Teen in Twitter hoax seen in surveillance photo

nbcnewyork.com A person believed to be Kara Alongi is seen with a suitcase at a transit station in Rahway, N.J. By Katherine Creag and Brian Thompson, NBCNewYork.com Police have released a surveillance photo of a young woman they believe to be the runaway 16-year-old New Jersey girl who set off a Twitter firestorm after she apparently falsely indicated an intruder was in her home and disappeared. Kara Alongi, 16, was seen on a security camera at the NJ Transit Rahway train station in Union County, holding a backpack and a large purse. Police say she purchased a train ticket to New York Penn Station Sunday evening and authorities are working with NJ Transit to review available station video. Alongi gained thousands of followers after asking people on Twitter to call 911 Sunday because an intruder was in her home and then vanishing. People re-tweeted her message and #helpfindkara trended on the social network. Investigators later said it appeared Alongi, of Clark, had voluntarily called a taxi company and gotten a ride to the Rahway train station, which police say is confirmed by the surveillance photo. Police do not believe any foul play was involved, but stress Alongi remains missing and her family wants her home. "Kara might feel that she will be in trouble if she comes home after this scare and causing a panic," Clark Police Chief Alan Scherb said Monday as the extensive search got underway. "At this point, all everyone cares about is seeing her safe and at her house where she belongs." Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter Twitter users worldwide tweeted messages of good will @KaraAlongi Sunday night as her initial post asking for help circulated. Many said they were frightened to think about what could have happened to her. Others were skeptical about her pleas for help, pointing out a Tweet that allegedly popped up on Alongi's account that said: "Why is everyone saying I'm missing? I was jkin haha" and was deleted a short time later.       Police: No foul play in missing NJ teen Kara Alongi case When NBC 4 New York called the missing girl's home, someone quickly answered "no comment" and hung up. No one answered the door. Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com For Carly Martin, a Rutgers sophomore who followed the tweets Sunday night, it was more than disappointing to find out someone just a few years younger would take advantage of a social media site in that way. "That's just ridiculous," Martin said. "You shouldn't be making a joke out of that when people are actually missing." More content from NBCNews.com: VA weeks, months late paying student veterans A week later, search still on for 73-year-old accused of killing daughter-in-law Video: Like hurricanes, winter storms to get names too Cell phone video shows cop striking woman after Philadelphia parade State Dept: Missing American journalist Austin Tice believed held by Syria regime Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Hoffa case: No human remains found

Nearly 40 years after his disappearance, former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, pictured circa 1955, remains among America's most famous missing persons. Authorities have been searching for the once powerful union boss since he vanished in 1975. The mystery continues, as authorities in Michigan, acting on a tip, failed to find any human remains after digging up a driveway in Michi gan on Friday, September 28. Hoffa slumps in a chair at the Teamsters union office. He was one of the most powerful union leaders in America until being forced out of the organized labor movement. He went to prison in 1967 for jury tampering and fraud before being pardoned four years later. Hoffa appears at the Teamsters union convention in 1957, the year he first became union president. Hoffa, center, stands with other officials at the Teamsters convention, where he made a successful bid for control of the union in 1957. Hoffa testifies at a Senate Rackets Committee hearing in 1958. Hoffa on the phone at an airport in 1959. An office for Teamsters union local chapters that Hoffa set up. Hoffa eats with union leader Joseph Curran, left, in 1959. Hoffa holds a Teamsters rally at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1960. Hoffa leads supporters at a Teamsters convention in 1959. The Teamsters boss appears on the cover of Life magazine on May 18, 1959. The headline reads, "A National Threat: Hoffa's Teamsters; Part 1: Sources of a Union's Uncurbed Power." Hoffa, pictured circa 1960, was a powerful labor leader at a time when unions wielded a great deal of sway over elections and were notoriously tied to organized crime. From left, "Meet the Press" moderator Ned Brooks, Lawrence K. Spivak and Hoffa appear at an NBC studio. Hoffa and his son, James Phillip, enter a federal courtroom in July 1964. His son is the current president of the Teamsters. Hoffa, second row, center, leaves court after being found guilty of jury tampering in 1964. Hoffa at the Pittsburgh airport in 1971 on his way back to federal prison after being let out to visit his ailing wife. He was released from prison later that year on the condition he not resume union activity before 1980. Hoffa poses for a picture on July 24, 1975, less than a week before his disappearance. He was 62 at the time. A Bloomfield Township, Michigan, police officer stands beside Hoffa's car after the former labor leader's disappearance in July 1975. Hoffa was last seen at a restaurant in suburban Detroit on July 30, 1975. Police sweep a field in Waterford Township, Michigan, in search of Hoffa's body in July 1975. Demolition workers in 2006 tear down a horse barn for the FBI in a search for Hoffa's remains in Milford, Michigan. The FBI had received a tip that Hoffa was buried on the farm. Police are set to take soil core samples at this Roseville, Michigan, house in the hunt for Hoffa. Police call a tip about a body being buried there around the same time as Hoffa's disappearance credible. The tipster did not claim it was Hoffa's body, authorities say. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Test results were negative for human remains The two soil samples were taken from a Michigan home last week A tipster said he saw a body buried there a day after Jimmy Hoffa went missing The union leader's disappearance 35 years ago captured the public's imagination (CNN) -- He's still missing. The seemingly never-ending search for the remains of missing Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa hit another dead end Tuesday when soil results taken from the grounds of a home in Michigan showed no evidence that human remains were buried on the property. Two soil samples were taken from a home in the suburban Detroit community of Roseville last week after a tipster claimed he saw a body buried in the yard a day after Hoffa disappeared in 1975. The samples were taken from beneath a storage shed and sent to a lab at Michigan State University for tests to determine the presence of human remains. "The samples submitted for examination showed no signs of human decomposition," a statement from Roseville Police Chief James Berlin said Tuesday. It is the latest act in the on-again, off-again search for Hoffa, whose disappearance 35 years ago captured the public imagination. Police: Hoffa a wound that won't go away New hunt for Hoffa's remains Hoffa, then 62, was last seen on July 30, 1975, outside the Detroit-area Machus Red Fox restaurant. He was there ostensibly to meet with reputed Detroit Mafia street enforcer Anthony Giacalone and Genovese crime family figure Anthony Provenzano, who was also a chief of a Teamsters local in New Jersey. Giacalone died in 1982; Provenzano died in 1988 in prison. The tipster, a former gambler, once did business with a man tied to Giacalone, said Dan Moldea, author of "The Hoffa Wars." Moldea said he first spoke to the tipster in March and then sent him to police. Vanished Hoffa still fascinates after almost 40 years Berlin said the "timeline doesn't really add up" because the tipster said he went to the house to repay a bookie -- who didn't live at that address until years after Hoffa disappeared. Still, the man said he thought he saw what could have been a body taken into the shed. Moldea said it seemed unlikely that anyone would have been buried at the site, in full view of the neighborhood. And if a body had been buried there, little would remain, he said. "This is kind of like an open wound that won't go away," Berlin said Monday. "Every couple of years this happens, and all you guys come out here and we have to relive it." Hoffa was one of the most powerful union leaders at a time when unions wielded enormous political sway. He was forced out of the organized labor movement when he went to federal prison in 1967 for jury tampering and fraud. President Richard Nixon pardoned him in 1971 on condition he not attempt to get back into the union movement before 1980. Hoffa believed Giacalone had set up the meeting to help settle a feud between Hoffa and Provenzano, but Hoffa was the only one who showed up for the meeting, according to the FBI. Giacalone and Provenzano later told the FBI that no meeting had been scheduled. The FBI said at the time that the disappearance could have been linked to Hoffa's efforts to regain power in the Teamsters and the mob's influence over the union's pension funds. Police and the FBI have searched for Hoffa intermittently. In September 2001, the FBI found DNA that linked Hoffa to a car that agents suspected was used in his disappearance. In 2004, authorities removed floorboards from a Detroit home to look for traces of blood, as former Teamsters official Frank Sheeran claimed in a biography that he had shot Hoffa. Sheeran died in 2003. Two years later, the FBI razed a horse barn in Michigan following what it called "a fairly credible lead." Urban lore long suggested that Hoffa was buried around the end zone at the former Giants Stadium in New Jersey. CNN's Chuck Johnston and Stephanie Gallman contributed to this report.

