Free Republic

BUFFALO, N.Y. — New York law enforcement won't be releasing as many mugshots from now on. A new law requires that many mugshots be withheld from public distribution. This comes after third party websites take and post the pictures online and then demand money if the person in the photo wants it to be taken down. One possible exception to the rule will be when releasing the photo is important for public safety. "Effective immediately, New York State Police will not include mugshots in press releases, and they will not be provided to media when requested. This is due to...

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. (7News) — In a letter obtained by 7News, Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney Buta Biberaj said she will no longer prosecute certain misdemeanor charges. The move is being made to focus resources on prosecuting violent crimes, Biberaj said. The charges that will no longer be prosecuted include: Hit and run with property damage Eluding police Reckless driving for speeding under 90 miles per hour Trespassing Petty larceny Drunk in public Underage possession of alcohol Noise complaints Failure to appear You can read the letter below: "Greetings Judges: I would like to have the opportunity to present to you...

Ned Sharpless, the director of the National Cancer Institute, is stepping down at the end of April, he told STAT. Sharpless, 55, spent nearly five years leading the roughly $7 billion biomedical research agency, which is the largest of the 27 institutes that compose the National Institutes of Health. “I strongly support what this [administration] is doing to support cancer research, but it’s time for me to step aside,” he wrote in a text message. A former professor of medicine at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Sharpless spent four years as director of UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center....

Maria Quiroz Became A U.S. Citizen In October, But Now The Documents To Prove It Are Missing In The USPS System The pandemic delayed Maria Quiroz’s becoming a U.S. citizen, and then the U.S. Postal Service lost the documents she needs to prove she has done so. For months, we have investigated missing mail and mail delays. On Thursday night CBS 2’s Tara Molina looked into internal issues at USPS – with Quiroz’s passport documentation stuck in a distribution facility for more than a month.

A Texas high school football player has been charged with assault one day after attacking a referee during a game. Edinburg High School senior Emmanuel Duron was booked into jail Friday morning and charged with "assault causing bodily injury," according to Hidalgo County jail records. Duron, 18, posted a $10,000 bond on Friday evening and was expected to be released. The incident happened during the second quarter of Edinburg’s 35-21 victory over Pharr-San Juan-Alamo. Duron received one personal foul penalty for roughing the opposing quarterback and another after an apparent exchange of words with the referee. After referee Fred Gracia...

Campbell County is a First Amendment Sanctuary, according to a resolution the Board of Supervisors (BOS) unanimously passed at a regular meeting on Tuesday. “No Campbell County funds will be used to restrict the First Amendment,” the resolution states. “[No] County funds shall be expended to aid federal or state agencies in the restriction of said rights,” the resolution adds. The document is a version of a no-shutdown resolution similar to one authored by the Virginia Constitutional Conservatives (VCC). However, the Campbell resolution has removed language requiring local authorities to arrest state authorities enforcing Governor Ralph Northam’s executive orders mandating...

If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

On Friday, New York City's health department sent out a health alert to thousands of physicians instructing them to only test for COVID-19 in patients that require hospitalization. The advisory said: "Persons with COVID-like illness not requiring hospitalization should be instructed to stay home. It is safer for the patients and health care workers and testing does not currently change clinical management or recommendations about staying home." The advisory suggested the only justification for alternate testing venues would be for hospital systems trying to offload testing activities so they do not put too much stress on emergency departments. Aside from...

When she was raped at gunpoint at the Alexandria, Va., pool where she worked in 2016, the 24-year-old lifeguard could describe her attacker only as a thin man she believed was 35 to 40 years old and a little over 6 feet tall. Three years later, police arrested Jesse Bjerke, after having DNA from the attack analyzed by genealogy researchers who used public databases to link the sample to people in Bjerke’s family — an increasingly common tool for cracking unsolved crimes. Bjerke is also under investigation for a similar rape at a pool in Fairfax County in 2015, according...

UPDATE Jan. 18, 2019, 6:30 a.m.: The U.S. Army Sergeant who told Texas state troopers at the scene of a highway wreck that he had saved a crash victim with a Saints hoodie and a ballpoint pen apparently made the story up, the Army Times is now reporting. <snip> According to Army Times, Lt. Bryan Witt of the Texas Department of Public Safety also said they couldn’t find “any evidence through our investigation that his story was accurate about the first aid he talked about.” <snip> Troney had just completed a rotation at the Army’s National Training Center in Fort...

