Free Republic

MOSCOW: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov on Wednesday criticised the Russian military’s level of combat readiness, saying that both he and President Vladimir Putin wanted to see improvements. ``Neither the president nor I am fully satisfied with the current state of combat-readiness in the Armed Forces,’’ the Interfax Military News Agency quoted Ivanov as saying. Ivanov singled out the navy in particular. ``We are going to do everything so that the departure of ships to the sea isn’t a special occasion, but becomes a regular occurrence,’’ Ivanov said. Russia’s navy has struggled to find funds to maintain its warships and...

NEWS For Immediate Release July 25, 2003 Contact: Mark Gould, PIO Director312-280-5042 CIPA Decision/Response: A statement from ALA President Carla D. Hayden and the ALA Executive Board July 25, 2003 The American Library Association (ALA) has a long-standing commitment to ensuring access to information for all. It advocates for a free and open information society and for equitable access to knowledge and information resources in all formats for all people. In December 2000, Congress passed an appropriations bill that included a requirement that any library receiving federal E-Rate or Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds would be required to...

June 2005 They come from different backgrounds with the same story. But the countries they are in — Canada and Australia — refuse to believe them or publicly acknowledge what they are saying. Why? Because both administrations have huge and influential money ties with China which has never been closer. The latest diplomatic crises involving Chinese spies overseas is playing out in Australia after a Chinese First Secretary Chen Yonglin applied for asylum in Sydney. Chen has alleged there are 1,000 Chinese spies in Australia and that abductions sponsored by the Chinese Government take place Down Under. He said he...

BALI bombing mastermind Hambali has told interrogators how al-Qaida funded the attack that killed 202, including 88 Australians, a year ago today. The terrorist is being held under strict security by US intelligence agents on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Hambali, also known as Riduan Isamuddin, also has told agents al-Qaida wanted to build a bio-weapons plant in Indonesia to produce weapons to deliver the deadly biological agent anthrax. He revealed that the Islamic network of terrorist cells known as Jemaah Islamiah had recruited American-trained scientist Yazid Sufaat to oversee the project. He has studied chemistry at California...

SACRAMENTO – A citizen's tip led investigators to the only person arrested in a series of recent attempted or successful fire bombings of residential, commercial and government buildings east of Sacramento, the FBI said Thursday. Three of the attacks have been claimed by a shadowy eco-terror organization. Ryan D. Lewis, 21, of Newcastle, admitted stealing and transporting five-gallon plastic buckets full of gasoline and diesel to the site of a Jan. 12 attempted arson of an Auburn office complex that was under construction, the FBI said in an affidavit unsealed Thursday. Lewis also admitted knowing the arsonists who attempted to...

WASHINGTON - One of the most damaging espionage cases in U.S. history was more the result of poor oversight by the FBI than master spying by Robert Hanssen, said a Justice Department report released Thursday. The FBI's deficiencies, including an almost blind trust in its own agents, enabled Hanssen to spy for the Soviet Union and Russia for more than two decades, according to the investigation by inspector general Glenn A. Fine. The report concluded that Hanssen, a top FBI counterespionage official, received little supervision and the bureau had few checks in place that would deter him from spying or...

<p>WASHINGTON — Robert Hanssen, whom the FBI calls the most damaging spy in its history, was a "mediocre" agent who escaped detection because he was loosely supervised by a bureau that fooled itself into believing it had no spies in its ranks, the Justice Department's inspector general said Thursday.</p>

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's father-in-law carried out a suicide bombing in the Shia holy city of Najaf that killed a leading Iraqi cleric, according to two senior Kurdish intelligence officials. The attack in August 2003 killed more than 85 people, including Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who led Iraq's largest Shia political party. The bombing was carried out with an explosives-laden ambulance driven by Yassin Jarad, the father of al-Zarqawi's second wife, the Kurdish officials said. Jarad had slipped into Iraq several weeks before the bombing from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, where al-Zarqawi was born, said the officials,...

RIYADH, March 29 (IslamOnline.net) – Saudi Arabia is set to close all charities and relief organizations outside the kingdom and place their funds and properties under the control of a newly established governmental body, well-places Saudi sources revealed Sunday, March 28. Among the targeted organizations are the World Assembly of the Muslim Youth (WAMY), the Islamic Relief International, the Islamic Waqfs and the Saudi Joint Committee for the Relief of Kosovo and Chechnya (SJRC), the sources, speaking on condition not to be named, told IslamOnline.net. The activities of the yet-to-be dismantled charities would be exclusively run by the state-run Saudi...