Suit seeks to block Calif. limit on 'gay cure' therapy

By James Eng, NBC News A conservative legal defense group is suing to try to block a new law in California that will ban therapies that aim to "cure" gay teens. The Pacific Justice Institute filed the lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Sacramento on behalf of a marriage and family therapist, a psychiatrist and a man studying to become a mental health professional. It names as defendants Gov. Gerry Brown and a host of other state officials. Brown on Sunday signed SB 1172, a bill sponsored by state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, that would prohibit therapists from administering "sexual orientation change therapy" to gay and lesbian children under 18.  California became the first state in the nation to crack down on "gay cures" for minors. Brown and Lieu said such "gay conversion" therapies are not based on science and in some cases have driven teens to commit suicide. The law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. "Of all the freedom-killing bills we have seen in our Legislature the last several years, this is among the worst," Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said in a statement. "This outrageous bill makes no exceptions for young victims of sexual abuse who are plagued with unwanted same-sex attraction, nor does it respect the consciences of mental health professionals who work in a church. We are filing suit to defend families, children and religious freedom. This unprecedented bill is outrageously unconstitutional." The lawsuit states: "The statute materially interferes with the plaintiff mental health professionals' exercise of their independent professional judgment in providing treatment to minors who have unwanted same sex behaviors or attractions. As such, the statute requires the plaintiff mental health professionals to discriminate against minors who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or questioning youth. This is in violation of these plaintiff mental health professionals' obligations under the rules of professional ethics to provide treatment to persons regardless of their sexual orientation." Lieu, a  former prosecutor, called the lawsuit "frivolous." "Under the plaintiffs' argument, the First Amendment would shield therapists and psychiatrists from medical malpractice and psychological abuse claims simply because they use speech in practicing their medicine. That is a novel and frivolous view of the First Amendment." Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, also said the lawsuit is meritless. "This lawsuit is a desperate, last-ditch effort to defend the indefensible,'' Kendell told The Los Angeles Times. The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, a group of therapists who believe sexual orientation can be changed, has also said it plans to file a lawsuit to block implementation of the law. Previous story: California becomes first state in nation to ban 'gay cure' therapy for children More content from NBCNews.com: VA weeks, months late paying student veterans A week later, search still on for 73-year-old accused of killing daughter-in-law Video: Like hurricanes, winter storms to get names too Cell phone video shows cop striking woman after Philadelphia parade State Dept: Missing American journalist Austin Tice believed held by Syria regime Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook