Free Republic

New sanctions on Iran to hurt peace prospects The new sanctions on Iran recently announced include eight individuals, six ships, five banks and 15 other entities. U.S. Treasury officials claim that companies based in Turkey, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates have served as front companies to help Iranian Mahan Air to purchase airplane engines and other parts. Because of their limited scope, the new sanctions will be ineffectual and only damage prospects for peace with that nation. According to the Geneva “interim” agreement reached last November between Iran and the so-called P5-plus-1 group (United States, Britain, France, China, Germany...

The parents and children of this Syrian family sleep on the streets of Istanbul in Turkey. They are among the 3 million refugees from Syria, many of whom live in desperate conditions. Photo: UNHCR/S. Baldwin 29 August 2014 – Three million Syrians will have registered as refugees outside of their country today, the UN refugee agency reported, amid accounts of increasingly horrifying conditions inside their homeland – cities where populations are surrounded, people are going hungry and civilians are being targeted or indiscriminately killed. A news release issued by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that a further...

Egypt charges ex-president Mursi with passing state secrets to Qatar Ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi stands behind bars during his trial at a court in Cairo . Egypt charged ousted president Mohamed Mursi and several other people on Saturday with endangering national security by leaking state secrets and sensitive documents to Qatar, dealing a further blow to his outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Relations between Qatar, a Gulf Arab state, and Egypt have been icy since July 2013, when then-Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled Mursi after mass unrest against his rule. Qatar had supported Mursi, who is already in jail...

IHS, the African mobile infrastructure group, will double the size of its business following a $2bn deal to acquire more than 9,000 telecoms towers from MTN, the South African-based telecoms group. The deal with IHS, which is raising equity from investors to help fund the transaction, will be the largest transaction for towers in Africa. Issam Darwish, IHS chief executive, declined to comment on the value of the deal but added that it would double the size of the group’s asset value. He said Nigeria was of particular importance in the regional telecoms industry. “Nigeria is at the heart of...

The Chinese authorities have accused British MPs of interfering in Hong Kong's affairs, Newsnight has learned. They are trying to block an influential Westminster committee from carrying out an inquiry into the ongoing tensions in Hong Kong. The Chinese ambassador to the UK has also tried to warn the MPs off. It comes as thousands of activists in Hong Kong protest at Chinese government moves which they say will limit democratic elections in the territory. In a strongly worded letter, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Committee accuses its UK counterpart of carrying out a "highly inappropriate act which constitutes interference in...

MOSCOW, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- Russia said Thursday that its relations with Iran have been growing, citing shared approaches on several major international and regional affairs. "The intensity of political contacts is growing and there is obviously positive dynamics in the areas of practical interaction," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary ahead of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif's visit to Moscow. Positions of the two countries coincide to a large extent on such issues as the Syrian crisis, anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan as well as the disputed Iranian nuclear program, it said. In particular, Moscow sees good opportunity...

Islamic State or Russia? Ten Key Questions Towards Pragmatism Politics / GeoPolitics Sep 01, 2014 - 01:03 PM GMT By: DK_Matai There are insufficient resources and bandwidth to counter the rising threat of global destabilisation from the barbaric ambitions of the Islamic State operatives and Russia’s increasing belligerence and military interventions in Eastern Europe simultaneously. At some stage, a clear and present danger based priority needs to be established. At that point, some strategic questions need to be asked. It is in the context of prioritisation that the ATCA 5000 Research and Analysis Wing and the mi2g Intelligence Unit have...

Photo: Mombasa County Government Drug ship destroyed at Mombasa. By Kazungu Chai Mombasa — President Uhuru Kenyatta today sent a clear signal to drug traffickers that they will not be allowed to continue the illegal trade at the expense of the dreams of the Kenyan youth. He personally led an operation to blow up a ship and destroy heroin worth over Kshs 1 billion. The President - aboard a Kenya Air Force chopper and the Kenya Navy in their modern warship KNS Jasiri - led journalists, security personnel and anti-narcotic officials as the ship and the drugs were blown off...

I Can Destroy Your Reputation and Career in Two Minutes Rachel Alexander | Sep 01, 2014 There is a new form of cyberbullying out there and it is scary, because it could derail the professional career of any conservative - even those working in apolitical jobs. Slimy folks like “Busta Troll” are hijacking Facebook pages of conservatives, replacing the content with goats and anti-conservative messages. Some believe a goat is used because it is a Satanic symbol; many of the conservatives are targeted because of their Christian or Jewish views. The conservative Citizens’ Post page on Facebook was hijacked by...

