Free Republic

ROSEBURG, Ore. -- Police are investigating a man who allegedly tried to allow a Texas couple to adopt his 2-month-old daughter. Authorities learned of the plot when the man who wanted to adopt the baby grew suspicious and called the Oregon State Police on Monday. It is unclear whether any charges will be filed against Heath Leo Wilson, 32, who had recently moved to Canyonville from Texas, with his partner and three children. Wilson met the Dallas couple through a mutual friend, who told him they were looking to adopt a child. "On April 24th, we got a phone call,...

<p>In a tiny meeting cubicle at Multnomah County Detention Center, AvNell Mayfield watched as her son Brandon sat in blue prison scrubs, tried to touch his wife's hand through a heavy glass partition and spoke in reassuring tones through a telephone receiver attached to the wall.</p>

LYON, France -- Menad Benchellali, thin and bearded, was known among his Arab friends as "the chemist" because of the special skills he learned at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. When he returned to his native France in 2001, according to investigators, he set up a laboratory in his parents' spare bedroom and began to manufacture ricin, one of the deadliest known substances. ......... Today, exactly how many jars of ricin the 29-year-old Benchellali may have produced -- and their whereabouts -- is an urgent question for European governments facing a wave of terrorist attacks and threats. Last year,...

Note: This is the text as prepared for delivery by Goh Chok Tong, prime minister of Singapore.) The terrorist attacks in Madrid in March this year could become a turning point in the war against terrorism. Unless we make the right moves, I fear the turn could be for the worst. The choice of the target and the timing of the attack were strategic. The Spanish Socialist party had made the withdrawal of troops from Iraq part of its election platform. Attacking Madrid just before the election was obviously calculated to achieve a strategic effect; as indeed it did when...

ORCHARDS, Clark County — A man who stopped by State Patrol headquarters to ask about a job didn't get what he wanted — but he did find out how a handheld alcohol tester works. Robert Gulley, an unemployed radio technician, was ticketed for alleged drunken driving as he drove away from the patrol office in this suburb east of Vancouver. He had asked for a job application. "I guess it was a bad time to go there," Gulley, 25, of nearby Sifton, told The Columbian newspaper. "It was a bad judgment call." When Gulley walked into patrol headquarters Wednesday afternoon,...

Was it "shaking trees" or shaking knees that led to the arrest of convicted millennium terrorist Ahmed Ressam? As former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke tells it in his book "Against All Enemies," an international alert to be on the lookout for terrorists played a role in Ressam's capture at a Port Angeles ferry terminal in December 1999, his car loaded with bomb-making material. But national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in her testimony before the Sept. 11 commission last week, discounted Clarke's version and credited a savvy U.S. customs agent, Diana Dean. Dean stopped Ressam because "she sniffed something about...

A former congressional press aide was arrested yesterday for allegedly maintaining an "intelligence relationship" for several years with U.S.-based spies for Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi leader was ousted. Among other activities, authorities said, Susan Lindauer, 41, cooperated with Iraqi intelligence agents in January 2003 by delivering a letter to the home of a distant relative, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, urging the Bush administration to hold off its invasion of Iraq so weapons inspectors could continue their work. Lindauer, a former journalist, worked in the late 1980s for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Herald in Everett. Lindauer,...

<p>TACOMA -- A federal judge could decide Monday the fate of an Olympia man implicated in an alleged plot to kill Gov. Gary Locke. A sentencing hearing for James D. Brailey, 44, began Friday in U.S. District Court. In June, Brailey pleaded guilty to illegal possession of seven guns, including handguns and an assault rifle that were found in his van and home during a search warrant.</p>

A Houston man who met two juvenile girls over the Internet drugged and assaulted them after luring them from their school campus, authorities said. Navid Ocheghaz Ghahremani, 21, of the 6100 block of Reims was arrested Friday and charged with one count each of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sexual assault of a child. Bond was set at $60,000. Harris County Precinct 4 deputy constables said Ghahremani met two north Harris County girls on the Internet and picked them up from their private school campus Jan. 30. The girls, 13 and 14, told their parents they spent the...

A gang of boys from a West Seattle foster home, capping a spree of crime and delinquency, kicked Said Aba Sheikh into a coma for no better reason than he was riding a pink bike. Four years later, three of the teens are in prison. Aba Sheikh, a young refugee from Somalia, is permanently brain-damaged. The 20-year-old has no short-term memory, and his lungs fill with fluid, requiring frequent hospital stays. For a King County jury, difficult questions remain. Is the foster-care system to blame? And if so, should the state pay for Aba Sheikh's lifelong care, estimated at $20...

