Free Republic

The apparent murder of a Chinese-American man, along with three family members, at his home in Houston, Texas, this January was recently said by an established overseas Chinese newspaper to have some connection to the former Chinese security official Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of an intense corruption investigation.

Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the centre of China's biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said. More than 300 of Zhou's relatives, political allies, proteges and staff have also been taken into custody or questioned in the past four months, the sources, who have been briefed on the investigation, told Reuters. The sheer size of the asset seizures and the scale of the investigations into the people around Zhou - both unreported until...

In May, Jack Peterson went on a Tinder date. With a woman. They ate at an Italian restaurant in downtown Chicago, and made casual chitchat about themselves. It was an ordinary date in every way. But for 19-year-old Peterson, it was an achievement of epic proportions. Until recently, Peterson identified as an “incel,” or involuntarily celibate. Incels believe that, due to reasons entirely beyond their control ― too short, too bald, too weak a jawline ― they cannot attract a female partner. They believe they’re doomed to remain alone, forever. For many incels, this fatalistic worldview is paired with a...

Air Force instructors have been warning troops about the growing threat of radicalized “incels” — aka guys who can’t find women to sleep with them, a report says.Airmen stationed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland were recently briefed on the “involuntary celibates,” with documents cautioning themabout an “increase in nationwide activity,” according to the military website Task & Purpose.A number of shootings and mass casualty events have been linked to the incel movement in recent years — including the 2014 Isla Vista massacre in California, last year’s Toronto van attack and this month’s Dallas shooting.Alek Minassian, the man charged in the Toronto killings,...

(CNN)Shortly before he allegedly killed 10 pedestrians Monday, Alek Minassian may have praised a man who vowed to "destroy" women who rejected him. "All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" reads a Facebook page believed to be Minassian's. The accolade apparently refers to the California killer who carried out a "day of retribution" in 2014.

Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance. Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the United States owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage.

WASHINGTON — Unexpected visitors have been dropping in on anti-oil activists in the United States — knocking on doors, calling, texting, contacting family members. The visitors are federal agents. Opponents of Canadian oil say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators in several states following their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oilsands. A lawyer working with the protesters says he’s personally aware of a dozen people having been contacted in the northwestern U.S. and says the actual number is probably higher. Larry Hildes says it’s been happening the last few months in Washington State, Oregon...

A Department of Energy electrical engineer has been arrested on charges of providing support to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, including by buying materials for homemade explosives and drones and traveling to Yemen, the Justice Department said Thursday. Ashton Hamed Ellaboudy, 51, of Richland, Washington, was arrested Thursday and is due to make his first court appearance Friday. Court records do not list an attorney available to speak on his behalf. The FBI says Ellaboudy had a goal of helping the Houthis improve their communications capabilities and traveled last September to Yemen, where the Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces are now...

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) confirmed via its public health agency on Sunday that at least 2,325 people have died of Ebola infections in the current outbreak in the east of the country, making it the deadliest such outbreak in the country’s history. Experts noted that the extremely high death toll is likely not a full count of the people killed by the disease, as the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) was slow to identify an outbreak in the affected area, and that only one other known Ebola outbreak – the 2014-2016 outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia...

Thank goodness we didn’t waterboard him or shoot him in the head on capture. Or drone him. That would have been wrong. A senior leader of the Taliban and al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who was captured by Coalition forces in the spring of 2011 is now leading more than 300 jihadists in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. The IMU leader once served as the top commander of the jihadist group’s network in Afghanistan.Qari Bilal, the IMU leader, was freed by the Afghan government at the direction of President Hamid Karzai, Afghan officials in Kunduz have told...

In a speech to US business leaders, Najib says opposition politicians have blown 1MDB scandal out of proportion in a failed attempt to topple his government. WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump welcomed Prime Minister Najib Razak to the White House today, praising his country for investing in the United States while steering clear of an American investigation into a Malaysian corruption scandal. The visit is important for Najib, who faces elections next year and wants to signal he is still welcome at the White House despite a criminal probe by the US Justice Department into a state fund called 1Malaysia...