Robert Richards, Marine Guilty in Taliban Desecration, Dies at 28 Robert W. Richards, a former sergeant who helped provoke international outrage when he and three other Marines were seen on videotape urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in 2011, died on Wednesday at his home in Jacksonville, N.C., near Camp Lejeune, where he had once been based. He was 28. His lawyer, Guy Womack, confirmed the death, saying there were no signs of foul play or self-inflicted wounds, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Womack said he suspected that a combination of medications that Mr. Richards had been...

As the 2014 midterm elections approached, the media were quick to criticize conservative donors like the Koch brothers for backing issues important to them. But journalists largely ignored the incredible financial power being used to promote the liberal agenda. Five top donors – Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Pierre Omidyar, Tom Steyer and George Soros’s own son, Jonathan – are major funders of the left. Together, they have contributed at least $2.7 billion since 2000 to groups pushing abortion, gun control, climate change alarmism and liberal candidates. That’s not how major media depicted them. Broadcast networks applauded when billionaire hedge fund...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014 STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where I have worked since 1998. I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report...

US Sen. Bernie Sanders visits North Carolina with 2016 on his mind Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, addresses a rally in front of the White House against proposed changes to Social Security benefits, on April 9, 2013 in Washington, D.C. KEVIN G. HALL — MCT A potential 2016 contender is visiting Raleigh on Wednesday and getting a boost from the state Democratic Party. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who aligns with Democrats, will host a town hall forum at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. The topic: “The fight for economic justice.” Sanders is not considered a serious contender for...

Op-Ed: 1,400 kids sexually abused in one UK town, cops knew, did nothing Rotherham - It must surely be one of the most inglorious moments in British history. A report indicates that a place called Rotherham was for years a centre of serious sexual violence and abuse of children over a period of 16 years. Worse, police were allegedly aware of the abuse and did nothing. Sydney Morning Herald Reading descriptions of the abuse makes it hard to imagine that nothing was done for so long. The report described rapes by multiple perpetrators, mainly from Britain's Pakistani community, and how...

Author Insights: Legalizing Medical Marijuana May Reduce Opioid Deaths BY BRIDGET M. KUEHN on AUGUST 26, 2014 Marcus A. Bachhuber, MD, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues found that states that legalize marijuana experience lower rates of opioid deaths, on average, compared with states that don’t allow medical marijuana. Image: University of Pennsylvania Opioid-overdose deaths increased in states across the country between 1999 and 2010, but states that legalized medical marijuana saw less-steep increases than those without, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week. Growing use...

Who is David Danon, and what drove him to take on his old bosses at Vanguard Group Inc., alleging that its nearly $3 trillion in assets were built on an illegal tax strategy? The son of a refugee from Bulgaria, Danon got in scraps as a schoolboy in Tenafly, N.J., where his short stature and harelip made him a target for bullying. "The teachers didn't do anything," Danon said. "I got into lots of fights that I should never have had to." The struggle with Vanguard, where he worked for nearly five years as a tax lawyer, is Danon's toughest...

The Mega Debt and Sustainable Capitalism Economics / Credit Crisis Bailouts Tom Naysburn writes: Accepted thought acknowledges the financial crisis of 2008 was a near apocalyptic event which needed the citizens of the Anglo American dominated financial world to bailout the banking system to the conservative tune of $10 trillion in the US, and at least £1 trillion by UK taxpayers. For perspective, the entire cumulative national government debt in the UK stood at £350bn at the turn of the century. Why then was a bailout required? Would we have woken and the sky had fallen? No. The answer given...

Monday, August 25, 2014 Investor Soros sues BONY for unpaid Argentina bonds Billionaire United States investor George Soros and Kyle Bass, the founder of hedge fund Hayman Capital Management, have opened a lawsuit against the Bank of New York Mellon (BONY) for failing to distribute 226 million euros in Argentine bonds to creditors. According to a report from Bloomberg, the litigation was initiated due to the BONY's refusal to pass on to bondholders a payment made by Argentina on June 26, which was blocked by a ruling from New York judge Thomas Griesa as part of the dispute with holdout...

The biggest tracts of cannabis to have been detected in China since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 are in the northern provinces of Jilin and Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is also home to extensive fields of illicit opium poppies, as are the provinces of Heilongjiang and Hebei. These and other discoveries were made possible by images transmitted from space by Gaofen-1, China’s first high-resolution imaging satellite, the official China News Service reported on Monday. Launched into space on the back of a Long March rocket in April 2013, the Gaofen-1 has been orbiting the Earth at an...

Government leaders are expected to agree in November that the world's top banks must issue special bonds to increase the amount of capital which can be tapped in a crisis instead of calling on taxpayers to come to the rescue, industry and G20 officials said. The bonds, known as "gone concern loss absorption capacity" or GLAC, are seen by regulators as essential to stopping the world's 29 biggest lenders from being "too big to fail". The plans are being drafted by the Financial Stability Board, the regulatory task force of the Group of 20 economies which declined to comment ahead...