Free Republic

It's dawn on Darwin Harbour and government ranger Kelly Ewin - whose job is to catch and remove crocodiles - is balancing precariously on a floating trap. Heavy rain clouds from the storm that has recently passed are overhead. The engine of the boat has been cut so now it's mostly silent – that is, apart from the intermittent splashing coming from inside the trap. "You get pretty much zero chances with these guys," says Ewin as he attempts to loop a noose around the jaw of the agitated reptile. We're in Australia's Northern Territory (NT), home to an estimated...

Pro-Palestinian protesters have shut down entrance to the World Trade Center in New York City

Lou Martins is angry, frustrated, and disappointed but not surprised that the first Target store to open in Manhattan — in his New York City neighborhood — is closing in October. Target this week cited large-scale theft and safety concerns for employees and customers for its decision to close nine stores in New York, San Francisco, Seattle & Portand. “I’ve seen shoplifting happening in that mall, in Target. I’ve seen cops chasing people carrying bags of products out of the mall,” said Martins, who lives and works a block-and-a-half away from the the East River Plaza shopping center in New...

<p>SAN DIEGO — Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Donald Trump's border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage.</p>

LEXINGTON, Neb. — A 13-year-old student with whom a middle school teacher is accused of fleeing to create a romantic life in the boy's native Mexico may be required to stay there. An illegal immigrant while residing in the United States, 13-year-old Fernando Rodriguez may not be able to return to the rural town in the U.S. state of Nebraska where he was an eighth-grade student.Kelsey Peterson, 25, and Rodriguez were taken into custody without incident. "They didn't have a very well-defined plan, it was basically to continue driving into Mexico to hide," said Alfredo Arenas, the Baja California...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. laws informing communities where former sexual offenders live do little to protect children, but can lead to harassment and violence against the offenders, a Human Rights Watch report said on Wednesday. The laws are ill conceived because children are more at risk of sexual abuse from a family member or trusted friend of the family than from a former sexual offender, Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, told reporters on a conference call. "Stranger danger is not the norm," Fellner said about community fears of repeat attacks by sexual offenders....

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- British and Danish troops arrested five followers of Moqtada Sadr in the largest operation conducted by coalition forces in the southern Iraq city of Basra. The nighttime amphibious raid involved 800 British soldiers and 200 Danes with support from tanks, helicopters and boats. They raided houses near the Shatt al-Arab waterway, The Independent reported. Soldiers found arms in one house that included Katyusha rockets, bombs, rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, plastic explosive and fuses. Computers were also seized, the newspaper said.

By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Spam must be stopped, lawmakers and Internet experts said on Wednesday, but few agreed how to curb the unwanted junk e-mail they say threatens to overwhelm the Internet's most popular application. On the first day of the Federal Trade Commission's "spam summit," participants could not even agree on what type of online marketing was unacceptable enough to earn the pejorative tag. Marketers said that deceptive messages with misleading subject lines like "Re: your account" were to blame, squeezing out more reputable operators who only send messages to consumers who want to hear from them....