After watching Microsoft stock fall despite this year's tech rally, Microsoft shareholders sharply questioned Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer during the company's annual meeting yesterday in Bellevue. Investors in general are more skeptical after recent corporate scandals and, after three relatively weak years for Microsoft's stock, there were few cheers from the crowd of 1,250 at Meydenbauer Center. Shareholders did not go so far as to throw out any board members, all of whom were re-elected yesterday, and they approved changes to the stock-option plan that Ballmer proposed in July. But they asked when the company will...

Santa Cruz is a large, semiarid, semirainy region in eastern Bolivia, bordering Brazil and Paraguay. The province is best known as the last stop on the revolutionary trail of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine Marxist and medical doctor who caught a bullet there. But Santa Cruz is also the first stop on a different trail, taken by Kara Kemerling of Austin, a twentysomething product of the conservative religious proving ground at Baylor University. Almost two years ago, Kemerling left her comparatively comfortable existence in Texas, determined to become a missionary. To reach Santa Cruz, you take a big Pullman bus...

The state levied nearly $13,000 in fines against two Spokane nursing homes this week, after investigators found lapses in medical care, verbal abuse from nurses and neglect of patients. At Sunshine Gardens Nursing Home, a man died Sept. 16, three days after he first complained of chest pain. The nursing home did not send the man to the hospital despite his well-documented history of cardiac problems, according to a state report. Nor did it properly administer medication to manage his pain. The state assessed a $3,000 fine to Sunshine Gardens, an 84-bed home at 10410 E. Ninth Ave., for failing...

SPOKANE -- An Okanogan County deputy prosecutor who handled child pornography cases has pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing his own private stash of child pornography. Ralph L. Perkins, 54, admitted in court documents that he got hooked on child porn while researching the topic as part of his job prosecuting people for the crime. "His initial research turned into sexual gratification, and less than half of the pornography on his computers was work related," court documents said. An examination of Perkins' computers turned up more than 10 images of children younger than 12 involved in sexually explicit conduct,...

An intermediate appellate court in Waco has upheld the felony child pornography conviction and seven-year prison sentence of a former Baylor University professor. Waco's 10th Court of Appeals overruled Bruce Watson's appeal on Wednesday, determining that he didn't have permission to appeal after his guilty plea and rejecting his assertion that the statute under which he was convicted is unconstitutional. Watson, 44, a non-tenured French professor who had been with Baylor 12 years, was indicted in September 2000 on 10 counts of possession of child pornography. University officials discovered hundreds of images of nude children and children engaged in sex...

WASHINGTON -- Government and industry experts consider brewing hacker activity a precursor to a broad Internet attack that would target enormous numbers of computers vulnerable from a flaw in Windows software from Microsoft Corp. Experts described an unusual confluence of conditions that heighten prospects for a serious disruption soon. They cite the high numbers of potential victims and increasingly sophisticated attack tools already tested successfully by hackers in recent days. The Homeland Security Department cautioned Wednesday that it had detected an "Internet-wide increase in scanning" for victim computers. In an unusually ominous alert, it warned the threat could cause a...

A Seattle lawyer who was caught in a sexual encounter with her client in the King County Jail last year has agreed to a one-year suspension of her license to practice law. The client is accused of killing three members of a Bellevue family. Yesterday, the Washington State Bar Association recommended the one-year suspension for lawyer Theresa Olson to the Washington State Supreme Court, where justices could make a final ruling in a few weeks. The settlement also includes a year of probation and a psychological evaluation for Olson, who would be required to get any recommended counseling or treatment....

A driver, 83, crashed into a neighbor's home and several cars in his northeast Harris County neighborhood as he backed out of his driveway, News2Houston reported in an exclusive story. Officials said that around 6 a.m. Tuesday, Jim Trammell lost control of his vehicle as he went in reverse down his driveway in the 2800 block of Blue Glen Lane near Grey Moss. He crashed into the home across the street, and then continued in reverse for approximately one block, hitting three parked cars, according to authorities. "I was coming out my back door to put the trash out and...

People often tell Julie Miller: "E-mail's ruined me." As a business-writing coach, Miller spends her time teaching professionals — architects, bankers, engineers, you name it — to write better, faster. And it appears that, increasingly, companies of all kinds are realizing the importance of the written word. "Writing skills are a career-maker or breaker," Miller said. "There's no place to hide now, with everyone having access to a computer, because your writing is on display." Good writing skills are especially important if you are looking for a job. In a tough economy, employers often are deluged with résumés and cover...

MCNEIL ISLAND, Pierce County — John Mathers needs to get a life, and the state of Washington is eager to help. A vocational specialist helps the sex offender look for a job, and state real-estate brokers are house hunting. His probation officer offers her golf clubs. His therapist is giving advice on dating. It's not going well. Every time he ferries over from McNeil Island's Special Commitment Center, he has to tell prospective employers that he's a sexually violent predator. He must recite his convictions for child molestation, rape and serial escape, crimes that have kept him behind bars most...