Free Republic

SAN JOSE, Calif. - (KRT) - Kathleen Namphy was dazed and bleeding. Her frightened interpreter called for help, and a group of hikers promised to stay with the 69-year-old retired Stanford lecturer as he ran down the snow-covered Iranian mountain. But when rescuers reached the spot near the summit of Mt. Damavand more than four hours later, Namphy - and the hikers - had vanished. Now hundreds of searchers, aided by Iranian Army helicopters, are scouring the three-mile high mountain near Tehran for any sign of the Palo Alto, Calif., woman. Namphy, a veteran hiker who scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro last...

According to a statement released by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), LMU researcher Enrique Jiménez was able to decipher a Babylonian hymn that had been lost for 2,000 years. Jiménez, in collaboration with the University of Baghdad, is working on digitizing all cuneiform tablets from the legendary ancient Sippar Library, once located on the banks of the Euphrates River north of Babylon. Using artificial intelligence, the team was able to identify 30 different fragmentary pieces from the same composition, which turned out to be a previously unknown hymn consisting of 250 lines. The piece was written by an ancient...

Saturday, November 2, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/11/02/international1651EST0195.DTL (11-02) 13:51 PST JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- A California doctor who committed suicide after being accused in a murder plot gave deadly germs to apartheid South Africa's secret chemical and biological weapons program, CBS' "60 Minutes" reported Sunday. Larry C. Ford met with scientists from South Africa's Project Coast in the 1980s to discuss chemical and biological warfare, Wouter Basson, who headed the project, told the program. He also passed a bag filled with cholera, typhoid, botulism, anthrax and bubonic plague to a South African military doctor during a meeting...

The White House Office of the Press Secretary FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 29, 2019 PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO AND SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MARK ESPER Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach, Florida 6:49 P.M. EST SECRETARY POMPEO: Good evening. Myself, with Secretary Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley, came here to Florida today to brief the President on the activities that have taken place in the Middle East over the course of the last 72 hours. I will leave to Secretary Esper to talk about the military activity, but I want to put it in the context...

Nothing will ever be easy with congressional Republicans. The reconciliation package aged all of us 35 years, as Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to whip votes, hold the line, and make some phone calls. President Trump was also working the phones heavily when final passage was at stake in the House. Republican leadership held the line, but with Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) retiring after the reconciliation vote, delivering what’s left of the Trump agenda before the 2026 midterms is about to get even tougher. The House did its job and passed the rescission package, but...

"The dogs bark, the caravan moves on." That Middle Eastern proverb could well describe the events surrounding production of the world's most-hyped dud firecracker, the Iraq Study Group Report. After immense agonies in the mainstream media (MSM), those like myself who predicted the report, once released, would largely be ignored by President George W. Bush, are being proven right and neoconservatives who support a continued commitment to the transformation of Iraq have exhibited renewed influence. Only a couple of lines in the report were worthy of comment. One appears on page 29 of the printed version: "Funding for the Sunni...

Twelve Turkish soldiers have died after being exposed to methane gas while searching a cave in northern Iraq, the Turkish Ministry of National Defence said. At least 19 personnel were exposed to the gas during the search and clear operation on Sunday, and immediately taken to hospital. By Monday, 12 had died, the ministry said. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he received the news with "great sorrow" and extended his condolences to the soldiers' families and to the Turkish Armed Forces. Methane gas is not directly toxic, but can be deadly as it can become suffocating, especially in tight, enclosed...

FBI agents arrested two members of a Central Avenue mosque in an overnight raid in connection with an alleged plot to buy a shoulder-fired missile that would be used to assassinate the Pakistani ambassador in New York, according to court papers filed today in federal court in Albany. Mosque members said the imam, 34-year-old Yassim Aref, who also spells his first name Yasen, was arrested early this morning. Another mosque leader, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, 49, an owner of a downtown pizzeria, was arrested at his home, according to mosque members. The arrests are in connection with a money-laundering scheme involving...

ALBANY - The prosecutor who sent two local Muslim men ensnared in an FBI terror sting to prison is on the short list for a federal judgeship. Many in the Capital District's growing Muslim community are outraged. Members of Albany's Muslim Solidarity Committee say they will do everything in their power to ensure Glenn Suddaby doesn't receive the nomination. The activists formed their group after the arrest and conviction of Mohammad Hossain, an Albany pizza shop owner, and Yassin Aref, an Albany imam. Despite grass roots opposition, Suddaby has at least one pretty big name supporter - U.S. Sen. Charles...

