Free Republic

The press conference U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry convened together with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry was one of Kerry's most embarrassing incidents since taking office. And there were quite a few in the last year and a half. A few hours before the press conference began, the Israeli security cabinet ministers unanimously rejected Kerry's cease-fire plan draft. Kerry, as is his wont, seemed and sounded as if he came from a parallel universe. He claimed to have never presented Israel with a formal offer for a cease-fire, slammed the Israeli media's "mischievous reports"...

Remember: nothing riles the White House more than the appearance that Israel is supplying ammo to Obama’s political enemies, as it did on Sunday. Barack Obama may have stopped short of reading the riot act to Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, but the White House version of the two leaders’ phone conversation left no room for doubt: The U.S. President was ratcheting up the rhetoric and the pressure on Israel to end the fighting in Gaza, and to end it now.

Failure of official investigators to inspect the crash site properly and the length of time it has taken to examine forensic evidence may mean that those responsible are never foundThe inquiry into the shooting down of Flight MH17 risks becoming hopelessly compromised by the failure of official investigators to inspect the crash site properly – giving rebels nine days to destroy and tamper with vital evidence. The probable launch site of the ground-to-air missile, found by a Sunday Telegraph reporting team, also remains unexplored by the Dutch officials leading the investigation. Experts fear that the inquiry has become bogged down...

• Hezbollah has a major presence in North, Central and South America. • Hezbollah is embedded in the Lebanese Muslim community in the US and enjoys protection from a neighborhood watch-type program that serves as a countersurveillance and counterintelligence operation. They also are embedded in multiple Shia mosques, some of which are directly tied to the Iranian regime. • In 2003, then-CIA director George Tenet testified before Congress that 12 Hezbollah cells has been identified as operating in the US conducting surveillance. • A Congressional Research Service report published in 2011 indicated that Hezbollah was present in 15 US cities,...

An Al Qaeda-linked group fighting in Syria has released video of the first American to carry out a suicide attack in the country's civil war, showing him smiling and saying he looked forward to going to heaven. The Nusra Front released the new video late Friday showing American citizen Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, 22, with other fighters before the May 25 attack that targeted several army positions at the same time. Abu-Salha appears smiling in the video and speaks in broken Arabic. "I want to rest in the afterlife, in heaven. There is nothing here and the heart is not resting,"...

Police detained two men at a Midtown hotel late Friday after a doorman reported they possessed a pair of pressure cookers like those used to make the Boston Marathon bombs. But the men say it was a misunderstanding: They plan to use the pressure cookers back home to prepare rice, chicken and meat. Mohammad Alotaibi, 20, and Ayoub Alawadhi, 21, pulled up to the InterContinental Hotel on East 48th Street on Friday evening with the pressure cookers in their car trunk, said law enforcement sources.

The past few weeks, from France to Gaza, have seen many Islamic attacks. A record for the deadliest attack in Tunisia was also set last week. Tunisia, an overwhelmingly Islamic country, is in the middle of a crackdown on Islamic terrorists who feel the current, democratic, regime is too moderate. The Tunisian Army is leading the crackdown and 14 Tunisian soldiers were killed last in that country while 20 more soldiers were wounded; the worst terrorist attack ever seen on Tunisia’s army. The attack which took place at two checkpoints near the Algerian border, was not atypical of Islamic attacks...

Norwegian officials say they think Islamist terrorists could strike the country within a few days, but they do not know what the plot is. The Police Security Service "recently received information that individuals affiliated with an extreme Islamist group in Syria may have the intention of carrying out a terrorist action in Norway," the service said in a statement Thursday. A preliminary investigation strengthened the credibility of the information, the statement said. "We also have information indicating that a terrorist action against Norway is planned to be carried out shortly -- probably in a few days.

Events in Iraq and Syria have alarmed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Extremists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria control vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. Its members may be mingling with Yemeni bomb makers who have a track record of getting devices on Western planes. And thousands of Europeans have gone to Syria ready to give up their lives. Holder has voiced "extreme concern" that the volatile mix could spread to Western shores.

