SEND IN THE DRONES: PREDATORS TO FLY ABOVE TEX-MEX BORDER Tue Apr 27 2010 19:39:41 ET Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate hearing Tuesday that unmanned aerial drones will soon fly through Texas skies! "Big Sis" declared that over the past 15 months, federal law enforcement initiatives have made the border more secure than in any other time in history, the SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS reports in Wednesday editions. The new "predator bees" have the capability to fly at altitudes used by commercial aircraft, and are designed to enhance intelligence capabilities of federal, state and local law enforcement. But...

In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. In terms of international armed conflict, those CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to...

The US government's refusal to offer a legal rationale for using unmanned drones to kill suspected militants in Pakistan could result in CIA officers facing prosecution for war crimes in foreign courts, a legal expert has told lawmakers. "Prominent voices in the international legal community" were increasingly impatient with Washington's silence on the CIA's bombing raids in Pakistan and elsewhere, Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University, told a congressional panel on Tuesday. Lawyers at the US State Department and other government agencies were concerned that the administration has "not settled on what the rationales are" for the drone...

-- Airmen of the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing made history March 12 when they surpassed the 700,000 flight hour mark in the MQ-1B Predator remotely piloted aircraft. The last 200,000 Predator hours were flown in just over 12 months compared to 19 months to fly the previous 250,000 hours and 12.5 years for the first 250,000 hours. Remotely piloted aircraft are one of the highest demanded assets on today's battlefield, said Col. Peter Gersten, 432d Wing and 432d Air Expeditionary Wing commander. "Over the past year, our Predator fleet has averaged over 16,500 hours per month," Colonel Gersten said. "This...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The Boy Scouts of America call them "perversion files," internal documents used to track Scout leaders suspected of sexually abusing young boys, and they have became part of the public record in an Oregon lawsuit. A judge who had ordered the Scouts to release them received 1,247 files into evidence near the end of the day Friday - the third day of trial that began with a lawyer saying "you will be the first jury to see them." Attorneys Paul Mones and Kelly Clark won the release of files from 1965-85 to help them make the...

PARACHINAR, Pakistan — Pakistani officials say suspected U.S. drones have fired missiles at a house and nearby truck in the country's northwest near the Afghan border, killing at least four people. Local government official Sabir Khan said Wednesday's attack occurred in the Mazer Meda Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal area. Mazer Meda Khel is located some 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the main town of Miran Shah. Two Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed the details of the attack. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The identities of those...

“I’m a 38-year-old person, and my life has been riddled with drug abuse and crime directly related to what happened to me as a kid,” said Scott Kimball in his Southie accent, talking on the phone from his new home in New Hampshire. “It seems like my past somehow always becomes my future.” What happened to Kimball is that, at age 13, he was sent to Jamaica Plain’s Nazareth Child Care Center and met Brother Edward Anthony Holmes. “Brother Tony” was a child rapist who is now in prison for sexually molesting three children. Those abuse survivors include Kimball, who...

The two latest variants of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for the U.S. Army and Customs and Border Protection Service will move closer to initial deployment following the completion of key tests in California this month. Weapons tests of the Army’s MQ-1C Sky Warrior, a heavily modified derivative of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) Predator A, were successfully completed following the last live firings of nine Hellfire P+ missiles. GA-ASI Chairman and CEO Neal Blue says a post-test review identified “minor technical and desired fixes,” adding that an “ updated software release will be verification-tested in March from our...

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an integral part of today's modern armed forces and considered as the next generation Airborne Reconnaissance. US and Israel are the most prominent users of UAV technology, their companies are successful in manufacturing them and exporting it to other countries. UAVs are said as a predecessor of ‘aerial torpedoes’ built during World War-1. The UAV is an aircraft which are remotely piloted, they are mostly assigned for the Dull, Dirty and Dangerous missions. They consist of high resolution video, digital imagery and sensors. They cover large area through way point tracking which is programmed...

IRVING – Gov. Rick Perry tried to shore up his border security credentials Monday as he campaigned for re-election by calling for a Predator drone at the Texas-Mexico border and highlighting a transnational gang initiative. Perry, a Republican seeking his third full term as governor, said he has asked the Defense Department to deploy an unarmed drone to the Texas border to assist in border security and provide "real-time" data. "Why not fly them from Brownsville to El Paso?" Perry said in remarks at the Irving Police Association Hall.