Oct. 28, 2003 Iran rejects U.S. demand to extradite al-Qaida operatives By ASSOCIATED PRESS TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran rejected a U.S. demand to hand over senior al-Qaida operatives in its custody, Tuesday, saying the terror suspects would stand trial in Iranian courts, state-run radio reported. A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that senior al-Qaida operatives held by Iran should be turned over to their countries of origin or to the United States for interrogation and trial. "Al-Qaida operatives currently in (our) custody have committed crimes in Iran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted by...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Chanting ``death to Israel'' and ``death to America,'' tens of thousands of Lebanese marched Friday through the streets of Beirut in support of Palestinians' third year of uprising. Smaller anti-Israel demonstrations were held in other Arab capitals, too, with speakers condemning the United States' backing of Israel and for leading attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. ``No matter how much the world changes after Sept. 11, 'death to America' will remain our echoing slogan,'' the leader of the militant Hezbollah group, sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in his fiery address in...

Tucker Carlson and Scott Horton talk about the background to the current Iran conflict. Interesting. Not for everyone. Imho worth the listen.

Inside the government, some officials called her “Wayward Storm.” Her real name was Monica Elfriede Witt, an exemplary Air Force counterintelligence agent who had studied Persian and carried out covert missions in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But by mid-2013, Ms. Witt had become disillusioned with the government — why, exactly, remains a mystery — and had left the military. Thoughts of betrayal consumed her, federal prosecutors now say, until she finally acted on them at the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, where they say she “told all.”

A man suspected of gathering information on Jewish locations and individuals in Berlin for Iranian intelligence, possibly with a view to carrying out attacks, has been arrested in Denmark, German prosecutors say. The Danish national, identified only as Ali S., was arrested on Thursday in the Danish city of Aarhus, federal prosecutors say in a statement. They say that the man was tasked by an Iranian intelligence service early this year with gathering information on “Jewish localities and specific Jewish individuals” in Berlin and spied on three properties in June.

The famous DataRepublican data analyst dropped damaging information she had gathered about Code Pink's connections to the communist Chinese government after the group threatened legal action against her. The database kernel engineer, whose real name is Jennica Pounds, said Wednesday on social media that the group sent her a message accusing her of libel. "We are writing to formally address and correct the false and defamatory statements made in your recent social media posts regarding CODEPINK," the group reportedly wrote. "These claims — which falsely allege that our organization is funded by China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or any...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran said its missile attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar matched the number of bombs dropped by the United States on Iranian nuclear sites this weekend, signaling Iran’s likely desire to deescalate. Iran made the announcement Monday night in a statement from its Supreme National Security Council after the attack, which Qatar said caused no injuries. Iran also said it targeted the base because it was outside of populated areas. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran launched missile attacks Monday on a U.S. military bases in Qatar and Iraq, retaliating for...

Mohammad Saeed Izadi, the commander of the Palestine Corps within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force and the key coordinator between Iran and Hamas, was killed on Saturday, both the military and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced. Izadi, according to reports, helped finance and arm Hamas in the lead-up to the October 7 massacre. He was reportedly behind the "plan to destroy Israel" by coordinating assaults on Israel from multiple fronts. Izadi was killed in an apartment in the city of Qom, south of Tehran, by an attack by Israel Air Force fighter jets following an intelligence-gathering effort, the...

In attacking numerous military targets in Iran on June 13, 2025 as part of its Operation Rising Lion, Israel made good on a 1981 policy announced by then Prime Minister Menachem Begin:‘We shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal. We will not allow any enemy to obtain weapons of mass destruction that can be turned against us.’While we hear international criticism of Israel for the attack, long forgotten is that Tehran’s mullahs actually recognized this same need a year before the Israelis announced their doctrine.By 1976, Saddam Hussein had become the de facto leader of Iraq,...

Toll from Tehran’s terrorism and proxy attacks are a serious factors in Trump’s decision on whether to support or even join the Israeli war effort. Three years after 19 Americans died in a bombing at a Saudi Arabian apartment complex, then-President Bill Clinton sent a cable that told Iran’s president a secret that the 42nd president wasn’t even willing to tell the American public: U.S. intelligence had ample evidence that Tehran was behind the deadly Khobar Towers terror attack. “Message to President Khatami from President Clinton: The United States Government has received credible evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary...

It had been three days since Egypt and Syria launched a two-headed assault against Israel, and now,..Kissinger and the rest of Richard Nixon’s administration faced a decision with titanic consequences. Should they send a flagging Israel the tanks, jets, and other weapons it needed to win the war? Or let the belligerents duke it out as is? The president and his administration chose the former. For the Israelis, this was a deliverance that could have come from God himself. Simply put, America’s resupply saved Israel.... The whole of the U.S. government was caught unawares by the outbreak of the Yom...