Free Republic

When Jessica and Derek Simmons first saw the beachgoers pausing to stare toward the water, the young couple just assumed someone had spotted a shark. It was the evening of July 8, after all, peak summer season in Panama City Beach for overheated Florida tourists to cross paths with curious marine life. Then they noticed flashing lights by the boardwalk, a police truck on the sand and nearly a dozen bobbing heads about 100 yards beyond the beach, crying desperately for help. Six members of a single family - four adults and two young boys - and four other swimmers...

Shopkeepers, businessmen, farmers and police unionists in Calais have pledged to block 'indefinitely' the motorway leading to the port with a 'human chain', saying they will not break it until the migrant Jungle camp that has now swollen to up to 10,000 people is totally dismantled. The unprecedented action, due to start on Monday, came as the local head of France’s national haulage federation warned: "Migrant violence hasn’t gone up a notch, it’s gone up 10 floors." Lorry driver representatives issued a joint call with an umbrella group of shops and businesses in Calais, the CGT union, farmers and the...

People are wetting themselves over on Twitter right now after Muslims formed a human chain around a synagogue in Oslo, Norway, yesterday following the terror attack this week at a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark. Here’s some of the reaction, beginning with GOP pollster Frank Luntz:

For the past two Sundays, hundreds of Pakistanis of all faiths have formed human chains in front of churches during mass – first in Karachi, then in Lahore. This solidarity movement was launched in reaction to the terrorist attack that killed 81 worshippers at a church in Peshawar, making it the deadliest ever perpetrated against the country’s Christian minority. Militant groups linked to the Pakistani Taliban said they carried out the September 22 bomb attack in response to US-led drone strikes. Christians have been targeted for their faith before, but previous attacks have usually taken the form of mob violence...

Kfir Sharar didn't know Tali Hatuel and her four young children, but their murder by a terrorist in May in the Gaza Strip spurred the 25-year-old economics student into action. As a secular, fun-loving Israeli, Sharar admits that he doesn't exactly fit the stereotype of an activist. Sitting near Jerusalem's Central Bus Station, with sunglasses hanging from his half-opened button-down black shirt, Sharar said he would rather be out dancing or telling a woman he loves her than getting ready to stand in the human chain that ran from Gush Katif to the Western Wall on Sunday. But it would...