Free Republic

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has taken a holiday to "think and reflect" after a once close ally quit his anti-Syria coalition in a move expected to delay the formation of a new government. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's departure from Hariri's "March 14" alliance this week has redrawn Lebanon's political map and undermined the coalition's June parliamentary election victory over rivals including the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group. Hariri, a Saudi- and U.S.-backed billionaire businessman, had been expected to conclude talks this week on the formation of a coalition government grouping his alliance with parties allied to Syria,...

A member of an extremist Sunni group has confessed to the 2006 rape and murder of prominent Iraqi TV reporter Atwar Bahjat, whose brutal death at the height of the sectarian violence shocked even battle-scarred Iraqis. The confession was made in a videotape broadcast at a press conference today. Suspect Yasser al-Takhi described how he and three others abducted and killed Bahjat and her two-man crew, Adnan Abdullah and Khaled Mohsen, in the central Iraqi town of Samarra. His two brothers also confessed to killing Abdullah and Mohsen. Bahjat, who worked for the Arabiya TV network, had gone to Samarra...

(CN) - A county attorney in Kansas violated a girl's privacy by showing around photos of her sexual assault, the teen and her mother claim in Topeka Federal Court. The Anderson County Attorney refused to prosecute the assailant, but showed other parents photos of the sexual assault, and was suspended from practicing law for 6 months for it, the family says. The parents say their 17-year-old daughter attended an outdoor party in May 2007, where four men or boys forced her to take off her clothes. One of them had sex with her in the bed of a truck, despite...

It is becoming increasingly clear that the opposition protests that have rocked Iran over the past month have seriously undermined the credibility of the regime. In the last month, four of Iran's highest ranking ayatollahs have issued statements defiantly declaring the current regime "illegitimate." Iranian Nobel Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has asked the international community to refuse to negotiate with the Ahmadinejad presidency until the crackdown on opposition ends. And two of the most important groups within the Shi'ite clerical establishment--Majma' Rohaniyat-e Mobarez and Majma' Moddaresin o Mohaggegin Hozeye Elmiye Qom--have issued statements doubting the legitimacy of the election. But...

A delegation from Human Rights Watch was recently in Saudi Arabia. To investigate the mistreatment of women under Saudi Law? To campaign for the rights of homosexuals, subject to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia? To protest the lack of religious freedom in the Saudi Kingdom? To issue a report on Saudi political prisoners? No, no, no, and no. The delegation arrived to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW's demonization of Israel. An HRW spokesperson, Sarah Leah Whitson, highlighted HRW's battles with "pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations." (Was Ms. Whitson...

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger appealed to Jordan's King Abdullah II in a letter sent this week to stop his country's policy of preventing Israeli tourists from crossing the border with religious items such as tefillin, talitot, prayer books, Bibles or the Talmud. "As a person for whom religion is important and dear, I cannot imagine the possibility that the state of Israel would order a Muslim tourist to refrain from wearing his or her traditional dress or to refrain from entering Israel with religious items such as the Koran," wrote Metzger, according to a press release issued by the...

BAGHDAD — The score did not matter so much — well, it mattered some. More important was that Iraq’s itinerant national soccer team, displaced for years by war, finally returned to Baghdad on Monday night to play a home match at home. In a dusty summer swelter, tens of thousands of Iraqis poured into Baghdad’s shabby Shaab Stadium and for the first time since 2002 filled it with a cacophony of clapping, clanging, chanting and cheering for the one thing that unifies Iraq more than any other. “Iraq! Iraq!” they chanted hours before the match, the stadium filled past capacity...

The traditional throwing of a bride's bouquet for luck ended in disaster at an Italian wedding when the flowers caused a plane to crash. The bride and groom had hired a microlight plane to fly past and throw the bouquet to a line of women guests, Corriere della Sera reported. However, the flowers were sucked into the plane's engine causing it to catch fire and explode. The aircraft plunged into a hostel. One passenger on the plane was badly hurt. But about 50 people who had been in the hostel escaped unscathed, as did the pilot.

Memories of Abdul Kareem Qasim (right), Iraq’s first leader after the monarchy, were alive today as Iraq celebrated the anniversary of the establishment of the modern Iraqi republic in 1958. His supporters view him as a defender of the poor who fought for the state’s rights against the interests of the West. His detractors view him as the first in a series of disastrous would-be strongmen who led Iraq on to the path to instability that culminated in dictator Saddam Hussein. Qasim was killed by the Baath party in a coup in 1963, bookending his own power grab five years...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- For months, the reports percolated in Washington and other capitals. Iran was constructing a major beachhead in Nicaragua as part of a diplomatic push into Latin America, featuring huge investment deals, new embassies and even TV programming from the Islamic republic. "The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned in May. "And you can only imagine what that's for." But here in Nicaragua, no one can find any super-embassy. Nicaraguan reporters scoured the sprawling tropical city in search of the embassy construction site. Nothing. Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce chief...

