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Police were called to the 1800 block of Bandera Road just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday for a reported kidnapping. A family member told police they had received a call that their 17-year-old relative had been taken. The caller demanded money and said the victim would be harmed if the relative didn’t comply.

NSA director modeled top secret war room to look like the bridge of Star Trek's Enterprise As head of the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Keith Alexander gave orders from the odd room designed with tax dollars Alexander now heads the embroiled NSA The director of one of America’s largest spy agencies is catching flack for once working from a war room built with American tax dollars to mimic a fantastical space ship. Keith Alexander heads up the National Security Agency and in addition to a lot on controversial revelations about his organization, a recent profile of the top spy...

U.S. soldiers deployed to Afghanistan are using Craigslist to meet and have sex with each other on bases across the war-torn country, leading to concerns about a breakdown in discipline overseas. Military commanders have forbade any service members who are not married to each other from having sex while deployed to the combat zone. As a result, each of the covert meetings is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The vast majority of the posts on Craigslist involve male soldiers seeking sex with other men - a practice that could have resulted in the discharge of both...

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Police said they caught a naked Iowa City man smashing out tail lights Wednesday morning. Iowa City police officers were dispatched to 714 Westwinds Dr. at 6:25 a.m. Wednesday for a report of a naked man trying to get into cars and hitting cars with a bottle. Responding officers witnessed 42-year-old Sean C. Flaherty smashing out tail lights with a glass bottle. Police took Flaherty into custody, who admitted to drinking. Flaherty had bloodshot, watery eyes and smelled strongly of alcohol, police said. A breathalyzer test showed he had a blood-alcohol content of .083 percent. Flaherty...

I live like a disabled person even though I'm physically healthy... and now want a surgeon to cut my spinal cord: Rare condition has made woman, 58, disown her legs * Chloe knew at 4 she was different and wanted to live as a disabled person * She wanted to wear leg braces like her aunt, hurt in an accident * Aged 9, she caused an accident to stop her own legs from working * Now she enjoys the excitement of downhill skiing - because she might fall * She spends most of her time in a wheelchair, but is...

The Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases. Its investigators also are probing two allegations that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted for audit candidates for public office,” the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, has privately told Sen. Chuck Grassley. In a written response to a request by Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. George said a review turned up four cases since...

LOS ANGELES -- An elderly man was terrorized on a Metro bus and it was all caught on camera. Another bus rider appears to strike the man and screams at him after the older man accidentally sat on him. The incident happened around 8 p.m. Wednesday near Wilshire Avenue and Vermont Boulevard. "I started filming it for my husband who doesn't realize all the crazy stuff that happens on the bus all the time, and then it got really intense," said Erica Rodriguez, who captured the incident on camera. Rodriguez says she's not really surprised that no one stepped in...

'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer:' Hot mic catches NSA boss praising FBI chiefs for supportive testimony on surveillance programs The director of the National Security Agency was overheard offering a round of beer to the FBI's second-in-command following Tuesday's congressional hearing on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. The three-hour hearing had just wrapped up around 1 p.m. when NSA Director Keith Alexander turned to FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and praised him for his testimony. 'Thank you, Sean,' Alexander said, according to a clip of the exchange that was first reported by Ben Doernberg. 'Tell your...

A 28-year-old woman has accused a court marshal of sexually assaulting her during a search in a courthouse witness room - and numerous court employees are accused of covering it up. Monica Contreras, from Las Vegas, is suing Clark County and its courts, claiming her civil rights were violated when marshal Ron Fox groped her when she attended for a divorce hearing in August 2011. Her two-year-old daughter was with her at the time. Judge Patricia Donninger is accused of ignoring Contreras when she complained to her about the incident and a video shows Donninger with her back turned to...

A Saudi prince is suing Forbes magazine for libel because it said he was only worth $20billion in its annual rich list instead of $30billion. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world's richest businessmen, claims the magazine underestimated his wealth by £9.6billion when it placed him at 26th in this year's list. Being listed as worth $29.6billion would have placed him in the list's top ten. Alwaleed accused Forbes of 'flawed and inaccurate, displays bias against Middle East investors and financial institutions' in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in March.

It has been reported from the Egyptian capital, Cairo, that a Libyan by the name of Karim Ahmed Essam el-Azizi, suspected by Egypt of having been involved in the September 11 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador Christopher Stevens, has himself been killed during a raid by Egyptian security forces in Cairo.

Hopes of solving 2004 murder of aspiring actress dashed after DNA 'match' at Occupy protest caused by NYPD botched evidence A mistake by an NYPD employee was to blame for the sensational DNA connection between the murder of Sarah Fox and the Occupy Wall Street movement, dashing hopes that after eight years her killer might finally be brought to justice. It was originally thought that DNA found on a padlock chain dropped during an OWS protest this year matched that discovered at the 2004 murder scene of the aspiring Julliard actress. However it is now believed that a worker at...

Have any of you heard of VOTER homes before? I suppose it is technically legal but....

I am wanting a thread for recommended health professionals and thought it would be nice. I don't see a thtead to check out and I prefer the opinion and recommendations of FReepers to that of the general public. I hope some will list their choices, as I have a few solid recommendations for the list but I am STILL searching for a good M.D./ G.P.in the San Antonio area-- I am a bit funny and particular about this (and not happy with those I've tried). Tomball

Sen. Jim DeMint is trying to stop the federal government from banning a popular over-the-counter asthma inhaler, introducing an amendment that would yank funding for the ban set to go into effect in January. The Food and Drug Administration rule would take off the shelves the epinephrine asthma inhaler known as Primatene Mist. The product is currently the only FDA-approved over-the-counter inhaler and is being banned because it uses something called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as a propellant -- the substance is considered harmful to the ozone layer.

Many Americans think badly of the government because of “gridlock” in Washington. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is not one of them. Americans “should learn to love gridlock,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “The framers (of the Constitution) would say, yes, ‘That’s exactly the way we set it up. We wanted power contradicting power (to prevent) an excess of legislation.' ''

Herman Cain's political star is lately on the rise, thanks in no small part to the persistent marketing of his '9-9-9 plan' to reform the tax code. Independent economists say the plan takes us into uncharted territory. *snip*“I can understand how a presidential candidate may want to start out and go a different way,” says John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C. “But, we have to know how we’re going to get from here to there – there are a lot of implications for this.”

I don’t know if I’ll feel compelled to say anymore about the Cain tax plan unless the candidate actually seems to have a decent chance of getting the Republican nomination, but on the way to seeing if that happens I hope people recognize how insane his tax plan is (without needing any detailed analysis).

The Obama administration is escalating its crackdown on tough immigration laws, with lawyers reviewing four new state statutes to determine whether the federal government will take the extraordinary step of challenging the measures in court.

U.S. troops are losing confidence in the military's long-term chances of success in Afghanistan, a new poll has revealed. The Military Times survey found less than half of serving soldiers believe the U.S. is 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' to succeed in Afghanistan. The number is down from 2007, when more than 75 percent of those polled said the U.S. was 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' to succeed. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038887/Under-50-U-S-troops-believe-Afghanistan-winnable.html#ixzz1YN2SeV1W