Free Republic

Kuwait’s parliament, reacting to a suicide bombing last week that killed 26 people, adopted a law Wednesday requiring mandatory DNA testing on all the country’s citizens and foreign residents. The legislation, requested by the government to help security agencies make quicker arrests in criminal cases, calls on the interior ministry to establish a database on all 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents. Under the law, people who refuse to give samples for the test face one year in jail and a fine of up to $33,000 (29,700 euros). Those who provide fake samples can be jailed for seven...

The attack Friday at a Tunisian beach resort killed at least 18 Britons, but officials said Monday the actual number was likely to be 30. That would make it by far the deadliest terrorist attack on Britons since the London transport bombings 10 years ago. Yet it was just one of three terrorist attacks on three continents that followed one another in frightening succession last week. While it is not yet known whether the attacks were linked, they have left officials in numerous countries concerned about how to keep their citizens safe. Not long after that, a bomb ripped through...

Uproar in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has relieved Gen. Qassem Soleimani,the Al Qods Brigades chief and supreme commander of Iranian Middle East forces, of his Syria command after a series of war debacles. He was left in charge of Iran’s military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. This is revealed by exclusive Iranian intelligence sources. Since Soleimani last visited Damascus on June 2, in the aftershock of the historic town of Palmyra’s fall to the Islamic State, the situation of President Bashar Assad and his army has gone from bad to worse. The Iranian general’s...

The death toll from a suicide attack on a Shia mosque during Friday prayers in the Kuwaiti capital has risen to at least 27, the interior ministry says. Another 227 people were wounded, it added. Images circulating online show bodies on the mosque floor amid debris. The blast hit the Imam Sadiq Mosque in a busy area to the east of Kuwait City. An Islamic State- (IS) affiliated group said it was behind the attack. IS has carried out similar recent attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Yemen. However, this is the first attack on a Shia mosque to take...

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Against the backdrop of a pending deal over Iran's nuclear program, an unprecedented meeting took place in Washington, D.C., last week. The meeting between Israel and Saudi Arabia sent one more signal of an historic geopolitical change taking place in the Middle East. At the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel's incoming director general of the Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, met with Anwar Majed Eshki, his Saudi counterpart. These historic enemies shared an identical message: Iran is trying to take over the Middle East and it must be stopped. The meeting took place in public, but Israel and...

She had registered with a websiteA Kuwaiti girl looking for a husband online was stunned when she discovered the suitor was her own neighbour, a crippled man in his 60s. The girl, in her 30s, had registered with a specialised website seeking a husband and waited for nearly two weeks before she was connected with a man. “He phoned her and agreed to meet…when she saw him, she got a big shock as he was her crippled neighbour, who is known by her family…she quickly left him and was still under the shock,” the Saudi daily ‘Sada’ said without giving...

Russia is gradually turning its back on Syrian President Bashar Assad, evacuating some 100 expert advisers and their families from Syria and refusing to repair regime fighter jets, an Arab daily reported on Sunday. “Senior sources in the Gulf” told pro-opposition London-based daily a-Sharq al-Awsat that the change in Russia’s position toward the Assad regime stems from diplomatic pressure exerted by Arab Gulf states. It also comes as part of Moscow’s efforts to shake international sanctions imposed on it following a military confrontation with Ukraine, the sources said. Meanwhile, Syrian opposition sources told the newspaper that 100 of Russia’s top...

President Obama’s Camp David summit with the Gulf Arab states on Thursday will seek to boost arms sales to the Gulf neighbors but the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been taken off their wish list. White House officials on Monday sought to tamp down speculation that King Salman of Saudi Arabia canceled his attendance at Camp David when the U.S. made clear that his country would not be permitted to buy F-35s. “We do not and never anticipated this to be a summit that only focused on one capability, like the F-35, for instance,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy National...

)—Five Iranian boats fired shots across the bow of a Singapore flagged cargo vessel in the Persian Gulf on Thursday in an attempt to potentially stop the ship, a U.S. official told CNN. For the first time, the incident brought another Persian Gulf nation into the recent rising maritime tensions in the region. It is not yet clear if any of the rounds hit the Alpine Eternity. There were no U.S. citizens or cargo on board. The Pentagon is still gathering information about the incident.

