Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Nytta Norton of Bryant, Alabama, says her son, 48-year-old Bob Norton, has been serving as director of Adventist Medical Aviation - Venezuela. SNIPPET: "She says searches have failed to locate the plane he was piloting, which also carried his wife, two adults accompanying two sick children, and a missionary who taught at an Adventist school. Norton says her son "grew up with a missionary spirit and was carrying on for his dad," who was killed while piloting a missionary plane that crashed 29 years ago in Mexico."

Two days before NFL player Marquis Cooper took a doomed fishing trip with three friends in Florida Gulf Coast waters, a friend urged him to buy a life-saving device used to locate boats in distress. Cooper hadn't heard of the gadget, an emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB). And he didn't purchase one before his excursion on Saturday, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

As the Coast Guard ended its search for three missing football players whose boat tipped over in high Florida seas, the lone survivor said two of those lost gave up after hours in the frigid water and the third tried to swim to safety. South Florida player Nick Schuyler told investigators that all four of the friends on a fishing excursion were initially wearing life vests and clinging to the 21-foot boat belonging to Oakland Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper. But two to four hours after the boat capsized, one of the NFL players removed his life jacket and let...

The Coast Guard called off its search for three missing football players at sunset Tuesday. The news came after crews combed choppy waters off the Florida Gulf Coast for a third full day since NFL players Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith and a third friend William Bleakley disappeared. Their fishing boat capsized in stormy seas Saturday evening. One of the four on the excursion, Nick Schuyler, survived.

Nick Schuyler was taken via helicopter to Tampa General Hospital. Officials are still searching for former Buccaneers Corey Smith and Marquis Cooper, along with ex-USF football player William Bleakley.

DEVELOPING: The Coast Guard has found an overturned boat with one person clinging to it in the search for missing NFL players. Search crews found the boat about 30 miles off the Gulf Coast of Florida. Corey Smith, a free-agent defensive end who played for the Detroit Lions last season, and Marquis Cooper, an Oakland Raiders linebacker, are two of the four people aboard the boat that didn't return from a fishing trip Saturday. Will Bleakley and Nick Schuyler, both former University of South Florida players, were also aboard. The identity of the man hanging on to the boat could...

UPDATE: A family member tells us that the Coast Guard has found a boat with one person clinging to the side. We will have the details posted here as we learn them. http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=101513&catid=8

<p>Overturned boat found in Gulf of Mexico with 1 person clinging to it. No word if it is one of the missing NFL players.</p>

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran said on Monday that a freelance US journalist with Iranian nationality who is reportedly being detained in the Islamic republic has been gathering news "illegally." Foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi did not confirm or deny whether Roxana Saberi, 31, was being detained by the Iranian authorities, but said her activities were "illegal". US-based National Public Radio and Fox News, citing Saberi's father, reported last week that the US-born journalist was arrested in late January on charges of buying alcohol, which is prohibited in the Islamic republic. "Ever since her credentials were revoked by Ershad, her activities...

A former Miss North Dakota, who's been working in Iran as a freelance reporter, is being detained in undisclosed location there. 31-year-old Roxana Saberi has reported for NPR, "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", and Fox News Channel, among others as the Tehran bureau chief for Feature Story News. Her press credentials were revoked by the Iranian government more than a year ago, but she was being allowed to file short stories until her arrest about a month ago. NPR reports the Saberi family decided not to go public with Saberi's arrest until yesterday. Her father, who still lives in Fargo,...

Detroit Lions defensive end Corey Smith and Oakland Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper were among four boaters missing Sunday off Florida's Gulf Coast, the Coast Guard and Smith's agent said. Smith and Cooper were on a 21-foot vessel that left Clearwater Pass on Saturday morning for a fishing trip and did not return as expected, the Coast Guard said Sunday. Crews used a helicopter and a 47-foot boat to search a 750-square mile area west of Clearwater Pass on Sunday -snip-

The Coast Guard is in search of a fishing boat 50 miles off the coast of Clearwater, FL. Reportedly, the boat is carrying three NFL players, including one who plays for the Detroit Lions. The 21-foot boat apparently left Clearwater Pass on Saturday with four people aboard and likely encountered choppy conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

February 26, 2009 My son Joshua James Culbertson boarded a Greyhound Bus Schedule Number 1683 in Indianapolis Indiana on February 22, 2009 bound for Eureka California, Humboldt County. He was due to arrive last night at 9:30 pm in Eureka. He never made it. Joshua is a person with schizophrenia and according to his father in Indiana he was deteriorating mentally. Why in the blazes did he put him on the bus in that condition I will never know. Joshua may be confused and upset and may lash out to himself or others. He may have gotten off the bus...

Geraldo Rivera was issued a trespass warning on Saturday Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera was issued a trespass warning after a contentious interview with the father of a missing Putnam County girl. As the search for 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings entered its 13th day, the county was abuzz about the contentious interview with her father Saturday night with Rivera. Cummings got upset when Rivera said he'd been told by members of Haleigh's mother's family that Cummings hit the child and has said he is 75 percent sure he knows who has her.

"What we've been told is that he's a sexual pedophile," said Haleigh's mother Crystal Sheffield. The child's grandmother, Teresa Neves, said Croslin described him as a "jerk" and she was worried. "I couldn't tell you anything about him," a distraught Neves told reporters Friday, adding that she only knew of the cousin by his first name Joe. "I can't tell you how they could have taken her from a family that absolutely adores her."

Authorities were trying to track down Texas billionaire financier Allen Stanford on Thursday, as fraud charges against the cricket impresario prompted panicked investors to withdraw cash from his banks..... Two days after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Stanford, 58, of perpetrating "a fraud of shocking magnitude," officials were still in the dark about his whereabouts - as were close members of his family....

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) – Scientists have found fossil remains of an omnivorous dinosaur in Argentina -- a missing link to the carnivores, a researcher said Monday. "It is an omnivore -- in other words it ate everything (plants and meat) -- which is the missing link between carnivorous dinosaurs and giant four-footed herbivores," said Oscar Alcober, also director of the Natural Sciences Museum in San Juan, 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) west of Buenos Aires. "This is a very important piece of the puzzle on the origin of dinosaurs," said Alcober. Alcober and Ricardo Martinez, chief of the museum's paleontology division,...

WASHINGTON – The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 69 computers, including at least a dozen that were stolen last year, a lab spokesman said. No classified information has been lost, spokesman Kevin Roark said. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration that said 67 computers were missing, including 13 that were lost or stolen in past 12 months.

A missing 5-year-old Florida girl was most likely abducted from her home in rural Florida, police said Wednesday. Haleigh Cummings, 5, went missing Monday night from her home near Orlando, police said. Haleigh Cummings has been missing since 3 a.m. Tuesday, when her father's girlfriend called 911 to say the child had vanished from her Putnam County home. "There's no longer any reason to believe that the child simply wandered outside," said Putnam County Sheriff's Office Maj. Gary Bowling. The police must "assume abduction," he said. "All the answers to why you'd want to take a 5-year-old are ugly," Bowling...

In some of the strongest language to date, the director of a Minneapolis mosque has again rebuffed rumors that its leaders could be connected to the recent disappearances of up to a dozen young Somali men. "We have nothing to do with these kids who left," Farhan Hurre, director of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in south Minneapolis, said Monday. "I mean, we don't know the time they left, we don't why they left, we don't know who convinced them to go there. We don't know if somebody financed them or is working with them. We just don't know." Hurre's...