Free Republic

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A Florida man is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State extremist group, including attempting to buy multiple weapons and scouting potential targets for an attack in the Tampa Bay area, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. A criminal complaint charges Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charge carries a potential 20-year prison term. **SNIP** According to the affidavit, Al-Azhari scouted a number of targets in the Tampa Bay region, including beaches, parks and even the Tampa FBI field...

The city of Dunedin, Florida, wants Jim Ficken's home.Ficken's mom died, so he went to South Carolina to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to look after his house.But then the friend died, and no one cut Ficken's grass. When it grew to 10 inches, Dunedin officials started fining him $500 a day.The fine is now about $30,000."I was shocked," Ficken says in my latest video. City officials say they will foreclose on his home if he doesn't pay the fine, and Ficken doesn't have that much money."Do you have $30,000 lying around?!" he asked me."The city...

It all started innocently enough. Last summer, Jim Ficken left his modest home in Dunedin, Florida, for Columbia, South Carolina, to tend to his late mother’s estate. He asked a friend and local handyman to keep an eye on his lawn, lest it grow too long in his absence. After Jim left, sadly, his friend died unexpectedly. And, left unattended, Jim’s grass did what grass in Florida does during the summer: It grew. The city’s code enforcement department noticed. Labeling Jim a “repeat violator” because he’d once let his grass grow too long some four years earlier, the city began...

A teenager tried to kill Queen Elizabeth II during a visit to New Zealand in 1981, declassified official documents confirm. Christopher Lewis, 17, fired a shot as the Queen toured the city of Dunedin, New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service (SIS) said. Police had said at the time that the gunshot sound had been caused by a sign falling over, local media report. A former police officer and local media have suggested a cover-up took place. New Zealand feared future royal tours could be cancelled, it is claimed. The royal parade took place in Dunedin on 14 October 1981. Police and...

On the corner of Patricia Avenue and San Salvador Drive in a Dunedin, Fla., neighborhood, 12-year-old T.J. Guerrero operates a lemonade stand to raise money for summer activities with his friends and family.His stand is usually open in the afternoon, and customers line up to sample his lemonade and baked goods. “I tried the strawberry before and it’s perfect,” one customer commented, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “That’s what it’s about. He’s willing to work.”Hard work and business skills are the lessons learned in this venture. “It’s all about profit,” T.J. noted. He operates his stand with a little...

Picture Emerges of Teen Suicide Pilot CHARLES BISHOP: To some, he was a smart, humorous student, which makes his suicide flight all the more incomprehensible. By CURTIS KRUEGER, KATHERINE GAZELLA and ED QUIOCO © St. Petersburg Times published January 8, 2002 ----------- Charles Bishop was a teacher's dream. He read Shakespeare in class, pulled together a middle school literary magazine and enjoyed a good game of flag football. Friends and family members who knew him best described Charles as a patriot. The teen who flew an airplane into the Bank of America building, carrying a note sympathizing with Osama bin...

Wellington - New Zealand authorities are baffled by a mystery cache of machine guns, bullets, grenades and mortar bombs found in a shipping container from China in the South Island port of Dunedin, according to news reports on Wednesday.

A Dunedin woman complained of flu-like symptoms not long before her 12-year-old daughter heard a thump and found her dead on the floor of their home. Julie Millan died suddenly last Friday at her home in the central Dunedin suburb of Mornington from what is thought to have been a pulmonary haemorrhage - bleeding in the lungs. The 46-year-old housewife's death is similar to that of two other west Dunedin residents who died this month with unexplained lung haemorrhages. But deadly coincidence is considered the most likely explanation for the sudden cluster of mystery deaths. The three were unknown to...

Hospitals have been placed on high alert over a mystery disease that has killed three people. Two died within an hour of collapsing. Health authorities said last night that they were startled at the sudden deaths of two women and a man in Dunedin and were "very concerned" that the disease killed so quickly. They issued a nationwide alert, mostly to warn hospitals to watch out for symptoms but also to find out whether the disease had spread beyond Dunedin. At a press conference last night, they ruled out Sars as a cause but said they had no idea what...