Free Republic

European taxpayers are supporting a massive fraud. The European Union (EU) has become embroiled in a financial scandal of massive proportions in relation to the financial assistance given by it to the Palestinian Authority (PA) since 1994. This appears very clear from the comprehensive European Court of Auditors Report dated 22 October 2013 which was only made public this week. The Report reveals the following: .....

BEAVER COUNTY (KDKA) – An 18-year-old has been charged in the brutal rape and beating of an elderly nun in Aliquippa. Andrew Bullock, of Orchard Street, faces at least 10 charges in the Friday morning attack. The nun serves at St. Titus Church on Franklin Avenue.

A 10-year-old boy was suspended after he pretended to shoot an imaginary bow and arrow at his classmate, the family's attorney said this week. Johnny Jones was disciplined after he playfully responded to his friend's imaginary gun duel during class in October, by making an imaginary bow and arrow using his pencil. Johnny was reported by a girl in his class at the South Eastern School District West in Pennsylvania.Following a lecture by their teacher, Johnny and the other boy were suspended for one day under the school district's zero-tolerance policy against weapons and their school records marked to say...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is threatening once again to pull out of the peace talks with Israel over its plans to build in Judea and Samaria. Channel 2 News reported on Sunday that the PA is accusing Israel of not having really cancelled tenders that were issued several weeks ago for 20,000 new homes in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reprimanded Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel over the construction and cancelled it, but the PA is now claiming, according to Channel 2, that the announcement of the tenders appeared as “active” on the Housing Ministry’s website...

Hamas has already acquired some 250,000 signatures of PA Arabs who signed a convention calling for no peace compromise with Israel, insisting upon Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem and the West Bank and the return of all pre-1948 refugees with...

The fortress, an important site in the Maccabee revolts which Hanukkah commemorates, is located in 'Area A' not under Israeli control. Tour guides from the Kfar Etzion Field School this week discovered that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been digging at Beit Betzi, a Hasmonean fortress located between Bethlehem and the Herodion in "Area A." The Hasmonean revolt against the Greek empire is commemorated in the holiday of Hanukkah that begins Wednesday night. Following the Oslo Accords the site, one of the only existing discoveries from the days of the Hasmoneans, was transfered to PA control. News of PA digs...

HARRISBURG — After idling six months in the state Legislature, Gov. Tom Corbett's coveted bill to address pressing transportation needs seems headed toward becoming law at 70 mph, fueled by higher gasoline taxes. Final passage is expected Thursday on legislation that would rev up transportation spending by $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion and give Corbett a badly needed policy victory. Success would come just days after what appeared to be a legislative pileup. The House balked at passage late Monday, only to suddenly shift gears Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday, the Senate passed the package 43-7, and that vote put the...

A private citizen armed with a gun for which he had a license, shot and killed two robbers in Reading, Pennsylvania this week. Sooooo… OF COURSE… the families of the two dead ROBBERS want the citizen who shot and killed them charged with a CRIME. I know, I know: The capitalized words bother me too, but I had to write it that way because, honestly, the story is just so retarded—read progressive-- that I feel compelled to use the liberal-needs font. What crime, you ask, do the families of the dead guys want the citizen charged with? They’re really not...

Developing story.

The United States intends to try and force a peace agreement on Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), IDF Radio reported Monday. The radio station says the US has informed Israel and the Palestinian Authority that if negotiations between them do not advance, Washington will propose its own solution, that will include a US position on every point that is in contention. In effect, according to the report, this will be an attempt to force the sides to agree on a solution formulated by the US. MK Zehava Galon (Meretz) was quoted as saying Monday that senior US officials told...

POTTSVILLE, Pa. — A freshman Democrat representing northeastern Pennsylvania's biggest cities and some anthracite coal towns will hold a town hall meeting on the federal health care law in the wake of an uproar over its website woes and insurers discontinuing plans that don't meet the law's standards. U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright was to appear Friday in Pottsville. Cartwright supports the law, even though he wasn't in office for its 2010 enactment. But a backlash over the law in the last mid-term election of 2014 helped drive Democrats from office and Republicans into the House majority.

