Free Republic

LOOMIS, Calif. — China is demanding that the Obama administration return a wealthy and politically connected businessman who fled to the United States, according to several American officials familiar with the case. Should he seek political asylum, he could become one of the most damaging defectors in the history of the People’s Republic. The case of the businessman, Ling Wancheng, has strained relations between two nations already at odds over numerous issues before President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States in September, including an extensive cybertheft of American government data and China’s aggressive territorial claims. Mr. Ling...

Chinese spies in U.S. hunting for man who could be the 'most significant defector in decades' are warned off by White House US warned Beijing about covert Chinese agents operating in America to pressure fugitives such as defector Ling Wancheng to return to China Operation Fox Hunt part of large effort by Beijing to repatriate fugitives China’s former president, Hu Jintao, employed Ling’s brother as an aide Brother in July accused of bribe-taking and illegally obtaining state secrets Ling may have got sensitive information about Chinese leaders from him Chinese President Xi Jinping will make his first state visit to...

An Antifa whistleblower going by the name Eric said Thursday on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” that he left the now-designated terrorist organization after a decade due to “pressure” and “ostracization” from other members. On Sept. 17, President Donald Trump announced the designation of militant far-left network Antifa as a terrorist organization and called for investigations into its financial backers. Fox’s Jesse Watters asked Eric, who wore a face mask to protect his identity, whether the organization’s ideology was “full blown communism.” “I mean, a lot of it is. So a lot of it is — these are accelerationism. It’s...

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and its passengers are entombed in an ocean trench after its twisted pilot ditched the plane as part of a mass-murder-suicide plot, a British aviation expert claims. British pilot Simon Hardy was part of the official search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared over the South China Sea on March 8, 2014, and was never found. In 2015, he was brought on board by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to trace the missing plane, which disappeared 39 minutes after it left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 passengers and crew members on board. Hardy used the...

Chris Harper-Mercer, the man accused of opening fire at a rural Oregon community college Thursday, formerly lived in the South Bay and attended a school for teens with emotional disabilities. Records show Harper-Mercer, 20, lived in a ground-floor apartment on Arlington Avenue at 230th Street in Torrance with his mother, Laurel Harper, from 2011 to 2013. The owner of the building said he did not know them and neighbors did not recall them. But current residents, greeted by reporters knocking at their doors late Thursday, were shocked to learn that the man suspected of committing the nation’s latest mass shooting...

Australian war hero Ben Roberts-Smith said he would not encourage potential recruits to join the armed forces because of the lack of support veterans receive. The former soldier believes the heads of the Australian Defence Force are putting themselves ahead of servicemen and not providing the assistance that veterans need. The 41-year-old told The Daily Telegraph he would not endorse young people going into the military without a major shakeup in leadership. 'My opinion is the Australian Defence Force needs good young Australians… but when you look at what is happening at the moment it gives me pause to think,...

Democrats had set their sights on impeaching Donald Trump long before he assumed the presidency. The media was openly speculating how Democrats might impeach him if he won months before the election. Once they had control of the House in 2019, it was only a matter of time before they ginned up a pretext for impeaching him. Bizarrely, they launched an impeachment inquiry over a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Those charges stemmed from the accusations of whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, who took his claims to Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office in 2019. Democrats accused Trump of...

The disgraced relative of an Iranian warlord being deported from California has reached out to her former LA love interest from an ICE detention center to beg for help. Married Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, niece of terror mastermind Gen. Qasem Soleimani – former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who was taken out in a deadly 2020 U.S. air strike – frantically called Maziar Aflaki, 68, on Monday from the facility in Pearsall, Texas. But on hearing her voice, retiree Aflaki declined to accept the call, claiming years of harassment and abuse at the hands of Afshar. He told the...

An Iranian vice-president on Tuesday responded dismissively to Israel's objections to a looming nuclear deal, claiming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not have much influence. "I don't think (Netanyahu's voice) carries much weight,"said Massoumeh Ebtekar, who is vice-president for environmental affairs [snip] "They are making their efforts to derail the deal but I think the more logical lobbies on both sides are looking forward to a solution," she claimed. Ebtekar, whose country is the leading state sponsor of terrorism and has rapidly expanded its control in the region, claimed "the current threats in the region - the radicalism, extremism, terrorism...

Since assuming office in 2009, President Barack Obama has consistently held that the United States would carry out airstrikes to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This position is supported by the vast majority of U.S. policy makers, lawmakers and the political elite, regardless of political affiliation. Nonetheless, it is also generally agreed that airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would only have a limited impact on preventing Iran from acquiring the bomb. To be sure, a concerted airstrike effort against Iran would delay its ability to build a nuclear arsenal by several years. Nonetheless, Iran would be able to...

