Free Republic

Two career criminals – one an ex-con and high-risk sex offender who served time for rape – were charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting an off-duty NYPD cop while apparently trying to swipe his neon green BMW his Queens over the weekend, police said Monday. Denzel Brown, 29, and Marvin Dankwah, 26, also face charges of first-degree robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in the 6:30 a.m. Sunday violence that left the 25-year-old officer with a graze wound on his leg, according to authorities and sources. Investigators are probing whether the arrested pair were attempting to carjack the...

The FBI thwarted an apparent plot to harm employees at a Florida office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to court documents filed Monday. Law enforcement arrested Forrest Kendall Pemberton after he allegedly traveled to Plantation, Fla., in search of AIPAC’s office with several firearms, including an AR-15 rifle. Pemberton told police he went to the site, a former AIPAC office, to “scout” out the location before returning with the firearms, according to an affidavit signed by FBI special agent Taylor Nicklin. He was intercepted in a ride-share vehicle carrying the guns on Dec. 25, the first...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Almost three years ago, Sajjad Khan used to buy supplies for the Pakistani Taliban with U.S. dollars that he says came from al-Qaida. Now he realizes what al-Qaida is getting in exchange. Khan's 13-year-old nephew has been pulled from a madrassa to train as a suicide bomber, and Khan fears he himself might be killed for begging the boy not to go. "The Taliban come in secret and take them for training from the madrassa," said Khan, a burly, black-bearded Pashtun, holding a picture of his young nephew. "They go to the Taliban but they get their...

He seemed to abandon the fight in the last year.CLEARWATER - Shawn Lonsdale, whose one-man crusade against Scientology made him a public enemy of the church, was found dead at his home over the weekend in an apparent suicide. He was 39. Police discovered Lonsdale's body at 12:20 p.m. Saturday after neighbors reported a foul odor. They found a garden hose stretched from the exhaust pipe of Lonsdale's car into a window of his home at 510 N Lincoln Ave., according to Clearwater police spokeswoman Elizabeth Daly-Watts. Daly-Watts said there were no signs of foul play, and police found...

SHASTA LAKE, Calif. (AP) - An autopsy of a college student found dead at Lake Shasta last week indicates that she hanged herself, Shasta County Sheriff Jim Pope said Monday. Gina Zalunardo, 22, of Redmond, Ore., apparently committed suicide after she disappeared May 7 following an argument with her boyfriend at Slaughterhouse Island on Lake Shasta, Pope said. "The evidence from the scene was the indication of that," Pope said. Toxicology reports are pending. Zalunardo, a junior at Oregon State University, was staying on a houseboat with members of her sorority over the Mother's Day weekend. The boat, which was...

Marine commanders in Iraq are investigating an incident in which a Marine apparently shot and killed a severely wounded and unarmed Iraqi in a mosque in Fallujah, a Pentagon official said last night. Images of the incident, captured Saturday on videotape by Kevin Sites, a freelance correspondent working for NBC News who is embedded with a Marine unit, were broadcast last night on several news networks. The videotape shows a squad of Marines entering the building and seeing several Iraqis lying against a wall, either dead or gravely wounded. One Marine shouts something about one Iraqi feigning death. The Marine...