Free Republic

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Former Puerto Rico Gov. Rafael Hernández Colón, who oversaw one of the U.S. territory’s most prosperous periods, has died at age 82. Family members said in a statement that Hernández died Thursday at his home in Puerto Rico. They did not provide further details regarding his health. Hernández served as governor from 1973 to 1977 and again from 1985 to 1993. He was an attorney and considered one of the most influential politicians of the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the island’s current political status. Before becoming governor, he served as Puerto Rico’s justice secretary...

(English translation) PONCE - Officer Guarionex Candelario Rivera, the author of the tragic massacre that took the lives of a commander, a first lieutenant, and an officer at the Command Center of the Ponce Area Police Headquarters, had displayed problematic behavior that resulted in his having his gun taken for long periods. However, he regained his gun recently, although he suffered from "nerves" and occasionally went out to the streets as a reinforcement. Fifty-year-old Candelario, a resident of the Tallaboa Alta neighborhood in Penuelas and a 19-year veteran of the force, had been summoned to his workplace this morning. Different...

SANFORD, Fla. - As controversy over the $200,000 George Zimmerman raised on PayPal took center stage Friday, Special Prosecutor Angela Corey's decision to ignore legal questions raised over whether she's obeying Florida's public record law went largely unnoticed. But the issue of whether Corey has the legal right to continue preventing the public from seeing the evidence she says proves Zimmerman committed the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin seems to be coming to a head. The special prosecutor's office on Friday refused to make that evidence public -- even though an attorney fighting for the public's access insists Friday...

(English-language translation) The [Puerto Rico] Police [Department's] K-9 unit and Explosives Division were nowhere to be seen this morning at Colegio Sagrado Corazón in Ponce following an 8:45 AM anonymous call warning of the existence of an explosive device on the school's premises. The call was received at Police headquarters and the Ponce Region Command Center. As Officer Gerardo Echevarría with the Ponce Press Office explained, the correct protocol in these cases is to conduct a search of the area and, if a device is found, then the Explosives Unit is called, but no explosive device was found on campus....

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Puerto Rican police tightened security at federal buildings and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton canceled a visit to the island amid fears the killing of a Puerto Rican nationalist in an FBI shootout could lead to a resurgence of pro-independence violence. Police chief Pedro Toledo acknowledged the potential for unrest, saying the death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios had generated "rancor and rage." Ojeda Rios, 72, was shot to death Friday by FBI agents who came to arrest him at his farmhouse in southwestern Puerto Rico for the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in...

Diana Ponce talks on a phone in the yard of her San Pablo home Wednesday, the fifth day of a hunger strike to protest the gathering of armed volunteers, the Minuteman Project, at the Arizona-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Chronicle photo by John O'Hara

PORT SAID, Egypt: Seven US warships crossed the Suez Canal on Tuesday heading to the Gulf to join the US military buildup in preparation for a possible attack on Iraq. The seven amphibious ships, based in Norfolk, Virginia, carry more than 4,750 sailors and 7,000 Marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. They are the USS Kearsarge, Bataan, Saipan, Ponce, Gunston Hall, Ashland and Portland. In Washington, defence officials said on Monday that the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the Navy's latest Nimitz-class carriers with more than 5,000 sailors and naval aviators aboard, had re-entered the Arabian Sea over the...