Free Republic

<p>A thug armed with a pellet gun fired at a jogger in Central Park late Monday and is now being sought by police. The victim, 36, told police she was jogging near midnight in the far southern end of the park, on the West Drive near West 60th Street, when a pellet hit her in the back of the head. She turned and saw a group of five people — three men and two women — “laughing and making anti-white statements,” the police said.</p>

My uncle Robert Kuhle, 95, died yesterday in Huntington Beach, CA. He was a kind, unassuming man, who derived his greatest pleasure in being around children. After WWII, he became an elementary school teacher in Southern CA, and all his students followed him like following the pied piper. He was even invited to weddings of his former elementary school students. In WWII, he was a carrier pilot on the USS Wake Island, an escort carrier, piloting the Grumman TBF Avenger, in the South Pacific. He related one story, in sadness, of being in the takeoff row, and the Avenger taking...

The United States was said to be considering air strikes aimed at eliminating individual leaders of Islamic State as Turkey came under mounting pressure to stem the flow of jihadists across its border into Syria. As Washington debated extending air strikes into Syria on Saturday, senior British politicians urged Ankara to act to block recruits from the UK and other countries from entering Syria via Turkey, en route to joining Islamic State (formerly Isis). This weekend large numbers of Isis jihadists were trying to secure greater control of the border area, pushing northwards in armoured trucks looted from abandoned Iraqi...

The United Nations special representative for Iraq has called on the international community to take immediate action to avoid a massacre of civilians in town besieged by Islamic State (Isis) forces. Nickolay Mladenov said he was "seriously alarmed" by reports that the people living in the northern Iraqi town of Amerli had no food or water as the two-month siege continues. He said: "The situation of the people in Amerli is desperate and demands immediate action to prevent the possible massacre of its citizens. The town is besieged by [Isis] and reports confirm that people are surviving in desperate conditions."...

Dr. Sandeep Jauhar is mad as hell. American health care is in upheaval. On one side, overhead and malpractice insurance costs keep increasing, while salaries stagnate. On the other, patients believe that expensive drugs are better, more people are on government-run insurance that pays less, while private insurance fights every claim. Now doctors spend most of their time trying to game the system, requiring endless paperwork, protracted bureaucratic battles and “treadmill medicine,” seeing as many patients as possible in as little time. This problem will only intensify as millions join the ranks of the insured under the Affordable Care Act.

<p>Original Title:Florida professor: Obama an 'apostle' sent to create 'heaven here on earth'</p> <p>According to a book written by longtime Florida A&M University professor Barbara A. Thompson, Barack Obama is no mere mortal. He is, as she wrote, "Apostle Barack," sent to create a “heaven here on earth,” a post at PJ Tatler said Monday.</p>

The European Space Agency (Esa) says the latest two satellites for Europe's version of the American GPS satellite navigation system have not gone into the correct orbit.

The headline couldn’t be missed. The Huffington Post could not be any plainer if Arianna Huffington herself were walking down the main street of Ferguson at the head of a screaming mob swinging a noose. The liberal online web site wanted Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson arrested - pronto - and damn any investigation into the facts of the case - aka the truth - surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown.

The US military has yet to offer Pte First Class Chelsea Manning sex change treatment despite medical recommendations, her lawyer has said. Defence secretary Chuck Hagel approved treatment for a condition known as gender dysphoria in July. But lawyer David Coombs says her requests for hormone therapy and other accommodations have been "ignored". The soldier formerly known as Bradley Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking secret files to Wikileaks. "This time last year I publicly asked that I be provided with a treatment plan, to bring my body more in line with my gender identity," Pte Manning said...

MILLS, Wyo. A Wyoming police officer has pleaded not guilty to an animal-cruelty charge that alleges a police dog died after he left it in a hot patrol car for several hours. According to an investigator's statement filed in Natrona County Circuit Court, Mills police officer Zachary Miller left the dog, a 10-year-old female black lab named Nyx, in his patrol car for over six hours July 9. "It's a tragedy," Mills Mayor Marrolyce Wilson said. The car was running, but the air conditioning was off and outside temperatures reached 86 degrees, KCWY News 13 reported (http://bit.ly/1tAzzhs). Miller, a four-year...

"The owner of the Aurora movie theater that was the site of a deadly 2012 attack could have reasonably enough foreseen the danger of such an attack to be held liable for it, a federal judge ruled Friday." "Noting “the grim history of mass shootings and mass killings that have occurred in more recent times,” U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled that Cinemark — owner of the Century Aurora 16 theater — could have predicted that movie patrons might be targeted for an attack. Jackson’s ruling allows 20 lawsuits filed by survivors of the attack or relatives of...