Aaron Rich, who had reportedly been blocking his family’s private investigator from looking into whether or not his brother Seth was a WikiLeaks source, works for an influential defense contractor that provides cyber security. According to a source close to the Rich family, Aaron works for Northrup Grumman, which was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015. The source did not provide what his specific role is at the company. “It’s not just hacking and defending, there’s a lot more to it,” a cyber software engineer at Northrup Grumman says in a video on the company’s...

Leaders across Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are preparing for a meeting to begin the process of seceding from the United Kingdom.The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will gather on Monday to sign a deal designed to kick-start the break-up of the United Kingdom, The Telegraph can disclose.🔗: https://t.co/VeumqBREAKING:The Telegraph writes that the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will meet in Cardiff tomorrow sign a deal on starting cooperation breaking up the UK.They will demand the right to independence referendum, or in the case of Northern Ireland, on the right to become part of Ireland. After...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that events in Europe, including the far-right victory in a German state election, were the ​result of "system errors" committed by globalists in the West. Putin, speaking to reporters ‌in a pool report on the first day of a visit to India, also said the conflict in Ukraine was the fault of the West for constantly putting pressure on Moscow and seeking ​to "drag" Ukraine into the NATO alliance. The Russian president said he would offer no ​comment on Sunday's top result for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party ⁠in the German state...

In a shocking case out of Colorado, a crime lab analyst has been sentenced to 10 years behind bars for tampering with DNA evidence. Imagine your loved one’s rapist or murderer being acquitted because the forensic analyst on the case decided to destroy the DNA proof linking them to the crime. That’s exactly what 66-year-old Yvonne “Missy” Woods did. Over her decades-long career at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, this deranged woman altered DNA data in over one-thousand cases, allowing countless criminals to walk free. For some bizarre reason, this woman threw out DNA from rape kits and even homicide...

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has taken out a full page ad in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and six UK papers today to apologize Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter. The ad starts in bold letters, saying: “We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.” The ad was published on Sunday, following Zuck’s first public acknowledgement of the issue on Facebook and a subsequent media tour earlier this week. Congress has also put Mark Zuckerberg on notice to potentially come speak with them, with Senator...

On Tuesday, Socialist New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced the appointment of Ramzi Kassem as the city’s top attorney. Kassem gained notoriety for defending al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi when he served as lead counsel. In 2014, al-Darbi pled guilty in connection with an al-Qaeda terrorist plot to bomb a French oil tanker near Yemen in 2002, leaving a civilian dead and several others injured. He was convicted in 2017 and ultimately transferred to Saudi Arabia in 2018. Al-Darbi’s brother-in-law was Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the five hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon during the September...

Svetlana Lokhova's life flipped upside down when she became ensnared in what she describes as a completely false narrative that she had recruited Michael Flynn to work with the Russian government. Lokhova, an immigrant from Russia to Britain who worked as an academic at the world-renowned Cambridge University, found herself facing allegations that she had been involved in an affair with Flynn. A new mother at the time, Lokhova described herself as "absolutely gobsmacked" by the allegations. She explained during an interview on the "John Solomon Reports" podcast that she met Flynn once in 2014 when he visited Cambridge while...

PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia judge has ordered philly.com to reveal the name of an anonymous commenter, in a defamation suit brought by electricians’ union leader John Dougherty. An attorney in the case says it could have a broad impact on incendiary online comments and those users, sometimes called “trolls,” who post them anonymously. The anonymous defendant in the suit, disguised by the nonsense name “fbpdplt,” called Dougherty a name in the comments section of an article on the website, one of the properties in the media group that also owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.

Car bombs used to be a fixture of gangland feuds in 1990s Russia but have since fallen out of fashion. This makes it all the more striking when, as happened last night, such a device rips through a car just outside Moscow, killing Darya Dugina, daughter of the controversial nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. She was a prominent figure in her own right, a journalist working for an outfit Washington says is owned by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin – under sanctions in the West for being the godfather of both the Wagner mercenary group and the infamous social media ‘troll farms’...