Free Republic

Elian Gonzalez, the focus of a bitter international custody dispute after he was rescued at sea as a child, left Cuba on Friday for the first time since 2000, when the U.S. government returned him to the island. Gonzalez, who also turned 20 on Friday, traveled to Quito, Ecuador, as part of a 200-member Cuban delegation to a weeklong youth conference there. "Fidel Castro for me is like a father," Gonzalez said in the recent interview. "I don't profess to have any religion but if I did my God would be Fidel Castro. He is like a ship that knew...

( A defendant known as 'Anna Chapman' allegedly communicated with a Russian official in Manhattan in January Photo: Facebook)) Anna Chapman, the woman at the centre of a transatlantic probe into spy allegations previously worked in Britain and was married to a British citizen. Ms Chapman was one of 10 people arrested in the US by the FBI for allegedly serving for years as secret agents of Russia's intelligence service. Ms Chapman appears to have lived in Britain for around four years from 2003 and private plane hire firm NetJets Europe said she had been employed at its London office...