Free Republic

Germany 'may buy weaponised drones from Israel' (AFP) – 13 hours ago BERLIN — Germany is in talks with Israel to buy weaponised drones for its military that are seen as more technologically advanced than US ones, the weekly Der Spiegel reported. The news magazine's Monday edition said the German defence ministry had already held two meetings with Israeli military officials, in November 2012 and February 2013, on the proposed purchase. The chief of Germany's air force, Lieutenant General Karl Muellner, was said to have recently gone to Israel to attend a presentation of Israel's Heron TP drone, Der Spiegel...

Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed. On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him. Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman...

By KEVIN ROBILLARD | 2/22/13 1:50 PM EST Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants one thing before he’ll allow the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA Director to go forward; he wants assurances “someone eating at a cafe in Boston or New York” won’t have “a Hellfire missile [come] raining in on them,” he said Friday on Fox News. The libertarian scion sent a letter to Brennan’s office at the White House Wednesday asking if the administration has the power to order a lethal drone strike on an American citizen within U.S. borders. Until he gets an answer, Paul has pledged...

FULL TITLE: Parents detain man, 21, in a headlock after they find him in their teenage daughter’s bedroom having sex with the girl he met online Parents detain man, 21, in a headlock after they find him in their teenage daughter’s bedroom having sex with the girl he met online According to the girl's parents, Narvaez was caught 'in the act' when the teen's mother walked into her room for a late-night check-up. The unnamed woman told KHOU 11 that when she turned on the light in the bedroom, the startled 21-year-old man tried to flee, but she informed him...

Just heard from Fox news 15 minutes ago that second drone above Bengazi came OUTSIDE Libya --it came from SIGONELLA, Sicily...! It was UNARMED and replaced the first drone that egressed owing to low fuel. For unmanned drone observation of an ongoing battle against an American target is it a requirement that cross-border ingress authorization come from **POTUS**..? Because THIS might have required that. Does anyone know? I'm asking because if that is so, then what is possible is that gayMuzzie permitted drone observation but required that it be UNARMED...! If you have one spun up and fueled then putting...

Police shot and killed a mountain lion this morning in Des Moines. Kevin Baskins, with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says it’s extremely unusual for such an animal to end up in a residential neighborhood. “Certainly, we see the occasional mountain lion wander through the state of Iowa, but to the best of our knowledge, we really have not seen one in urban setting like Des Moines,” Baskins said. ”The only explanation we can think of is that mountain lions will follow river corridors and the river is in fairly close proximity to where this cat got shot.”...

(CBS) TAMPA, Fla. - Florida puppeteer Ronald Brown appeared in federal court Tuesday on charges of child pornography and conspiring to kidnap a child, CBS Tampa reports. Brown, 57, was arrested Friday after an international investigation conducted by the Department of Homeland Security. A criminal complaint followed Brown's graphic online conversation with another man about kidnapping, sexually abusing, murdering and eating children, CBS Tampa reported. A search warrant was issued on July 19 for Brown's residence. Homeland Security Investigators seized media including CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, micro disks and VHS tapes that contained several images of naked, bound and...

The plea agreement drops robbery and battery charges against the man, who was to be released. A man who grabbed a stranger in downtown Roanoke in March pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted abduction. Mauricio Ramirez-Diaz, 22, initially had been charged with assault and battery and attempted robbery, but in June a Roanoke grand jury added abduction with attempt to defile and misdemeanor sexual battery to the counts against him. Through a plea agreement, prosecutors dismissed the robbery and battery charges and amended the abduction charge to a lesser felony. Ramirez-Diaz, who had been held since March, was given a two-year...

A former Bangor Area High School teacher who had sex with a 17-year-old student was sent to prison for five months Friday by a Northampton County judge who said he expected her to be unhappy with his sentence. But then Rachel L. Farrell, 26, surprised Judge Emil Giordano, who had just heard her defense attorney arguing for probation.

Sandusky waives hearing. http://www.centredaily.com/2011/12/13/3018542/sandusky-arrives-at-courthouse.html

Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates. Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three...