Four male write-in candidates who emerged after state Senator Stanley Rosenberg resigned last month are being called sexist for running against a woman who is the only candidate appearing on the Democratic primary ballot. Rosenberg resigned May 4, after the deadline for getting on the ballot had passed. But five write-in candidates have emerged, and four of them are men. One left-wing observer says white men shouldn’t be challenging activist Chelsea Kline, who challenged Rosenberg in the Democratic primary before the filing deadline and is therefore now the only candidate on the ballot. “If you are committed to this progressive...

A stampede on a footbridge at a Mumbai railway station has left 22 people dead and injured more than 30, Indian officials report. The tragedy occurred during the morning rush hour at Elphinstone station, which connects two major local lines. It was triggered by overcrowding and people seeking shelter from monsoon rains, the officials said. The injured have been taken to a nearby hospital and senior railway officials are at the scene. What happened? "The incident occurred as heavy rains lashed Mumbai and passengers took refuge on the foot overbridge. People at the front slipped and the huge crowd toppled...

The city of Alexandria, Va., is stonewalling an investigation into voter rolls in the city that could have illegally registered voters. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an Indiana-based law firm that litigates to protect election integrity, filed a lawsuit in April against the city of Alexandria on behalf of the Virginia Voters Alliance, a group dedicated to improving election laws. The groups contended that voter rolls in Alexandria have for years contained more registrants than people of voting age in the city. In January, PILF sent a statutory notice letter to Anna J. Leider, the general registrar of Alexandria, warning...

ABC News has confirmed the United States deployed 40 additional troops to protect the embassy in Juba, South Sudan on Tuesday amid the deteriorating security situation there. Clashes that erupted last week have so far killed nearly 300 people, including several dozen civilians, before a ceasefire took effect on Tuesday. "We brought in a small contingent of U.S. military forces," U.S. Ambassador Molly Phee said in an interview with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. "They are here to protect the embassy and to help us provide support for those Americans who want to depart from South Sudan at...

Three Prince William County Police officers were shot Saturday as they responded to the scene of a domestic-related shooting, police said. The officers are being treated for their injuries, police tweeted. Their conditions are not yet known. In a brief statement, Prince William County police asked for patience as they investigated. Police said the shooter was in custody. The shooting happened in the 13000 block of Lashmere Court in Lake Ridge, Virginia. Several roads are blocked in the area of Quate Lane at Delaney Road during the investigation.

President Barack Obama will not attend Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral Saturday, the White House confirmed. Instead, the president will pay his respects on Friday, when Scalia's body lies in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court building. Vice President Joe Biden will attend Scalia's funeral at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the White House said Wednesday during a press briefing. When pressed for clarification on Obama missing the funeral, White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeated that "the president will pay his respects at the Supreme Court on Friday and he'll be joined...

The D.C. fire department's medical director, hired last year to help reform an agency beset by failures in response times and patient care, is resigning, saying her proposals have been blocked and that "people are dying needlessly because we are moving too slow." Jullette M. Saussy is ending her eight-month tenure by delivering a scathing indictment of the District's new fire chief and what she calls his refusal to end a culture of indifference that she contends endangers residents' lives.

A U.S. Marine was arrested Tuesday at his base in an Arizona city near the Mexican border, some 1,100 miles from where he allegedly shot and killed a 20-year-old college student who'd just rung in the new year. Eric Jamal Johnson was taken into custody in Yuma "for killing Sara Mutschlechner," Denton, Texas, police spokesman Shane Kizer told CNN. The U.S. Marine Corps said in a news release that Johnson was arrested in connection with the Denton shooting around 6:30 a.m. (8:30 a.m. ET) Tuesday at the Marine air station in Yuma where he's based. Johnson, a corporal, belongs to...

Just two days before Hillary Clinton’s testimony to the House Benghazi Committee, the State Department presented lawmakers with a huge trove of Ambassador Chris Stevens’ emails: #BREAKING: The State Dept *just* delivered nearly 1,300 printed pages of new emails from Ambassador Chris Stevens. #Benghazi — Benghazi Committee (@HouseBenghazi) October 20, 2015 Yesterday, Fox News obtained one of Stevens’ cables from July 2012, and found him pleading for decent security protection… a plea that fell on deaf ears in Hillary Clinton’s department. In the July 9, 2012 cable, Stevens reported that, “Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers...

Four students at Summerville High School in Tuolumne, California, were arrested for allegedly plotting a school shooting, the Tuolumne County Sheriff said in a press conference on Saturday. Sheriff Jim Mele claimed that the students involved were planning to "come on campus, and shoot and kill as many people as possible at the campus." The Summerville High School administration contacted the sheriff's office on Wednesday to report three of the students, who were identified by classmates who found their behavior suspicious. The authorities immediately launched an investigation, which involved interviews with the suspects, as well as school staff and students,...