Free Republic

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia was ready to bring its nuclear weapons into a state of alert during last year's tensions over the Crimean Peninsula and the overthrow of Ukraine's president, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks aired on Sunday. Putin also expanded on a previous admission that the well-armed forces in unmarked uniforms who took control of Ukrainian military facilities in Crimea were Russian soldiers...Russia initially denied that the unmarked forces who took control in Crimea were Russian, but Putin later admitted they were.

A Florida man was arrested on Sunday for stalking a rabbi’s son in front of a local synagogue and threatening to cut his head off, the Miami Herald reported. Miami Beach police said David Weberman and a friend were walking outside the Ohev Shalom temple on Saturday night when Diego Chaar, 24, looked at Weberman and shouted in Arabic “Allahu Akbar.” After Weberman ignored the comment, the suspect allegedly yelled, “Heads will be cut off.” Weberman called 911 from his cell phone and police responded, according to the arrest affidavit. Police questioned Chaar and wrote up a report, but then...

New Hampshire’s first transgender lawmaker was charged on Thursday with calling in a bomb threat at a Vermont hospital.Stacie Laughton, the first transgender elected to state legislature, was arrested Thursday. The Union Leader reported: Stacie Laughton, the state’s first openly transgender legislator who was elected to the House of Representatives and then withdrew her candidacy days later, said Thursday that she is the person responsible for calling in a hoax bomb threat at a local hospital. After spending two weeks receiving treatment at a Vermont hospital for bipolar disorder, Laughton walked into the Nashua Police Department at noon on Thursday...

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan made a fiery speech Sunday in which he warned whites that a “day of judgment” is coming to avenge their “evil” and that African Americans serving in the armed forces should immediately withdraw and fight for their communities instead. In an address given at the Nation of Islam’s headquarters in Chicago, Farrakhan claimed whites have oppressed blacks for hundreds of years and a reckoning is due for the “iniquities of their fathers,” the NOI publication Final Call reports. “When a man has done that kind of evil, they are long gone and dead, but...

Isis supporters have threatened Twitter employees, including co-founder Jack Dorsey specifically, with death over the social network’s practice of blocking accounts associated with the group. In an Arabic post uploaded to the image-sharing site JustPaste.it, the group told Twitter that “your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you”. It warned that Jack Dorsey and Twitter employees have “become a target for the soldiers of the Caliphate and supporters scattered among your midst!” “You started this failed war … We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing...

President Obama threatened last year, according to Middle Eastern news outlets Sunday, to use the U.S. military to shoot down Israeli fighter jets if they attempted to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities — reports the administration denounced later Sunday as flatly untrue. Mr. Obama’s threat reportedly deterred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from dispatching warplanes into Iran after Israel discovered that the U.S. had entered into secret talks with Tehran and that the two countries had signed an agreement, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida. In a statement to The Washington Times early Sunday evening, a senior administration said “that report is...

A former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, Numan Bin Uthman, has written a letter to al-Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri telling him that Jihadi groups in Arab countries have failed and that the strategy of using nonconventional WMD to deter an invasion of Afghanistan was a misguided and failed strategy. The letter needs to be understood in the context of the fact that the microbiologist that Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef used to infiltrate US biodefense, Ali Al-Timimi, had a stern warning not to invade Iraq hand-delivered to every member of Congress on October 6, 2002...

The Twitter account for Newsweek was apparently hacked this morning by an entity calling itself CyberCaliphate and claiming affiliation with the Islamic State. The hackers replaced Newsweek’s header image with a photo of a masked man and the words “CyberCaliphate, Je SuIS IS” (meaning, “I am isis”). The hackers sent out multiple tweets to the publication’s 2.51 million followers. The tweets included threats toward United States President Barack Obama and his family, and what the hackers claimed were classified documents apparently describing social media-based intelligence gathering programs. Late last month, the relatively obscure CyberCaliphate claimed responsibility for the hacking of...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A naturalized citizen from Iran who has a history of mental illness pleaded innocent to possessing enough cyanide to harm hundreds of people, authorities said. Hessam S. Ghane, 53, was undergoing a court-ordered mental evaluation and remained in custody pending the results.Ghane has no ties to any terrorist organization, an FBI agent testified Tuesday before a federal magistrate. Psychiatrist Howard Houghton testified that Ghane suffered suicidal depression and paranoia.Houghton said he called police in February after Ghane threatened government groups and unnamed individuals. After making the threats, Houghton said, Ghane said: "You know I...

