Free Republic

Special temporary U.S. residency issued to thousands of Central Americans is due to expire in the coming months, and with the debate over immigration increasingly fierce, many of the immigrants fear they will be sent home. The temporary status granted to Nicaraguans and Hondurans after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and to Salvadorans following a devastating earthquake in 2001 has been renewed repeatedly with little public debate, but opposition is growing. Critics say the program was never meant to be permanent and that it's time for the more than 300,000 people it protects to return home. Immigrants and their advocates say...

A Florence man charged with setting a series of fires nine years ago in Ravalli and Missoula counties that cost millions of dollars to fight was back in a Ravalli County court Wednesday. Jonah Mica Warr, 28, was recently released on probation after serving seven years of a 10-year federal prison sentence for setting the fires in 2006. Warr’s court troubles in Ravalli County date back to 2004 when he pleaded guilty before District Judge Jeffery Langton to a number of felony charges for possession of explosives and criminal mischief for blowing up mailboxes in the Florence and Stevensville areas....

David Lessick, an Air Force Reserve Major, has been recruited by AeraSpaceTours as the Chief Mission Commander of the Altairis Rocket which will begin taking passengers into space in 2006. In this role, he will follow in the footsteps of the other pioneer-astronauts and test pilots who made the dream of space flight possible for a fortunate few. "With safety being of paramount importance to us and to our customers, it is essential that our mission commander has the experience and abilities of Chief Mission Commander Lessick. We are pleased an officer of his caliber would join in our efforts...

LONDON — Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch and long-time opponent of the Kremlin, died at his home in Britain on Saturday aged 67 in unexplained circumstances, officials said. British police launched a full investigation into the death at the mansion in the well-heeled commuter town of Ascot, near London, saying it was "currently being treated as unexplained". Berezovsky's lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky told Russian television the tycoon had committed suicide after suffering from weeks of depression over his huge debts, although another friend strongly denied this. Berezovsky was one of handful of businessmen who made a fortune out of the...

For Gays, a Loud New Foe Sacramento's large enclave of immigrant Slavic evangelicals is becoming a force on social issues. Their actions shock many. By Rone Tempest, Times Staff Writer October 13, 2006 SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble. The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground's cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.

Starting in the late 1990s, China's presence on the African continent experienced a phenomenal expansion. Far more profound changes, however, have been underway and may only become apparent in the next decade. These changes are likely to transform the regional economic landscape of the African continent in ways never seen before. Chinese experts apparently believe that Africa is entering an era of relative stability and that the time to explore its untapped resources has arrived [1]. Chinese policymakers see in Africa possible solutions to some of China's most pressing problems, for instance, Beijing's need to secure access to energy resources...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. federal court documents show Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.</p> <p>A document filed by prosecutors on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York mentions Hernández as part of a group of individuals investigated by the DEA since about 2013 for participating “in large-scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities relating to the importation of cocaine into the United States”.</p>

Terrorism's Western Ally By Dale HurdCBN News Senior Reporter April 21, 2003 U.S. intelligence is still coming to grips with reports that Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups are setting up bases in Venezuela. CBN.com – WASHINGTON, D.C. — While America's attention has been focused on Iraq, it may have a growing terrorist threat in this hemisphere, and in a country you might never expect. On February 13 this year, at London's Gatwick Airport, a Muslim with suspected links to Al Qaeda was arrested after a grenade was found in his luggage. His ticket shows he flew in from...

Video: Chinese soldiers murder Tibetan pilgrims posted at 5:35 pm on October 15, 2006 by Allahpundit The old-fashioned way. Execution buses aren’t well suited to snowy, mountainous terrain. These are the people we’re counting on to rein in Kim Jong-Il. Click the here to watch. http://hotair.com/archives/2006/10/15/video-chinese-soldiers-murder-tibetan-pilgrims/

Six years after declaring the Venezuelan election process "flawed," former President Jimmy Carter's Carter Center will monitor only one aspect of the country's Dec. 3 elections, despite claims of abuses during the campaign designed to favor the incumbent, left-wing populist President Hugo Chavez. The center announced Nov. 20 that it would organize a "specialized, limited technical mission" to "observe the use of the automated voting technology." The effort is in collaboration with Carter's group and the Venezuelan National Electoral Council, a body which Chavez critics say is controlled by the president. The group will also not monitor the election broadly...

Porfirio Lobo, Honduras president elect, said on Sunday he is committed to enable ousted president Manuel Zelaya to leave the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he remains under refuge following a frustrated attempt last week. Honduras now made it clear what it will accept: "It was decided at the highest level of government: it will be a territorial asylum and he may not go to any nation which borders Honduras, ie that is in Central America," said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Milton Mateo. According to the Honduran government, Zelaya will not be allowed to travel to Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua...

