Free Republic

TRIESTE, Italy, April 17 (UPI) -- Italian shipbuilder Orizzonte Sistemi Navali and DCNS of France have announced the construction of combat vessels for the navies of Italy and Egypt. Orizzonte Sistemi Navali S.p.A. said that OCCAR, the European Union agency in charge of multinational weapons procurement projects, had notified them that the Italian Navy was exercising a contract option to obtain two FREMM frigates. The frigates would be the ninth and tenth for Italy under the Italian-French FREMM, or Multi Mission European Frigates, program. The value of the option exercise carries a value of about $818.1 million. "Considering the effort...

Alexandria, VA (AP) — President Barack Obama and his family attended Easter service at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, whose history dates back almost 200 years to when Thomas Jefferson was in the White House. Obama along with wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia were welcomed to the historic church by the pastor, Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley, who noted that like the first lady, he is a native of Chicago’s South Side. “How fitting that on the day we celebrate the rising of our Lord and savior, we also welcome our sitting president,” Wesley said, as...

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama attended a spirited Easter service at a historic black church on Sunday, in keeping with the first family's tradition of visiting local Washington area congregations. The president, his wife Michelle and their two teenaged daughters attended the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, its pews filled with congregants who could barely contain their excitement over the visit. "How fitting that on the day we celebrate the rising of our Lord and Savior, we also welcome our sitting president," Pastor Howard-John Wesley said to applause from enthusiastic worshippers, whom he urged to keep their...

What is going on?? It appears that a fifth undersea communications cable has been damaged. The latest...an estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected by the recent undersea cable damage. A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

Michelle Obama was lying about a racist incident at her September 29, 2011 trip to Target in a People Magazine story, Gotnews.com has learned. The careful orchestrated press event occurred in Alexandria, Virginia’s Route 1 Target store. Obama has told two different, conflicting accounts about her Target experience. The first time she claimed she helped someone because of her height in a 2012 appearance with David Letterman. Now she’s claiming there was a racist incident in People Magazine. She is also lying about having any interactions with customers. In fact, the store was under strict control by the Secret Service...

The lake's progress In ancient times Lake Mareotis was a pleasure resort and watering spot surrounded by market gardens. Jenny Jobbins considers the fertile past of an area that is now desert Western Alexandria was once heavily populated in the Greek and Roman eras. Leucaspis, a residential seaport, is among the few surviving remains. Note Lake Mareotis in the background -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the Greek colonisers and Roman cohorts -- and, later, the Persians and Arabs -- marched to and from Cyrenaica along Egypt's northern coast they all had one aim in mind -- to hold and control North Africa. The...

An Egyptian court acquitted six police officers Saturday on charges of killing 83 protesters during the country’s 2011 revolution, the latest in a string of trials that rights group say failed to hold the country’s security forces accountable for demonstrators’ deaths. The acquittals come as ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, toppled in July by the military, faces a host of criminal charges. Morsi appeared Saturday in court and shouted from inside a soundproof defendants’ cell, urging his supporters to continue protests and vowing to try the country’s military chief and Republican Guards commander for killing his supporters. The police officers’...

Afghan National Charged With Explosives Possession • Bomb squad searching a car near a Fairfax County shopping center A Fairfax County man has been charged with possessing a crude homemade bomb constructed out of fireworks. Thirty-eight year-old Atal Bashar of Burke is a native of Afghanistan and a naturalized U.S. citizen. He made an initial appearance Monday in federal court in Alexandria. According to an FBI affidavit, a cleaning service hired by a real estate agent found what appeared to be a bomb while cleaning Bashar's father's home in the Alexandria section of the county in March 2012. According to...

Italians discover hoard of Roman statuesThe works have been protected by a temple wall which collapsed during an earthquake 1,600 years ago By Edek Osser CYRENE. An Italian team of archaeologists has discovered 76 intact Roman statues at Cyrene in Libya. The discovery is remarkable because the site, once a thriving Greek and then Roman settlement, has been under excavation for the last 150 years. With a nearby coastal port, Apollonia, serving it, Cyrene was once a conurbation equivalent to Alexandria, Carthage and Leptis Magna. An important Dorian colony, founded by Greek settlers from the island of Thera in 631...

Egyptian activists circulated on Saturday an online video showing what appeared to be Islamist supporters of ousted president Mohammad Mursi throwing two young men off a building during clashes in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. On Friday, clashes between opponents and supporters of Mursi flared in Egypt, killing at least 46 people nationwide, with the heaviest death toll registered in Alexandria. The footage of the young men thrown off a building in Alexandria’s Sidi Jaber has been widely circulated. One of the young men was killed; he was identified as Hamada Badr and activists say he was celebrating Mursi’s ouster...