The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for Libya on Tuesday, overriding the previous warning issued in July 2014. In July, the U.S. embassy suspended all operations in Libya and relocated staff due to “ongoing violence between Libyan militias in the immediate vicinity of the Embassy.” On Tuesday, the State Department said that “the security situation in Libya remains unpredictable and unstable.” Pointing to the inability of the Libyan government to “adequately build its military and police forces and improve security following the 2011 revolution,” the State Department said that crime levels remain high and various groups have called...

It’s all a grand charade — the matinee show put on by the Theater of Science was merely being used for the Grand Extravaganza called the Theater of Politics.Wikileaks, not surprisingly, turned up some not-so-diplomatic and not-so-scientific goings-on in the political race to steer power and dollars.From The Guardian The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic...

Seven men have been arrested in connection with alleged threats made toward police officers since Saturday afternoon, when two NYPD officers were shot in the head from behind while sitting in their patrol car, New York City police said. Police said in a statement Wednesday that they have assessed hundreds of online postings and calls to 911 and pressed the public to continue to report any suspicious activity. "All threats against members of the NYPD are taken seriously and are investigated immediately to determine the credibility and origin of the information," the statement read. The arrests come as an investigation...

In the days since two New York City police officers were fatally shot in their car by a man who forecast his intentions online, threats of other attacks on the police have streamed in from 311, 911 and online postings. Investigators have scrambled to separate serious warnings from disturbing pranks. On Wednesday, heavily armed officers stood guard outside a pair of precinct station houses in Brooklyn that were the targets of specific violent threats. Officials felt enough concern that the Fire Department moved an entire engine company from its base adjacent to one of the station houses. John J. Miller,...

SEATTLE - Federal officials have arrested a Washington state man for allegedly posting Internet threats to kill the police officer who shot and killed a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. The U.S. Attorney's Office says Jaleel Tariq Abdul-Jabbaar, 46, of Kirkland was arrested early Tuesday at his home. According to court documents, he began posting threats to kill the officer and members of his family on a Facebook page soon after the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown. The criminal complaint only refers to former officer Darren Wilson as D.W. He has since resigned from the police department.

The Department of Justice is allegedly wreaking havoc by threatening the Ferguson prosecutor with a bias order, Gotnews.com has learned. An officer who wishes to remain anonymous went on to say that the national guard was called to stop rioting brought on by the DOJ. “That’s the REAL reason the national guard was called. When the governor found out about the bias charge by the feds,” the officer told Gotnews.com.

FBI Director James Comey says an agent impersonated an Associated Press reporter during a 2007 criminal investigation, a ruse the news organization says could undermine its credibility. In a letter to the Justice Department last week, the AP requested Holder's word that the DOJ would never again misrepresent itself as the AP and asked for policies to ensure the DOJ does not further impersonate news organizations. In a letter Thursday to Comey and Holder, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press asked the agency for full disclosure about the incident. "The utilization of news media as a cover for...

The New York Post reports on a disturbing mailing received by registered Democrats in New York state: The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday.“Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says.“We will be reviewing voting records . . . to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014.”It ends with a line better suited to a mob movie than a major political party: “If...

CASTLE HAYNE, NC (WWAY)-- Some citizens feel threatened by political letters in New Hanover County. One woman says she has received multiple letters from parties threatening her to vote. Castle Hayne resident Dierdre Dunn says she first got a letter that gave her a grade for her voting habits. She says the letter gave her a B and gave her neighbors an A. She says she threw that letter away without paying much attention to it. Friday she got a second letter. This one was from North Carolina's democratic party telling her they would be reviewing whether she votes. "I...

If you live in an area with a competitive race, be it for Senate, governor or any other office, parties and activist organizations want to get you to the polls. In addition to phone calls, knocking on doors and offering rides, activists are now using a different tactic — vote-shaming. Residents from Alaska to North Carolina to New York are reporting receiving letters with their voting history in them and a not-so-subtle message — vote this time or we’ll tell your neighbors you didn’t. The letters don’t say which candidate a person voted for, that is impossible to know, but...

Democrats are telling voters that they had better head to the polls — or else. The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday. “Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says.