Free Republic

Pinnacle Bank is closing this week what was known as its Latino branch at 13th and E, because it failed to attract the numbers the bank was hoping for. “It was an experiment,” said Pinnacle President Mark Hesser. “It was a new concept at the time it was opened. (June 2006) As far as I know it was the first branch to have 100 percent bilingual employees in Nebraska.” All employees will be retained and will work at other Pinnacle locations, he said. “We found out with the downtown location and others, we could serve that community easily,” Hesser said....

A California jury has awarded a rider $8.6 million dollars for a motorcycle accident caused by wild pigs. Dating back to an accident which took place in December 2003 when Adam Rogers, a 45-year-old former karate teacher and champion kickboxer was thrown from his motorcycle after colliding with wild pigs on Highway 1 south of the Carmel River in Monterey County. A Monterey County jury ordered the state’s Department of Transport to pay $8.6 million to Rogers ruling the state was responsible because officials knew that wild pigs regularly crossed that particular stretch of highway but did nothing to address...

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — A Massachusetts man has been arrested on charges he peeked at a woman dressing in a Nashua, N.H., store. Police told WMUR on Friday that the man was charged with lying on the floor and looking into a fitting room at Kohls. Police said the woman did not see him, but her mother spotted a man lying on the floor looking into the changing room. Police said the man was arrested in Natick, Mass., in January on similar charges. He told police has been in the United States for about two years and is from Guatemala.

Teen Bites Students - Dad Blames "Twilight" Did a Middle School student take “Twilight" too seriously? His dad thinks so. This after a 13-year-old boy gets in trouble for allegedly biting 11 students. It sounds crazy – but that’s the story out of Des Moines.

The Central Texas toddler attacked and killed by a pit bull wandered into a backyard with the dog while his mother slept. 18-month-old Tyson Miller died Thursday in Luling. Police say the child woke up before any of the adults in the house and walked outside through an open door. His mother, Melissa Miller, woke up between 12:15 and 12:30 p.m. She told police she searched the house then went to the backyard and discovered her son with severe wounds to his head and neck. Police say it appeared the child had been dead for "a while" but they don't...

SALT LAKE CITY – Police said a customer fired one or two shots into a Salt Lake City McDonald's after the driver of the car he was in .. was told only breakfast was available. .. two men then got out of the car and one pulled a sawed-off shotgun from the trunk, shooting into the drive-thru window once or twice, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday. No one was injured. ...

For a recovering drug user, the boxing ring offers a place where there's little to fearMark Allen is sitting in a Starbucks that is a stoner's throw from where he used to score crack cocaine. The incongruity of the picture isn't shy, the way it stares you in the face. The Near West Side is in the heat of some fervent gentrification, but not far away on Madison Street, the poverty of the area around the United Center still throbs. And here in the American monument to caffeinated uniformity sits a 29-year-old boxer with an economics degree from the University...

WARREN, Mich. -- An Eastpointe woman who sued a Warren police dog was fined by a judge to pay $500 for frivolously naming the dog as a defendant. She was also fined another $500 for failing to appear in Macomb County Circuit Court for a February hearing. Inez M. Starks, 55, filed a lawsuit in August against the city of Warren and several police officers for a 2007 incident outside of her daughter's Warren home. During the altercation, Starks claimed she was bitten in the buttocks by the Warren police dog Liberty. Starks said she was bitten by the German...

Nearly three decades after the sexual assault and brutal slaying of a woman, Los Angeles cold-case detectives announced Friday that they have identified a suspect and have asked the public for help in tracking him down. In 1980, 39-year-old Lois Hale's teenage daughter found her stabbed to death in her North Hollywood home. Detectives worked the case for years without solving it, police officials said. In 2006, Los Angeles Police Department cold-case detectives Thomas Townsend and Timothy Kirkpatrick reopened the case file, examining DNA evidence, fingerprints and crime scene photographs. Guadalupe Gonzalez Jimenez Lois HaleAdvances in DNA technology and expanded...

NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – Lou Saban, the well-traveled coach whose NFL and college careers spanned five decades and dozens of jobs, has died. He was 87. ... Saban played football at Indiana University and for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL before embarking on an unmatched head coaching career that included stops with the Boston Patriots of the AFL, the Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos, along with college jobs at Miami, Army, Northwestern and Maryland.