Jerry Sandusky has been taken out of his home in handcuffs by the Centre County District Attorney's office to face two new criminal charges of child sex abuse. "Today's criminal charges were recommended by a statewide investigating grand jury, based on evidence and testimony that was received following the initial arrest of Sandusky on November 5th," Attorney General Kelly said in a statement. Sandusky is scheduled to appear in court next Tuesday, December 13, for his preliminary he

Once the war on terror’s fiercest critic, Obama has become its deadliest practitioner.We are in a long war against radical Islamic terrorism. The struggle seems almost similar to the on-again/off-again ordeals of the past — such as the French-English Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries, or the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century. In these kinds of drawn-out conflicts, final victory will go to the side that responds best to new challenges. And we’ve seen a lot of those since 9/11, when the United States was caught unaware and apparently ill-equipped to...

An unnamed computer virus is compromising the security of U.S. Reaper and Predator drones as they fly missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Pakistan. Wired reports the virus was found about two weeks ago and hasn't kept the drone pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from conducting missions. There haven't been any reports of classified data breaches, but the virus has resisted the military's best efforts to remove it.

Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat, a senior Obama administration official said Saturday. The Libyan national who was the network's former operational leader rose to al-Qaida's No. 2 spot after the U.S. killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistan compound in May. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that al-Qaida's defeat was within reach if the U.S. could mount a string of successful attacks on the group's weakened leadership.

Bill bans teacher-student flingsBy Jo Ciavaglia Staff writer Updated: 12:16 pm, Mon Aug 22, 2011 She was a 17-year-old student. He was a 43-year-old math teacher. When their romance was revealed in 2009, many called it morally and ethically wrong. **SNIP** Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman, whose office initiated the push for the bill to make student-teacher sexual relationships a felony, says the crimes happen frequently, and they do “enormous” damage to young people. Ferman believes the bill would provide a strong deterrent for school employees. “When misdeeds have no consequence, there is not disincentive to act. What we...

Chris Hanson Of “To Catch A Predator” Caught Cheating On His Wife [Rumor]James Johnson Posted: June 30, 2011 NBC’s To Catch A Predator may have a cheater in their midst. Rumors are circulating that show host Chris Hanson, 51, has been caught cheating on his wife during a four-month affair with Kristyn Caddell. The National Enquirer broke the story and PEOPLE is reporting that Caddell, a 30-year-old news anchor at NBC affiliate WPTV in West Palm Beach, Fla., have been “hooking up for months.” According to Caddell’s station bio she started working at the network six years ago, then left...

He's made his name with a controversial show that catches would-be internet sex perverts in televised stings. But now Chris Hansen has found himself on the receiving end of his own hidden camera tactics, after the married NBC anchor was secretly filmed on an illicit date with a blonde television reporter 20 years his junior. Hansen, 51, has allegedly been having an affair with Kristyn Caddell, a 30-year-old Florida journalist, for the last four months. Last weekend he was recorded taking Miss Caddell on a romantic dinner at the exclusive Ritz-Carlton hotel in Manalapan, before spending the night at her...

NEW YORK – New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner (WEE'-nuhr) says racy, shirtless pictures that appeared on a website are him and he's apologizing for what he calls making terrible mistakes. During a teary-eyed press conference, he says he won't resign.

Two of the books designed to teach children about homosexuality in a positive light. ALBANY, New York, May 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As the same-sex “marriage� battle heats up again in New York, one writer at a prominent gay news source is questioning why his lobby refuses to admit that the gay agenda involves “indoctrinating� schoolchildren to accept homosexuality. Queerty contributor Daniel Villarreal criticized the homosexual movement’s knee-jerk reaction against accusations of meddling in public schools. Villarreal pointed to a recent National Organization for Marriage (NOM) ad launched in New York that points out how homosexual indoctrination has been introduced...

Tenerife beheading: killer copied Predator film The man accused of beheading a British grandmother on the holiday island of Tenerife last Friday was obsessed with the sci-fi film Predator and its decapitations, a friend claimed. 9:50AM BST 17 May 2011 Deyan Deyanov, 28, enjoyed the way the alien creature hunted and beheaded its victims and had tattoos of characters from its fictional language on his right arm. Deyanov hacked to death Jennifer Mills-Westley, 60, in a supermarket after the Spanish legal system had released him from a psychiatric unit on bail, despite police warning he was a danger to the...