This Aug. 23, 2003 IKONOS satellite image shows the aftermath of the explosion that destroyed the Brazilian VLS-1 V-03 rocket designed to carry two satellites into orbit. The Aug. 22 explosion killed 21 people after an engine ignited by mistake while on its launch pad. The rocket exploded at its jungle base of Alcantara, in the northeastern state of Maranhao, Brazil. The image shows the burned vegetation and the collapsed launch pad. A before image taken on Sept. 5, 2001 is also available for comparison. The image may be used to support reporting of this story in print, broadcast and...

Kidnap me, says Uganda leader Children are often abducted by the LRA President Yoweri Museveni has dared Uganda's rebels to abduct him rather than civilians after he moved to the central town of Soroti to direct the army campaign. He was speaking after the army accused the Lord's Resistance Army of killing 13 children whom they had abducted. However, the LRA staged an ambush 30km from Soroti a day after Mr Museveni's arrival on Saturday, killing five people and abducting 10 more. The LRA has been fighting since the late 1980s to replace President Yoweri Museveni's secular government in a...

CMS launches campaign to break the silence over atrocities in northern Uganda by Matthew Davies In an effort to raise awareness of the shocking realities of child abduction and the 17-year war in northern Uganda , the Church Mission Society (CMS) launched a campaign today (21 August) by delivering a petition to Downing Street. The petition asked Tony Blair to "help break what local churchmen have dubbed an 'international conspiracy of silence' over the Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) brutal reign". The Bishop of Kitgum diocese, the Rt Revd Benjamin Ojwang, accompanied an Acholi refugee child to Downing Street and...

Anthrax: Source of Fishy, Shaggy Dog Stories Pleads Fifth December 20th, 2007 by Ross E. Getman In October 2007, the former Criminal Chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Daniel Seikaly, was deposed in the civil rights action by Steve Hatfill about whether he was the source of leaks relating to Steve Hatfill in connection with Newsweek and Washington Post stories about the use of bloodhounds and the draining of ponds in Frederick, Maryland. Attorney Seikaly pled the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination in connection with most substantive questions. Attorney Seikaly has had a very distinguished career....

WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike, plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein. Obeidi, who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia...

The Tanzanian tanker, "M. T. Beacon", that disappeared from the northern Mozambican port of Nacala about a month ago, carrying 882,020 tonnes of fuel, is yet to return, reports Tuesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias". The fuel, worth about 345,000 US dollars, was to be delivered to Quelimane, the capital of Zambezia province, to supply the central region of the country, and there must now be fears that it has been stolen. The vessel, hired by the Mozambican company ADECNEL from the Tanzanian firm M.C.J. Shipping, left the port without authorisation, during the night, after it was discovered that...

William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007's subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy. William White had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life after shedding his pinstriped suit and entering retirement. White, a Canadian, worked for various central banks for 39 years, most recently serving as chief economist for the central bank for all central bankers, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Then, after 15 years in the world's most secretive...

Posted on Tue, Aug. 05, 2003 Macon mayor defends trip to Africa Ellis says Ghana could process city's parking tickets By Mike Donila Telegraph Staff Writer Macon Mayor Jack Ellis on Monday defended his plans to visit Africa, saying that his mission, in part, is to encourage Ghanian officials to import more goods from Middle Georgia. Ellis also said that during his weeklong trip he will lay the groundwork to possibly enable Macon's Ghanian sister city of Elmina to process local parking tickets. "Ghana is very important to the city, the state - even the region where we live. They...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department updated its travel warning for Saudi Arabia Wednesday, saying the U.S. government has received information about threats involving Western targets, including some directed at civil aviation.</p> <p>The suspension was also in response to a document seized in a car during anti-terror searches in Saudi Arabia that detailed the casing of the airport, a U.S. official told CNN.</p>

Two Pakistani men are being held in Seattle after an airline employee at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport found one of their names on a terrorism-related no-fly list Saturday night. One of the men, 36, carrying a British Columbia driver's license, paid cash for a one-way ticket to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. After the airline employee called 911, the man left the counter, abandoning his ticket. The other man, 29, who had a New York driver's license, also paid cash for a one-way ticket to Kennedy Airport on a different airline, police reports show. Port police detained both men,...

British Airways has suspended flights to Saudi Arabia over a security threat, it has been announced. All of the airlines flights to the country have been stopped until further notice due to "heightened security concerns" in the region. The decision followed discussions with the Government's transport department, the airline said. Geoff Want, BA's director of safety and security, said: "As a matter of precaution we have decided to suspend all flights to Saudi Arabia for the time being and we will continue to liaise closely with the British Government." BA normally operates four flights a week to Riyadh and four...