ISTANBUL — For the last 12 days, the predominantly black St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri has been the site of racially charged civil unrest that came after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot to death by a white police officer. Another unarmed black man named Kajieme Powell was also shot by a white police officer a total of 12 times and killed. These two police shootings point to the issue of racial injustice in America. It has also exposed the reality of an American society sharply divided over race. It is possible that if Michael Brown had...

Two unidentified airstrikes targeting Islamist militia positions in Libya's capital killed 15 fighters and wounded 30 on Saturday. A senior militia leader accused Egypt and the United Arab Emirates of being behind the attacks on their posts. The mysterious airstrikes Saturday were the second this week to target Islamist militia posts in the capital. They have fueled speculation that foreign powers are covertly intervening in Libya's militia violence because Libya's air force does not possess the guided ordinance apparently used in the strikes, while the country's army is reeling from weeks of intense fighting driven by polarized politics. The violence...

Sunni politicians in Iraq have suspended talks to form a new government, in protest of a mass killing inside a mosque in the northeastern province of Diyala. In a statement on Saturday, Salim al-Jabouri, speaker of the Iraqi parliament, denounced as "terrorists" the Shia armed group suspected of killing at least 73 people inside a Sunni mosque.... Jabouri and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak are demanding that outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the main Shia parliamentary bloc hand over the perpetrators within 48 hours and compensate the families of victims, the AP news agency reported. [....] The attack on...

WILKES-BARRE, Pa., Aug. 22 (UPI) -- A stolen life-sized statue of United States President Barack Obama was has been returned to its Northern Pennsylvania owner after being discovered on a nearby picnic bench with an empty six-pack of Twisted Tea and a cigarette butt hanging from its mouth.The statue was a staple of the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., neighborhood it was stolen from, where owner Tiffany Bruce prominently displayed it on her porch and decorated it for holidays."I peeked my head out the door and Obama's gone and I kind of went into a panic," described a distressed Bruce when the statue...

LANCASTER (CBSLA.com) — Authorities say a man has died in an apparent bow-and-arrow attack in Lancaster. Lancaster Sheriff’s deputies responded to the 43000 block of 27th West around 3:30 a.m. Saturday. When they arrived on scene, they found the victim with an arrow wound to the upper torso. The victim was taken to an area hospital in critical condition but died hours later. Authorities said the incident is now being investigated as a homicide. One person has been taken into custody. It’s unclear what relationship existed between the suspect and victim. No further information was available.

In the wake of the recent beheading of a US journalist by a suspected British Islamic State militant in Iraq, the UK is planning a tougher law to tackle threat of Islamist terrorism in the country which includes stripping citizenship of naturalised Britons who are fighting overseas. It will also have new orders for banning extremist groups that fall short of the legal threshold for terrorist proscription. UK Home Secretary Theresa May, in an article for the 'Daily Telegraph', wrote, "People who insist on travelling to fight in Syria and Iraq will be investigated by the police and security services....

Crazy publicity stunt or stroke of daring genius? We're not sure, but it got our attention. The man pictured above is Alex Bellini, a professional adventurer and motivational speaker who plans to live alone on a melting iceberg off the coast of Greenland for one year, to emphasize the urgent need for climate change action. This bold one-man campaign comes at a time when a chorus of scientists, organizations and policymakers continue to warn about the accelerating loss of Arctic ice. Thus, extreme circumstances seem to call for extreme measures, but for this former finance student from northern Italy who...

Last month, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) proposed the SWEET Act, an excise tax on sweetened beverages. The tax, which has been billed as a national soda tax, would lay a one-cent duty on every teaspoon of sugar in soft drinks and other beverages. The proposal is intended "to curb obesity, diabetes, and the resulting health care costs." Why is this a good idea? “When a two-liter cola is 99 cents and blueberries are over three dollars, something has gone very wrong,” DeLauro told attendees. For the record, a pint of blueberries contains more than 40g of sugar. That’s about as...

A statement shown on screen on An-Nabaa television, regarded as close to the Islamists, said: "Fajr Libya announces that it totally controls Tripoli international airport." Earlier on Saturday, leaders of the Islamist coalition, partly comprising men from Misrata, east of Tripoli, said their forces were advancing on the airport, having taken a bridge and a military base. The strategic site 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the Libyan capital, has been shut since July 13 amid skirmishes between the Islamists and the Zintan force, allies of rogue general Khalifa Haftar, based at Benghazi in eastern Libya and hostile to the...