HARRISBURG — Voters' anger at Congress is boiling over because of the government shutdown, polling shows, but it's unclear whether the foul mood will have any impact on statewide judicial elections, political analysts say. Retention races for Supreme Court justices and Superior Court judges are the top races in the Nov. 5 election, which will include city, county, township, borough and school district races. Two Supreme Court justices and two Superior Court judges are running for 10-year terms in contests decided by “yes” or “no” selections. “Pennsylvania judges have nothing to do with Congress,” said Justice Max Baer of Mt....

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 29, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Republican governor faulted by a grand jury with allowing Kermit Gosnell to operate his “house of horrors” free from state inspections has delivered a scathing address, denouncing the GOP's pro-life and pro-family wing as “narcissists and ideologues” seeking to impose their own brand of “tyranny” on the United States. “Sometimes we just come across as too damned self-righteous, and I’m sorry, that’s just not the 21st century political party GOP that I think we need to govern America,” he said. Tom Ridge, a two-term governor of Pennsylvania and the first Secretary of...

A woman's boyfriend fatally shot the armed ex-boyfriend who attacked her in her Brighton Heights home early Sunday, Pittsburgh police said. The Allegheny County Medical's Examiner's Office identified the dead man as Curtis Edmonds, 37, of Brighton Heights. Police did not identify the shooter or the woman. The shooter, a 39-year-old man from Penn Hills, was not charged. (snip) Online court records did not show any protection from abuse orders filed against Edmonds. He had convictions on his record related to drugs and possessing a firearm despite previous felonies. He arrived early Sunday, confronted her and forced his way in....

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has reported that on three different occasions, Palestinian Authority TV has broadcast children reciting a poem that includes the words "my enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail." Last week during a performance given in the PA, the Egyptian writer of the poem, Hesham El-Gakh, recited this and other poems, after which the PA Minister of Culture, Anwar Abu Eisheh, and PA District Governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam, awarded him a plaque of honor. The event was broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV Live. To warm up the audience, a young girl recited a small section...

CRANBERRY TWP — An Allegheny County man broke through the front door of a township home early Monday morning only to find himself facing the barrel of a pistol, police said. Township officers got to the house in the 200 block of Heston Drive and found suspected burglar Matthew A. Fettis on the floor held at gunpoint by homeowner Joseph Eisel. Officers promptly arrested Fettis, 27, of Richland Township, who apparently was intoxicated. “It was a crazy day,” the 51-year-old Eisel said Tuesday morning of his ordeal. Fettis, was in the Butler County Prison on $100,000 bail, is charged with...

George Irizarry will get his guns back. The Hazleton man known for wearing a gun on his hip to demonstrate his Second Amendment rights had all charges dismissed stemming from a Feb. 3 incident in which he drew a gun on a man walking through yards near his home on West Maple Street. After dismissing the charges following a preliminary hearing Friday afternoon, Magisterial District Judge James Dixon instructed police to return weapons Irizarry surrendered under Dixon's order in July. Michael Andrejco testified he had walked between homes and reached a sidewalk on West Maple Street when Irizarry put a...

Michael Ward, one of only two survivors of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, died on Friday. Ward, who was known as "Birdie Africa," became an icon of the disaster. It happened on May 13, 1985, when police had an armed confrontation with the . Police were intent on removing the members from their fortified compound and as the day wore on, after thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired, police dropped a bomb from a helicopter on the group's house in West Philadelphia. The explosives started a fire that destroyed 61 row houses and killed 11 people, including five children....

United States President Barack Obama lauded Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders in a speech Tuesday at the United Nations. Obama spoke in support of the ongoing Israel-PA peace talks, and said he was glad to see that more young Israelis recognize that "the occupation of the West Bank" cannot continue. Young Arabs in Ramallah are "understandably cynical" regarding the talks and frustrated at "the daily indignities of occupation," he said. The "West Bank" is the term American and other international leaders use to refer to Judea and Samaria (Shomron). The territories were settled by both Jews and Arabs until 1948,...

A Catholic priest in Pennsylvania has been charged with molesting a teenage boy after police said he was found in a car on a college campus with a 15-year-old who was wearing no pants, according to a police criminal complaint filed Friday in Lackawanna County. The Rev. W. Jeffrey Paulish was charged with one felony count of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and one felony count of unlawful contact with a minor after Dunmore police say they found him and the boy on Thursday in a car on the Worthington Scranton campus of Penn State University, according to the complaint.