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ZINDELL BROWN, LATAVIA MCGEE, SHAEED WOODARD, ERIC JAMES WILLIAMS Mexican authorities announced on Tuesday that two U.S. citizens who were abducted last week in Matamoros have been found dead, while two others have been discovered alive. One of the surviving individuals was injured, while the other was unharmed, according to Tamaulipas Governor Américo Villarreal. The deceased were identified as Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown. The two who survived are Latavia Washington McGee and Eric Williams. The FBI had been working alongside Mexican authorities in the search for the missing Americans, who were abducted on Friday. A family member of one...

LONDON, April 26 (IranMania) - Thousands of religious hardliners chanting "Death to America" gathered in Iran's central desert to celebrate a failed US hostage rescue mission 26 years ago, AFP reported. The anniversary of the US military debacle came amid a mounting war of words with Washington, reported to be mulling the use of force to rein in the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear programme. Iranian officials used the occasion to tell US leaders that they risked yet more "divine intervention" if they dared to again set foot on Iranian soil. "The Tabas incident should act as a reminder to US...

The first commanding officer of SEAL Team Six - the US military's vaunted counter-terrorism unit that would hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden - died Sunday at age 81. Richard 'Dick' Marcinko was tasked with designing the counter-terrorist team after the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Marcinko, along with another Navy representative, was on a task force to help free the American hostages in Iran, but were unsuccessful. The mission, known as Operation Eagle Claw, highlighted deficiencies within the US military command structure and revealed the need for a full-time counter-terrorist team. Marcinko launched the United States' third SEAL...

President Joe Biden, sharing a report of a "hostage crisis" with Americans reportedly unable to evacuate Afghanistan as the Taliban prevent planes from taking off. "Joe Biden abandoned Americans in Afghanistan. Members of Congress, including me and my office, have been working around the clock to get them out - and for days Biden's State Dept. couldn't even get out of its own way. Now there are deeply disturbing reports of a hostage crisis," Cruz tweeted on Sunday. The GOP senator retweeted CBS News correspondent Eana Ruffini, who reported that the Taliban are holding several flights from taking at Afghanistan's...

The Kabul airport gates are reportedly closed Saturday, as additional details indicate the Taliban is confiscating U.S. passports. “All of the entrance gates to the airport were closed on Saturday morning because of the dangerous situation,” the New York Times reported, adding that the U.S. embassy in Kabul is advising evacuees not to travel to the airport in light of “security threats.” "Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport,” the embassy alerted on its website, “we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless...

@realDonaldTrump tweet at 5:52 pm on 1/4/2020: Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently.... ....hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have..... ....targeted 52...

Old Friends Recount Memories Of The Presidential Hopeful Before His Political Success (AP) The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug Charlie on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog's head. This was in the 1980s, a time when New York was a fearful place beset by drugs and crime, when the street smart knew that the best way to handle the city's derelicts was to avoid them entirely. But Siddiqi was angry and he confronted the bum, who approached him menacingly. Until his skinny,...

On February 29, 2016, New York Times reporters Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy provided an insider analysis of the Clinton team's plan to defeat Donald Trump. Citing interviews with "more than two dozen" Clinton insiders, including several who spoke directly to Bill Clinton, the article reported on a series of emergency meetings Clinton supporters convened to respond to Donald Trump's February 20 victory in South Carolina and his February 23 win in Nevada. The article reported that Bill Clinton and others argued against those inclined to underestimate Trump "that Mr. Trump clearly had a keen sense of the electorate’s mood...

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were convinced their one-sided nuclear deal would lead to better relations with Iran, but it’s already doing the reverse.Tehran has taken two more Americans hostage just this month — and followed up with a massive cyberattack on the US government, especially the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs.The kicker: Iran is holding the nuke deal hostage — threatening to junk it if Obama tries to punish the country for its fresh outrages.

Ken Taylor, Canada's ambassador to Iran who sheltered Americans at his residence during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis has died. He was 81. Taylor's wife, Pat, said Ken died Thursday after a two-month battle with colon cancer. Taylor kept the Americans hidden at his residence and at the home of his deputy, John Sheardown, in Tehran for three months. Taylor facilitated their escape by arranging plane tickets and persuading the Ottawa government to issue fake passports. Born in 1934 in Calgary, Taylor was heralded as a hero for helping save the Americans -- a clandestine operation that had the full...

In 1981, Jimmy Carter said the world could never know West Germany’s role in the negotiations for the release of 52 hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran. New research sheds light on the important part the country played in ending the crisis. […] The details of the German contribution, however, remained unclear. Now historian Frank Bösch, the director of the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam and Spiegel have conducted research in German archives and spoken with period witnesses. This has revealed that the West German government at the time had a “smooth intermediary role,” as Bösch puts it....