TERRE HAUTE — When I hear a call from progressives to mobilize against some obstructionist politicians, I’m ready to respond with e-mails or phone calls to the enemy camps to let them know where I stand. When I read about the national “Dog the Blue Dogs” campaign against conservative Democrats, my liberal antennae began wiggling in eager anticipation. True, two of the main targets of the campaign are my U.S. congressman, Brad Ellsworth, and Indiana’s U.S. senator, Evan Bayh. But an obstructionist is an obstructionist, even if he’s your voice in D.C.

The blame for the weekend violence at Sydney Airport lies entirely with the men who perpetrated it. However, responsibility for not suppressing the violence lies with the relevant authorities. Outlaw bikers are crazy. Jihadi crazy, but some are crazy in their own very special way. Look at the bottom line of what just happened in Sydney. A pack of bikers, allegedly Commanchero, deliberately stormed into an airport terminal patrolled by heavily armed agents of the state, a public space covered by dozens of security cameras, and populated by hundreds of witnesses, and there they beat a man to death with...

TWO bogus callers last week tricked a Bellshill pensioner into parting with cash for work which will never be carried out. Police say the suspects turned up at a house in Minella Gardens, Bellshill, at about 3.30pm on Wednesday, March 18. The men offered to clean monoblock paths at a 73-year-old’s house. The pair told the trusting pensioner that they would need the money in advance before they would complete the job. However, when the man paid over the money both suspects ran from the property and drove off in a white Ford transit van. Police were this week appealing...

PORTSMOUTH — Police arrested a city woman on a charge of indecent exposure alleging she was collecting dog feces while naked from the waist down.

SPCA Officials Stunned After 2 Feet Of Feces Found In Room Of House Located In Million-Dollar Community Officers Say It's One Of The Worst Cases Ever Reported Reporting Sean Hennessey CHESTER TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) ― One New Jersey SPCA official said it was probably the worst case he's ever seen.

WICHITA - You may have noticed them tiptoeing in branches of trees, along high lines or scampering across streets in front of cars: squirrels with receding hairlines. Increasing numbers of balding squirrels. In Wichita. And Salina. And wherever there are large populations of squirrels. The hairlines are the start of the classic symptoms of notoedric mange, said Charlie Cope, wildlife biologist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks in Wichita. The animal first experiences hair loss over the chest and shoulders, Cope said. The mange then eventually spreads over the entire body, causing the animal to become nearly bald....

On March 22, William and Cynthia Bennett left their Potomac Station home for an early morning walk and never returned. Shortly after 5:30 a.m., police found William, 57 lying dead, they found Cynthia, 55 badly beaten but still alive a short distance away. Around 5:30 a.m., less than a mile from the Bennett home, a resident on Rocky Creek Drive called police to report the presence of a suspicious vehicle ( a white panel work van), and three men outside the van causing a disturbance. By the time a Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputy arrived, the van was gone. However, the...

A late March snowstorm — buck up, people, it’s not that unusual — is expected to deposit 3 to 8 inches of snow across most of southern Wisconsin by early Sunday. Light snow could start Saturday morning, but most of the accumulation likely will come late Saturday afternoon and into the evening, according to the National Weather Service. The heaviest accumulation is expected in a band from Janesville to Sheboygan. The southeast part of Dane County could get 7 inches, with the accumulation quickly tapering to 3 inches in the county’s northwest corner, said meteorologist Chris Kuhlman. "But I want...

All of the Storm Drain Grates on my street have been replaced. There was nothing wrong with the old ones that I could tell. But they didn't have the admonition, "DUMP NO WASTE / DRIANS TO WATERWAY" in raised letters in the iron or whatever it is they use to make these things. I discovered this only today, because today was the first day this year that the weather permitted an outside cigar walk. They repaved the street sometime and it was probably during this project that the new grates were installed. Pictures below: (The new one is the one...

PALMDALE - The next step in hypersonic flight test is under development in a hangar at The Boeing Co.'s facility at Air Force Plant 42. The unmanned X-51A "Wave­Rider" is a scramjet engine flight demonstrator, expected to provide flight test data at speeds beyond Mach 6 - about one mile per second - using its unique engine design. In a scramjet - or supersonic combustion ramjet - engine, air is scooped into the engine duct, then forced through a combustion chamber, where fuel is mixed in and ignited. This produces energy, which is forced out the rear of the engine...