Free Republic

List of Islamic Terror: Last 30 Days This is part of the list of Islamic terror attacks maintained by TheReligionofPeace.com. During this time period, there were 212 Islamic attacks in 31 countries, in which 2160 people were killed and 1895 injured.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras The report on drug trafficking, issued by the office of investigations of the US Congress, made some of the Chavist officials in Caracas explode. The report revealed that the trafficking and distrubution of drugs is aided by corruption in the government of ...Hugo Chavez and by the lack of cooperation with the anti-drug policies of the US. According to the report, Caracas has created a "permissive atmosphere" for insurgent organizations like FARC, by whom the drugs produced in Colombia are brought to Venezuela and from there distributed to the world. “According to US officials, this permissive atmosphere is...

10:28 Bogotá, AFP An officer, a non-commissioned officer, and nine soldiers of the Ecuadorian Army were captured on Colombian territory, on the border with Putumayo department, according to the Colombian chancellor of communications. “Yesterday, August 8 of 2009, at 12 noon (17:00 GMT), at the location known as La Reforma, Puerto Leguízamo municipality, Putumayo department, the army of Colombia captured an officer, a non-commissioned officer, and nine soldiers belonging to the Ecuadorian Army, some 300 meters from the border, said the chancellor. “According to the pertinent agreements... they were handed over today to the Ecuadorian military authority, captain Michael Cadena,...

Brasilia, ANSA General Jim Jones, security advisor to president Barack Obama, said today that members of FARC are in Venezuela organizing attacks on Colombia and the government of Hugo Chavez “is not doing much to combat it”, according to Estado de Sao Paulo. “We know with some certainty that significant elements of Farc are active inside Venezuela and the Venezuelan government has done little to combat this” declared Jones, who met yesterday in Brasilia with the Brazilian chancellor Celso Amorim. “Venezuela and other countries in the region have their differences with the United States” and the installation of US bases...

CARACAS [AFP]. The attorney general of Venezuela, Luisa Ortega Díaz, presented yesterday to the National Assembly (parliament) a proposed law on “media crimes” which would provide jail terms for information professionals and businessmen. In her speech before the deputies, Díaz asked that the State regulate freedom of expression and the behavior of the communications media. According to the proposed law, violators could receive up to four years in jail. The draft of the law explains that a person who divulges information considered false, manipulated or twisted, which causes harm to the interests of the State or public moral or menatl...

President Rafael Correa rejected statements by ex-FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, who supported the attack by the Colombian Army on a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory on March 1. In the letter, the Head of State said he was surprised by comments by Betancourt, who was rescued in an operation authorized by Álvaro Uribe. “We are surprised and deeply pained by these declarations that support and try to justify an illegitimate and illegal act, which has been recognized as such and rejected by every government in America” , said Correa in the letter sent to Betancourt, released yesterday by Carondelet. In...

14:20 | The Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos reported that the army had rescued 15 hostages, among them the former presidential candidate and three US citizens, during a military operation called "Operation Check". Bogotá (EFE) .- The Colombian army rescued safe and sound ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three US citizens, and eleven soldiers held hostage by FARC in Guaviare department (south), announced today Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos. The minister said in a press conference that the French-Colombian former presidential candidate, held captive since February of 2002, and US citizens Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves,...

CARACAS [EL COMERCIO/AGENCIAS]. Last week it was the cement industry and now it is the Andean and Caribbean steel giant’s turn. The Venezuelan government ordered the nationalization of the steel company Siderúrgica del Orinoco (owned by Ternium-Sidor, which has majority Argentine ownership) after the collapse of contract talks with the workers, announced the Venezuelan vice-president Ramon Carrizales. "After a long process of negotiations were fruitless in solving the conflict between Sidor and its workers, president Hugo Chavez decided to assume control of Siderúrgica del Orinoco which has been privatized for some 10 years", said Carrizales. The company "took a radical...

Some ten Mexican citizens may be among the dead from the Colombian military attack carried out last Saturday against a FARC camp in Ecuador, confirmed today the Coordinating Minister of Internal Security, Gustavo Larrea. Larrea said to news reporters that there could be "more than ten, a numerous group" of the at least 24 people who died in Operation Fenix, in which died the number two of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), "Raul Reyes". The minister said that they were a group of professors and students from the Autonomous National University of Mexico (Unam) who had "come...

A total of 13 members of the Colombian armed forces are being investigated for working for ‘Don Diego’, the drug trafficker arrested on Monday. In addition, in an attack on a FARC guerrilla camp, classified military information was found. Whats going on inside the Colombian military? Is there more infiltration than before, or is counterintelligence working better? The investigations began in March of 2006, when amid some confusion in the details an army battalion killed... 10 police agents who were carrying out an operation against drug trafficking in the Cauca Valley, near Cali. The situation, not yet over, unraveled until...

