Free Republic

He turned me down. By the time I asked for an interview, Albuquerque police officer Chris Poccia had already been all over the media – in our newspaper, on TV news and talk radio locally and nationally and in every imaginable way on social media. The Albuquerque Police Department put him in the public eye almost from the moment he became the center of the city's best happy-ending story in weeks, maybe months, maybe longer than that. Poccia had been the one to find a little bundle of purple named Caraline Leon-Alcocar, a 3-year-old girl who for five hours Saturday...

This video was filmed in 2012 after the tugboat Miss Stacy became pinned broadside against a construction barge at the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, N.H.. According to onlookers, the Miss Stacey was pinned for about 20 minutes before the larger tug Eugene Moran arrived and was able pull it to safety.

MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) – Somali Islamist militants sprayed a Kenyan bus with bullets on Monday, killing two people, but a passenger said he and fellow Muslims defied demands from the attackers to help identify Christians traveling with them. The attack took place in Mandera, in northeast Kenya. A year ago, al Shabaab gunmen stormed a Nairobi-bound bus in the same area and killed 28 non-Muslim passengers execution-style. Abdi Mohamud Abdi, a Muslim who was among the passengers in Monday’s incident, told Reuters that more than 10 al Shabaab militants boarded the bus and ordered the Muslim passengers to split away...

A group of Kenyan Muslims travelling on a bus ambushed by Islamist gunmen protected Christian passengers by refusing to be split into groups, according to eyewitnesses. They told the militants "to kill them together or leave them alone", a local governor told Kenyan media. At least two people were killed in the attack, near the north-eastern village of El Wak on the Somali border. The Somali based al-Shabab group says it carried out the attack.

One member of a US special operations team was killed during an operation to rescue hostages held by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, the first American killed in ground combat with the militant group, US officials said on Thursday. Hostages were successfully rescued during the operation, a US official told Reuters. CNN said about 70 Kurdish hostages were freed. A US official confirmed to Reuters that one American was killed. No further information was available on the mission, which local residents and a Kurdish military commander said was carried out in the Hawija area in northern Iraq. One member...

Alex Dennison and Ashley Lewis should have listened to people. The Australian couple adopted their German Shepherd, Nasra, when she was eight weeks old. The pair were frequently stopped on the street by strangers who complimented the beautiful canine while telling them that, based on the size of her paws and head, she was going to be a big girl. Dennison and Lewis usually laughed off the warnings. They did, however, create a growth chart by photographing Nasra every month. In the series, the first image starts with Lewis comfortably cradling Nasra to the latest image where the dog is...

A 13-year-old put his Boy Scout training to the test and helped rescue his father after he was hit by a refrigerator-sized boulder during a backpacking trip in Idaho last Monday. A week into what was supposed to be a 12-day trip at Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, a large boulder fell on David Finlayson, 52, knocking him down 20 or 30 feet, NBC affiliate KTVB reported. The elder Finlayson broke his left arm and leg. He also started to lose blood because of gash in his shin. “At first I was freaking out a little bit, but after...

A 10-year-old boy who disappeared while hiking with family in eastern Utah has been found alive more than 24 hours after he got lost while looking for mushrooms near a remote mountain lake, the child's aunt said Monday. Police say that Malachi Bradley got lost near a remote mountain lake near the Wyoming border Sunday morning. His aunt Lehua Estrada-Brown said she got a text from her husband at the scene saying the boy was found Monday afternoon in good shape. "We are so relieved and happy," she said. Malachi Bradley survived in the remote, rugged area as temperatures dipped...

The woman, 70, was hoisted in a large yellow net by FDNY paramedics from her Fifth Avenue home and rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital, where she was listed in stable condition. “Firemen came down and measured the elevator door,” the building doorman said. “She would not have been able to get out of the door.”

Freelance camera operator Harrisen Howes lost a small camera drone two months ago after his roommate “drunkenly” crashed it onto a neighbors roof high overhead. After recently purchasing a larger, camera-equipped drone, Howes decided to try and rescue his old drone with his new one using some rope and hooks fashioned from coat hangers.

A teenager has survived after falling 100ft off a cliff then being bitten by a venomous snake at the bottom. Brock Leach, 14, tumbled over a cliff edge and bounced off outcroppings and rocks during his descent - before landing on a ledge. But as he tried to clamber to safety before the tide came in Brock suddenly felt a sharp pain in the hand he'd been using to help pull himself along. He was horrified to discover he had been bitten by an adder - the only native venomous snake in the UK. The fall was witnessed by his...

Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died on Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106. The Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which Mr. Winton was a former president, announced his death on its website. He lived in Maidenhead, west of London. It was only after Mr. Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in the attic of their home in 1988 — a dusty record of...

Two grade school boys who rescued a toddler and a baby from a fire say they didn’t think twice about going into a burning home. Ten-year-old Isiah Francis and 11-year-old Jeremiah Grimes say they were watching YouTube and playing video games Tuesday when they smelled smoke coming from the home of Jeremiah’s neighbors. Isiah said Wednesday that he ran next door first

A 70-year-old man sailing alone across the Pacific Ocean was rescued by a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier returning home to San Diego. USS Carl Vinson rescued the man Sunday from his 35-foot sailboat, 400 nautical miles from Hawaii. Using a satellite phone, the man sent a text to his wife asking for help. That message was relayed through the U.S. Coast Guard, Pacific Fleet Command and the U.S. 3rd fleet. The sailor, who had spent a month on his boat, was airlifted by the crew of a MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter including two search and rescue swimmers. Once the...

U.S. military aircraft and personnel were due to begin helping ferry relief supplies to stricken areas outside the capital, a U.S. Marines spokeswoman said, after arriving in Nepal on Sunday, a day later than expected.

“It hurt my heart because they were helpless," the teenager told NBC 7.A San Diego teenager was one of the first to jump in and help a couple trapped and in shock following in a hit-and-run crash in Loma Portal Saturday. “It hurt my heart because they were helpless and didn’t know what to do," said 18-year-old Nida Wongsri. Wongsri told NBC 7 she first spotted the couple's minivan near the intersection of Chatsworth Boulevard and Elliot Street Saturday night, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department said. The minivan crashed on its side and the couple inside - described by police...

An officer who found an abandoned newborn in a garbage dumpster has been reunited with the now 25-year-old man he helped save. Santa Ana police officer Michael Buelna and Robin Barton recently met in an emotional reunion, KABC-TV reported (http://abc7ne.ws/1QwNdzt ). "I hoped that someday I would see him again," Buelna said. Buelna was on duty in November 1989 when he heard a faint sound coming from a trash bin. Buelna started shifting through the trash and discovered a baby, his umbilical cord still attached. The child was just four hours old and weighed 4 pounds, 2 ounces. "He still...

For those in the DC area, there is the annual ceremony for the rescue attempt fallen this Saturday at noon time in Arlington National Cemetery head to the tomb of the unknown soldier, it is right in front of the rotunda

Louis Jordan, who's 37, apparently survived on raw fish and rainwater and was found 200 miles off the North Carolina coast. A passing German container ship spotted him sitting on the hull of his ship, which had overturned.

The U.S. Air Force and Navy rescued two Saudi pilots Friday after they ejected from their F-15 fighter over the Gulf of Aden during combat operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Saudi jet apparently suffered some mechanical problem forcing the pilots to eject. A U.S. Air Force Pave Hawk special operations helicopter and crew were dispatched from Djibouti to rescue the Saudi pilots.