Free Republic

It began in late 2007 as a routine audit. Retail giant Wal-Mart noticed that some exit signs at the company's stores and warehouses had gone missing. As the audit spread across Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, the mystery thickened. Stores from Arkansas to Washington began reporting missing signs. They numbered in the hundreds at first, then the thousands. Last month Wal-Mart disclosed that about 15,800 of its exit signs – a stunning 20 per cent of its total inventory – are lost, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for at 4,500 facilities in the United States and Puerto Rico. Poor housekeeping, certainly, but what's...

Bush -- Man Of The Day Fools rush in every time something positive is written about President George W. Bush. Attacks on the writer, not on what was written, come from the dark pit of anger and ignorance where enlightenment is badly needed. By highlighting Bush’s achievements in a published editorial as he bids farewell to the nation, I “forced” Liberal extremists and their radical satellites on the edge, to stump their feet of disapproval and cry in pain! What I actually did was forced out of their system, their greatest hidden expertise on name-calling. When I wrote about Bush’s...

Hijacked Iranian Ship: Dirty Bomb meant for Israel on Yom Kippur? Follow up on an original posting by Snooper of Take Our Country Back Cross posted from Director BlueSaturday, October 11, 2008 Shirat Devorah researched the various articles surrounding the recent Somali hijacking of an Iranian vessel and came to an ominous conclusion.On August 21st, 2008, the MV Iran Deyant, 44,458 dead weight bulk carrier was heading towards the Suez Canal. As it was passing the Horn of Africa, about 80 miles southeast of al-Makalla in Yemen, the ship was surrounded by speedboats filled with members of a gang of...

Authorities seized a small amount of radioactive material and nerve gas from a taxi in the Georgian capital and detained the driver, officials said Monday. Tedo Mokeliya was detained May 31 after police in this former Soviet republic discovered two containers with 3 curies of cesium-137 and 12 microcuries of strontium in his taxi, said Givi Mgebrishvili, chief of the Interior Ministry's main criminal investigation department. Cesium and strontium, which have medical and industrial applications, are considered likely ingredients for a so-called "dirty bomb," in which conventional explosives are combined with radioactive material. Mgebrishvili said at a news conference that...

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory equipment helps to sniff out radioactive sources. Remnants of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (pictured), are being used in other fields.NASA The 9-year mission of NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory ended in 2000 with a plunge into the Pacific Ocean. But its spare parts are living on — as a detector of dirty bombs. James Ryan, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, has recycled parts from one of the space telescope’s old instruments, realizing that they can work just as well pointing horizontally as they did vertically up into the heavens. The...

SCOTLAND Yard believes it has thwarted an al-Qaeda nerve gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in the British Parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded emails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 later identified an al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video-recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the terror attack. The encrypted emails are said to have been decoded with the assistance of an al-Qaeda "supergrass". By revealing the terrorists' code, he was also able to help MI5 and GCHQ - the...

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

By Judi McLeod Tuesday, March 25, 2008 In an effort to provide them a fair trial, the Canadian government is seeking a limited publication ban on the identities of the adults charged with belonging to the so-called “Toronto 18” group. The identity of the youth charged with belonging to a homegrown terror cell is already protected under the Young Criminal Justice Act. The trial for the youth gets underway in a Brampton court today. Almost unheard of since they were nabbed in a foiled undercover operation to kidnap and behead members of Parliament, among other things on June 2, 2006,...

Colombia's FARC guerrilla movement was trying to get hold of radioactive material to make a "dirty bomb," Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos said on Tuesday. Santos told the United Nations Conference on Disarmament that materials found on computers of Raul Reyes, the deputy commander of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), showed the group was in negotiations to get hold of radioactive matter for a bomb. (Reuters)

MIAMI (AFP) - Jose Padilla, the US citizen arrested in 2002 for an alleged dirty bomb plot only to see those charges disappear three years later, was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison Tuesday for supporting the Al-Qaeda terror network. ADVERTISEMENT Two other men accused of plotting with Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, also received lengthy prison terms: 15 years and eight months for Hassoun and 12 years and eight months for Jayyousi. Miami federal judge Marcia Cook said there was not enough support for the charges to give Padilla the maximum life sentence requested...