Caracas.- President of the Republic Hugo Chávez defended today his proposal of indefinite reelection stating that it is “far from concentrating power in one man” and denied that it would endanger democracy. The head of state urged the “Morality and Light” brigade which was sworn in today in a ceremony at the Teresa Carreño [concert hall] not to let themselves be put on the defensive by the attacks of the “opposition, the oligarchy, and imperialism” who try to use Bolivar’s Angostura speech to try to “put them on the defensive about my proposal ". Chávez reiterated that the viability of...

A little over 2,000 bolivars is the daily income for 2,182,900 Venezuelans upon which they must subsist each day. The 2006 Human Development Report, prepared by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) calculates that these levels of extreme poverty affect 8.3% of the population, and if they represent an improvement of almost 7 percentage points in less than a year, still the figures have an impact. In addition to the number of people living on a dollar a day, the UNDP also took into account in the analysis the number of people who subsist on only 2 dollars a day...

Berlin. - Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti are considered to be the countries where corruption is most widespread, according to Transparency International (TI) in its 2006 report published Monday. Venezuela and Ecuador appear both in positions number 138 and Haiti in 163 according to AFP. Chile, in 20th place along with the US and Belgium, continues to be the least corrupt country in Latin America. Spain is further down, on 23rd place, followed by Portugal (26) and Uruguay (28). Brazil (70), Mexico (70) and Argentina (93) are located in the middle of TI’s new listing. Finland… is the country where corruption...

La Paz.- The entry into Bolivia of a dozen military flights from Venezuela and the presumed presence of soldiers from that country unleashed a virtual "media war'' between the government and the main opposition group. In a paid announcement, the Ministry of Defense characterized as "irresponsible'' and "absurd'' the public accusation by Democratic Social Power (Podemos), the main opposition group, that the previous evening had published another paid announcement entitled: "Chavez’ troops over-run Bolivia''. In its ad, Podemos accused that "a large number of military flights from Venezuela are landing at night and early morning '' at the main airports...

Caracas. - Presidential candidate Teodoro Petkoff said today that his government will work “to rebuild the climate of harmony in the country” and will keep those social programs he called “missions”. Petkoff criticized the “inefficiency” of the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and said that he will remain in the presidential race ''to the end'', in an interview broadcast by state TV channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV). ''I ran (for president) not to withdraw, but rather to confront Hugo Chávez. I hope Hugo Chávez will use his influence to guarantee democratic conditions'' in the upcoming elections December 3, he...

Mexico City.- The Venezuelan ambassador in Mexico, Vladimir Villegas, accused the governing party of Mexico of serving as an instrument of the US to attack president Hugo Chavez, according to Mexican newspaper "Reforma". Villegas questioned the support given by the leadership of the National Action Party (PAN) to opposition presidential candidate Julio Andres Borges and statements by PAN Deputy Rodrigo Cortes that Venezuela sold weapons to Mexico's guerrillas, according to DPA. "It is a new episode in this tiresome soap opera they have been putting together for a long time to justify actions against our country, and this deputy is...

México. Pemex, the Mexican oil monopoly, is studying an alliance with Anglo-Dutch Shell to develop a crude oil deposit in the Gulf of Mexico, near the maritime boundary with the US, according to newspaper El Universal de México. The newspaper cites sources close to the project and Secretary of Energy Fernando Elizondo, who acknowledged that Shell is interested and that "there have already been contacts". "But we have to adjust our activities absolutely to the legal framework", he emphasized. "We have to resolve this matter quickly because there is a risk that someone could beat us" to the development of...

Caracas.- Minister of Defense, Admiral Orlando Maniglia Ferreira, referring to the graduating officers from the staff officer course at the Army Superior School, who chose Cuban president Fidel Castro as their class godfather, dismissed the choice as having little importance, since “… whoever they choose as godfather, has more to do with that class than the institution". The Minister of Defense said that “he doesn’t have at hand” any information concerning the trip that officers of the “Fidel Castro” class will make to Havana. Maniglia claimed not to know if these officers will receive a thousand dollar bonus which some...

Miami. Drug trafficking which starts in Colombia and passes through Venezuela on its way to the US and Europe is rising to "higher and higher levels" generating corruption that has reached the Venezuelan military, accuses the newspaper The Miami Herald. Confiscation of drugs in Venezuela has doubled in the last four years. In 2004 alone it reached 32 tons of cocaine and 12 tons of heroin, according to the newspaper, cited by DPA. "And there are growing accusations of corruption at the highest levels of the security forces, accompanied by an apparent official indifference", it said. The Herald quoted an...

Havana- Cuban president Fidel Castro received a delegation from the National Defense Institute of Advanced Studies of Venezuela (Inaden) which concludes its visit to the island today, reports the official newspaper "Granma". The brief note in the Cuban newspaper gave no other details of the meeting held last night at Havana's Palace of the Revolution... The Venezuelan delegation, headed by the director of Inaden, Brigadier General Rafael Eduardo Arreaza Castillo, traveled to the island for the purpose of exchanging experiences, to learn the Cuban defensive system, and to discuss economic and social matters of interest to both countries, explained the...