As the cliche goes, there are no coincidences in politics. Obama fundraiser group Code Pink just happened to have arrived in Cairo last week for the group’s ninth visit there in two years as part of its campaign to undermine the Mubarak government and help Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza. Code Pink and the media are trying to portray the leftist group's 'sudden' appearance in Cairo Wednesday as an act of courageous support for a democratic revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth.Code Pink protests the Mubarak government in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. February 2, 2011. Code...

A leading medical firm has quietly recalled hundreds of human tissue products destined for transplants around the nation that were supplied by a North Carolina body parts broker believed to have a tainted history. The broker used an unsterile embalming room to carve up dozens of corpses to procure tissue, a Raleigh funeral home director said Tuesday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down the body broker on Friday, but refuses to say how many people may have received potentially risky tissue. It is the second scandal in less than a year in the booming tissue transplant industry. Cadaver...

Just hours after The Post revealed that burglars broke into Nassau University Medical Center Chairman Matthew Bruderman’s home and stole documents tied to a federal corruption probe, the county’s top official abruptly fired him. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — who once appeared to be aligned with Bruderman’s claims that the hospital was robbed of more than $1 billion by state and prior county leaders since 2006 — pulled the plug on his three-year tenure late Thursday. The county exec, who helped launch the federal investigation by meeting with FBI Director Kash Patel on Long Island in early April, declined...

ORLANDO, May 24, 2013 – Online social networks can reveal alot. Including information about the relationshps of Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter and Chechen, that was fatally shot at his Orlando townhouse. During a meeting with FBI agents during which Todashev was allegedly being questioned about a triple murder that Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev is a suspect in, Todasheve was shot and killed, raising numerous questions in the minds of neighbors and revealing an interesting daisy chain of online links. Todashev lived, and was killed, in the Windhaven condominium complex located in Orlando, Florida, near the Universal...

Iranian Terrorist Attack Against U.S. Revealed How Bill Clinton concealed it from the public and U.S. intelligence. October 7, 2015 Arnold Ahlert    A bombshell report by the Washington Times reveals that fecklessness in the face of terror isn’t a condition exclusive to the Obama administration. "Bill Clinton’s administration gathered enough evidence to send a top-secret communique accusing Iran of facilitating the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist bombing,” the Times states, "but suppressed that information from the American public and some elements of U.S. intelligence for fear it would lead to an outcry for reprisal, according to documents and interviews.” Nineteen American...

MARFA, Texas— Rolling southeast on Highway 90 from El Paso, the telephone polls blur into the horizon, white antelope tails bob near ranchers' water troughs and one Prada shoe and handbag store blurs by. The shoe store is the first inkling that Marfa, Texas, isn't like the rest of the small towns that dot the highway to Big Bend. One part Taos circa 1980, one part hipster New York arena, and one part dusty West Texas town, it's become almost embarrassing for an art aficionado to have not been there. "(Marfa) has been in Paris Vogue, Dwell, New York Times...

Five-and-a-half years after being convicted of providing material support for terrorism, terror lawyer Lynne Stewart finally received a sentence commensurate with her crime. She was resentenced last week to 10 years. But if George Soros had his way, she would be free today. Stewart made a career out of defending street criminals and terrorists, including Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (pleaded guilty), Weather Underground terrorist David J. Gilbert (convicted), and Larry Davis (acquitted of wounding six policemen and killing several others in 1986, only to be convicted of a later murder and killed in prison). It should have come as...

(CNSNews.com) - Amid growing concern about the illicit drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border, the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas have been linked to South American drug trafficking organizations–and the money Hezbollah and Hamas make from narco-trafficking is used to finance their organizations, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). “International terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have also reportedly raised funding for their terrorist activities through linkages formed with DTOs in South America, particularly those operating in the tri-border area (TBA) of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina,” stated CRS in an April 30 report. As evidence that Hezbollah and...

A federal judge issued an order Friday that allows the sale of four newspapers, including the Times, to MediaNews Group Inc., pending a separate decision by the U.S. Department of Justice. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston clears a major obstacle that could have stalled the sale of the Times, San Jose Mercury News, Monterey County Herald and St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press. San Francisco businessman Clinton Reilly had filed a lawsuit aimed at halting the deal in which Sacramento-based McClatchy Co. would sell the papers to Denver-based MediaNews. The judge denied a request by Reilly for a...