Egyptian security and medical officials say an American has been killed in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria during clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt's embattled President Mohammed Morsi. Alexandria security chief Gen. Amin Ezz Eddin told Al-Jazeera TV that an American was killed Friday in Sidi Gabr Square while photographing the battles between opposition youth and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails. A medical official told The Associated Press the American was wounded by gunshots and died at the hospital. SNIP Six Egyptians have been killed in days of clashes ahead of nationwide protests Sunday...

Supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi have staged rival rallies across the country but there has been violence in the north. Tension has risen ahead of a mass protest planned by the opposition for Sunday. Thousands of Morsi supporters rallied outside the main mosque in Cairo's Nasr district. At least one person was killed in Alexandria as protestors stormed a local Muslim Brotherhood office. Dozens more were injured when anti-Morsi protestors and Islamists clashed in the northern city, the second biggest in Egypt. The office of the Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Mr. Morsi, was set ablaze and birdshot...

... [Franck Goddio's] results were impressive ... But it was an expedition he undertook in 2000 that really put him on the map, so to speak: He managed to locate Thonis-Heracleion, an ancient port city (built circa 800 B.C.!) that's now completely submerged off the coast of Egypt. The hyphenated name hints at its cosmopolitan nature: The Egyptians called it Thonis, the Greeks, Heracleion after a massive temple to Heracles that once stood at the site ...

Egypt’s Interior Ministry said on Saturday that it had detained men belonging to an al Qaeda-linked group who were planning a bomb attack on a foreign embassy in the country. Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said Saturday that Egyptian security forces had intercepted a terrorist cell linked to al Qaeda that was on the verge of carrying out a suicide attack on a foreign embassy. “The Interior Ministry was able to direct a successful blow to a terrorist cell that was planning suicide operations,” Ibrahim said during a televised news conference. The minister did not specify which embassy was being targeted,...

The Associated Press has been one of the few national media outlets providing at least some coverage of the Kermit Gosnell trial, presumably from their local partners, so they certainly deserve some credit for going where their competitors wouldn’t — at least not until recently.  As with most news outlets following an ongoing story, the AP started looking for fresh angles to frame their stories.  Last night, though, the AP sent out a wire story headlined “Philly abortion workers saw few options,” in which Maryclaire Dale focuses on the employment woes of Gosnell’s co-defendants to explain why they followed Gosnell’s orders...

New research into Thonis-Heracleion, a sunken port-city that served as the gateway to Egypt in the first millennium BC, was examined at a recent international conference at the University of Oxford. The port city, situated 6.5 kilometres off today’s coastline, was one of the biggest commercial hubs in the Mediterranean before the founding of Alexandria... This obligatory port of entry, known as ‘Thonis’ by the Egyptians and ‘Heracleion’ by the Greeks, was where seagoing ships are thought to have unloaded their cargoes to have them assessed by temple officials and taxes extracted before transferring them to Egyptian ships that went...

Obscure al-Qaida Chemist Worries Experts By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 7 minutes ago He's a mystery in a red beard, with a strange alias and a degree in chemical engineering. In the hands of this alleged al-Qaida operative, it's a specialty that summons visions of poison gas and mass terror. Al-Qaida is "wedded to the spectacular," notes U.S. counterterrorism analyst Donald Van Duyn, and elusive Egyptian chemist Midhat Mursi was said to be exploring such possibilities when last seen, brewing up deadly compounds and gassing dogs in Afghanistan. Van Duyn's FBI and other U.S. agencies are interested enough...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the site of the Library of Alexandria, often described as the world's first major seat of learning. A Polish-Egyptian team has excavated parts of the Bruchion region of the Mediterranean city and discovered what look like lecture halls or auditoria. Two thousand years ago, the library housed works by the greatest thinkers and writers of the ancient world. Works by Plato and Socrates and many others were later destroyed in a fire. Oldest University Announcing their discovery at a conference being held at the University of California, Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's...

Saddam lookalike attacked by gang who tried to kidnap him and force him to impersonate the dictator in porn film An Egyptian Saddam Hussein lookalike claims an Iraqi gang tried to kidnap him and force him to make a pornographic film impersonating the late dictator. Mohamed Bishr, who comes from Alexandria, said the group hoped to sell their video as exclusive erotic footage of the former leader. He claims the gang beat him severely when he refused to go along with the plan, despite being offered $333,000 (£205,000). The devout Muslim says the gang made threatening phone calls saying they...