Free Republic

July 19 (Reuters) - A global tech outage was disrupting operations across multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off air and services from banking to healthcare hit by system problems. While major U.S. airlines - American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab, Delta Airlines (DAL.N), opens new tab and United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab - grounded flights, other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions early on Friday. Banks and financial services firms from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions. In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple...

Whistleblowers have informed top Republican senators that former President Barack Obama’s State Department blocked the FBI from executing arrest warrants against illegal aliens in the U.S. who were financially backing Iran’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that for nearly 20 years, Republican and Democrat administrations imposed sanctions on “Iranian individuals, companies, and organizations for involvement in nuclear proliferation, ballistic missile development, support for terrorist groups, and human rights abuses.” They noted that even one of Obama’s executive orders and a law passed during the Obama-era, the Iran Nuclear Agreement...

Who the heck made this bad decision? And how does it differ from something an embedded Cuban operative in the U.S. might do? After the arrest of Ambassador Manuel Rochas on espionage charges for Cuba, a logical question was whether there were one, two, many, Manuel Rochases (and Kendall Myerses) over at the State Department? What else can one conclude with whoever it was at State who made a decision like this? According to the Washington Times: Homeland Security gave a delegation from Cuba a look behind the curtain at airport operations at Miami International Airport, in a move critics...

On Sunday, a group of keffiyeh-clad individuals huddled around a computer to discuss the "Palestinian resistance." Charlotte Kates, a member of the Israeli-designated terror group Samidoun, praised Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack for showing "the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism." Khaled Barakat, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist, lauded airplane hijackings as "one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in." While those speakers and other attendees were explicit in their support for terrorism against Jews, the event did not take place in Gaza, Doha, or Tehran. It took...

Anti-Israel protesters blocked a roadway to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport early Monday, causing extreme frustration and a snarl of traffic. To block the flow of traffic, protesters sat down in the middle of Interstate 190 with their arms interlocked and used “long tubes” to keep cars from going into the airport, the New York Post reported. Anti-Israel protesters block highway outside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport https://t.co/wLlBm69Nua pic.twitter.com/Ia7OGVagYw — New York Post (@nypost) April 15, 2024 Another group was seen walking around in the middle of a roadway near a sign that read “Your Tax $ Funds Genocide.” The protesters were...

This is the chaotic moment a belligerent American Airlines passenger was put in a headlock and dragged out by a fellow flyer before takeoff. The disruptive male passenger was removed from flight 2506 that was set to fly from Tampa International Airport to Philadelphia on Tuesday. During the outburst, which caused a 30-minute delay, the man yelled an anti-Semitic slur at a flight attendant and seemed to threaten another passenger. In a statement, American Airline told DailyMail.com: 'Prior to departure of American Airlines flight 2506 with service from Tampa (TPA) to Philadelphia (PHL), law enforcement was requested to the aircraft...

Drudge is giving this banner treatment but I’m not sure why. Of course Al Qaeda is on the brink of a dirty bomb. Their comrades-in-arms in the Taliban are the jihadist proxy of one of the world’s biggest nuclear proliferators, aren’t they? If the filthbags in Pakistani intelligence want Al Qaeda to have nuclear material, they’ll find a way to smuggle some out of the state supply, I’m sure. In fact, according to a new piece in the NYT, Pakistan’s practically swimming in fissile material these days. Never mind the dirty bombs; how long before AQ or Lashkar e-Taiba or...

Is the migrant crisis plaguing the U.S. just the spontaneous movement of the globe's peoples to the U.S. ... or the work of an evil little banana-republic dictator plotting to take down the U.S.? Based on a new report from Agence France-Presse, which ran on the Voice of America's website, it actually looks like the latter: … analysts say that the government of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, a longtime nemesis of the United States, has deliberately made it easier for migrants to bypass the Darien by flying straight into his country and then heading north overland. Manuel Orozco, a migration...

The out-of-control airline pilot who tried to down an Alaskan Airlines flight midair told cops he had taken magic mushrooms before the flight, it emerged Tuesday. Joseph Emerson, 44, an off-duty commercial airline pilot, went off the rails while sitting in the cockpit jump seat of a flight between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco on Sunday — trying to cut the fuel to the engines before he had to be held down by crew members. Even while restrained, Emerson tried to open the emergency doors on the Alaskan flight, which was being operated by Horizon Air, as the pilots frantically...

The first indication that something was amiss on Wizz Air Flight W9 4452 from Tel Aviv to London Monday was a hulking passenger who kept walking back and forth the entire length of the airplane, from the cockpit to the rear emergency exit and then back again. The plane’s engineer recalled: “I saw him going up and down, maybe looking for weak points on the aircraft… checking seat numbers… It was a very scary situation.” It got a lot scarier. Repeatedly screaming “Allahu akbar,” the suspicious passenger punched a crew member and tried to open an emergency exit door, which...

