Free Republic

As Britain readies to host the G8 summit, the documents uncovered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that back in 2009 US spies intercepted top-secret communication of then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to London. The shocking news has been broken by The Guardian which has seen the documents. It also revealed that a UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails during the 2009 G20 summit held in the British capital. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic....

A Sanford judge today ruled that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi does not have to answer defense attorneys' questions under oath in a mammoth Internet casino gambling case pending in Seminole County. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. made that ruling this morning.The case involves more than 50 defendants, accused of violating the state's gambling, racketeering and money laundering laws by operating Internet cafes that prosecutors say served as storefront gambling parlors. Each had ties to the non-profit Allied Veterans of the World, a group that provided charity to military veterans but, according to authorities, donated just two percent of its...

THE Protect America Act, enacted in August, has lived up to its name and objective: making the country safer while protecting the civil liberties of Americans. Under this new law, we now have the speed and agility necessary to detect terrorist and other evolving national security threats. Information obtained under this law has helped us develop a greater understanding of international Qaeda networks, and the law has allowed us to obtain significant insight into terrorist planning. Congress needs to act again. The Protect America Act expires in less than two months, on Feb. 1. We must be able to continue...

A RUNAWAY teen has married her Egyptian lover after searching for him for two months. Amy Robson fled her home near Carlisle in September to track down internet cafe owner Mohamed El Sayed, 30. Amy, who has just turned 18, met Mr El Sayed, nicknamed Noby, on a previous visit to Egypt when she split up with another boyfriend. She sparked an international hunt when she left the village of Beaumont in April to meet up with a boat hand she had met on a family holiday the year before. Unknown to her parents - electrician James, 43, and teacher...

A runaway schoolgirl has married an Egyptian internet cafe owner only hours after being reunited with him in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada. Amy Robson, who has just turned 18, married 30-year-old Mohamed El Sayed - known by the nickname Noby - in an Islamic ceremony that seems to have passed in a rose-tinted blur. "I don't need to cry another tear or feel depressed," Amy told the Daily Mail. "I feel so happy now. I wish my parents could understand, they think he is not a good man but he is the best man I've ever met. "He...

Recently, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) announced a new comprehensive media campaign titled "The Battar Media Raid to Defend the Islamic State [of Iraq] (ISI)," [1] whose declared purpose is to repel the intensive campaign against the ISI by Arab and Western media agencies and to stop the increasing military campaign against the ISI by Sunni organizations in Iraq. In a message titled "The Battar Media Raid: How to Participate? How to Help? What Is My Role?" the GIMF announces the beginning of the campaign and provides a detailed description of the campaign's goals and ways of accomplishing them,...

June 7: A new online propaganda effort by jihadists focuses on stirring anti-war sentiment among Americans. NBC's Lisa Myers reports.

Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person. From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite. Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment. It's cheaper than a hotel, offers access to the Internet and hundreds of Manga comic books, and even has a microwave and a shower where he can wash in the morning before heading off to one of his temporary jobs ranging from cleaning...

The Internet has become a virtual operations center replacing the Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Bosnia. SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA — They never met face to face, but the two young zealots became brother warriors in the new land of jihad: the Internet. Investigators say their bond made them central figures in a terrorism network that spanned eight countries, involved more than 30 suspects and hatched plots in Washington, Toronto, London and Sarajevo. Maximus was the online moniker of Mirsad Bektasevic, a lanky Bosnian refugee with a dark stare and a hunger for action. At 18, he returned from Sweden to...

Islamic terrorists are engaged in a "media jihad" in which they encourage jihadists to pose online as Americans to foster anti-war sentiment in the U.S. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, a posting on the Al-Mohajroon Islamist website with the username Al-Wathig Billah provides instructions on how to infiltrate popular American Internet forums and use them to distribute jihad films and spread anti-war sentiments. "Our experience shows that such instructions often yield compliance," Eli Alshech, director of the Jihad and Terrorism Project at MEMRI, told WND. The instructions direct jihadists to "raid non-political forums and trivia...

