Free Republic

CATAWBA COUNTY, N.C. -- The Catawba County Sheriff’s Office said a business owner shot and killed a suspected robber, and hurt another one. Deputies said it happened at 3:15 a.m. Saturday. Randy Willis, owner of Willis Packaging on Highway 10, went to his store because the alarm was going off. When Willis got there, deputies said he saw a man coming out of his store with a shotgun. Willis and the robber struggled, and deputies said Willis pulled out a pistol and shot the robber, killing him. Deputies said another robber, 52-year-old Arnold Ray Jr., had broken into the store....

Stacey Korn arrives just before 10 a.m. to unlock her shop on Northwest 23rd Avenue. She hoists orange molded plastic benches from the back and places them outside under the windows. Then she sets up her sidewalk sign: "Shop 'Hello' -- nifty gifts for the whole family," it says. "Patronizing us is like flirting with a wealthy widow. You can't overdo it." Korn needs her sense of humor now more than ever. As the economy slumps, sales at her Hello Portland store at 525 N.W. 23rd Ave. are half what they were soon after opening in late 2005. Her family...

Gunman kills five women in Chicago store By Tim Shipman in Chicago Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 03/02/2008 Five people were shot dead at a women's clothing store in a Chicago suburb on Saturday. Police evacuated the mall and sealed off the car park after at least five shots were fired The victims, all women, were killed inside the Lane Bryant store at Brookside Marketplace shopping centre at Tinley Park, south of Chicago. Police evacuated the mall and sealed off the car park after at least five shots were fired shortly before noon. It is thought that the shooting occurred after...

Consumer electronics retailer CompUSA says it will close its stores after the holidays. CompUSA closed more than half its stores this spring.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- A pet store employee was recovering, Thursday morning, from a rattlesnake bite. Store surveillance video showed the man cleaning a western diamondback rattlesnake's cage Wednesday in Hollywood. But, when he tried to move the snake to another cage, it lashed out and bit his hand. The Florida snake handler was rushed to a Miami-Dade hospital that specializes in snake antivenin. Experts said the rattlesnake bite probably wasn't a feeding response, otherwise the attack caught on tape could have been much worse. The Strictly Reptiles Company breeds snakes and other reptiles. Employee Tony Cruz was cleaning the cage...

Teacher declares doll hanging from noose in Watchung is racist: WATCHUNG — The owner of a Halloween costume store here said a window display depicting a man hanging from a noose will be removed after a Scotch Plains woman complained, saying it was appalling and racist. Delores Jackson, a fifth-grade teacher at the Charles H. Skillman Elementary School in Plainfield, said the display she saw Sunday in the window at the Halloween Scene store in the Blue Star Shopping Center on Route 22 West depicted a stuffed doll resembling a black man, wearing a labor suit and hanging from a...

Some of the newest players in health care are rubbing doctors the wrong way. You may know them: those small clinics at your neighborhood Wal-Mart, Target or CVS that promise quick attention for routine visits -- sore throats, minor aches and pains, flu shots -- with no appointments needed. The clinics, which go by such names as MinuteClinic, RediClinic, QuickClinic, Medpoint Express, Curaquick and MediMin, offer convenience and low price -- scarce commodities in today's medical marketplace. But while consumers are taking to the concept, physician resistance is building. ...Not that many are convinced this trend is good for patients....

Left behind by Netflix, DVDs, and on-demand cable service, outlets are dying off; popcorn, tanning salons keep some alive If it were an old Western movie, this would be the faded boomtown. It's silent save for the buzz of fluorescent lighting and the familiar "swish-clunk" of DVDs slipping through an outside drop-box. A smattering of customers -- one, maybe two at a time -- stroll in, getting lost in tall stacks filled with dusty gems such as "Divine Trash" and "Cactus Flower." One elderly gentleman passes through a door in the back to a beyond not suitable for children. At...

FORT EDWARD, N.Y. - This history-rich Hudson River community has yielded a museum's worth of 18th-century military artifacts over the decades, from musket balls to human skeletons. But a colonial soldier's daily lot wasn't all fighting and bloodshed. They had their share of down time, and that's where the sutler came in, offering for sale two of the few diversions from frontier duty: alcohol and tobacco. A five-year-long archaeological project has unearthed the 250-year-old site of a merchant's establishment that sold wine, rum, tobacco and other goods to the thousands of soldiers who passed through this region during the French...