Reporting from Baghdad -- There was a time when Baghdad's reconstructive surgeons were rushed off their feet trying to repair the terrible disfigurements caused by war. These days, they're just as likely to find themselves giving Botox injections or performing nose jobs, as Iraqis take advantage of the calmer conditions to enhance their looks. "Definitely we are performing more plastic surgery than before, mainly because the security situation of the country has improved," said Rida Ali, a plastic surgeon who estimates that half her patients are seeking cosmetic surgery, compared with less than a quarter a few years ago. They...

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- A Yemeni Jewish woman who reportedly ran away from her new husband's home has embraced Islam, according to a Yemeni newspaper. The English-language Yemen Observer reported Monday that Lia Saeed Hamdi was going to marry a Muslim man from the northern Yemen village of Kharif, located near her hometown. Citing Jewish sources, the News Yemen Web site reported last week that Hamdi had been kidnapped from her husband's home in Tourist City in the capital Sana'a after their wedding. Hamdi married the Jewish man, Haroun Salem, on June 30 after the family refused the Muslim man's request...

Before he goes to sleep, Jack Briggs goes through his nightly ritual. First, he checks there is a knife within easy reach beside his bed and a baseball bat beneath it. It has been the same routine ever since he ran away with his sweetheart, Zena, 17 years ago. She came from a Muslim family and was supposed to wed a cousin in an arranged marriage - not Jack, a white British man ten years her senior. And so it was that, under threat of death, the couple fled their homes and have been in hiding ever since. Now, for...

GAZA CITY // Every morning Nidal dons his blue camouflage fatigues, trademark of the Hamas Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, and sets off to work as a civil policeman in the Jabaliya refugee camp outside Gaza City. In the same camp, another policeman, Ismail, keeps his own uniform tucked neatly in a drawer, forbidden to wear it after Hamas fighters ousted his fellow Fatah forces from Gaza in a violent power struggle in 2007. Ismail and Nidal are brothers, separated by just two years and an ideological abyss that has fractured the Palestinian landscape since the West Bank...

The mood in Jerusalem this week was one of shock. As if it weren't enough that the Obama administration is ignoring previous understandings between Israel and the Bush administration regarding natural growth in the settlements, now it seems there isn't agreement even on the outposts. The Rice-Weissglas compromise, which stipulated that Israel would evacuate 26 outposts established in the West Bank after the Sharon government came to power in March 2001 (in the meantime, that number has been reduced to 23), is no longer accepted by the Americans. The daily Maariv has reported that the United States is now demanding...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman disregarded Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's provocative statements on how he would have constructed the Israeli government, were he prime minister, as an attempt by an illegitimate leader to gain ground by extreme declarations. "Abu Mazen [Abbas] isn't exactly legitimate, hence neither is his new demand, or suggestion, to replace Lieberman with Tzipi Livni. I see such advice as a blessing. His demand to cease settlement construction is nothing more than an expression of his distress and incompetence," he told Israel Radio on Monday, noting that the lower Abu Mazen's legitimacy drops, the harsher his demands...

JERUSALEM, July 13 (Reuters) - Britain has cancelled the planned sale of some military components to Israel following an export review prompted by the December-January war in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli official said on Monday. London cancelled five out of 182 licensed British arms exports to Israel, the official said, all involving equipment for the Saar 4.5 class Corvette, a naval vessel that took part in the offensive which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians. British Foreign Minister David Milliband announced the review in April after some legislators pressed for an arms embargo on both Israel and the Hamas Islamists...

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. - Police and prison guards aided by search dogs hunted Sunday for two convicted killers and a third man who escaped the maximum-security Indiana State Prison, apparently through underground tunnels and pipes. All three men were considered dangerous, and prison officials used a telephone notification system to send alerts to nearby residents and others. It was not known if any of the men had weapons. Authorities identified the men as Charles Smith, 48, and Mark Booher, 46, both of New Castle, and Lance Battreal, 45, of Rockport. Smith and Booher were convicted of murder in the 1990s....

Egypt has ceased efforts to mediate the formation of a national unity government between the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, Israel Radio reported on Saturday. Officials who met with the senior echelon of Egyptian intelligence said that Cairo is instead proposing that two separate governments ? the Hamas regime in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank ? continue to function until general elections are held. In parallel, Egypt would like to see the Palestinian factions agree on the formation of a committee that will lay the groundwork for the next elections as well as the...

As Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the leader of Libya, hosted an African Union summit last week, his name was romantically linked in a court case with the queen mother of an ancestral Ugandan kingdom. Two editors of a Ugandan daily newspaper are being prosecuted for alleging that he is having an affair with her. The Libyan ambassador, who initially brought the case seeking £245m in damages, said in his affidavit that the editors had launched an almost daily campaign to defame Gadaffi. The Ugandan director of public prosecutions, which has taken over the case, accused the editors of defaming a foreign...