Free Republic

RALEIGH, N.C. — "I am just kind of shocked," cyclist Michaella Van Maanen said Friday, about 24 hours after a Raleigh man was assaulted on the greenway trail she enjoys. Raleigh Police Department detectives said Chauncey Weinkoop Depew Jr., 57, died at WakeMed after an assault in the 1800 block of South Saunders Street shortly after noon on Thursday.

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...

On St. Paul's East Side, homeowners in the 1900 block of Hawthorne Avenue are in line for property tax increases of 40 percent or more -- an additional $430 on their tax bills. Property owners along the 700 block of Summit Avenue will see just as much in savings. The city's middle-class property owners will feel the biggest bite in their wallet come tax time, and nowhere more so than on the city's East Side. After years of mild tax breaks, the owners of median-value homes in St. Paul likely will do a double-take when "Truth in Taxation" statements arrive...

Boston residents and visitors spoke out Wednesday against anti-Muslim statements made on-line in response to a temporary mural on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. “I think that reaction comes from a place of fear rather than a place of inclusion,” said Jeff Stineback, 35, as he shared lunch with his wife Jenn Stineback Wednesday afternoon.

Robbery victim won't be charged. Prosecutors have decided not to file charges against the man accused of killing 18-year old Tim Jackson, saying he was acting in self-defense. Investigators say Jackson and another man tried to rob a man identified as P.W. as he walked in the Midtown Greenway near 28th Ave. and Hiawatha in Minneapolis. P.W. told police he stabbed Jackson in the stomach as Jackson tried to hit him in the head. "Minnesota law is pretty clear, folks are entitled to walk in the streets, if someone assualts you, you have a right to respond with reasonable force"...

A few weeks ago on the Right Angle TV show I host, my guest was Barry Strauss, the brilliant professor of history and the classics at Cornell University. Our conversation focused on his recent book, "The Trojan War", which one reviewer has described as so authoritative "it may well preempt future historians from ever trying to improve on it."Toward the end of the show I invited Prof. Strauss to comment on whether he saw any parallels between the fall of Greek and Roman civilizations and the situation in the West today. While eschewing sweeping generalizations, the professor did observe that...

<p>LAST WEEK, Acting Governor Jane Swift, Mayor Thomas Menino, House Speaker Thomas Finneran, and Senate President Thomas Birmingham introduced legislation to create the Millennium Greenway Trust, a public entity that would own the Central Artery corridor, to be known as the Rose Kennedy Greenway.</p>