Free Republic

Oregon Inlet is closed to vessels drawing more than 2 feet, essentially shutting down the charter fishing fleet with four days left in the bluefin tuna season and Easter week approaching. Petty Officer Kathryn Bruner with the Coast Guard in Wilmington said Saturday that the closing was prompted by the latest U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey, which showed that search-and-rescue vessels can no longer get out of the inlet. Emergencies will be handled by helicopters out of the Coast Guard’s air station in Elizabeth City, she said. A buffer zone of 100 yards on either side of the Bonner...

Italy’s coastguard announced Friday that it would allow its 11,000 members to carry weapons, following threats from Islamic militants in Libya, and recent confrontation with traffickers. Up till now, the Italian coastguard has operated on a different status from the ordinary military or even that of police officers, who have the right to carry firearms. Now the coastguard will be on a similar footing. This represents a noteworthy acceleration of events and a heightened understanding of the gravity of the situation. Just two weeks ago, the general commander of the coast guard himself, Admiral Felicio Angrisano, had said that there...

GRAND HAVEN, MI - A suspect is in custody this morning after breaking into the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Haven and assaulting Coast Guard personnel, according to a release by the Grand Haven Department of Public Safety. Per the release, the male suspect crashed his truck through the gate of the Grand Haven Coast Guard Station, 601 S. Harbor Drive, before breaking into the facility at approximately 6:07 a.m, on Sunday, Feb. 8. The U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Haven is located at 601 S. Harbor Drive. U.S. Coast Guard The suspect, whose name has not yet...

GRAND HAVEN, Mich. (WOOD)– Officers from the Grand Haven Department of Public Safety are investigating after a man crashed his truck through the Coast Guard Station Gate and assaulted U.S. Coast Guard personnel. This happened just after 6:00 a.m. Sunday. According to officials, the suspect broke into the station and threatened he had an explosive device in his truck. Authorities say all U.S. Coast Guard personnel are safe. At this time, Harbor Drive and the boardwalk are closed until further notice. Residents of Sand Piper Condos are advised to shelter in place. If you live there, stay in your residence...

Despite its status among progressives as a veritable model for health care reformers and proponents of egalitarianism, the joint announcement by President Barack Obama and Cuban dictator Raul Castro of the normalization of bilateral relations has resulted in a sharp uptick in the number of Cubans desperately fleeing the island in makeshift dinghies. Who could have possibly seen this coming?The Coast Guard is reporting an 117 percent spike in December in the number of Cubans fleeing the island nation by boat. On Monday alone, the Coast Guard returned 121 Cubans back to the custody of authorities in Havana. They...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35 ORLANDO) - The EOT Spar is a 300-foot-long cargo ship due in Port Canaveral just 17 days after leaving the port of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in West Africa. The country has documented 5,235 Ebola cases so far, according to the World Health Organization. The U.S. Coast Guard says federal requirements already in place, as well as self-monitoring by the crew is enough to reduce risk to Central Floridians. The Coast Guard says it is in close communication with the EOT Spar, an American-flagged cargo ship out of Annapolis, Maryland. It's scheduled...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A U.S. Coast Guard sector says it will contact ships that have recently been to Ebola-affected countries to ask whether passengers have symptoms of the virus before they are allowed into port. The sector, which includes parts of New York and Connecticut, issued to the maritime community in Long Island Sound on Monday a bulletin that describes protocols being put into place due to the Ebola outbreak....

(U.S. Coast Guard photo) WWII veteran given Viking funeral; Coast Guard agreed to Norse send-off World War II veteran Andrew Haines decided years ago that he wanted a Norse-inspired funeral upon his death, and the U.S. Coast Guard obliged. Mr. Haines, who emigrated from Norway in 1927, scaled down blueprints for a 100-foot ship to a few feet in the years before he died. It was then up to the Coast Guard to decide whether it would ignite the boat and send-off Mr. Haines‘ cremated remains in accordance with his wishes. “Oh, I was thrilled,” Mr. Haines’ son Andy...

An investigative reporter whose private files were illegally seized during a raid on her home will receive $50,000 as part of a settlement with the Department of Homeland Security. Audrey Hudson, an award-winning journalist most recently at the Washington Times, told The Daily Signal she was awoken by her barking dog around 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2013, to discover armed government agents had descended on her property under the cover of darkness. The agents had a search warrant for her husband’s firearms. As they scoured the home, Hudson was read her Miranda rights. While inside Hudson’s house, a U.S....