The idea that poverty breeds terror appears obvious; how could it be otherwise? And people as different as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharraf, have also noted a link between poverty and terrorism. In fact, there is now robust evidence that there is no such link. That does not mean, however, that economics is irrelevant. First, to the question of poverty. Of the 50 poorest countries in the world (see list at right) only Afghanistan (and perhaps Bangladesh and Yemen) has much experience in terrorism, global or domestic. But surely that is the...

Even as the leadership of the Democrats sets timetables for withdrawal from Iraq, the sands have shifted and leaders of the Global Islamic Jihad Movement are displaying signs that their own alliance has fractured. Some pundits have described the Democrat leadership's position over the war on terror as "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory"; a cynicism that perhaps never sounded as plausible as it does this week. But to understand how this Islamic jihad movement has splintered, we must understand how it fits together. Reports from Southwest Asia tell us that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has distanced himself from the Taliban...

Let's hope this is not for real. They claim that an audiotape will be released soon.

(CBS) America's top intelligence officer overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan says terrorists have made the Internet their most important recruiting tool. Brig. Gen. John Custer tells Scott Pelley that terrorist groups like al Qaeda are influencing Islamic youth to join their cause through Web sites devoted to jihad, or religious war. Pelley's report will be broadcast this Sunday, March 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. [this was just broadcast in the Eastern time zone] "I see 16-, 17-year-olds who have been indoctrinated on the Internet turn up on the battlefield. We capture them, we kill them every day in Iraq, in Afghanistan,"...

LONDON - Police said Tuesday that they raided two Internet cafes in the investigation of an alleged plot to blow up jetliners over the Atlantic, and a news report said officers found firearms in a search of a woodlands near where some of the suspects were arrested earlier. Travelers continued to face problems at Britain's main airports, where delays and cancellations exacerbated confusion over shifting rules governing hand luggage. The two Internet cafes were raided Thursday in central Slough, 25 miles west of London, not far from the neighborhood in the town of High Wycombe where several suspects were arrested...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British police confirmed Saturday that they had raided a series of Internet cafes in their investigation into an alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic aircraft. There was no confirmation of any arrests in the raids in London, Birmingham and the Thames Valley region, west of the capital. The raids came as links to suspected terror operatives in Pakistan -- possibly connected to al Qaeda -- were emerging Saturday as key elements of the investigation.

At least two people have been killed and four injured in blasts at two internet cafes in the city of Hefei, Chinese state media has reported. The explosions occurred at about 0930 (1330 GMT) on Friday, Xinhua news said. The incidents left the two cafes, which are just 10 metres apart, strewn with broken glass and debris, the Anhui Daily newspaper said on its Web site. Small-scale explosions are common in China and are often blamed on rival business groups. The explosions in the capital of Anhui province took place about 10 minutes apart, the Anhui Daily newspaper reported. Witnesses...

China has closed 47,000 internet cafes in a campaign aimed at creating a more "wholesome environment" for children. The country’s leaders encourage internet use for business and education, but have expressed growing concern that it gives children access to violent or sexually explicit material, and have tried to block online criticism of their Communist rule. The cafes closed in the crackdown had been "admitting minors and engaged in dissemination of harmful cultural information", the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said on its website. About 21,000 of the closed cafes might be allowed to reopen after making unspecified changes. It said...

<p>LONDON, England (CNN) -- The Baghdad bloggers became famous for their insights into life during the Iraqi war.</p> <p>The Internet pioneers courted danger and risked death by messaging to the outside world. Now Internet cafes are opening up across Baghdad giving Iraqis the chance to connect without restriction or hindrance for less than $1 per hour.</p>

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has shut more than 3,300 Internet cafes for safety reasons after a fire tore through an underground Beijing cafe in June killing 25 people and injuring 12 others, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Li Rongrong, minister in charge of China's State Economic and Trade Commission, was quoted as saying officials had inspected about 45,000 Internet cafes in the past six months. Operations of nearly 12,000 of them had been suspended pending improvements and more than 3,300 were permanently closed, it said. China sentenced two Beijing boys to life in prison in August for...