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged a Kenyan man with plotting to stage an attack in the style of Sept. 11 at the direction of al-Shabaab, a terrorist group that serves as al Qaeda’s principal wing in East Africa. Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 30 years old, traveled to the Philippines in 2016 to train as a pilot and researched how to hijack an aircraft in preparation for crashing a commercial aircraft into a building in the U.S., Manhattan federal prosecutors said. They said he acted at the direction of an unidentified senior al-Shabaab commander who was also responsible for planning a 2019...

Cholo Abdi Abdullah Obtained Pilot Training and Researched How to Hijack Aircraft in Order to Conduct a 9/11-Style Attack at the Direction of al ShabaabThe Department of Justice announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Cholo Abdi Abdullah with six counts of terrorism-related offenses arising from his activities as an operative of the foreign terrorist organization al Shabaab, including conspiring to hijack aircraft in order to conduct a 9/11-style attack in the United States. Abdullah was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines on local charges, and was subsequently transferred on Dec. 15, 2020 in connection with his deportation from...

Two women who got into a fight with an airline employee were arrested on Tuesday. A Pennsylvania man was arrested after attempting to bring an explosive device on a flight on Feb. 27. Marc Muffley, 40, was arrested by FBI agents on Monday night after he allegedly attempted to bring an explosive device onto an Allegiant Airlines flight from Lehigh Valley International Airport headed to Orlando Sanford International Airport on Feb. 27. After staff with Allegiant Airlines checked Muffley's bag, TSA agents were alerted to the "presence of suspicious items," an affidavit states. When TSA agents physically inspected the bag,...

Five cars rented by President Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail for his Thanksgiving weekend trip to Nantucket mysteriously burst into flames a day after he left, according to reports. Footage of the burned out rental vehicles in a car park at Nantucket Memorial Airport was obtained by the Nantucket Current. The local news site reported that the cause of the fire was under investigation. No one was injured in the blaze. Footage showed firefighters dampening down the smouldering remains of several vehicles including a Chevy Suburban, a Ford Explorer, an Infiniti QX80, a Ford Expedition, and a Jeep Gladiator. In...

The news agency added, "After checking the public flight information, there are still a few flights taking off smoothly at Quanzhou Jinjiang Airport and Xiamen Gaoqi Airport this morning, but almost all the flights that have not yet taken off have been canceled.".

Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor of Italian origin who led a distinguished life, was at the Auschwitz concentration camp hospital one day due to high fever caused by an infectious disease. He later wrote in his memoirs that when confronted with Soviet soldiers: "They neither greeted nor smiled; they seemed to be tormented by the guilt of why this crime had to happen." The trial of one of the perpetrators of another heinous crime, the massacre of 30,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988, is currently taking place in a Swedish court. What happened in 1988 was a ruthless, bloody, and...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) disclosed to a congressional office that migrants flying without proper identification can use an arrest warrant as an alternate form of identification when presenting to airport security, according to a letter the Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively obtained. Responding to Republican Texas Rep. Lance Gooden’s Dec. 15 inquiry about migrants flying across the country, TSA Administrator David Pekoske explained that certain Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents may be considered acceptable forms of alternate identification for non-citizens, including a “Warrant for Arrest of Alien” and a “Warrant of Removal/Deportation.” “TSA’s response confirms the Biden Administration...

ATLANTA — A woman who reportedly caused a scene while on board a flight to Atlanta is now in FBI custody, according to Atlanta police. Police say they were called to Hartsfield-Jackson International airport last week in reference to an unruly passenger on a Delta flight from Tampa to Atlanta. Officers and Delta employees were waiting at the gate when the plane arrived. Passengers exiting the plane told police that a passenger named Patricia Cornwall caused a “disturbance” that led to the injury of other passengers and Delta employees.

XILINX AND PIXEL VELOCITY TEAM TO DELIVER WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED 3-D FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 3-D biometric "fingerprint" of human face to revolutionize airport security SAN JOSE, Calif., November 29, 2004 - Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ: XLNX), the world's leading programmable logic supplier, and Pixel Velocity, a leading image processing solutions company, today announced a collaboration that resulted in the world's most advanced 3-D facial recognition technology. Using the advanced features of Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs, Pixel developed the revolutionary biometrics technology to replace today's limited two-dimensional (2-D) technology in applications such as airport surveillance cameras and automated travel kiosks in airports...

A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges Thursday for allegedly taking bribes from a mobster to supply him with inside information that led to four underworld slayings in Brooklyn. R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, was arrested in a case of "confidential leaks, payoffs and death" dating back two decades, District Attorney Charles Hynes said. DeVecchio pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bail. He did not speak at his arraignment. One of the two alleged mob hitmen behind the slayings was jailed without bail. The other was in Florida, awaiting extradition.