Free Republic

Arkansas Sportsman : Mystery of missing Wal-Mart firearms continues Bryan Hendricks As of March, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, no longer sells firearms in about 1,000 of its stores nationwide. One of those “firearms free” zones is the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Sheridan, a small town located in the heart of Arkansas’ deer hunting country. I visited the Sheridan Wal-Mart recently, and as always, stopped by the sporting goods department. No shotguns or rifles were for sale, and no display racks were present. Ammunition, however, was abundant. An associate at the store informed me of this new policy. This person...

The search for a 3-year-old boy missing since 9:30 a.m. today intensified just before nightfall, as the Houston Police Department issued an Amber Alert after Texas EquuSearch joined in the investigation. Kendrick Jackson, of 1251 Wilcrest, disappeared from his parent's home in the Canfield Falls apartment complex in southwest Houston this morning. The little boy's father, Rodrick Johnson, went upstairs briefly this morning after he checked on the boy and saw that he was sitting up in bed. When Johnson went back downstairs, the boy was missing and the front door to the apartment was ajar. Keyanna Jackson, the boy's...

IT SEEMED a simple question: where was the President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko? But on the eve of his planned visit to Moscow yesterday, no one could answer. And, in the absence of official information, rumours swirled that “Europe’s last dictator” was in hiding, suffering from severe depression. Mr Lukashenko has been seen just once since the day after he won a third term in an election widely condemned as a farce and he even postponed his own inauguration ceremony, scheduled for last Friday, to an unspecified date this month. Now there is uncertainy over whether he will attend a...

As I was preparing for this article, I asked a friend who is Jewish if it was appropriate to use the term "holocaust" to portray the worldwide violence against women. He was startled. But when I read him the figures in a 2004 policy paper published by the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, he said yes, without hesitation. One United Nations estimate says from 113 million to 200 million women around the world are demographically "missing." Every year, from 1.5 million to 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence...

Fugitive couple caught in Washington 06:59 PM PST on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 Associated Press LONG BEACH, Wash. - First they were missing, then they were found, then they fled and now - finally - an end is in sight in the saga of Elbert and Becky Higginbotham. AP file photo Elbert Higginbotham talks to reporters after the family is rescued. The Arizona couple was arrested Tuesday in Pacific County, Washington, according to police there. The two are wanted in Arizona after allegedly being caught with a small amount of methamphetamine and a shotgun 11 months ago. They received national...

Wanted tyrant of Liberia vanishes from Nigerian haven By David Blair, Africa Correspondent and Katharine Houreld in Lagos (Filed: 29/03/2006) The Nigerian government was accused of allowing Charles Taylor, Africa's most notorious fallen tyrant, to escape justice after he vanished from his grace-and-favour residence yesterday. Taylor, 58, the former Liberian dictator, had been living in the city of Calabar despite being the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant and an indictment on 17 counts of war crimes. Charles Taylor took refuge in Nigeria when he was deposed The Baptist lay preacher, who devastated Liberia and led a brutal rebel army...

ABUJA, Nigeria — Former Liberian President Charles Taylor disappeared from his Nigerian haven, days after his hosts agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal for the murder, rape and maiming of more than a half-million Africans, officials said today. The announcement of Taylor's disappearance came the day before Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo was to meet with President Bush at the White House. That visit was supposed to occur on a high note after Obasanjo resolved two issues of concern to his U.S. allies — Monday's release of kidnapped American oil workers and last week's deal to hand over...

VISTA, CA – The body of a Vista businesswoman who was reported missing about two weeks ago was found in Mexico, the victim of an apparent homicide, police said Monday. San Diego sheriff's deputies were notified by Mexican authorities Monday that Jane Kling, 68, was found about 45 miles south of San Felipe, deputies said. Kling's children reported her missing March 15. She owned the two A&J consignment shops in Vista. Mexican authorities also found Kling's Dodge Caravan, also reported missing, near the area where her body was discovered, deputies said. Homicide investigators in Ensenada are conducting an investigation into...

NEW ORLEANS -- By Louisiana's latest official count, 1,292 people are known to have died in the state because of Hurricane Katrina. About 1,280 -- the number changes daily -- remain missing. Hundreds of people were sucked into the Gulf of Mexico by Katrina's retreating tsunami-like storm surge and will never be found. But the state-run, federally funded Find Family National Call Center is discovering that hundreds of others have used the storm and the nationwide diaspora it triggered to escape a troubled or painful past. They do not want to be found. The center's 90 or so workers immerse...

