Free Republic

A Russian deputy attorney general, who is thought to have directed Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya in her efforts abroad on behalf of Russia's government, reportedly died Wednesday night in a helicopter crash. The Daily Beast reported that Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was aboard an unauthorized helicopter flight, which crashed near the village of Vonyshevo, outside of Moscow. Karapetyan was reportedly behind Veselnitskaya's global efforts to lobby lawmakers to overturn anti-corruption acts such as the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which passed in 2012. The U.S. legislation is similar to others around the world which commemorate Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died while trying...

It was an easy story to miss. On Feb. 22, the Beijing newspaper China Business Herald, citing an anonymous source, reported that PetroChina International Vice President Shen Dingcheng had been missing for weeks. As a single point of data, the story means little. But the disappearance of Shen (which dozens of other Chinese news outlets covered) is likely another piece of the still unfolding and maddeningly opaque saga of Zhou Yongkang. Shen, it turns out, served as Zhou's secretary for part of the 1990s. Formerly one of the most powerful men in China, Zhou ran China's state security apparatus as...

Inside the infamous Ferrari crash that brought down Ling Jihua Staff Reporter 2015-01-01 13:29 (GMT+8) More stunning details have been revealed about the infamous Ferrari crash that killed the only son of fallen senior Chinese official Ling Jihua and sent his once promising political career into a tailspin. Ling, best known as the "political fixer" of former president Hu Jintao, has been placed under a probe for unspecified "serious discipline violations, according to a statement from the Central Inspection for Discipline Inspection, the country's top anti-graft watchdog. The 58-year-old once appeared destined for a seat on the Communist Party's elite...

<p>BENGHAZI, Libya — The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other American officials died in a coordinated assault on the U.S. consulate by gunmen firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and carrying the black flag of an Islamic extremist group, the property’s landlord said Wednesday.</p>

How the Communist Party sells Xi Jinping’s 'Chinese Dream' HONG KONG — To understand the attitude of China’s new leadership toward reform, you need to understand “The Chinese Dream.” Adopted by Xi Jinping as his governing slogan at the end of last year, “The Chinese Dream” has since become ubiquitous in the People’s Republic: it’s featured in newspaper editorials, TV debates and elementary-school textbooks. It’s taught in universities, prisons and work training programs. It’s written on walls and plastered on propaganda billboards. But what does “The Chinese Dream” mean? /snip This half-joking post was shared over 9,000 times on Sina...

Police say “graphic and dark” evidence leads them to believe two women were killed in Eugene and Raymond Horsch's house. Philadelphia police now believe at least two women were killed inside the decrepit Olney home at the center of a sprawling missing persons investigation, officials said Wednesday — a stunning breakthrough in a probe that began nearly two months ago after a chance encounter near Independence Mall. Inspector Raymond Evers said homicide detectives had recovered photos and videos on hard drives inside the home that appeared to show the deaths of two women who had been reported missing — neither...

Several Malian soldiers were killed in the jihadist ambush on Thursday of an army convoy heading for Niger, in the Ménaka region (northeast), a military official and a local elected official said on Friday..."We can speak of about twenty people if we count the dead, wounded and missing Malian soldiers" , said the local elected official, stressing that the balance sheet is "not yet very clear".Both spoke on condition of anonymity in the absence of official communication from the authorities.The elected official reported that the Malian army and paramilitaries from the Russian security group Wagner were deployed in the area....

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrest of an illegal caught up in a sting operation. Federico Pascual-Jimenez, from Mexico, thought he was sending sexually explicit text messages to a 14-year-old girl. It was, in fact, an ICE agent. Goodbye AC: This US invention is set to revolutionise cooling New Air Conditioner Without Outside Unit Going Viral in America Enlarged Prostate? Most Men Do Not Know About This Simple Shrinking Method In his texts, Pascual-Jimenez said he thought “age doesn’t matter.” ICE announced on X, “.@ICEgov has ARRESTED a criminal illegal PEDOPHILE.” “Federico Pascual-Jimenez, from Mexico, believed he was...

In January, 2012, Glenn Villeneuve was attacked by a pack of 20 wolves. It was a very unusual event. Villeneuvea detailed the event, including pictures of the extremely large pack. He gave an extensive interview to Joe Rogan. Villeneuve has been one of the stars of the reality show, Life Below Zero. The attack event is discussed starting at 13:30 on the video. Villeneuve explains he never expected such an attack to happen. It was far outside many years of experience dealing with wolves. He does not know why the wolves came after him that day. They had never been...

