Free Republic

<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 BBC has suffered a sophisticated cyber-attack following a campaign by Iranian authorities against its Persian service, director-general Mark Thompson said on Wednesday. Thompson also reported attempts to jam satellite feeds of the British Broadcasting Corporation services into Iran and to swamp its London phone lines with automated calls. In extracts from a speech he will make later on Wednesday, Thompson stopped short of explicitly accusing Tehran of being behind the cyber-attack, but he described the coincidence of the attacks as "self-evidently suspicious". Last month, Thompson accused Iranian authorities of arresting and threatening the families of BBC journalists to force...

NEW YORK – President Obama will sit down for an interview with BBC Persian Friday morning to address the people of Iran, the White House said Thursday. “This is an opportunity for him to speak directly to an Iranian audience,” Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told reporters at a briefing in New York. Obama will reiterate a message he had for Iran since taking office, Rhodes said: That the United States seeks a better relationship with Iranians, but that is only possible if Tehran takes certain steps on its nuclear program. “Thus far they have...