WASHINGTON: The United States carried out its first drone strike in Libya on Saturday, the Pentagon said, two days after approving the use of pilotless aircraft to aid rebels fighting Muammar al-Gaddafi's forces. "The first Predator strike in Libya occurred today in the early afternoon local time (our morning time EDT)," a US military press spokesman said in a statement sent to AFP. A NATO statement said a "regime Multiple Rocket Launcher (MRL) in the vicinity of Misrata," was destroyed "at approximately 1100 GMT today" when a drone intervened in the strikes. "The MRL has been used against civilians in...

Slaughtering his own people and mocking the world's pleas, for peace, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi can only be stopped by force. Since President Barack Obama seems comfortable killing terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Predator drone strikes, why not in Libya? So far, establishing a no-fly zone is the only air power option on the table... The Turkish prime minister has said he would oppose such a move. A no-fly zone also creates political problems for Obama. He came to power promising to end two wars, not to start a new one. "Let's just call a spade a spade," Defense Secretary...

PROVO — The father of The 5 Browns — his face scratched with injuries from a spectacular Monday auto accident — pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually abusing his daughters when they were children. Keith Brown, 55, appeared very solemn and serious during his appearance. He was just recently released from the hospital where he was treated for injuries from a Monday night accident in Little Cottonwood Canyon. In a voice barely audible, Brown pleaded guilty to sodomy on a child, a first-degree felony, and two counts of sex abuse of a child, a second-degree felony. Brown will be sentenced March...

Police charged a former P.E. teacher at Chesapeake Bay Middle School in Pasadena Jan. 5 with possession and distribution of child pornography. Gregory Alan Christy, 39, of northern Anne Arundel County was charged with one count of distribution of child pornography and 10 counts of possession of child pornography after police executed a search warrant at his home in the 7000 block of Timberfield Place in April 2010 and several computers were confiscated.

The U.S. Army is now receiving UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle) similar to those used by the air force, but flown under different conditions, by a quite different type of crew. While air force Predators and Reapers are flown by officers, assisted by sergeants operating sensors, the army operators are mostly sergeants, with some warrant officers. The air force operators control their UAVs via satellite link from a base in the United States. Only the ground crews go overseas. But army operators and ground crews not only go overseas, but are assigned to a specific brigade, which they are a part...

The CIA has recalled it top officer from Pakistan after his cover was blown and his life threatened. The alleged name of the CIA's station chief in Islamabad was revealed by a Pakistani man, Kareem Khan, who has threatened to sue the intelligence agency over the death of his son and brother in a U.S. missile strike. Khan and his lawyers told a news conference in November that they would seek a $500 million payment for his family members' deaths and warned they may sue CIA director Leon Panetta, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the man they identified as...

On paper he was deceased, legally declared dead 16 years ago. In reality, Thomas Steven Sanders had lived openly for years without anyone noticing that fact — until his weekend arrest on suspicion of kidnapping a Las Vegas girl who recently turned up dead. Sanders was arrested Sunday at a Gulfport, Miss. truck stop after a massive nationwide manhunt and charged with kidnapping 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, whose body was found last month in Louisiana, the FBI said. The girl's mother, 31-year-old Suellen Roberts is missing and feared dead in a bizarre case that leaves many wondering how a legally dead...

Less than three percent of Americans are homosexual or bisexual. Major national surveys of sexual behavior have consistently shown that less than three percent of the American population identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual. This was acknowledged by a coalition of thirty-one leading homosexual rights groups in an amicus brief which they filed in the 2003 U. S. Supreme Court case of Lawrence v. Texas. Their brief declared: The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). The NHSLS found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of...

Tuesday evening, Christine Judd was still the Athletic Director and Dean of Students at Cathedral High School in Springfield, Mass. Then suddenly, after a single meeting on Wednesday morning, she was not. According to MassLive.com, Judd met with officials of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield Wednesday after the diocese -- which runs Cathedral and other Catholic schools in the Springfield area -- learned that Judd, an open lesbian, married her longtime partner in August. Judd isn't a newcomer to Cathedral. The Springfield resident served as AD for three years and dean of students for six years. She'd been at...