A former C.I.A. officer suspected of helping China identify the agency’s informants in that country has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. Many of the informants were killed in a systematic dismantling of the C.I.A.’s spy network in China starting in 2010 that was one of the American government’s worst intelligence failures in recent years, several former intelligence officials have said. The arrest of the former officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, capped an intense F.B.I. investigation that began around 2012 after the C.I.A. began losing its informants in China.... Mr. Lee, who left the C.I.A. in 2007...

Almost all media commentators seem convinced that Donald Trump’s foreign policy in his second term is a disaster. He is bogged down in Iran, snookered in Ukraine, his tariff agenda has failed and he has alienated his NATO allies. But this consensus has been too hastily formed. Looking at the bigger global picture, Trump’s foreign policy has been a spectacular success. Take the western hemisphere. We have the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” the updated version of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. In 1822, president James Monroe, having welcomed South America’s overthrow of Spanish and Portuguese imperial rule, stated that Latin American nations...

Despite 50 years of research on high-power microwaves, the US military has yet to produce a usable weapon. For some Pentagon officials, the demonstration in October 2007 must have seemed like a dream come true — an opportunity to blast reporters with a beam of energy that causes searing pain. The event in Quantico, Virginia, was to be a rare public showing for the US Air Force's Active Denial System: a prototype non-lethal crowd-control weapon that emits a beam of microwaves at 95 gigahertz. Radiation at that frequency penetrates less than half a millimetre into the skin, so the beam...

Airborne troops from Russia and the Untied States would hold joint anti-terror drills in the U.S. state of Colorado between May 24 and 31, spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry Col. Alexander Kucherenko said on Thursday. According to the spokesman, it will be the first time that the Russian airborne forces have held exercises with the U.S. airborne forces on the U.S. territory. "According to the exercise scenario, soldiers of the two countries will hold a tactical airborne operation, including the reconnaissance of imaginary terrorists' camp and a raid," Kucherenko said. "After the operation, a helicopter will evacuate the soldiers,"...

In 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage. “When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence...

Repsol, has confirmed that (his) company and its partners are abandoning drilling offshore Cuba, representing a major blow to the island's ambitions to secure oil self-sufficiency.... The decision follows reports that the Jaguey-1 exploration well drilled by Repsol and partners Statoil (Norway) and ONGC (India) on Block N26, in Cuba's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Gulf of Mexico, had come up dry.

Diplomacy: After a weekend of cavorting in Colombia, the White House was caught flat-footed by Argentina's takeover of a big oil company whose loss will hike gas prices, harm Spain and slam U.S. investors. Lucky us. Never was a response to a global outrage more mealy-mouthed than the one from the U.S. after Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, standing under a portrait of Evita Peron, announced a brazen grab for YPF, the Argentine oil company that's 57% owned by Spain's Repsol. Markets fell, world leaders denounced the violation of contracts and economically battered Spain rallied European Union support. But...

MADRID - Spanish oil firm Repsol YPF SA has begun offshore drilling in Cuban waters as part of its global exploration operations, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday. Deep-water exploration drilling began about 50 kilometers north of Havana and will take at least 60 days to complete, this person added. Repsol is resuming exploration in the area after it failed to find exploitable oil in 2004. The U.S. Geological Survey has said there could be a substantial amount of untapped oil off the Cuban coast. The Repsol well is much closer to Florida than any other well in...

The Justice Department announced Friday that a “key participant” in the September 11, 2012, Benghazi attack is now in U.S. custody and will be prosecuted for his alleged role in the deaths of four Americans. Attorney General Pam Bondi identified the suspect as Zubayr Al-Bakoush and said he arrived at Andrews AFB early Friday. Prosecutors have filed an eight-count indictment that includes murder-related charges tied to the deaths of several Americans. Bondi made the announcement alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, and Al-Bakoush is expected to face charges that include terrorism, arson, and murder.

Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has reported to federal prison to begin a 14-year sentence following a conviction over illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Michel reported to prison Thursday, a spokesperson said, with federal records listing him as an inmate at a low-security correctional institution in Arizona. “Today is a painful day for Pras, for his family, and for everyone who believes in a fair system of justice. Pras honors the legal process as he reports to begin his sentence,” said Erica Dumas, a spokesperson for...

CIA China Ops Wiped Out By 'Botched; Spy Contact System: Investigation results show indicted spy Jerry Chun Shing Lee was not the CIA's only security breach. Sloppy coding led to a back door hole in the messaging system, used by the Chinese to 'wipe out' our entire spy network. Suddenly, in late 2010, undercover agents in China were being rounded up and hauled off for interrogation. Under Barack Obama's administration, the Central Intelligence Agency suffered what intelligence officers are calling one of the worst disasters in decades. Suddenly, in late 2010, undercover agents in China were being rounded up and...