<p>It was a fairly routine day at Michigan’s Coast Guard Station Saginaw River – until the telephone rang. It was Thursday afternoon, September 18.</p> <p>A baby eagle had been spotted in the water by the captain of a sailboat. The bird was in distress. It was wounded and could not get up.</p>

Lighthouses for sale! Actually, lots of lighthouses for free. Technological advances and a desire to purge unneeded properties have paved the way for the federal government to get rid of more than 100 lighthouses over the last 14 years, and it intends to keep selling and giving them away. The sold lighthouses, located on both coasts and in the Great Lakes states, have become everything from museums to bed-and-breakfasts. […] The federal General Services Administration, which sells the lighthouses, does not have a target number of how many lighthouses it would like to sell and give away, but the Coast...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A U.S. Coast Guard vessel fired in self-defense on an Iranian boat in the Persian Gulf, the Navy said Wednesday, an encounter that could exacerbate tensions between the two countries as they work to hammer out a lasting deal over Iran's nuclear program. Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said personnel on a small boat dispatched from the U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat Monomoy fired a single shot when it saw crew on a nearby Iranian dhow training one of its two .50-caliber machine guns on them and preparing...

On August 4, 1790, the United States Revenue Cutter Service was established by Alexander Hamilton, and eventually evolved into the United States Coast Guard. Today, we raise the current version of the Coast Guard Ensign in honor of all who serve.

~ August 4th ~ ~ Happy 224th Birthday, US Coast Guard!! ~ Canteen Mission StatementShowing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies militaryand the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. From Flotilla 76, Oregon The United States Coast Guard, one of the country's five armed services, is a unique agency of the federal government. We trace our history back to 4 August 1790, when the first Congress authorized the construction of ten vessels to enforce tariff and trade laws and to prevent smuggling. Known variously through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...

More than two-thirds of America's youth would fail to qualify for military service because of physical, behavioral or educational shortcomings, posing challenges to building the next generation of soldiers even as the U.S. draws down troops from conflict zones. The military deems many youngsters ineligible due to obesity, lack of a high-school diploma, felony convictions and prescription-drug use for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But others are now also running afoul of standards for appearance amid the growing popularity of large-scale tattoos and devices called ear gauges that create large holes in earlobes.

LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Coast Guard says a man is "lucky to be alive" after he was rescued 11 days into an attempted kayak voyage from California to Hawaii. A helicopter spotted the 57-year-old man, who had turned back to California, in the Pacific on Tuesday about 60 miles southwest of Santa Barbara's Point Conception after he sent a distress call indicating equipment failure, the Coast Guard said in a statement. The helicopter directed a Coast Guard cutter crew to the man, who was found in good health, the statement said. His name was not released.

Today, the Post published excerpts of Bowe Bergdahl’s journal, along with emails and other writings, giving us the most intimate, complex, and in many ways sad view we’ve yet had of the young man who had been held prisoner by the Taliban for five years. What the journal ultimately shows suggests that as a partisan political issue, Bergdahl’s release is likely to fade before long. The right has gotten about as much as they can out of it, and now that we know how troubled Bergdahl was before he wandered off his base, they may just let it go. The...

If he couldn’t tend to the coasts, why’d the Army think he could handle the Taliban? The U.S. government confirmed Wednesday that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was discharged early from the Coast Guard, after only 26 days in boot camp, two years before he tried to enlist in the Army. The fact raises questions on a third front that has nothing to do with how Bergdahl came to be captured by the Taliban, or how much the Obama Administration did to win his freedom May 31 in an exchange for five senior Taliban leaders: why did the Army let a failed...

Prior to his Army service, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was “administratively discharged” from the Coast Guard after only 26 days in 2006. U.S. Coast Guard and Army officials confirmed to CBS News that the sergeant who was recently exchanged for five Taliban detainees had joined the Coast Guard before the Army, but was dismissed for unclear reasons just 26 days later. Lt. Col. Elaine Conway told CBS News that the Army knew of Bergdahl’s discharge from the Coast Guard, and said they are “looking into” whether it was known at the time of his enlistment into the Army. An “uncharacterized discharge”...

Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant captured in Afghanistan and held for nearly five years before being traded for five top Taliban operatives, was discharged from the Coast Guard before he joined the Army, Fox News confirmed. An Army spokesman did not confirm reports that Bergdahl's discharge was due to psychological reasons or elaborate on the circumstances leading to his ouster in 2006. "We did confirm that Bergdahl was administratively discharged from the USCG prior to his enlistment to the U.S. Army,” the spokesman said.