Free Republic

A teenage daughter of Osama bin Laden has been released from Iran after living under house arrest there since her family fled Afghanistan in 2001, her brother says.Iman bin Laden, 18, is now living in Syria with her mother, according to the girl's brother, Omar, and his wife, Zaina Alsabah.The couple spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from Britain.Alsabah said she had spoken on the phone with Iman, who is "healthy and settling in."Many of Osama bin Laden's children escaped to Iran following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. They lived in a compound under Iranian guard after authorities...

The country of Ghanzia is embroiled in a civil war. As a soldier in America's Army, your job is to do everything from protect U.S. military convoys against AK-47-wielding attackers to sneak up on a mountain observatory where arms dealers are hiding out. It is a tough and dangerous tour of duty that requires dedication, focus, and a bit of luck. Fortunately, if you get hit by a bullet and bleed to death, you can reboot your computer and sign on under a new name. America's Army is a video game -- a "tactical multiplayer first-person shooter" in gaming lingo...

He calls himself "America's Prophet," a psychic, trained by Nepalese monks in the art of time travel, who can foretell the future of the stock market. But to the authorities, Sean David Morton is simply a fraud - and a really, really bad psychic. In a case that seems ripped from the pages of the satirical newspaper The Onion, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Mr. Morton for securities fraud on Thursday, claiming he swindled more than $6 million from investors by promising them "piles of money," along with spiritual happiness. "I have called ALL the highs and lows of...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The people who killed a Hamas operative in an airport hotel here in January seem to have thought they could pass it off as a natural death, or perhaps just another of this region's macabre mysteries. They injected him with a muscle relaxant, suffocated him and then smoothed away any signs of struggle, reattaching the hotel door chain as they left the room, investigators say. Instead, the Dubai police quickly unraveled the plot and identified 26 suspects, in a display of transparency that is almost unheard of in the Arab world. They released a 27-minute...

GENEVA (AP) - A killer - or killers - may be on the loose in Europe after a Hamas operative was slain last month in Dubai. European nations, however, seem to be in no rush to find him, her or them. The spotlight is falling on those countries where police say the alleged assassins' trails begin and end: Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Authorities there have either declined to say whether they are investigating, or told The Associated Press they have no reason to hunt down the 26 suspects implicated in the Jan. 19 killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh....

Authorities in Dubai have found DNA  traces of one of the suspects in killing senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January, as well as finger prints of several members of the suspected hit squad, Dubai Police Chief Lt. General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told the Al-Arabiya television network on Friday. Earlier Friday, Khalfan announced that Dubai intends to seek the establishment of an international team to investigate Mabhouh's death. Such a team could bring to the arrest of 26 suspects identified so far, against whom police in Dubai have “clear cut evidence,” he explained.In an interview with Al-Bayan, a newspaper published...

Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary, is resigning her position just a few months after she was roundly criticized for a security lapse that led to uninvited guests crashing the president's first state dinner. "It's been a tremendous experience and honor to serve this president and first lady in what is really a historic presidency for all Americans but particularly for African-Americans," she said in a brief telephone interview. "That is part of the reason I came out to do the job." Ms. Rogers was a newcomer to politics as well as to Washington, and in her first year...

Suspected Israeli assassins have inadvertently given the world an unusual master class in clandestine killing in broadcast surveillance video of them going about their murderous trade. There is cold-eyed admiration in the intelligence community for a near flawless "hit" by the nondescript group of travellers who executed a Hamas commander undetected within hours of his arrival in Dubai thanks to strong teamwork and preparation......."They got in, killed the guy and disappeared, without leaving proof of who they were," said Robert Ayers, a former U.S. intelligence officer."It doesn't get any better than that."Israel has not denied or confirmed it played any...

Global media reports about Israeli secret service's involvement in Dubai assassination create unprecedented hype, increasing applications for jobs within spy agency........ The Mossad website has become extremely popular in recent weeks, particularly its job openings page, through which one can apply for a position with the agency. Global media reports on Mossad's alleged involvement in the assassination of the Hamas commander has led to a soaring number of civilian applicants who wish to join the secret service.The agency, which did not post any new job openings for over six months, posted a statement on February 12 "almost a month after...

.....Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, says Wednesday's revelations did not change his opinion that Israel was behind the assassination.......Mr Riedel says it would have been highly unusual for the hit squad to have visited Dubai using the stolen identities last year just for reconnaissance, as the police claim, and that this may have been an attempt to eliminate the Hamas leader that had failed. He also doubted that all of the suspects had been in the Gulf just for one mission."What the Dubai authorities are uncovering now is...

