Free Republic

The Senate’s top Republican Thursday warned that legislation enacted over President Barack Obama’s veto to allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts may have “unintended ramifications” and that lawmakers should discuss fixes to the measure. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the White House was too slow to warn about the “potential consequences” of the measure. Both the House and Senate overwhelmingly overrode Obama’s veto of the measure on Wednesday. McConnell said he told the president recently that the 9/11 victims bill “was an example of an issue that we should have talked about...

Denmark’s decision to separate married couples in refugee centers if one party is below the age of 18 has been reversed after the government concluded it was in violation of international conventions.Metroxpress reported on Wednesday that the Danish Immigration Service will now reunite several married couples who have been living separately since February. “In some of these cases it has been it has been assessed that it would not be compatible with Denmark’s international obligations to maintain the separate living quarters, thus these couples have been offered to be housed together,” DIS wrote in an official response to a parliamentary...

A Saudi princess has been accused of ordering her guard to “beat up and kill” an interior decorator in Paris. It all allegedly started when the decorator took photos inside the woman’s apartment block on the chic Avenue Foch in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, reported Le Point newspaper. The Saudi Princess accused the man of taking the pictures just to sell them to the press, although he said it was just part of the job. “You have to kill this dog; he doesn’t deserve to live,” the princess allegedly told her bodyguard soon afterwards. …

The accommodation centers which house migrants across Italy are running out of money and if the funds don’t turn up by the end of the month, they may be unable to continue. The centers are run by charitable organizations and NGOs, which provide accommodation, food and health care to those living there. But the Italian Treasury owes them €600 million, according to Il Corriere, and the organizations have set the government a strict deadline to pay up: this Friday. […] The cost of providing accommodation, food and healthcare for new arrivals cost Italy over €1 billion in 2015. …

The nationalist Danes’ Party elicited strong reactions went it took to the streets of Haderslev to hand out cans of what it called “refugee spray”. The party, which was founded by a former Neo-Nazi and wants to see all non-Western immigrants kicked out of Denmark, put labels on cans of hair spray reading “Refugee Spray: Legal [and] effective”. The party’s chairman, Daniel Carlsen, said the spray is a necessary legal alternative to pepper spray, which is illegal in Denmark. He said that Haderslev was the perfect location to hand out the cans, given the reports of local women being harassed...

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday began representing a man accused of setting off bombs in New York and New Jersey and injuring more than 30 people. After judges in both states denied attempts by public defenders to represent Ahmed Khan Rahami, a lawyer for the organization’s New Jersey chapter entered a notice of appearance in his case in federal court in Newark on Monday. Rahami has been hospitalized since he was caught following a shootout with police in Linden last week. He has not made an initial court appearance. …

Bombing in Downtown BudapestOn Saturday night there was a major explosion in downtown Budapest that was originally reported in the media as a likely gas leak. However, by Sunday morning it became clear that the blast was caused by a bomb, and that police officers were deliberately targeted. Two officers were seriously wounded, and one (the female officer) is in critical condition. Below is a video excerpt from a press conference given by the chief of police and the prosecutor’s office in Budapest. Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling: Hungarian police...

A Bosnian migrant in Austria traveled back to his homeland to blow up his ex-girlfriend with a hand grenade when he found out she was seeing somebody else. Bosnian migrant Dalibor Gavric, 42, lived in the Austrian capital of Vienna where he met waitress Miljana Malesevic, 24, also from Bosnia. The couple started a relationship and even though he was married and had two daughters, he divorced his wife so that he could live with the younger woman. But he was always jealous, and frequently the jealousy turned to violence which resulted in Milijana, with whom Gavric had a 4-year-old...

Moody’s has downgraded Turkey’s credit rating to “junk” status, a further blow to an economy shaken by terrorist attacks, a failed military coup and a diplomatic spat with Russia. The rating agency on Friday lowered its rating on Turkey’s debt one notch, stripping it of investment-grade status. The move could mean higher borrowing costs as investors demand steeper interest rates to take on riskier Turkish debt. …

A man in his 30s is being questioned by gardai over the alleged female genital mutilation of a young girl. The Somalian national was arrested in Crumlin, South Dublin, on Thursday evening at an apartment where a mother lives with two girls under the age of five. It is believed the arrest under the Criminal Justice (Female Genital Mutilation) Act 2012 is one the first of its kind in Ireland, reports the Irish Mirror. …

According to a report from Iraqi News, the Islamic State staged the public execution of six youths from a “resistance faction” in Mosul by handcuffing them and then killing them with a welding machine, before a large crowd of onlookers. “This came in order to create a state of fear and panic among the people,” said a source from within Mosul. The Toronto Sun explains that the Islamic State often uses the term “resistance group” to describe groups of young people who spray graffiti on the walls of occupied cities. Fox News reported the six boys, whose exact ages are...

