Free Republic

For years, the bright green turf of Whitsett Fields Park has served as a joyous hub for Los Angeles youth soccer — particularly for thousands of immigrant families in the San Fernando Valley. On most weekends, the sprawling North Hollywood complex echoes with the shouts of hundreds of boys and girls, as vendors hawk aguas frescas, balloons and candy along the sidelines. But recently, immense grief and worry have settled over this close, Latin American community. Just last week, a well-known coach and Salvadoran national was charged with murder in the killing of 13-year-old soccer player Oscar Omar Hernandez during...

A Georgia man and woman cried in court Monday after they were both sentenced to long prison terms for terrorizing a black child’s birthday party with Confederate flags, racial slurs and threats. Jose Ismael Torres and Kayla Rae Norton were convicted earlier this month under a street gang terrorism law for the 2015 harassment in Douglassville, outside Atlanta, and cried in court on Monday. Video footage from the party, little more than a month after Dylann Roof’s Charleston church massacre, shows a parade of trucks roaring by with Confederate battle flags.

Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration. “We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities,” wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition. “Indeed, we are writing to say that we stand ready to work with your Administration to do much more and to urge you to increase still further the number of Syrian refugees the United States will accept for resettlement.” “This is...

PONCE, Puerto Rico — Jose "Cheguí" Torres, a former light heavyweight world champion and Olympic silver medalist, died Monday, his widow said. He was 72.

Wounded U.S. Marine Sgt Jose Torres (C), a native of Lorain, Ohio, looks up as he listens to comforting words from MARCENT Marine Sgt Major Royce Coffee (L) after he received the Purple Heart Medal on board the Hospital Ship USNS Comfort in the Gulf, March 30, 2003. Torres is one of nine Marines receiving medical treatment on the Comfort who were awarded Purple Heart medals for battle wounds received during Operation Iraqi Freedom.Wounded U.S. Marine Corporal Michael Mead, 20, a native of Newberry, Michigan wears the Purple Heart Medal on board the Hospital Ship USNS Comfort in the Gulf,...

Lorain- Sgt. Jose Torres' family - both in Ohio and in North Carolina - had been searching the grainy television images for days, hoping to see the Lorain native if only for a moment, proof undeniable that he was OK. News came Monday - five days into the war - that he wasn't. Torres was injured Sunday in southern Iraq while traveling in a convoy of armored personnel carriers. Several members of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Division were killed in an ambush. Torres survived. But he has shrapnel in his leg and buttocks, his family said. They expect...