Aircraft meant to monitor for drug and illegal alien traffic CORPUS CHRISTI — On Wednesday morning, the first Customs and Border Protection Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) "Predator" landed at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, according to NAS Corpus Christi public information officer Bob Torres. The Predator will help in the effort to control drug and illegal alien entry into the US along a 1,200-mile piece of the Texas-Mexico border between El Paso and Brownsville, according to the Department of

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States beginning Wednesday will add a third Predator drone to patrol its border with Mexico, allowing authorities for the first time to monitor the entire stretch of land separating the two neighbors using the unmanned aircraft. The latest drone joins two others in covering the 2,000-mile (3,200 kilometer) frontier which runs across the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, the US Department of Homeland Security said. With immigration a hot-button issue ahead of looming midterm elections in November, US President Barack Obama earlier this month signed a 600 million dollar bill aimed at...

Salazar's 5-year-old son was attacked and severely mauled by a cougar that tried to drag the boy off a well-used hiking trail and into the woods in the Sandia Mountains outside of Albuquerque. The story was so frightening that it made national news. "People would say that it was just an accident. That it was extremely rare, just a rare accident." ...Convinced that three attacks in three months didn't qualify as rare... In 2006 and 2007, there were nine reported ... In 2008, there were 40 reported encounters before the attack on her son in May. This led her into...

A former teacher already accused of the sexual molestation of three Waco schoolchildren now faces another charge of indecency with a child based on information from a fourth child. Fernando Antonio Campos, a Mexican national who has been in McLennan County Jail on an immigration hold since his arrest March 17, received the new charge Friday. Although he cannot be released because of the hold, his bonds top $900,000. In an affidavit requesting the new charge, police said a girl told her mother about an incident in December 2008. The mother contacted police and the girl said in a forensic...

STANTON – A man who two teen girls said was trying to take cell phone pictures of them outside a library – just feet from a sheriff's substation – was found to have pornographic images of minors in his phone, authorities said. Alejandro Lorenzo Contreras, 24, was trying to talk to two underage girls outside of the Stanton Library on Tuesday afternoon, said Lt. Jim England of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

ATLANTA, GA—DR. ADAM WAYNE LEBOWITZ, 50, of Decatur, Georgia, was sentenced today by United States District Judge Richard W. Story on charges of producing child pornography and attempting to coerce and entice a minor to engage in unlawful sex acts. LEBOWITZ was convicted of the charges by a jury on February 25, 2010, after a seven-day trial. United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said of the sentence, “As a doctor, this defendant took an oath to ‘never do harm’ to anyone. He not only violated that oath, he sexually violated children and then published his violation on the Internet, victimizing...

The 57-year-old man charged with 10 murders in the Los Angeles "Grim Sleeper" case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades but was never sent to state prison despite the recommendation of probation officers, court and jail records show. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested for burglary, car theft, firearms possession and assaults. But his crimes never were considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state's DNA database, authorities said. "He's danced to the raindrops for a long time without getting wet," Detective Dennis Kilcoyne, head of the task force...

Air Force leaders are working to build a new pilot culture in the service, creating a career track designed to turn officers without prior flying experience into operators of remotely piloted aircraft such as the MQ-1 Predator. Officially institutionalized in June as Undergraduate RPA Training, the new course evolved from an experiment nearly two years in the making—called a beta test—which indicated that the syllabus will likely need to continue evolving. A handful of officers have already passed the beta test to learn how to fly RPAs, and were awarded special wings recognizing their achievement. Some of those pilots are...

Air Force officials released their basing decision for the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper ground control stations June 21. The final bases approved by the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force are: Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. and Ellsworth AFB, S.D. "The Air Force uses a deliberate, repeatable and transparent process to address basing needs. These bases are the right locations for the next set of MQ-1/9 ground control stations," said Kathleen Ferguson, the deputy assistant secretary for installations. "They will provide the Air Force with the right kind of synergy for training purposes." The MQ-1 ground...