Sweden’s embassy in Budapest has sharply rebuked Hungary after an official leaflet claimed that Stockholm and other European cities had become “no-go areas”. Flyers warning of “hundreds of no-go areas in European cities”, which highlighted Stockholm along with London, Brussels, Marseille, Berlin and the Copenhagen-Malmö area, were this month sent to millions of households in Hungary ahead of its referendum next month on EU refugee quotas, reports the Financial Times. The leaflets claimed that migrants have overrun hundreds of “no-go” areas in Europe which “the authorities cannot keep under control” and where “the norms of the host society (…) barely...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday blamed “Zionist pressure groups” for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling he said could undermine the Iran nuclear deal, JTA reported. “The lack of compliance of the United States with the JCPOA in the last several months represents a flawed approach,” Rouhani said at the UN General Assembly, using the acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, the formal name for the nuclear deal his country signed with world powers last year. “The latest case in point is the United States Supreme Court ruling to seize billions of dollars of the Iranian regime’s assets,”...

As France struggles to deal with the potential threat posed by thousands of radicalized individuals, one furious French mayor in Normandy has decided it’s time to throw them all out of town. Guy Lefranc, mayor of Evreux in Normandy, has come up with a radical suggestion for what to do with all the radicalized individuals who may pose a threat to the town’s residents. Lefranc has demanded all those on France’s “Fiche S” list, meaning they have been flagged up as a potential danger to the national security, simply be expelled. …

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Thursday that the administration has not seen evidence that Iran's financial support for terrorism has grown since the U.S. paid the regime $1.7 billion in cash in January. "We have not seen an increase in terrorist financing by Iran," Lew told the House Financial Services Committee. But Lew also acknowledged that he wasn't aware if there was any way to trace how Iran uses the cash. Republicans pressed him on whether the U.S. recorded the serial numbers on the bills that were shipped to Iran, but Lew said he did not know. The U.S. arranged...

Jordan’s King Abdullah warned Israel would find itself in “a sea of hatred” if it did not accept a Palestinian state, while also condemning Muslim terrorists from the United Nations rostrum Tuesday. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, Abdullah spoke of the importance of peace between Israel and Palestinians, blaming the ongoing conflict for continued unrest in the region. “No injustice has spread more bitter fruit than the denial of a Palestinian state. I say: Peace is a conscious decision,” the king said. “Israel has to embrace peace or eventually be engulfed in a sea of hatred...

A German expert who evaluated six Minnesota men who pleaded guilty to trying to join the Islamic State group has developed counseling plans for each of them aimed at keeping them off the path of violence. He has also trained 20 to 25 local probation officers in his techniques. Daniel Koehler, who directs the German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies in Stuttgart, sat down with a small group of reporters Wednesday to discuss his work. He was joined by the chief U.S. probation officer for Minnesota, Kevin Lowry. […] Minnesota is the first place in the U.S. to try...

Airbus says the U.S. government has granted it a license allowing it to sell the first 17 planes involved in a landmark deal with Iran. […] Earlier this year, Iran Air signed agreements to buy 118 planes from the European consortium Airbus, estimated to be worth some €22.8 billion ($25 billion). …

Iran’s delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency says Western nations need to normalize relations with his country, saying Tehran has been living up to its end of a deal meant to crimp the country’s ability to make atomic weapons. Iranian representative Reza Najafi noted Wednesday the United Nations agency monitoring the nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers earlier this month reported no violations of the deal. …

George Soros to invest $500 million in help for refugees http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/20/george-soros-to-invest-500-million-in-help-for-refugees-through-his-open-society-foundations.html George Soros to invest $500 million in help for refugees Nyshka Chandran | @nyshkac 9 Hours Ago CNBC.com Soros invests $500m for refugees Billionaire investor George Soros pledged on Tuesday to invest up to $500 million in programs and companies benefiting migrants and refugees fleeing life-threatening situations. Announced against the backdrop of an ongoing United Nations (U.N.) summit in New York, Soros explained that he wished to harness the power of the private sector for public good. "We will invest in startups, established companies, social impact initiatives, and businesses...