The airline said the Panama-bound plane was forced to return to Toronto Friday morning about 45 minutes into the flight after a passenger, identified by authorities as Ali Shahi, made a "direct threat against the aircraft." Witnesses told CNN affiliate CTV that Shahi said he wanted to bomb Canada.

Officials have said that more than half of all children initially placed in shelters have gone on to be reunited with at least one parent already living in the United States, and 85 percent of all children have been placed with a close family member.

Channel 10 reports that the diplomatic-security cabinet "flatly rejects" American proposals for a week-long humanitarian halt to fighting.

The holy site is thought to be the burial place of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale or fish in both the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions. Militants belonging to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, planted explosives around the tomb and detonated the explosion remotely Thursday, civil defense officials there told CNN.

ASPEN, Colo.—Al Qaeda, nation states, and criminals are preparing for major cyber attacks against U.S. infrastructure that could be comparable to the devastating September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, a senior Justice Department official said on Thursday. “We’re in a pre-9/11 moment, in some respects, with cyber,” said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security in the Justice Department.

Russia, Israel Joining Efforts to Improve International Terrorism Law RIA Novosti July 23, 2014 MOSCOW, July 23 (RIA Novosti) - At meetings in Jerusalem Russia’s Federation Council members, led by the council’s foreign affairs committee chairman Mikhail Margelov, raised the proposal for a unified approach to terrorism. “As lawmakers we could propose to the international organizations, first of all the UN, to finally define this term and the approach to eliminating terrorists,” Vladimir Kulakov, first deputy chairman of procedures committee and head of Russia’s delegation to the OSCE Parliamentarian Assembly, was quoted as saying by the statement. Russia’s Israeli counterparts...

Witness the latest fruits of modern leftist foreign policy, as embodied in this instance by the much ballyhooed Obama/Hillary Clinton “Russian Reset”: 298 people who booked a flight on Malaysian Air’s Flight 17, now dead. Brutally slaughtered by those thugs supplied and inspired by Vladimir Putin — the ex-KGB agent who has come to view the president of the United States and his secretary of state (make that secretaries of state, in the plural) as, in the vernacular, wimps. Leaving him free to do anything and everything from invading Crimea to supplying anti-aircraft missiles to his favored thugs prowling the...

Predictably, having so many terrorists in our midst - in addition to the danger - will have the consequence of more intrusion in our personal lives and more state power. From The Telegraph, "Emergency laws to monitor phone and internet records 'to stop terrorists'": Emergency laws will be brought in next week to force phone and internet companies to hold records of customers’ calls, texts and visits to websites. The fast-track measures are necessary to defend national security against the terrorist threat from Iraq and Syria, David Cameron said. The consequences of not acting are “grave”, the Prime Minister...

Delta Air Lines is canceling all flights to Israel until further notice, citing reports that a rocket landed near Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport. A Delta Boeing 747 from New York was flying over the Mediterranean headed for Tel Aviv on Tuesday when it turned around and flew to Paris instead. Flight 468 had 273 passengers and 17 crew on board. US Airways, which has one daily flight from Philadelphia, canceled that flight Tuesday and the return trip from Tel Aviv. United Airlines, which has two flights daily to Israel out of Newark, N.J., did comment immediately on the status...

MANHATTAN — American flags were removed from atop the Brooklyn Bridge's two towers Tuesday morning and replaced by white flags, sources said. Police, including the NYPD's counter terrorism and intelligence divisions, were checking surveillance footage from the bridge after images of the white flags hit social media about 7 a.m., sources said. "Why are there white flags on top of the Brooklyn Bridge?" City Council member Mark Weprin tweeted at 9:34 a.m. It was not immediately clear how the white flags, which are usually a military symbol for surrender, got there. Witnesses reported seeing NYPD counter terrorism officers heading up...

Some truths CNN reveals only accidentally. One such truth Anderson Cooper shared on the night of July 17. In speaking about the shoot down of Malaysian airliner MH 17 earlier that day, Cooper referred back to “July 17, 1996, when TWA Flight 800 was shot down off the coast of Long Island in New York.”