ELKO, Nev. — A Twin Falls woman convicted of forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts was sentenced Monday to life in prison. Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November after a week-long trial in Elko County, Nev., District Judge Mike Memeo’s courtroom. With the conviction, Taylor faced a mandatory life sentence, and Memeo set parole eligibility after 10 years, the minimum sentence. If released on parole she must register as a sex offender and will be under lifetime supervision. The district attorney’s office did not offer a plea agreement in...

A top rugby player has been banned from coaching children after luring two underage girls into lesbian relationships. Tricia Brown, 31, will not be able to interact with teenage or child rugby players under the ban imposed by the Australian Rugby Union, the Courier Mail reports. But Ms Brown will be permitted continue playing rugby and is expected to play in the World Cup later this year. "Having finalised that review, ARU has decided not to impose any playing ban on Tricia Brown," said the rugby body’s spokesman Peter Jenkins. The investigation came after Ms Brown was earlier this year...

SEND IN THE DRONES: PREDATORS TO FLY ABOVE TEX-MEX BORDER Tue Apr 27 2010 19:39:41 ET Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate hearing Tuesday that unmanned aerial drones will soon fly through Texas skies! "Big Sis" declared that over the past 15 months, federal law enforcement initiatives have made the border more secure than in any other time in history, the SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS reports in Wednesday editions. The new "predator bees" have the capability to fly at altitudes used by commercial aircraft, and are designed to enhance intelligence capabilities of federal, state and local law enforcement. But...

In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. In terms of international armed conflict, those CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to...

The US government's refusal to offer a legal rationale for using unmanned drones to kill suspected militants in Pakistan could result in CIA officers facing prosecution for war crimes in foreign courts, a legal expert has told lawmakers. "Prominent voices in the international legal community" were increasingly impatient with Washington's silence on the CIA's bombing raids in Pakistan and elsewhere, Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University, told a congressional panel on Tuesday. Lawyers at the US State Department and other government agencies were concerned that the administration has "not settled on what the rationales are" for the drone...

-- Airmen of the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing made history March 12 when they surpassed the 700,000 flight hour mark in the MQ-1B Predator remotely piloted aircraft. The last 200,000 Predator hours were flown in just over 12 months compared to 19 months to fly the previous 250,000 hours and 12.5 years for the first 250,000 hours. Remotely piloted aircraft are one of the highest demanded assets on today's battlefield, said Col. Peter Gersten, 432d Wing and 432d Air Expeditionary Wing commander. "Over the past year, our Predator fleet has averaged over 16,500 hours per month," Colonel Gersten said. "This...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The Boy Scouts of America call them "perversion files," internal documents used to track Scout leaders suspected of sexually abusing young boys, and they have became part of the public record in an Oregon lawsuit. A judge who had ordered the Scouts to release them received 1,247 files into evidence near the end of the day Friday - the third day of trial that began with a lawyer saying "you will be the first jury to see them." Attorneys Paul Mones and Kelly Clark won the release of files from 1965-85 to help them make the...

PARACHINAR, Pakistan — Pakistani officials say suspected U.S. drones have fired missiles at a house and nearby truck in the country's northwest near the Afghan border, killing at least four people. Local government official Sabir Khan said Wednesday's attack occurred in the Mazer Meda Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal area. Mazer Meda Khel is located some 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the main town of Miran Shah. Two Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed the details of the attack. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The identities of those...

“I’m a 38-year-old person, and my life has been riddled with drug abuse and crime directly related to what happened to me as a kid,” said Scott Kimball in his Southie accent, talking on the phone from his new home in New Hampshire. “It seems like my past somehow always becomes my future.” What happened to Kimball is that, at age 13, he was sent to Jamaica Plain’s Nazareth Child Care Center and met Brother Edward Anthony Holmes. “Brother Tony” was a child rapist who is now in prison for sexually molesting three children. Those abuse survivors include Kimball, who...

The two latest variants of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for the U.S. Army and Customs and Border Protection Service will move closer to initial deployment following the completion of key tests in California this month. Weapons tests of the Army’s MQ-1C Sky Warrior, a heavily modified derivative of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) Predator A, were successfully completed following the last live firings of nine Hellfire P+ missiles. GA-ASI Chairman and CEO Neal Blue says a post-test review identified “minor technical and desired fixes,” adding that an “ updated software release will be verification-tested in March from our...