(06.09.06) — Fires were intentionally set inside two Wal-Mart stores late Thursday, Glendale fire investigators said Friday. Both stores were evacuated after the flames broke out, and six people were treated for smoke inhalation, with two taken to local hospitals. Fire officials said damages were estimated at $5 million, mostly from smoke and water damage. One of the stores was to remain closed until Monday. The first fire started about 10 p.m. in the rear of a Wal-Mart in Glendale and forced about 120 people to evacuate, Deputy Fire Chief Elio Pompa said. A second fire broke out about an...

A store that sells new husbands has just opened in New York City,where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch: you may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building! So, a woman goes to the Husband...

Man busted for threatening to kill retail shop worker over store's music KAWAGOE, Saitama -- A man has been arrested for threatening to kill an employee of a retail shop here unless it changed the background music it played at the store, police said. Tetsuya Hoshino, 34, a resident of the Saitama Prefecture city of Hidaka, denied he had intended to kill anyone. "I wasn't serious about it," he was quoted as telling investigators. Hoshino put a letter in the store's suggestion box on May 14 threatening to kill an employee unless it changed the background music the store played,...

USA Citizens Day - July 1st Immigration Control Rally Nationwide Rally on Saturday, July 1st, at noon, at your City HallMay 1st - Million of Illegal Aliens Marched in our StreetsTwelve million illegal aliens demonstrated their political power, and declared May 1st to be A Day Without Undocumented Workers ( illegal aliens ). They boycotted the USA, all US businesses and institutions. Millions of them marched in our streets, carried Mexican flags, shouted "Si se puede!", and demanded new laws from our Congress. July 1st - U.S. Citizens Nationwide Rally for Immigration ControlRally to stop our continuous invasion by...

Maine storekeepers say customers fuming about high cigarette tax By GLENN ADAMS Associated Press Writer HALLOWELL, Maine (AP) -- Taking time out to tend to customers who drift into his tobacco shop on a sunny Monday morning, owner Tom Allen showed little worry about the doubling of Maine's cigarette tax to $2 that just took effect. "There's no impact on me whatsoever. If anything, it will help because people will stop buying packs and make their own," said Allen, whose Kennebec Tobacco Co. sells bags of loose rolling tobacco as a sideline to its main products, cigars and pipe products....

A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles.Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97--a year's supply of pickles for less than $3! "They were using it as a 'statement' item,"...

Spurred by new laws restricting the sales of cold remedies such as Sudafed, which contain pseudoephedrine, a necessary component of popular meth-cooking recipes, police and prosecutors across the country have been arresting convenience store clerks -- sometimes on charges that carry substantial prison sentences. In one Georgia case, authorities made mass arrests of immigrant store clerks and owners, but it's starting to look less like a criminal conspiracy and more like culturally naive foreign-born merchants simply trying to sell their merchandise. It's all a big waste of money, says the Drug Policy Alliance, which issued a press release this week...

MICHIGANTOWN, Indiana (AP) -- An Indiana pet store owner says he sees the image of Satan on the shell of a turtle that was the only survivor of a store fire in October. The palm-sized red-eared slider turtle, named Lucky, was the only animal to survive the fire at Dora's A-Dora-ble Pet Shop in nearby Frankfort, about 40 miles northwest of Indianapolis. Owner Bryan Dora now says he sees Satan's face on the critter's shell. He can spot lips, eyes, a goatee, shoulders and a pair of pointy horns on Lucky's back.

EULESS - A robbery suspect was caught after leaving his wallet on the store counter -- and then going to the police station to pick it up. ADVERTISEMENT Joseph Fahnbulleh, 22, of Arlington, remained in the Euless City Jail with bail set at $30,000. He faces a robbery charge. A few days after the robbery, he walked into the Euless police station to pick up his wallet after a detective called to tell him someone had found it. "Once we had the wallet, we called him to say it had been turned in to our lost and found," Euless police...

This Thanksgiving my son and daughter in law gave us a surprise present--a sonogram of our grandchild to be. Suddenly, the urge to knit was triggered. I love to do it but haven't for some years, after I'd made dozens of coats and sweaters for every man, woman and child of my acquaintance. A frenzied search through the house for saved patterns, yarns, and knitting tools ensued, as well as a search for yet more. (Perhaps you have to be a knitter to understand, but no matter the size of the stash, there's always need for more.) After ordering the...

MUSCATINE, Iowa - Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) accused the Bush administration on Thursday of ignoring problems ranging from scarce flu vaccine to the war in Iraq (news - web sites) while officials campaign in battleground states and asked, "Who's minding the store?" Edwards, speaking in a high school gymnasium during a bus tour of eastern Iowa, cited national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans as examples of Bush officials who are campaigning while pressing issues remain...