Free Republic

Union Pacific railroad said there was a rash of cargo container break-ins as the containers were being hauled by train near downtown Los Angeles, as officials are trying to clear the backlog of cargo at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Thousands of boxes as far as the eye could see were strewn along the railroad tracks near Valley Boulevard and North Mission Road in Lincoln Park in footage captured by NewsChopper4 Monday. Several container doors were wide open - including a FedEx container with boxes tipping over. The section of the track is bordered by homeless encampments...

NEW YORK (AFP) – A dual US-Lebanese citizen has been extradited from Paraguay and charged with supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah militant force, US officials said Friday. Moussa Ali Hamdan, 38, appeared in court in Philadelphia following his extradition and has been charged with providing "material support to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization," the federal prosecutor's office in Pennsylvania said in a statement. Hamdan was arrested by Paraguayan authorities June 15 on suspicion of supporting terrorism and was subsequently handed over to US custody. He is accused in the United States on 28 counts including conspiring to supply Hezbollah with proceeds...

Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, an Islamic enclave is being carved out of the heart of the City of Brotherly Love. And how generous have you been with your tax dollars? You just gave $1.6 billion for the privilege of turning over all this cash to the Islamic community. The person doing the carving is Kenny Gamble, the author of such hit songs as “Love Train” and “Me and Mrs. Jones.” So far Americans have shelled out $1.6 billion in federal grants, loans, and “charitable” gifts to create an alleged “Muslims-only” community. A convert to Islam, Gamble, now known as Luqman...

GREENEVILLE - When those prison doors clang shut behind this dirty cop, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer wants the good guys to hear something else - praise. The way Greer sees it, the two-year prison term he doled out Tuesday for the former second highest-ranking law enforcer in Cocke County is as much a tribute to the good cop as it is an indictment of the bad. "Very simply put, Mr. (Patrick Allen) Taylor, a message needs to be sent," Greer told the former Cocke County Sheriff's Department chief deputy at his sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court. "Honorable_law enforcement...

The spyware that Sony installs on the computers of music fans does not even seem to be correct in terms of copyright law. It turns out that the rootkit contains pieces of code that are identical to LAME, an open source mp3-encoder, and thereby breach the license....

After a family asks U.S. Mint to authenticate 10 old coins, gov't grabs them. Potential value: $10M. A Philadelphia antiques dealer plans to sue the U.S. Mint to recover rare gold coins worth millions of dollars that the federal government has seized because it says they were illegally obtained. Ten "Double Eagle" $20 coins minted in 1933 were discovered in September in a Philadelphia antiques and jewelry store and voluntarily handed by its owners, the Langbord family, to the Mint for authentication. In June, the Mint confirmed they were the coveted Double Eagles but informed the Langbords that the coins...

 Burglar Puts Self on Fast-Track to Jail April 5, 2002 10:41 am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - A would-be burglar put himself on the fast-track to jail after the Tokyo building he sneaked into turned out to be a police dormitory. Police arrested the 50-year-old Chinese man after he tried to run away when challenged by an off-duty officer, the late edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Friday. "I'd never have guessed police lived here," the article reported the man as saying after he was pinned down by the officer. The unmarked building had been rented by the Tokyo...