Free Republic

LITTLE ROCK - A water tower in the town where Johnny Cash was born was shot May 11, leading to an interesting leak on the mural painted on its side. Residents of the small town just south of Little Rock thought the leak was due to routine overflow, but as the sun rose, the vandalism became clear. The vandal had shot the water tower in the groin area of the Jonny Cash mural.

A person who recently spent the night in police custody in England surprised the local department with a sarcastic thank you note and winning lottery tickets following their stint, requesting that officers use the prize money for better coffee.

During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea. Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy...

After slipping away alone from his tiny base in Afghanistan under cover of darkness in 2009, Army Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl had a sinking thought: His plan to draw attention to himself by spawning a massive manhunt was going to lead to a “hurricane of wrath” from his commanders. Bergdahl decided then to deviate from his plan to head straight from his platoon’s base, Observation Post Mest, to the larger headquarters 20 miles away, Forward Operating Base Sharana, he said on an episode of the podcast “Serial” published Thursday. It marked his first media interview since he was released in May...

Actor and former Republican senator Fred Thompson has died aged 73, his family have said. Thompson, who starred in Law & Order and Die Hard II as well as being a senator in Tennessee, died on Sunday in Nashville after a battle with lymphoma. 'It is with a heavy heart and a deep sense of grief that we share the passing of our brother, father and grandfather who died peacefully Nashville surrounded by his family,' a statement from his family said.

SOUTH PORTLAND (WGME) -- It's something we've all imagined at one time or another, going to an ATM and having the machine mistakenly spit out thousands of dollars. Never happens, right? Guess what? It did happen at a bank ATM in South Portland early Thursday morning. This all started at one in the morning, when officers were called to a TD Bank branch on Maine Mall road. A transient was inside the bank sleeping beside the ATM. Officers went inside and moved him along. But, he came back.

The original Dodge Viper revealed in 1992 was a beast of a machine — an attempt by then-Chrysler exec Bob Lutz to revive the spirit of the Shelby Cobra and give Chrysler a world-class sports car. Powered by a massive V-10 with 400 hp, the early Viper's brute force overwhelmed many drivers. Today, the power that made the Viper a legend appears to be at the heart of an order from Chrysler to dozens of trade schools, demanding the immediate destruction of some 93 early Vipers, including a preproduction model that could likely fetch a couple hundred thousand dollars at...

Starbucks is known for aggressively going after small businesses that appear to infringe on its trademark rights. So it was no surprise that a tiny brewpub in Missouri got a cease-and-desist letter from the coffee chain after it started selling a beer called "Frappicino." But unlike other businesses that have quietly caved to the coffee giant's demands, Jeff Britton, owner of Exit 6 Pub and Brewery in Cottleville, responded with a sarcastic letter and a $6 check, which he claimed was his total profit from selling three pints of the beer. He posted the letters to Facebook. Britton addressed his...

Once he had set up the 0871 line, every time a bank, gas or electricity supplier asked him for his details online, he submitted it as his contact number. He added he was "very honest" and the companies did ask why he had a such a number. He replied: "Because I'm getting annoyed with PPI phone calls when I'm trying to watch Coronation Street so I'd rather make 10p a minute." He said almost all of the companies he dealt with were happy to use it and if they refused he asked them to email.

TAMPA, Fla. - A $5,000 diamond meant to make its way on to a necklace or set on a ring made its way into an 80-year-old woman's belly instead. The Tampa Woman's Club held an event over the weekend where they poured 400 flutes of champagne. Inside each flute was a cubic zirconia, and one of the flutes contained a $5,000 diamond donated by Continental Wholesale Diamond. "We were laughing and I wasn't paying attention and I took a swallow," said Miriam, who declined to give her last name. After patrons finished their drinks, the real diamond was nowhere to...

<p>GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Fifty-two bottles of well-aged whiskey disappeared between his lips, police said, and now it's time for a western Pennsylvania man to settle up.</p> <p>John Saunders, the former live-in caretaker of a Pittsburgh-area mansion, faces criminal charges for allegedly drinking more than $100,000 worth of the owner's whiskey.</p>

If you've ever watched a movie and wondered what kind of gun that is, or if you have argued with a friend about movie weapons, here's the perfect resource. The Internet Movie Firearms Database has the answers! You can look up movies by title, actors, television shows, the weapons themselves, and even video games. http://www.imfdb.org

This unusual weapon was designed by Isaiah Jennings of New York in 1821. Unlike most rifles of the time, the user didn't have to reload after each shot: The multi-shot rifle illustrated takes twelve individual, superposed loads of powder and ball, one on top of each other, and is fitted with twelve individual touchholes, each with a swivel cover which also act to position and align the lock as it slides from its forward position towards the rear to align the shots in reverse order.

The 28-year-old does not hold U.S. citizenship, and rejected an offer to run under Sudan's flag following the nation's bitter divorce with his homeland. "Never," he said of his refusal to run for Sudan. "For me to even consider that is a betrayal. My family lost 28 members in the war with Sudan. Millions of my people were killed by Sudan forces. I can only forgive, but I cannot honor and glorify a country that killed my people." Since he cannot run for his country, and does not have a South Sudanese passport, the International Olympic Committee granted him permission...

Channel 2 Action News has learned a local police chief is fighting to keep his job after the state agency that certifies officers voted to revoke him. Lithonia Police Chief Washington Varnum, Jr. is accused of attempting to serve his own eviction notice. "He basically provided a sworn statement to the courts that he himself could not be found," said Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) spokesman Ryan Powell. Varnum was living at the Les Jardins apartment complex and working as a DeKalb County Deputy Marshal when, he said, a co-worker asked him to serve a stack of...

Barbara Walters, the grande dame of American television news, has been forced to apologise after it emerged that she had tried to use her influence to further the career of a former leading aide of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A minister in Morocco's Islamist government on Thursday called for a change to a law allowing a rapist to marry his victim after a 16-year-old teenager forced into such a union committed suicide. Bassima Hakkaoui, Minister for Women and Families and the only woman in the cabinet, called for a debate to reform the law, in comments to state television channel 2M. Her predecessor in the post Nouzha Skalli also declared herself shocked by the affair and called for the law to be changed. Amina al-Filali, 16, drank rat poison last week in Larache, near Tangiers in the north, after...

A top executive of Japan's scandal-ridden Olympus Corp has been found dead in a park outside New Delhi, an apparent suicide, The Times of India said on Tuesday, quoting police. Tsutomu Omori, 49, who was head of Olympus's medical equipment business in India, was found hanging from a boundary wall by a gardener in the park, which was part of an apartment complex in Gurgaon, just outside the capital, the daily said. "Police have recovered two suicide notes written in Japanese. While one of them was meant for Omori's family, the other note only said "I am sorry for bothering...

The U.S. Mint is facing a problem -- especially during these penny-pinching times. It turns out it costs more to make pennies and nickels than the coins are worth. And because of that, the Obama administration this week asked Congress for permission to change the mix of metal that goes to make pennies and nickels, an expensive recipe that has remained unchanged for more than 30 years. .... Just the administrative cost of minting 4.3 billion pennies costs almost a half-cent per coin by itself, leaving precious little room to make a penny for less than a cent, no matter...