Free Republic

Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front, blamed the European Union for declaring a new Cold War on Russia that would hurt all concerned, Russian media reported on Saturday as she paid an official visit to Moscow. Europe-Russia relations are at their lowest ebb in decades after President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea prompted the EU to impose sanctions on dozens of prominent Russian officials and lawmakers. However Le Pen, along with other Eurosceptic leaders of the far left and nationalist right, believe the original fault lies with Brussels for offering closer ties with Ukraine, a move Russia...

Austrian Soldier, Eastern Europe, 1915 German troops in Berlin, 1914 Ambulances in Palestine, 1918 French trenches, 1916 Senegalese troops, France, 1917 Dead Italian soldiers, Italy, 1915

Gang Founder Claimed Innocence Until the End By KIM CURTIS, Associated Press Writer Tue Dec 13,11:26 AM ET SAN QUENTIN, Calif. - Stanley Tookie Williams maintained his innocence right up until his death, even when an admission of guilt may have spared him execution. ADVERTISEMENT Even after the courts and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a flurry of Williams' last-ditch appeals before his execution early Tuesday, his supporters vowed to prove his innocence. Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a national debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, was executed Tuesday morning for killing four people in...

Sunday, March 09, 02:00 AM MYT +0800 Malaysia Airlines MH370 Flight Incident - 6th Media Statement Sepang, 9 March 2014: Malaysia Airlines humbly asks all Malaysians and people around the world to pray for flight MH370. It has been more than 24 hours since we last heard from MH370 at 1.30 am. The search and rescue team is yet to determine the whereabouts of the Boeing 777-200 aircraft. An international search and rescue mission from Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam was mobilized this morning. At this stage, they have failed to find evidence of any wreckage. The sea mission will continue...

Although it has not been stated explicitly yet, there seems little doubt that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed and probably with great loss of life. Rescue will inevitably turn into recovery - of wreckage and bodies - and the search for clues will begin. --SNIP-- So what might they look for? Weather can almost certainly be ruled out as a cause. Conditions have been described in different ways, but the consensus is that the aircraft was airborne in near-perfect flying conditions. This leaves just two main possibilities - catastrophic mechanical failure or an act of terrorism. Investigators will undoubtedly...

<p>MILAN (AP) — Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirm that names of two nationals listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysian airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand.</p> <p>Italy's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that an Italian man whose name was listed as being aboard is traveling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane.</p>

The United States dispatched a destroyer to join the massive international search for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that went missing Saturday morning with 239 on board, as it appeared increasingly likely the plane had crashed into the ocean. Air traffic controllers lost track of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 shortly after it left Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing, carrying 239 passengers and crew, half of which were Chinese nationals. Vietnam’s military said a search team discovered a 12-mile long oil slick in the Gulf of Thailand that may be the downed Boeing 777, but there had been no...

-excerpt- Louis Maraldi, 37, from Cesena, was named as one of the passengers on board the plane. However, reports in Italy have confirmed that he was NOT on board and that he had reported his passport stolen last August.

The search for a commercial jetliner that seemingly vanished without warning between Malaysia and Vietnam continued into the night as dark fell on Asia, officials said. -snip- For instance, after the airline released a manifest, Austria denied that one of its citizens was onboard the flight as the list stated. The Austrian citizen was safe and sound, and his passport had been stolen two years ago, Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Weiss told CNN. Similarly, Italy's foreign ministry confirmed that no Italians were onboard MH370, even though an Italian was listed on the manifest. Malaysian officials said they were aware...

An ancient Roman gladiator school has been discovered in Austria, complete with cell blocks, a training arena and a bath complex, archaeologists say. The buried remains of the school — at the site of Carnuntum, near Vienna — were detected not through excavations but through remote-sensing techniques. Based on these findings, researchers reconstructed the gladiator center in virtual 3D models. Archaeologists have been studying Carnuntum, which is on the south bank of the River Danube, for more than 100 years. Previous excavations at the ancient military city had revealed parts of the civilian town, the legionary fortress and an amphitheater....

Maria von Trapp, whose family's story was told in The Sound of Music, has died. She was the last surviving member of the musical family of seven brothers and sisters and passed away in her sleep at home in Vermont at the age of 99 on Tuesday, PEOPLE confirms. Von Trapp, who was the second-eldest daughter, and her family fled their home in Austria to escape from the Nazis in the 1930s and eventually ended up in the U.S., where their story inspired a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and the popular 1965 movie starring Julie Andrews.

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie. The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding’s The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after...

Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show. The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world. Spending has gone up from 18.6 per cent of GDP to 23.7 per cent of GDP – an increase of 27 per cent, according to figures from the OECD, the club of most developed nations. By contrast, the average increase in welfare...

Hap DeMarco is 87 years old and feeling it, physically, and facing another surgery in the not so far off future to get his bum ankle fused while worrying about his kid brother, Mickey, his only surviving sibling, whose heart is acting up. There is a lot on his mind, a lot of stuff pressing down, in the present. So answering the phone and finding a reporter on the line hoping to talk about the past, about April 25, 1945, the day his eldest brother, Wilfred — though everybody called him Foxy because he was so smart and handsome —...

The “troika” of international lenders, which sets the terms of eurozone bailouts with little or no democratic oversight, should be replaced by an EU system which is accountable to the European Parliament, MEPs say. “All European instruments that are not based on EU law are provisional. EU instruments should be based on the community method, with the European Parliament acting as democratic legitimator and control body,” Austrian center-right deputy Othmar Karas told press in Strasbourg on Wednesday (15 January). Karas is drafting a report together with a French Socialist colleague, Liem Hoang-Ngoc, on the work of the troika. The name...

(Vienna) in Austria in 2013, there were more than leaving the church than in 2012. Nearly 55,000 Catholics have left the Catholic Church as a corporate body under public law. Thus more Austrians left the Church in the first year of the pontificate of Pope Francis, than in the last year of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. The church leaders wonder about this phenomenon, which they had not expected. "We would have expected better numbers," said the Bishop of Linz Vicar William Viehböck. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. there was relief heard from not a few official...

ANDRIĆGRAD -- Plans for the start of World War I existed 13 months before the Sarajevo assassination and 14 months before Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.The Serbian Kingdom soldiers are seen during the Battle of Kolubara (Wikipedia) This can be inferred from a copy of the letter that Director of the Archives of Serbia Miroslav Perišić presented in Andrićgrad, in the RS, Bosnia. Governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina Oskar Potiorek sent this letter to the then Minister of Austria-Hungary Bilinski on May 28, 1913, and its copy was made public at the history department of Kamengrad (Andrićgrad) on Sunday. Perišić noted that...

MURRIETA (CBSLA.com) — It’s the time of the year when Christmas decorations adorn houses for blocks in communities throughout the Southland. But one entry in the Annual Holiday Home Decorating Contest in Murrieta that features a mythical creature from European folklore has sparked complaints from residents. The house in the 37000 block of Floral Creek Circle features a large handcrafted Krampus, who is sometimes referred to as “evil Santa” or the “Christmas devil” and dates back to pre-Christian Germanic traditions. With a doll on its back and a broomstick in its hand, the clawed black creature is perched on the...

BERLIN - The mayor of the Austrian town of Gföhl said on Tuesday in city council meeting that journalists who reported on asylum seekers should be hanged like the Jews. The Austrian news outlet Heute.at reported on Wednesday that Gföhl’s mayor Karl Simlinger expressed fury about asylum applicants who would be lodged in a planned complex. “I don’t give a shit about asylum seekers, but the journalists are to be blamed. They should be hanged; they are like the Jews.”

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...