Free Republic

Critical infrastructure operators in the U.S. continue to face a hailstorm of hacks. Federal documents obtained by USA Today through a FOIA request revealed that hackers infiltrated the Department of Energy's computer system over 150 times between 2010 and 2014. As the department overseeing the country's power grid and nuclear weapons stockpile, the Energy Department is an attractive target for overseas cyber spies seeking to uncover vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is warning critical infrastructure providers of a malicious spear-phishing campaign in which hackers use bogus emails to infiltrate users' networks. The campaign has targeted government facilities and...

Cyber warfare has gone nuclear. So says Valerie Plame, the former covert CIA agent who spent her intelligence career working against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Now she’s taking on a new task: helping government agencies and companies stem the relentless flood of hacker attacks. “There’s a huge impact on national security and intelligence,” says Plame, who this spring became an adviser to cybersecurity startup Global Data Sentinel. “The new normal is going to be more and more of these hacks, whether it’s Target or Home Depot or the Office of Personnel Management or Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos.”...

On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine. The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide. With American...

Once part of one of the most brutal dictator's army in the Middle East, over 100 former members of Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence officers are now part of ISIS. Now they make up the complex network of ISIS's leadership, helping to build the military strategies which have led the brutal jihadi group to their military gains in Syria and Iraq. The officers gave ISIS the organization and discipline it needed to weld together jihadi fighters drawn from across the globe, integrating terror tactics like suicide bombings with military operation

As part of the celebrations for his 91st birthday next Saturday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will be served a feast featuring five impala, two buffalo, two elephants, two sables, and one lion. According to a report in Zimbabwe's The Chronicle, the menagerie was donated by Tendai Musasa, owner of the prominent Woodlands Farm near the Elephant Hills Resort at Victoria Falls, where the 20,000-person shindig will take place. While you'd think that eating elephants and lions, icons of wildlife conservation, would be illegal, it turns out it's not—neither under Zimbabwean nor international law. As of 1997, elephant populations in Botswana,...

U.S. authorities believe the suspect in the fatal shootings of four Marines in Tennessee visited Jordan last year and possibly Yemen as well, two U.S. government sources said on Friday, as investigators looked for any connection to Islamist militants.Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old Kuwait-born U.S. citizen A little more than 24 hours after the shooting, the FBI said it continued to investigate it as an act of terrorism and that it was "premature" to speculate on the motive. Abdulazeez's travel was part of the investigation. "We do know that he has traveled outside of the United States," Ed Reinhold, FBI...

Miami (AFP) - In 2014 the world's oceans swelled, major greenhouse gases that fuel global warming hit record highs and the planet's surface temperature reached its hottest point in 135 years, international researchers said Thursday. The findings are contained in the 2014 State of the Climate report, a peer-reviewed study that examines temperature, precipitation and weather events around the world. A total of 413 scientists from 58 countries around the world contributed to the report, the 25th in a series that is based on data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, water, ice and in space. The...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Terrorist attacks worldwide surged by more than a third and fatalities soared by 81 percent in 2014, a year that also saw Islamic State eclipse al Qaeda as the leading jihadist militant group, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. In its annual report on terrorism, the department also charts an unprecedented flow of foreign fighters to Syria, often lured by Islamic State's use of social media and drawn from diverse social backgrounds. Taken together, the trends point to a sobering challenge from militant groups worldwide to the United States and its allies despite severe blows inflicted...

Five years ago, Utah government computer systems faced 25,000 to 30,000 attempted cyberattacks every day. At the time, Utah Public Safety Commissioner Keith Squires thought that was massive. "But this last year we have had spikes of over 300 million attacks against the state databases" each day: a 10,000-fold increase. Why? Squires says it is probably because Utah is home to the new, secretive National Security Agency computer center, and hackers believe they can somehow get to it through state computer systems. "I really do believe it was all the attention drawn to the NSA facility. In the cyberworld, that's...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Emma and Noah were the most popular baby names in 2014. Among girls, Emma was followed by Olivia, Sophia, Isabella and Ava, according to the list released Friday by the Social Security Administration. For boys, Noah was followed by Liam, Mason, Jacob and William.

The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches. A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what’s wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “In the fall of 2013 and...

When a 73-year-old man opened fire on two Jewish facilities in a Kansas City suburb last year, killing three people, police called the attack a hate crime.

Mother Teresa died in 1997 but her view on abortion has a relevance to the infamous group known as ISIS. Let me first take you back in 1987 when I personally saw this legendary woman. She came to the Philippines to inaugurate the Home for the Dying. This is one of the many homes she was operating in more than 100 countries all across the world. I was a high school seminarian when she spoke to us in our chapel. I was one of the many who were spiritually and deeply moved by her saintly presence. What I could not...

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When he goes door to door in this city handing out campaign materials, Shai Gal doesn’t tell people to vote for Labor, Meretz or the other liberal parties vying for support ahead of Israel’s March 17 election. He just asks one question: Do you want to replace Bibi? ___Snip___ OneVoice received grants from the State Department in 2014, prior to its affiliation with V15. ____Snip____ Dweck said that while the organization has received donations from abroad, V15’s activities are legal because the law only prohibits outside groups from campaigning for a specific party, which V15 doesn’t...

Oh my goodness, the 2014 election victories didn’t end the war! You mean the progressives are still out there dreaming of a future full of hugs and goosestepping? You mean the GOP Establishment hasn’t just given up its power and knelt before us, begging to be forgiven for its craven crony corporatism? You mean the fight’s not over? ... Kurt Schlichter was personally recruited to write conservative commentary by Andrew Breitbart. He is a successful Los Angeles trial lawyer, a veteran with a masters in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College, and a former stand-up comic.

2014 brought us a number of great films…don’t expect to see any of them mentioned here. Join http://www.WatchMojo.com as we count down our picks for the top 10 worst movies of 2014.

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran. According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel's back. The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister...

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran. Following Obama's threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack. According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign...

The Democratic Party lacks a “single narrative” and must tighten its pitch to voters in order to compete in future elections, an interim report from the Democratic National Committee found. The report released at the party’s winter meeting recommended forming a national project to bring together party leaders, activists and messaging experts to hone in on a theme. Currently, the party is “loosely understood as a long list of policy statements and not with a common set of core values,” according to the report. The review was launched last year shortly after Democrats lost control of the Senate in the...

Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...