The stunned Los Angeles renter of the property owned by the niece of Iranian terror mastermind Gen. Qasem Soleimani said he now realizes the mom and her daughter had been on ICE’s radar for some time before agents swooped on the quiet Tujunga home and hauled the pair away. Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, and her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, 25, were arrested by ICE Friday and had their green cards revoked for ties to the Iranian regime. Afshar had celebrated attacks on US soldiers and military facilities, praised Iran’s Supreme Leader, called America the “Great Satan,” and voiced support for the...

To Kill Without a TracePosted By Mark Tapson On March 24, 2015 @ 12:21 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments On July 18, 1994, a van loaded with explosives destroyed the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), murdering 85 innocents and injuring over 300. The government accused Hezbollah, but it was not until 2006 that sufficient legal evidence was gathered to request warrants for the arrest of those allegedly responsible.On January 19, 2015, the chief investigator of the case, prosecutor Alberto Nisman, was found murdered (though it had been made to look like a suicide). Nisman had been on the verge of...

Are the Russians coming to Texas riding the tailwinds of fracking? That depends on who you ask, as some believe Russian forces were behind the anti-fracking vote in Denton, while a $15 million investment in new Texas fracking technology by Roman Abramovich perhaps tells another story. When the anti-fracking campaign started to heat up late last year in Denton, Texas—the heart of the shale revolution—conspiracy theories were spread from within the pro-fracking community that the Russians were behind the whole thing. The logic was that the American shale revolution threatened Russia’s market share. Yet just months after a successful vote...

President Trump recently signed an Executive Order that expands U.S. production of glyphosate, a herbicide contained in commercial and domestic weed killers, such as Roundup. Glyphosate has been rigorously tested in more than 2,000 studies, including the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s large Agricultural Health Study, and has been used by farmers and home gardeners for more than 50 years. Yet some environmental advocates and other groups contend it causes cancer, specifically non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. This outcry stems primarily from a 2015 hazard assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC), a semi-autonomous agency of the World Health Organization, which...

Unusually specific intelligence reports about fresh Iranian threats to American forces in the Middle East triggered a request by the U.S. military command in the Middle East for additional assistance as a deterrent against possible aggression, U.S. officials said Monday. That threat prompted the Trump administration to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier and its strike group, along with several bombers, as extra force in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials say the intelligence, which emerged late last week, indicated that Iran planned to target U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, to orchestrate attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb strait...

Alberto Nisman, who on Monday was due in parliament to present his case against president Cristina Kirchner, found dead days after warning "I could end up dead because of this" An Argentine prosecutor who accused President Cristina Kirchner of covering up Iran’s involvement in the country’s worst ever terrorist attack has been found dead, hours before he was due to present his evidence in parliament. Alberto Nisman, 51, had spent the past decade investigating the 1994 bombings of a Buenos Aires Jewish centre, which killed 85 people. Two years ago he began working on a 300-page dossier – due to...

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...

A set of internal documents published by the Republican members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (Judiciary GOP) has sent shockwaves through Brussels. Released under the title The EU Censorship Files, Part II, the investigation presents documentary evidence of a sustained strategy by the European Commission to influence public debate on social media and digital platforms, pressuring major tech companies to censor lawful content, alter their internal rules, and restrict certain political viewpoints. https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/2018683758006665352 The revelations go far beyond an abstract debate over content moderation. According to the material made public, the Commission has directly or indirectly intervened in at...

The discovery of a black market Chinese biolab operating in California, and the subsequent investigation into it, has exposed a tangled web of shell companies obscuring ownership and loopholes that caused delays in cleanup and informing the public. The public found out in March about a secret biolab operating in a warehouse in Reedley, California, about 25 miles southeast of Fresno. But the warehouse and its biological hazards were discovered months earlier, on Dec. 19, 2022, by Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer with the City of Reedley Fire Department. Responding to an anonymous tip about the supposedly vacant warehouse,...

A Chinese court has sentenced to death 11 members of a notorious family that ran scam centres in Myanmar, according to Chinese state media. Dozens of members of the Ming family were found guilty of conducting criminal activities, with many receiving lengthy jail sentences. The Ming family worked for one of the four clans that ran Myanmar's sleepy backwater town of Laukkai, close to the border with China, and turned it into a hub for gambling, drugs and scam centres. Myanmar eventually cracked down, arresting many members of these families in 2023 and handing them over to Chinese authorities. A...