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Rescued miner Todd Russell has enjoyed a drink at his favourite pub in Beaconsfield, hours after he was freed from the collapsed mineshaft. Mr Russell entered the Club Hotel about 6.30pm (AEST), to loud cheers and cries of "Toddy" from patrons. He laughed and hugged his friends after entering the hotel. Mr Russell joined Channel Nine chief executive Eddie McGuire for a quiet chat and a drink after entering the premises. The miner who was trapped for 14 nights limped into the bar wearing a pink T-shirt. The Tasmanian mine shaft hero did a high-five with locals as they gathered...

Tasmania's miracle miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb fulfilled the promise to walk out of their rock prison before daybreak this morning after surviving almost 14 nights trapped a kilometre under the earth. "Yee-hah" were the men's first words when rescuers broke through the last metre into the rockfilled cavern where the men had been trapped since Anzac Day. The men slid down a vertical tunnel, were put onto roll-up stretchers and carried 36-metres to the Beaconsfield gold mine's main shaft. The men were checked by doctors and paramedics, took a shower and then took the lift to the surface...

Hunt for 900 dangerous criminals freed in error By John Steele (Filed: 26/04/2006) More than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals, including killers, rapists and child abusers, have been freed from prison without being considered for deportation and hundreds are missing, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, admitted yesterday. All of the prisoners had committed crimes that should have triggered automatic assessment for removal from the country and the majority should have expected to be expelled. Charles Clarke: ‘I take responsibility for it [the fiasco]’ About 160 were released without being considered for removal despite explicit recommendations by judges that they should be...

Freed Kember thanks rescue troops Freed hostage Norman Kember has thanked the soldiers who rescued him from kidnappers in Iraq after being reunited with his wife Pat at Heathrow airport. But the peace campaigner - criticised earlier for apparently failing to thank the rescuers - restated his opposition to foreign troops in the country. He also said he needed to reflect on whether he was "foolhardy or rational" to have gone to Iraq last year. Mr Kember, 74, of Pinner, London, and two Canadians were held for 117 days. Tribute paid Reading from a hand-written statement, Mr Kember said he...

Ann Coulter...was definitely Friday’s biggest draw at CPAC 2006. From the get-go the conservative columnist had the crowd cheering and was frequently interrupted by applause. Many of Coulter’s talking points came from recent news events -- such as “the great Danish cartoon caper” and President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees. “Muslims are the only group who kill because people call them violent,” she said of Islam’s rage over the printing of Muhammad cartoons. Speaking about the nation's highest court, Coulter not only expressed elation at Justice Samuel Alito’s confirmation, she also shared her feelings on Chief Justice John Roberts ... She...

TIKRIT, Iraq (Army News Service, Jan. 12, 2006) – Two kidnapped Iraqi men were freed, three weapons caches discovered and 21 anti-Iraqi suspects were detained in northern Iraq Jan. 11. Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 4th Iraqi Army Division were patrolling Wednesday afternoon in Khadasia when they surprised a group of men gathered around two vehicles. The vehicles raced away as the patrol approached. One vehicle escaped, but the Iraqi troops were able to stop the second. The Soldiers quickly disarmed the two suspects and searched the vehicle. The victims were found bound and gagged in the car’s...

US vows to track down hijacker freed early By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 23/12/2005) The United States has vowed to track down and bring to trial a Lebanese hijacker who has been secretly released after serving 19 years in a German prison for seizing an airliner in 1985 and killing a US navy diver. The Bush administration said it had asked Germany not to release Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was jailed for life for his role in the hijacking of TWA's Flight 847 from Athens to Rome and the shooting of one of the passengers, Robert Stethem. Despite...

No more Patriot Act means Operation Able Danger and 9/11 all over again. Don't let the sun set on the Patriot Act. Call your state senator at 202-225-3121. Freed Iraq. No thanks to Democrat oposition. Cowards cut and run. Marines never do. Stay the course. Peace with God. I believe in a time when Americans had guts. Maximum Effort. Abandon Iraq? NO! Thank you, FreeRepublic, for allowing me to post my work!

UNITED NATIONS - A Russian U.N. official accused of money laundering was released on $500,000 bail posted by his government on Friday, Russia's U.N. Mission said. Vladimir Kuznetsov, 48, who chaired the powerful U.N. budget oversight committee, had been jailed since Sept. 1 on charges that he conspired with a U.N. procurement officer to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign companies seeking contracts with the world body. He has pleaded innocent to the charges. Maria Zakharova, press secretary at Russia's U.N. Mission, confirmed that Kuznetsov was freed after the Russian government paid his $500,000 bail. Moscow is keeping...

