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Members of a notorious Dutch motorcycle gang who have been pictured helping Kurdish forces fight ISIS in Syria have been told they are not committing any crime. Three bikers from the 'No Surrender' Banditos gang traveled to Syria to help fight the Islamic militants last week, according to Klaas Otto, the head of the group. Now the Dutch prosecutor has told gang members that they will not be prosecuted for going to fight abroad, because such actions are only illegal if you are fighting troops from the Netherlands.

Protestors [sic] are assembling in New York and around the country to let billionaires, big oil and big bankers know that we’re not going to let the richest 1% force draconian economic policies and massive cuts to crucial programs on Main Street Americans. Out-of-touch Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he is “increasingly concerned by the growing mobs.” Mobs? That must be what Republicans refer to as the middle class, or maybe the millions of unemployed Americans across the country. As Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “The message of the American people is that no longer will the recklessness...

Washington (CNN) - The Republican who wants to be the next governor of California has a message for the state's Latinos: "Meg Whitman es una candidata diferente." Translation: "Meg Whitman is a different kind of candidate." The former eBay CEO released two Spanish-language television ads as part of a calculated courting of the state's 13.5 million+ Hispanics. "She is the Republican who opposes the Arizona law…" an announcer says in one of the ads. Many Latinos have vented anger at Arizona's passing of the nation's toughest immigration law. It requires law enforcement agents to "determine the immigration status" of anyone...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The mastermind of the 2002 Washington, DC-area sniper attacks will die by lethal injection next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. John Allen Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings. The three-week killing spree in October 2002 left 10 dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

SPRINGFIELD -- Frustrated by the lack of direct action on the part of state legislative leadership, two private Illinois citizens said Friday they will be filing a petition before the Illinois Supreme Court to temporarily remove Governor Rod Blagojevich from office. "Attorney General Lisa Madigan has been bringing up the possibility of removing the governor from office based on Illinois Supreme Court's Rule 382, which allows the court to move quicker than any other recourse," petitioner John Bambenek of Champaign told Illinois Review today. "Illinois can't wait for months for the Governor to step down, we have too many...

Gov. Dead Meat woke early, and even before he could spray on some dry look and meet the day, the boss of the Chicago FBI was on the phone, saying there were federal agents outside waiting to arrest him on corruption charges. One of those charges was for allegedly trying to sell a seat in the U.S. Senate by the pound, and there were candidates willing to pay the price. His alleged co-schemer was his chief of staff, John Harris, who once worked closely with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. "I could tell I woke him up," Chicago FBI chief Rob...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban's most prominent military commander, a one-legged fighter who orchestrated an ethnic massacre and a rash of beheadings, was killed in a U.S.-led military operation in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday. Mullah Dadullah, a top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was killed Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, said Said Ansari, the spokesman for Afghanistan's intelligence service. NATO confirmed his death, calling it "a serious blow" to the insurgency. Dadullah is one of the highest-ranking Taliban leaders killed since the fall of the hard-line regime following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. His death...

New York, Feb 1 - The Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee announced today that Ed Goeas, Dave Sackett and Brian Tringali from The Tarrance Group, a prominent research and strategic consulting firm, are joining the committee as its pollsters. Goeas and partners Sackett and Tringali currently also serve as pollster to five Republican Governors, ten U.S. Senators, and forty-two Republican Members of Congress. “We’re thrilled The Tarrance Group has come on board and will lead our polling efforts. Ed Goeas, Dave Sackett and Brian Tringali are truly superior in their field, have stellar reputations and make an outstanding addition...

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, taken for dead politically a month ago, rose again Monday night to win a special election for Johnson County district attorney. Kline, a Republican, defeated Assistant Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, 316-291 in an election among Johnson County Republican precinct committee members. Kline takes office in January. The vote means Kline will complete an unusual job swap with Democrat Paul Morrison, the current county district attorney. Kline lost badly to Morrison in the November attorney general’s race — 59 percent to 41 percent. In Johnson County, where the two were perhaps best-known, Morrison trumped...

Cuba's President Fidel Castro has recovered so well from surgery that he is now strong enough to play baseball, his Venezuelan counterpart joked after meeting the pajama-clad convalescent strongman. "He is more alive than ever, he walks, he sings and he is even ready to play baseball," Hugo Chavez told journalists after a private meeting with Castro at an undisclosed location where the Cuban leader is recovering from an intestinal operation he underwent in July. "He looks better every time," said Chavez, who has visited the ailing 80-year-old on several occasions in recent weeks.