TORONTO - There are still no leads in the case of an eastern Ontario scientist who disappeared without a trace last month, leaving his colleagues mystified. Lachlan Cranswick hasn't been seen since Jan. 18, when he left work at the National Research Council's Canadian Neutron Beam Centre in Chalk River, northwest of Ottawa. His nearby Deep River house was reportedly left unlocked and his car was in the garage. His wallet, keys and passport have all been accounted for......

At the threshold of my career as a journalist in Paris I was once the unwitting victim of a classic Mossad honey trap. Little did I know that Patricia Roxborough, the girl who pursued me and made sure she was the object of my desire, was a trained assassin of the feared Israeli intelligence service. We met, by chance, through friends in 1969. I was an impressionable 21-year-old learning the ropes of being a foreign correspondent in the French capital. Roxborough said she was a Canadian freelance news photographer. She was tall, beautiful and intelligent and her flashing eyes hinted...

....The theory is, of course, ludicrous. But it's worth noting just to point out how absurd some of the Birthers' favorite sources really are. The man behind this twist is James David Manning, the pastor of ATLAH Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, which he founded. He's probably most known for having called Obama a "long legged mack daddy." That started the Birthers' love affair with him, and he's been a presence in the movement ever since -- it doesn't hurt that he's a black man who says racist things about Obama.He was there for their big press conference in 2008,...

More than a year after his historic election, requests for President Obama's birth certificate continue to pour into the state's understaffed Health Department from people on the Mainland who refuse to believe he was born in Honolulu in 1961. In an attempt to stem the flow of requests, the agency recently set up a special page on its Web site devoted to the issue of Obama's birth certificate and who is eligible to get the records. But the requests for the president's birth certificate keeping coming at a rate of 40 to 50 a month, according to Health Department spokeswoman...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas legislator Salah Bardawil said al-Mabhouh unwittingly led his attackers to him by openly planning his travels - a move that would make him easily traceable if he were already under surveillance. "Al-Mabhouh called his family by phone before he traveled to Dubai and told them of his plan to stay in a specific hotel, and he....

ABCNews -- .....One Israeli columnist and authority on Israel's intelligence organizations says that all of Mossad's foreign operations similar to the one it is accused of in Dubai are carried out by a special unit called Kidon, Hebrew for dagger. The unit consists of a few dozen men and women who receive rigorous and specialized training including unarmed combat, weapons training, high-speed driving of both cars and motorcycles, and the field craft of trailing suspects without detection. Kidon operatives only work on short contracts of a few years because the work is so stressful. The agents regularly undergo extensive psychological...

Nahro Massoud, a Hamas official who was released from an Egyptian prison in 2007 to the chagrin of the Palestinian Authority, was arrested in Syria in connection with the assassination of fellow Hamas terror chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the British Guardian newspaper reported overnight Wednesday. According to the report, Palestinian sources confirmed that Massoud was being detained and questioned in Syria. Allegations of his arrest and detention have been denied by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, the paper added. He was quoted in the report assaying, "It is not correct at all." The PA in past years accused Massoud of being behind...

Interpol has issued wanted notices for 11 suspects in the murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, but Dubai's police chief has asked that Interpol also call for the arrest of the head of Israel's spy agency. Dahi Khalfan Tamin told Dubai TV he had asked the international police agency to issue one of its "red notices" for the head of Mossad, "in case Mossad is believed to be behind the crime, which is likely now." A senior Israeli official who wished to remain anonymous told ABC News that if Dubai asks for the arrest of Mossad chief Meir Dagan, "They...

Bangkok - Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides and other poor farming practices have led to an insect plague in Thailand's rice fields that was predicted to reduce yields by 30 per cent in vast areas, the International Rice Research Institute warned Monday. "This is the worst outbreak of brown planthoppers I have seen in my career since 1977," said Manit Luecha, director of the Chainat Rice Seed Center. "Most of the paddy fields - probably more than 1 million hectares - will suffer rice yield losses of more than 30 per cent," he predicted. Thailand is the world's largest...

Frugality. That's been the buzzword of the Great Recession.   Sliding home values, stumbling stock portfolios and a shaky job market brought with them a consciousness about spending that many of us misplaced during years of consumer overindulgence. Americans responded to the crisis by buying less, clipping coupons more and increasing savings to 4.8 percent of disposable income in December, up from near zero before the recession.   In the past year, blogs about frugality went viral. Everyone from Oprah to President Obama joined the frugality parade.   Now a new term is marching through the blogosphere: Frugality fatigue. But...