An Australian who was held hostage in Iraq has described the murders of two fellow detainees in the same room. In his first extensive interview, Douglas Wood, 63, also told Australian TV of his efforts to retain his sanity during his captivity. The engineer was held for 47 days by gunmen in Baghdad before being rescued by Iraqi forces earlier this month. He was reportedly paid A$400,000 dollars (US$307,000; £169,000) by Channel Ten for his story. Mr Wood was bound, gagged, beaten and fed only bread and water by his captors. 'Replay of my life' He said he heard two...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen on Wednesday killed a former judge whose name once was on a list of Sunni Arabs joining a parliamentary committee to draft Iraq's new constitution, officials said. Separately, a Filipino hostage was released after almost eight months in captivity. Former judge Jassim al-Issawi, whose candidacy to join the 55-member committee was later dropped, was a law professor at Baghdad University and the former editor-in-chief of Al-Siyadah newspaper, said Salih al-Mutlak, secretary general of the Sunni National Dialogue Council Al-Issawi, 51, and his son were killed in Baghdad's northwestern Shula neighborhood, said Abdul Sattar Jawad, current editor...

CANBERRA, Australia - An Australian engineer from California who was dramatically rescued in Baghdad last week after being held hostage for six weeks would have been released without military intervention, Australia's most senior Muslim cleric insisted Sunday. Iraqi and U.S. troops freed Douglas Wood, a 64-year-old resident of Alamo, California, early on July 15 from a Baghdad house where insurgents were holding him for ransom. Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly, an Egyptian-born Sunni cleric who flew from his Sydney home within days of the April 30 abduction to negotiate a release, said Wood was to have been released the day...

WASHINGTON -- Border Patrol agents arrested nearly 100,000 non-Mexicans illegally crossing into the United States through Mexico over the past eight months and let the vast majority of them go free on bail or their own recognizance, immigration officials told a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday. About 70 percent of so-called non-Mexican illegal immigrants captured along the southern border of the United States are released on their own recognizance to appear at a future deportation hearing, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Few ever show up. The rise in non-Mexican illegal immigrants captured while crossing the Mexican...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has freed numerous illegal aliens into the community who are dangerous murderers, rapists and child molesters under a legal loophole created by Supreme Court decisions, the Bush administration said on Thursday. In testimony to a Senate subcommittee, a senior Justice Department official said Congress should urgently pass legislation to close the loopholes, which have already resulted in the release of several extremely violent offenders, with others scheduled for release soon. "Among them are vicious criminals who have murdered their wives, molested young children and brutally attacked their enemies," Jonathan Cohn, a deputy assistant attorney...

ALAMOSA, Colo. (AP) - A woman accused of killing and cannibalizing her boyfriend will be allowed to leave a state mental hospital as long as she continues to take her medication and undergoes therapy, a judge ruled Friday. Psychiatrists at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo had recommended the release of Jane Lynn Woodry, 51, who changed her name from Carolyn Gloria Blanton in 1999. Prosecutors opposed the request and sought independent mental health evaluations. After reviewing two outside evaluations, District Judge Pattie Swift agreed to release Woodry under certain conditions. Woodry had been held at the hospital since...

Mexican judge drops charges against 4 tied to truck deaths MEXICO CITY - A Mexican federal judge has dismissed charges against four people accused of participating in a human-smuggling ring linked to the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants in Texas. The four, who are wanted by federal prosecutors in Houston, fled to Mexico after an abandoned trailer containing bodies was found at a Victoria truck stop on May 14, 2003. Victor Sanchez Rodriguez; his wife, Emma Sapata Rodriguez; Rosa Sarrata Gonzalez; and Octavio Torres Ortega were among 14 people indicted by a Houston federal grand jury in June 2003. They...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A red-faced man wearing a mini-skirt was rescued by police on Sunday after he became wedged head-first in a clothing donation bin in an act of Christmas charity gone wrong. Police said a startled member of the public had alerted them after seeing what they first thought was a woman trapped in the charity clothing bin late on Christmas Day. Two patrol officers were unable to dislodge the man and a rescue squad was called. The unidentified 35-year-old man was eventually freed early on Sunday and told police he was donating clothes when he became stuck. "I...

Hostages freed from Russian siege school (Filed: 02/09/2004) The armed gang holding more than 350 people hostage in a Russian school has released 31 women and children. Two-year-old Amina Dzantieva is comforted by her father after being freed from the school Officials said the hostages were released in a group of 26 and another of three women and two children. Russian soldiers carried children through crowds of relatives waiting outside the school in Beslan, 40 miles from the border with Chechnya. The move came well into the second day of the siege and hours after President Vladimir Putin made a...

Six hostages freed in Iraq August 04 2004 at 11:23AM By Suleiman al-Khalidi Amman - Militants in Iraq freed four Jordanian and two Turkish drivers after taking them hostage to put pressure on their companies to stop working in the country, relatives and media said on Wednesday. The four Jordanians, who were freed in the Iraqi town of Fallujah on Tuesday night, will be handed over to Jordanian diplomats in Baghdad later on Wednesday, relatives said. "They are now staying in the home of Haji Ibrahim Mohammad in the town of Fallujah. They spent the night in his house after...

Bali bombers may be freed by ruling By Marianne Kearney in Jakarta (Filed: 24/07/2004) The convictions of dozens of Islamists involved in the Bali bombings two years ago could be overturned after Indonesia's highest court ruled that the laws under which they were tried were unconstitutional. The constitutional court in Jakarta yesterday declared that the terrorism legislation was invalid as it had passed into law months after the bombings, in which 202 people died, including 28 Britons. The application of retroactive laws is banned under the Indonesian constitution, the court said. "This means we won, this is a victory for...