Free Republic

Haider Al-Abadi: "The unauthorized presence of Turkish troops in Mosul province is a serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty"

A three-day mourning period has been announced in the UAE after the son of Dubai's ruler died of a heart attack. Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who graduated from Sandhurst in 2002, died on Saturday morning.

Colonel Le The Mau, a senior military official at the country's Military Strategy Institute, told Sputnik Việt Nam that the United States' demand that Vietnam stop allowing Russian refueling planes to land at Cam Ranh airbase amounts to interference in the country's affairs.

The US Air Force confirmed that the 20-year-old Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13 (DMSP-F13) suffered a "catastrophic event". It shattered into 43 pieces following a sudden temperature spike which triggered the loss of its altitude control. The event happened on 3 February but the incident has only just came to light following questions from website Space News.

"...Over the past year, China’s Spratly outposts have been systematically undergoing a process known as “land reclamation,” where dedicated dredging vessels dig up sediment from the sea and dump it on top of submerged reefs to make islands. China has already built five islands through reclamation, and at least two additional islands are in the early stages of development. China is not the first claimant to reclaim land – Malaysia’s Swallow Reef and several Vietnamese islands have been artificially built or extended – but China’s reclamation efforts are operating at a larger scale than any previous project. Already, the artificial...

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Just hours after Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced his decision to resign, a subpoena arrived in a state office building confirming that federal agents are looking into the influence-peddling scandal that led to the abrupt end of a four-decade political career. The Democratic governor gave in to mounting pressure Friday, abandoning his office amid suspicions that his live-in fiancée used her relationship with him to land contracts for her green-energy consulting business. His resignation, which takes effect Wednesday, cleared the way for Secretary of State Kate Brown to assume Oregon's highest office and become the nation's...

A Malaysian passenger airliner with 295 people on board crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border, Interfax cited an aviation industry source as saying on Thursday.

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Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, has expand edits Board of Directors by bringing on Mr. R Hunter Biden as a new director. R. Hunter Biden will be in charge of the Holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations. On his new appointment, he commented: “Burisma’s track record of innovations and industry leadership in the field of natural gas means that it can be a strong driver of a strong economy in Ukraine. As a new member of the Board, I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency,...

Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia quoted Libyan security sources as saying that Zeidan was seized from a hotel where he was staying in the Libyan capital and taken to an unknown destination.

As part of the Obama administration’s repeated insistence – though without offering proof – that the recent sarin gas attack near Damascus was the work of the Assad regime, the administration has downplayed or denied the possibility that al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels could produce deadly chemical weapons. However, in a classified document just obtained by WND, the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria. The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some...

The head of the opposition Free Syria Army, General Salim Idriss, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday that he has intelligence that the Assad regime is moving its chemical weapons out of the country. “Today we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq,” General Idriss told Amanpour from inside Syria. It’s a huge claim that would fundamentally shift everything U.S. intelligence officials have in the past said they believe about the situation in Syria, CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr reports.

Excerpted from The Daily Caller: The Institute for the Study of War knew that controversial Syria analyst Elizabeth O’Bagy lacked a Ph.D. long before it fired her, according to the group’s own website. The Institute announced Wednesday that it had fired O’Bagy, ostensibly for faking her PhD credentials. The termination came after a series of articles in The Daily Caller revealed O’Bagy’s connection with a pro-rebel lobbying group that was not disclosed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by O’Bagy. In fact, the neoconservative think tank knew she was in a joint Ph.D. program all along. The author bio from...

[translated by google] 05-09-13.-The army of China on Thursday sent warships to the Syrian coast to observe the actions of U.S. vessels. UU. and Russia as tensions grow before a military attack against Syria. According to the Russian news website Telegrafist, the Chinese army sent Jinggangshan amphibious ship was seen sailing in the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. The report indicates that the vessel was not sent to participate in an action of aggression but is there to observe the actions of the U.S. warships. UU. and Russia. No clutch Jinggangshan equipped for fighting. The report also notes that...

Lugar: 'Random outliers' in Congress shouldn't stop Syria action

Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russian a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, fighting to crush a two-year-old uprising against four decades of rule by him and his late father, said on Wednesday the upheaval in Egypt was a defeat for political Islam. "Whoever brings religion to use in politics or in favor of one group at the expense of another will fall anywhere in the world," Assad was quoted as telling the official Thawra newspaper, according to an official Facebook page.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and the USA Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are going to exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters. This is provided by a protocol of the fourth meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations and seventeenth meeting of Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations, which took place in Washington on 25 June. The document provides for expert cooperation in disaster response operations and to study the latest practices. In addition, the parties approved of U.S.-Russian cooperation in this field in 2013-2014, which envisages exchange of experience including...

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) today announced a hearing, scheduled for May 9, to examine the Boston bombings and the implications for homeland security. Chairman McCaul: “Two weeks ago, our country was attacked by radical Islamist terrorists. Four lives were lost and hundreds of others were forever changed. As our nation recovers, it is imperative that we understand what happened, what signs may have been missed and what we can improve. “The Committee is currently examining the events leading up to the attack on our homeland, the genesis of this plot and the...