Free Republic

In the last few hours, a photo of a Ukrainian girl sitting on a window with a lollipop in her mouth and a rifle in her hand has gone viral. In her hair she wears a blue and yellow ribbon, colors of the Ukrainian flag. She looks outside, as if she is watching. She was even shared on Twitter by the former president of the European Council, Donald Tusk. The picture was taken by the girl’s own father, the Kiev photographer Oleksii Kyrychenko and published on their Facebook and Instagram accounts with the title “Young girl with candy”, “girl with...

As Yemen's beleaguered government launches a new offensive against al-Qaida, the other conflict in the troubled Arabian peninsula state takes a shocking twist: The regime and tribal rebels in the north are both using child soldiers, according to aid officials. Child soldiers have been a feature of warfare throughout history, although these days there are international laws that prohibit the use of children under 18 in conflicts. But they are difficult to enforce and are widely ignored, even though persistent failure to prevent children taking part in combat is considered a war crime by the International Criminal Court. In Yemen,...

The strenuously anti-war Rosie O'Donnell just took her message to a completely different level, dressing her 4-year-old daughter Vivienne in an ammo belt and fatigues in a photo on the top of her blog at Rosie.comRosie took flak from fans and foes alike, almost immediately after posting, but defended the choice in her usual defiantly minimalist way. "Art can't hurt u," she said to one foe who called her "sick," and replied, "Art provokes," to one fan who had begged her to take the picture down. Trump? O'Reilly? Your serve.

Everything about Staff Sgt. Adin Salkanovic says soldier. His clear, deliberate speech, close-cropped hair and serious demeanor give him an air of authority usually reserved for those with a lifetime of military experience, not five years of U.S. Army service. Those five years don’t tell the whole story, though. When he was only 14, Salkanovic spent a year in the Bosnian army, fighting Serbian forces that surrounded his hometown of Sarajevo for 3½ years between 1992 and 1995. “I volunteered many times but because of my age they said, ‘no,’” said Salkanovic, 24, who now serves as a scout with...