Cuba's Communist Party tried to quell fears of chaos on Thursday following the temporary surrender of power by the ailing Fidel Castro but failed to clear up doubts over who is in charge of the island. In a typically cryptic message, the main Communist Party newspaper Granma printed an old speech by Raul Castro, who took over island leadership on Monday, saying that his brother's only heir was the Communist Party itself. While the front page publication of the speech was obviously designed to quell fears that Fidel's possible exit after 47 years of rule would unleash chaos, it could...

In al-Jazeera interview, senior wanted Palestinian terror suspect presents academy which prepares thousands of activists to fight against Israel; 'Jew that came to lands of Palestine is a murderer, occupier and he is the one we fight, but we have no connection to Jew living in his synagogue in Britain or America,' group official says Muhammad Deif, head of Hamas' military wing and the senior Palestinian terror suspect wanted by Israel, said Sunday night that "all the land conquered in 1948 is Palestine's land. Every Muslim in the world has the right and duty to fight in order to liberate...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda in Iraq confirmed on Thursday the death of the group's leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi and vowed to maintain its fight against the U.S. occupation and the Baghdad government, according to a Web statement. "We herald the martyrdom of our mujahid (warrior) Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq... and we stress that this is an honour to our nation," said a statement on an Islamist Web site, signed by Zarqawi's deputy, Abu Abdulrahman al-Iraqi. The group also renewed its support for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden had declared Zarqawi his deputy in...

A Harvard College student home on vacation was fatally shot in the chest in Minneapolis this week while spray-painting graffiti on someone's house in a crime police said could be gang-related. Clarence Duane Meat, 24, an economics major who was expected to graduate next year, was shot as he and a friend spray-painted figures and letters on a home in a south Minneapolis neighborhood on Wednesday, Ronald Reier, a Minneapolis police spokesman, said yesterday. A 17-year-old male allegedly burst out of the home and fired numerous gunshots, hitting Meat in the chest, Reier said. Meat was taken to the Hennepin...

The Russian air force is buying 24 new Su-34 fighter bombers. This is the latest variant of the Su-27. The Su-34 is somewhat like the American F-15E, a high performance fighter modified to act as a very effective bomber. Aside from it's similarity to the F-15E, the Su-34 has one very distinguishing characteristic. The cockpit for the two man crew not only allows for tandem (side-by-side) seating, but is spacious enough for the pilots to stand up and, standing behind their seats, stretch a bit. There is also a toilet and cooking facilities back there as well. The cockpit itself...

Just wondering, have there been any indications or threats of riots tonight in LA and other areas in response to the tookie execution. I'm sure Al Sharpton can explain how they plan to react peacefully.

SAN DIEGO — Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges involving the sale of his home two years ago to a defense contractor at an inflated price. Admitting to a judge that he took bribes, Cunningham entered pleas in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004. Cunningham, 63, and his wife, Nancy, used the proceeds from the $1,675,000 sale to defense contractor Mitchell Wade to buy a $2.55 million mansion in ritzy Rancho Santa Fe. Wade put the Del...

GRETA just broke in with the story that two (2) men had ambushed and initiated a gunfight at a New Orleans police sub station....Officers returned fire and subjects retreated back to French QTR.

MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - A set of special arrangements by Russian secret services in the North Caucasus preceded the elimination of Chechen terrorist leader Aslan Maskhadov, a source in Russian secret anti-terrorist structures informed RIA Novosti on Wednesday. "During the past few weeks a set of special operations was conducted in Chechnya and a number of constituent members of the Russian Federation to locate Chechen terrorist leaders and emissaries of the Al Qaeda international terrorist organization," the interlocutor said on condition of anonymity. According to the source, the final stage of the operations involved considerable special task forces...

"Is anyone really surprised that another Clinton confidante has been indicted?" said Stephen Minarik, referring to the indictment of David Rosen, who served as Hillary Clinton's finance director in her 2000 Senate race. The New York State Republican Party chairman added: "Hillary Clinton's public life reads like an instruction manual for breaking the rules. New Yorkers deserve better. The remarks by Minarik are but the opening salvo in a ramping up campaign to frustrate her reelection to the Senate and even nix a potential presidential bid by Clinton in 2008, says a report in the NY Daily News. Pundits are...