SELMER, Tenn. — Police searched Thursday for the missing wife and three young children of a church minister who was found shot to death in his parsonage.

Tenn. Pastor Found Slain; Amber Alert Issued for Family Thursday , March 23, 2006 SELMER, Tenn. — A church minister was found shot to death in his parsonage, and authorities were searching for his missing wife and three young daughters Thursday. It wasn't immediately clear if the woman and children were abducted or if they were involved in the crime and fled. Church members went searching for pastor Matthew Winkler late Wednesday when he didn't show up for an evening service at Fourth Street Church of Christ, police said. They used a key to enter the parsonage and found him...

A woman who disappeared as a teen 10 years ago had been living with a middle school security guard who didn't allow her to leave his home for several years, police said Wednesday. Tanya Nicole Kach, now 24, was reunited with her family this week. She had been living at the man's home, located about two miles from her father's house in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKeesport, police said. The two met when Thomas Hose, 48, worked as a security guard at a school where Kach was a student. It was not immediately clear how she ended up at the...

All Six Members of Missing Oregon Family Found Alive Tuesday , March 21, 2006 MEDFORD, Ore. — Six family members missing in a recreational vehicle since March 4 were found alive Tuesday in a remote, snowy section of Southern Oregon, authorities said. U.S. Bureau of Land Management workers first found two of the family members, who had decided to walk out of the woods and left the vehicle, sheriff's deputies said. Later, search and rescue workers in a helicopter made contact with the other four, said Sgt. David Marshall, spokesman for the Douglas County sheriff's department. A snow machine was...

BREAKING NEWS Family missing in Oregon for more than two weeks found alive

LAURA W. MACKENZIE 5’4", Blue Eyes, Brown Hair. A senior at Goffstown Area High School, NH. She drives a 1995 black, 4-door Volkswagen Golf. NH License Plate Number: 211 0126. If you have any information, please call the Goffstown, NH Police Dept. 603-497-4858 or email enidmack@yahoo.com Last seen March 8, 2006

Family's desperate search ends in heartbreak when body is found March 16, 2006 JASON COLLINS - Victoria Advocate For more than a day, family and friends didn't know what happened to 53-year-old Sally Blackwell. That uncertainty came to an end Wednesday afternoon when her body was found alongside Hanselman Road in Victoria County. Lt. Mike Hernandez, with the Victoria Police Department, said the department is treating the death of Blackwell, program director of South Texas Child Protective Services, as a homicide. They are awaiting an autopsy report, ordered by Justice of the Peace Beatriz Gonzalez, to confirm the cause of...

Honolulu (AP) -- A dam burst on the island of Kauai on Tuesday, and seven people were missing, the Coast Guard said.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepali police began hunting on Saturday for a teenaged boy who some people believe is an reincarnation of Buddha after he disappeared from the site where he had been meditating for almost 10 months. Fifteen-year-old Ram Bahadur Bamjon has not been seen since early Saturday, said Hari Krishna Khatiwada, a district official of Bara, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Kathmandu. The boy had been meditating there without food or water since May. Some of his followers are also missing. "So far we have found no trace of them," Khatiwada said. Sitting cross-legged beneath a "pipal" tree,...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. Since her 13-year-old daughter vanished Monday, Stella Browne says she has been getting text messages from the girl saying that someone followed her and that she woke up in a dark basement. "Help. I'm scared. I don't know where I am," one of the text messages that Natasha Browne sent her mother said, Stella Browne told The Jersey Journal of Jersey City for Wednesday's newspapers. The message went on to say: "Someone was following me and I just don't remember what happened. I just woke up in a basement. I'm scared." Jersey City police have classified Browne's...

New Orleans Renews Search for the Missing Thursday March 2, 2006 11:01 PM By MARY FOSTER Associated Press Writer NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A full six months after Hurricane Katrina, officials renewed the search for bodies Thursday, moving slowly through ravaged neighborhoods with cadaver dogs in hopes of locating 300 to 400 people still unaccounted for. The search teams targeted 160 houses and 122 debris piles at or near addresses of people still missing. The addresses were culled from a list of about 2,300 people still listed as unaccounted for with state and federal officials. ``We have between 300 and...