Jose Padilla is sentenced to 17 years By CURT ANDERSON, AP Legal Affairs Writer 5 minutes ago Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting with al-Qaida to blow up a radioactive "dirty bomb," was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on terrorism conspiracy charges that don't mention those initial allegations. The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke marks another step in the extraordinary personal and legal odyssey for the 37-year-old Muslim convert, a U.S. citizen who was held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant after his 2002 arrest amid the "dirty bomb" allegations. He had...

MIAMI (AFP) - Jose Padilla, a US citizen convicted of supporting the Al Qaeda terror network, could face anywhere from decades to a lifetime behind bars, a federal judge said on Tuesday. Judge Marcia Cooke rejected defense claims that Padilla, 37, and two co-conspirators had not commited any actual act of terrorism. She ruled that a special provision for stiffer penalties applied and that the three could each face prison sentences of 30 years to life. Before Cooke delivers sentence, probably later this week, lawyers for the two sides will present their arguments for sentencing. The prosecutors want Padilla, Adham...

A British al-Qa'eda fanatic who planned to cause "indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery" on both sides of the Atlantic has been jailed for life. Dhiren Barot, from London, plotted explosions Muslim convert Dhiren Barot was told by a judge at Woolwich Crown Court this afternoon that he must serve at least 40 years before being considered for release. Mr Justice Butterfield told Barot: "This was no noble cause. Your plans were to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the UK on a colossal and unprecedented scale." He added: "Your intention was...

Slovak Police Say Seized Radioactive Material Was Uranium By Stefan Bos Budapest 30 November 2007 Officials in Hungary and neighboring Slovakia say police have detained three suspects who were in possession of material enriched enough to be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb." Stefan Bos reports for VOA from Budapest. A spokesman for the Hungarian Customs and Finance Guard, Attila Kiss, tells VOA that, after months of preparations, Hungarian and Slovak police detained three suspects on charges of trying to sell enriched uranium for at least $1 million. Kiss says police discovered half a kilogram of enriched uranium in...

There are no zombies to distract from the plausibility of Right at Your Door. And that's what makes this smart, coolly horrifying American indie thriller one of the scariest movies you're likely to see all year — a post-9/11 nightmare about terrorism, panic, and paranoia with real, waking-life implications. The time is now, the setting is the nothing-special new home of a young married couple in the hills of Los Angeles, where Lexi (Mary McCormack), a corporate type, kisses her stay-at-home musician husband, Brad (Rory Cochrane), goodbye and joins the city's commuting thousands. She forgot to charge her cell phone?...

WASHINGTON: The specter of a nuclear bomb, hidden in a cargo container, detonating in an American port has prompted Congress to require 100 percent screening of U.S.-bound ships at their more than 600 foreign starting points. The Bush administration and shippers maintain the technology for scanning 11 million containers each year does not exist and say the requirement could disrupt trade. Current procedures including manifest inspections at foreign ports and radiation monitoring in U.S. ports are working well, they contend. Nonetheless, President George W. Bush signed the measure into law this month and praised its transfer of domestic money to...

After a three-month trial, a federal jury convicted home-grown terrorist Jose Padilla (AKA Abdullah al-Muhajir or Muhajir Abdullah) of terrorism conspiracy charges. Padilla and co-defendants Adham Hassoun, a Palestinian born in Lebanon, and Kifah Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan, were found guilty of one count of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim overseas, one count of conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists and one count of material support for terrorists.Opponents of the Bush administration’s policy of treating terrorists as enemy combatants rather than common criminals, point to the verdict as "proof" that convictions can be obtained while...

A verdict was reached Thursday in the trial of Jose Padilla and two co-defendants charged with supporting al-Qaida and other violent Islamic extremist groups overseas. The jury verdict was scheduled to be read at 2 p.m. EDT before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami's downtown federal courthouse, according to an announcement from her chambers. The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about a day and a half following a three-month trial. Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible life in prison if convicted of all three charges in the case

DETROIT — A man who became the subject of a book called "The Radioactive Boy Scout" after trying to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a teenager has been charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors. Police say it was a possible effort to experiment with radioactive materials. David Hahn, 31, was being held Friday on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned Thursday on felony larceny charges. Clinton Township police Capt. Richard Maierle said Hahn denied the charges. A district court clerk on Friday said Hahn did not have an attorney. The Associated...

Breaking story