Free Republic

On Ukraina television last week, viewers caught images of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate in this country's contested presidential election, greeting voters and kissing babies, standard glad-handing by a pol on the stump. The broadcast of benevolent images of Yushchenko on a Russian language channel that stridently supports his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was short-lived. Just as suddenly, the sequence cut to historical footage of Adolf Hitler, also greeting supporters and caressing the foreheads of German children thrust toward him by their beaming parents. The message, one that has been hammered home for months now, was clear: Yushchenko is...

Malaysian police were investigating a company controlled by a son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi over allegations that it was involved in supplying parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programme. National police chief Bakri Omar said in a statement issued to "clarify several questions and confusion" that the probe was sparked by information provided last November by US and British intelligence services. The CIA and MI6 told Malaysia's special branch that the company, Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope), was supplying centrifuge components made in Malaysia for Libya's uranium-enrichment program. Scope is a unit of listed oil and gas firm Scomi Group,...

Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center in New York City has long been a place of mystery, with little known about what goes on behind the razor-wire fences. As a result, the state-run facility for the dangerously mentally ill — located on Wards Island in Manhattan — has gone all but unnoticed for decades, despite having held some of the city’s most notorious criminals, including serial killers and cannibals like Daniel Rakowitz, the so-called Butcher of Tompkins Square Park. But recently, employees have been speaking up, painting a picture of what goes on in Kirby’s wards. State officials are planning to close...