Free Republic

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

COLOMBO, May 16 (Reuters) - A loud explosion shook a commercial quarter of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo on Friday, a military spokesman said. "There is an explosion near the Hilton Hotel," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, adding there were no details of any injuries or damage.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - A suicide bomber attacked the opening ceremony of a marathon outside Sri Lanka's capital Sunday, killing a government minister and 11 other people, authorities said. Dozens were wounded. Officials blamed the bombing, the second this year resulting in the death of a senior government official, on Tamil Tiger rebels. Minister of Highways and Road Development Jeyaraj Fernandopulle was opening the race at Weliweriya town, 12 miles outside Colombo. He died in a hospital of injuries sustained in the blast, said government spokesman Lakshman Hulugalla, blaming Tamil rebels. Eleven others were killed—including former Olympic marathoner K.A....

Sri Lankan fighter jets bombed a secret rebel communications center early yesterday, killing the Tamil Tigers' political chief and five others in a strike expected to deal a sharp blow to the guerrillas' morale. The killing of S.P. Tamilselvan, who acted as the public face of the rebels, was widely seen as a public relations coup for the government. But analysts feared it would further escalate the more than two-decade-old civil war and spark a cycle of political assassinations across this Indian Ocean island nation. "This is a message that we know their leaders' location," Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said....

NEW YORK - It was like a classic episode of "Perry Mason," with an FBI agent charged with murder, a mouthy mob moll and a twist at the end: The FBI guy walked after a reporter with a secret tape exposed the gangster's girlfriend as a liar who couldn't keep her story straight. In a stunning finish to one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history, former FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio was cleared Thursday of giving up confidential information that a Colombo family hit man used to kill four fellow mobsters — either rivals or potential rats....

The bosses of New York's five Mafia families in the mid-1980s came a hair-trigger away from sanctioning a hit on then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, according to bombshell FBI records made public today. Before cooler heads prevailed - the mob bosses decided by a razor-thin 3-to-2 margin not to try to whack the future mayor and presidential candidate - at least two of the dons argued fervently that the mob-busting U.S. attorney should sleep with the fishes. Bonanno boss Philip “Rusty" Rastelli, Genovese chief Vincent “The Chin" Gigante and Lucchese honcho Anthony “Tony Ducks" Corallo all cast votes to spare the...

In roughly one month we will once again celebrate the memory of the Ultimate Liberal. No, that wouldn't be George Washington, who never told a lie, nor would it be Bill Clinton, who never told the truth -- nor would it even be Jimmy Carter, who never knew the difference. It would be a man from a long bygone era, one who epitomized what liberalism was all about long before the concept ever came into being in the sense we now know it. This man was an Italian sailor named Cristoforo Colombo, whose name somehow got corrupted into Christopher Columbus...

Sri Lanka: ambassadors Italian and US wounded in a rebellious offensive COLOMBO - The ambassadors American and Italian in Sri Lanka were wounded Tuesday in an offensive with artillery carried out by rebels tamouls supposed in the east of the island, indicated to AFP the minister human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe. The ambassador Robert Blake and his Italian counterpart Prio Mariani were touched by glares of shells which struck the landing strip of the air base of Batticaloa at the time when the diplomats left a military helicopter, specified the Samarasinghe minister. Mr. Mariani was touched with the head, without...

ALARM - Sri Lanka: "vast offensive" of the army COLOMBO - the Sri Lankian army launched Wednesday a "vast offensive" against the rebellion tamoule in the septentrional peninsula of Jaffna, announced the guerrilla.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Police say Sri Lanka's foreign minister has died after being shot near his home in Colombo.

Italy goes after its lost terrorists 26.08.2004 By PETER POPHAM in Rome Incensed by the disappearance last weekend from Paris of convicted terrorist Cesari Battisti, Italy says it will press France and Nicaragua to return 12 other convicted left-wing terrorists who have evaded justice by living in exile. They include Alessio Casimirri, the only member of the Red Brigade gang that kidnapped and killed former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro still at liberty. He is living in Nicaragua. All the others are believed to be in France. France agreed in 2002 to return Italians who are wanted for serious crimes,...

We are suffering. We have many friends among the dead and missing. Pray for the dead, the dying, and the living.

COLOMBO, Sept 23, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Former US President Bill Clinton told visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that he plans to visit Sri Lanka soon to acquaint himself with the country's peace process, the state-run Daily News said on Monday. When they met in New York last week, Wickremesinghe thanked Clinton for his interest in Sri Lanka during his period in office and briefed him on the progress of the peace process in his country. Clinton, who visited Sri Lanka in 1995 with his wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea, expressed interest in the peace initiative...