Just a bit of historical trivia, and a thought, in the wake of the Obama/Kerry HISTORIC. NUCLEAR. DEAL. with Iran. Obama has come under criticism that he left four American hostages in Iran; and his excuse was that "if we pressed for the release of the hostages, the Iranians would have demanded more concessions." Oh, really? Does anyone remember the last time a dimwit Democrat tried to deal with an Iranian hostage crisis? Yes, it's the return of Dhimmi...err, Jimmy Carter. Except I'm no longer so sure that Obama is merely a Dhimmi. Remember this little gem before Obama's first...

<p>The cafe in Sydney's central business district has been surrounded by armed police.</p>

A hostage has been forced to hold up an Islamic State flag in the window of a shop in Martin Place that is currently under siege. It is believed there are 12 hostages in the store and an ISIS flag has been placed in the window. Martin Place is the main financial area of the Sydney CBD.

Terror in Sydney As Gunman Takes At Least 13 Hostages At Lindt Cafe, forces crying women to hold black Islamic flag against the window and 'demands to speak to Tony Abbott' By EMILY CRANE and SARAH DEAN and LOUISE CHEER and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and CANDACE SUTTON 14 December 2014 | UPDATED: 21:56 EST, 14 December 2014 Witnesses described how a man wearing a headband covered in Arabic walked into the Lindt cafe in Martin Place and produced a shotgun from a blue bag at around 9.45am. Shortly afterwards hostages were seen with their hands pressed against the windows holding up...

Radical Muslim cleric Sheik Man Haron Monis has been revealed to be the ringleader in the Sydney cafe siege that has seen up to 30 people held hostage for more than 10 hours. Monis was born Manteghi Bourjerdi and fled from Iran to Australia in 1996 where he changed his name to Man Haron Monis and assuming the title of Sheik Haron. He has gained media attention in the past for a "hate mail" campaign, protesting the presence of Australian troops in Afghanistan. The campaign saw him and his partner Amirah Droudis post hate-filled letters to the families of dead...

<p>Police stormed a cafe in central Sydney early Tuesday where a gunman held more than a dozen hostages for more than 16 hours, firing automatic weapons and throwing grenades moments after captives were seen fleeing the buidling in terror. A scene of pandemonium erupted in the early morning just minutes after hostages started emerging from the cafe on their own or in small groups. Eleven hostages The dramatic end stage of the siege came as the gunman holding the remaining captives was revealed as a self-proclaimed Islamic cleric Man Haron Monis. Monis is a 49-year-old man living in southwest Sydney, but is originally from Iran and a self-proclaimed sheik, and also sent hate mail to the families of Australian dead soldiers between 2007 and 2009, according to The Daily Telegraph. The seige in the Lindt cafe in Martin Place on Monday follows an unsuccessful attempt to have these charges overturned in the High Court on Friday, The Age reported. Monis received 300 community service hours and a two-year good behaviour bond for the correspondence, which he claims were his version of sympathy cards, sent with the help from his girlfriend Amirah Droudis. Arriving as a refugee in Australia in 1996, the hostage-taker was charged as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife - who was allegedly stabbed and set on fire on a flight of stairs in her western Sydney apartment block in November 2013. The man's current partner was charged with murder but they both received bail as the case was deemed too weak.</p>

Radical Muslim cleric Sheik Man Haron Monis has been identified as the hostage-taker in Sydney who held people in a Lindt store against their will for over a dozen hours. Monis is known for writing letters to the families of fallen soldiers and comparing their dead loved ones to pigs. He is also being investigated for rape and was charged for murdering his ex-wife. Allegedly, he stabbed then lit his ex-wife on fire. He was out on bail.

Former President Jimmy Carter marked his 90th birthday Wednesday with a lengthy interview on CNBC Meets where he discussed his one term in office and the one thing he would have handled differently — the Iran Hostage Crisis. Carter suggested Operation Eagle Claw, a failed 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages taken by Iranian revolutionaries at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, could have been successful if he committed one more helicopter to the mission. "I think I would have been re-elected easily if I had been able to rescue our hostages from the Iranians," said Carter. "And everybody asks me...

President Obama on Friday signed into law a bill authored by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz that would bar an Iranian diplomat from entering the United States, but immediately issued a statement saying he won't enforce it. Obama decided to treat the law as mere advice. "Acts of espionage and terrorism against the United States and our allies are unquestionably problems of the utmost gravity, and I share the Congress's concern that individuals who have engaged in such activity may use the cover of diplomacy to gain access to our Nation," Obama said in his signing statement. "Nevertheless, as President...