DOHA (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirate's coastguard said it went to the aid of a Singapore-flagged ship on Thursday after the vessel came under Iranian naval fire, the Gulf state's news agency reported. The coastguard said the cargo ship, flying a Singapore flag,

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from a carefully orchestrated summit with the US that President Barack Obama hoped would assuage Gulf anxieties about the conclusion of a nuclear agreement with Iran. Until Sunday the monarch had been expected to join other heads of state from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries at an unprecedented meeting at the White House and a day of talks at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Now the only leaders attending will be the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait. The summit, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, follows months of tension and intensive...

Kuwait City, 5 Feb. (AKI) - The US air raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Layth al-Libi in Pakistan is reported to have also killed three other leaders from the terrorist network. According to the Kuwaiti daily, al-Watan, two Kuwaitis and a Libyan also died in the missile attack conducted by a Predator aircraft on January 25 in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan on the border of Afghanistan. The daily said the attack was aimed at what was believed to have been an al-Qaeda summit meeting. Abu Obeida Tawari al-Obeidi and Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti were reportedly there with al-Libi.Abu Adel...

Kuwait is expected to announce in coming weeks an order for 28 Boeing Co (BA.N) F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, a $3 billion-plus (£1.96 billion plus) deal that will keep the jets' St. Louis production line running well into 2019, according to people familiar with the deal. Kuwait, which operates a fleet of earlier F/A-18 models, has signed a formal letter stating its firm plans to buy newer-model Boeing jets, according to one of the people who is familiar with the deal but was not authorized to speak publicly. A second source confirmed that the U.S. government was working with Kuwait to...

TEL AVIV – In an extraordinary move that could mean billions lost to the American economy, Gulf monarchs meeting Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, took a closed-door decision to potentially withhold investments from U.S. military firms if the terms of any final agreement with Iran causes significant harm to the Sunni Arab states. The meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council brought together leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. All of those countries, aside from Oman, participated in the Saudi-led strikes targeting Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen. According to a source who took part...

Amid reports of a renewed Saudi offensive against Iranian-allied rebels in Yemen, Iran's news agency reported on Friday that Saudi Arabia had stopped Iranian aid planes from landing in Yemen. Not unexpectedly, a top Iranian official responded with threats directed at Saudi Arabia. Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned on Sunday that the Saudi behavior and its siege of Yemen and preventing the dispatch of humanitarian aids "will not remain unanswered." "Saudi Arabia is not entitled to decide for others in the region," Abdollahian added. Iran's FARS News Agency stated that Saudi fighter jets...

According to a report by al-Jazeera, several American generals are skeptical that Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen will succeed.  A “senior commander at CENTCOM” claimed the Saudis did not keep the operation secret from American authorities because they feared the Obama Administration inform Iran, but rather because the Saudis feared the Pentagon would dismiss their battle plan as a “bad idea” and try to talk them out of it. “Military sources said that a number of regional special forces officers and officers at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led intervention because the target of the intervention, the Shia...

It began with anxiety and depression. A few months later, hallucinations appeared. Then the Texas man, in his 40s, couldn't feel or move the left side of his face. He thought the symptoms were because of a recent car accident. But the psychiatric problems got worse. And some doctors thought the man might have bipolar disorder. Cattle feeding practices have been changed in an effort to halt the spread of mad cow disease. THE SALT Mad Cow Disease: What You Need To Know Now Eventually, he couldn't walk or speak. He was hospitalized. And about 18 months after symptoms began,...

On his radio show this morning, Glenn Beck not-so-fondly recalls the time he was employed by ABC News and became Diane Sawyer‘s “little bitch” before their working relationship soured and “she became the biggest bigot I’ve ever seen.” According to Beck, during his brief stint as an ABC contributor, Sawyer was fond of him and would call him up frequently to discuss what sorts of ideas she had for improving television. “I was Diane Sawyer’s little bitch,” he told his co-hosts today, recalling how she’d call and e-mail him so frequently his wife became concerned. However, he alleged, Sawyer stopped...

Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants to name 3,000 things after Ronald Reagan. His next target is a small mountain in Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's home state. The would-be Mount Reagan, at 3,366 feet, is not nearly the highest peak in Nevada. But it does overlook Las Vegas and, as such, would remind all who visit and live there of the former two-term California governor who went on to become president and lodestar of the Republican Party.

I've seen some negative comments about conservative talk radio host "Glen Beck" in here lately. Wasn't he the one that brought a million conservatives to a rally in Washington DC? So I'm just curious, if there is one thing you don't like about Mr. Beck, what is it?