Free Republic

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military is holding five U.S. citizens suspected of insurgent activities in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. They were captured separately and don't appear to have ties to one another, spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He declined to identify them, citing a Pentagon policy that prohibits identification of detainees. Three of those being detained are Iraqi-Americans; another is an Iranian-American; the fifth is a Jordanian-American, Whitman said. The three Iraqi-Americans were captured in April, May and June, officials said. The Iranian-American was captured May 17, one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - An Iranian-born U.S. citizen and Navy veteran was detained in Iraq by American forces after troops said they found a common component for improvised explosive devices in his taxi, according to U.S. defense officials. His family says Cyrus Kar, 44, was in Iraq to film scenes for a documentary on King Cyrus the Great, founder of Persia, when he was arrested at a checkpoint in mid-May. He had also filmed in Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Afghanistan and consulted with scholars, they said. Kar's family first learned of his troubles May 24, when he called them to...