Free Republic

A San Francisco State Arabic professor who has been stranded in Canada for three months while waiting for the U.S. State Department to give him security clearance and issue him a visa can now return home. Assistant professor Mohammad Ramadan Hassan Salama, who traveled to the U.S. Consulate in Toronto on June 20 and was stuck there after the consulate canceled his scholar visa, was called by the consulate in Toronto, Canada, today and told that he could pick up a new visa on Thursday, his attorney Clark M. Trevor said. "We have an immense burden removed," said Paul Sherwin,...

WASHINGTON -- Over 800 pounds of Mexican bologna smuggled into the U.S. without refrigeration has been destroyed by the Agriculture Department. It was found in suitcases aboard a bus earlier this month north of Las Cruces, N.M. The man who owned it said it was going to be sold at a swap meet or flea market. The man entered the country legally, and is not being charged. The Agriculture Department has approved some imports of Mexican bologna, but it must be refrigerated. Unrefrigerated bologna can create health risks such as Classic Swine Fever.

Italian investigators are focusing their attention on a shadowy group thought to be based in Bologna after a string of bomb attacks beginning in the Christmas period. A Red Brigades logo was found near a murder scene in 2002 They suspect that a number of letter bombs received by EU officials, including European Commission President Romano Prodi, are the work of Italian anarchists. An Italian-based group calling itself the Informal Anarchist Federation has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Investigators believe the group has fewer than 300 members in Italy. The previously unknown group shares the Italian initials - FAI -...

A judge has ordered 17 suspected members of Italy's Red Brigades militant group to stand trial next year, on charges including murder. Five suspects will be tried for the murder of a Labour ministry consultant shot dead in 1999. They include Nadia Lioce, already in jail for murdering a police officer. The ultra-left Red Brigades terrorised Italy during the 1970s and 80s, with a wave of attacks and bombings blamed for killing 415 people. Most of their leaders were eventually arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Shoot-out But the group re-emerged with the murder of consultant Massimo d'Antona in...

 March 21, 2002 Red Brigades Say They 'Executed' Italy Official By REUTERS Filed at 3:35 p.m. ETROME (Reuters) - An offshoot of Italy's Red Brigades urban guerrilla movement published a 26-page Internet message on Thursday saying it had ``executed'' a top government adviser and reviving fears of a new era in political killings.Marco Biagi, 52, was shot dead on Tuesday night in the northern city of Bologna with the same pistol that the Red Brigades for the Construction of the Fighting Communist Party had used to kill another government aide in 1999.Police pored over video material collected from security...

A SENIOR Italian government adviser on labour relations was murdered by gunmen apparently opposed to his proposals to make it easier to sack workers. Marco Biagi, 52, an affable professor responsible for drafting the government's package of labour market reforms, was shot dead by two attackers while cycling home on Tuesday night in Bologna, the nerve-centre of the Italian far Left. The murder is the most dramatic evidence so far of the political tension welling up in Italy since the Right-wing government of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, took power last year, backed by the "post-fascist" National Alliance and the...

ARIS, May 29 — Italian and German investigators have disclosed fresh information suggesting that hints of an attack involving aircraft and the United States were more widespread among European law enforcement agencies before Sept. 11 than previously suspected.The disclosures come after weeks in which the Bush administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced a shake-up today, have come under sharp criticism that they did not pay sufficient heed to signs of Al Qaeda plots in the United States that may have alerted them to the Sept. 11 attacks.A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said today that before Sept....

Democratic Presidential nominee Senator John Kerry stands in the stage lights as he listens to his running mate Senator John Edwards at a campaign rally in Zanesville, Ohio, July 31 2004.

July 18, 2004 Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises By EDUARDO PORTER he amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus. "There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent,...

Italy Thwarts Basilica Attack Plot Tue Aug 20, 2:43 PM ET A Moroccan man is shown walking in the San Patronio Basilica in Bologna, northern Italy, in this picture taken from a home video seized Monday by Italian authorities and made available Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2002, during a press conference. Four Moroccans and an Italian, left, whose names were not made public, were arrested Monday under the suspiscion of terrorism after they filmed themselves near the central altar and the frescoes in the basilica. (AP Photo/Gianfilippo Oggioni, HO) By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer ROME (AP) - Italian police arrested...

If you know a Roman Catholic bishop or priest, please pass this along to him with a request for a response. If they don't mind, ask them to copy me on the response at hhewitt@hughhewitt.com. John Kerry is the second most visible American right now, and the most visible self-identified Roman Catholic in the country. The most influential newspaper in the world, the New York Times, reported on Tuesday that Kerry had issued the equivalent of a new catechism for the Roman Catholic Church. Here are the key paragraphs: Mr. Kerry became combative when told that some conservatives were...

The headline might seem that this had to happened in our nation's capital...but it happened in: EL PASO, Texas - Border agents last week landed a meaty bust, seizing 756 pounds of bologna arranged into the shape of a car seat and covered with blankets in a man's pickup. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized 81 rolls of Mexican bologna Friday at the Paso Del Norte bridge as the pickup entered the United States. "It puts the ultimate consumer at risk," said customs spokesman Roger Maier. "Who knows how long these products have gone without refrigeration or without proper...

BOLOGNA, Italy (AP) — A judge sentenced an alleged Islamic extremist to one year in prison for supporting terrorism, while releasing nine others, a news agency reported Thursday. Judge Letizio Magliaro acquitted one of the nine in a quick trial, and he dismissed charges against the other eight, saying that there was insufficient for trials. The conviction came as the judge accepted a plea bargain agreement for a 10th person during a court hearing, the ANSA news agency reported. An 11th suspect was indicted on charges of criminal association. Legal officials were not available late Thursday to provide any details...