Free Republic

Turkey is under growing pressure to consider a major escalation in migrant deportations from Greece, a top European Union official said Thursday, amid preparations for a highly anticipated summit of EU and Turkish leaders next week. European Council President Donald Tusk ended a six-nation tour of migration crisis countries in Turkey, where 850,000 migrants and refugees left last year for Greek islands. [...] Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum-seekers. And he wasn't clear who would actually carry out the expulsions: Greece itself, EU border agency Frontex or even other organizations like NATO....

Macedonian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of migrants who stormed the border from Greece on Monday as a deeply divided Europe traded barbs over the biggest humanitarian crisis in decades. As frustrations boiled over at restrictions imposed on people moving through the Balkans, migrants trapped on the Greece-Macedonia border tore down a metal gate in the barbed wire fence. A Reuters witness said Macedonian police fired several rounds of teargas into the crowd and onto a railway line where other migrants sat refusing to move, demanding to cross into the country. Many of the migrants, fleeing war and poverty...

Hundreds of migrants attempted to break through a fence on the Greece-Macedonia border by charging it with a home-made battering ram. Authorities fired tear gas and stun guns as thousands of refugees congregated at the border to cross into the Balkan country in a bid to make their way across Europe. It comes as Macedonia as well as EU members Slovenia and Croatia and Serbia imposed a daily limit of allowing just 580 migrants into the country per day.

Austria has proposed sending its soldiers to Macedonia to strengthen Macedonian borders amid the refugee influx, Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said Wednesday. Austria has earlier placed daily limits on the number of people entering their territory and the number of asylum applications. "Austria is in favor of strengthening border controls along the "Balkan route' and offers support for Macedonia in the form of troops," Doskozil said before a meeting with the ministers of the Balkan countries, as quoted by Der Spiegel magazine. A ministerial conference on the migrant crisis is taking place on Wednesday in Vienna with the...

The increase to 1,450 soldiers and reservists comes after criticism on Austria last week for saying it would only accept 80 asylum seekers. Austria said Sunday it is beefing up the army at its borders to deal with the inflow of migrants, with 450 more troops from Monday and military police on standby in case of trouble. The increase to 1,450 soldiers and reservists comes after Austria drew criticism last week for saying it would only accept 80 asylum seekers and let 3,200 migrants pass through the country per day. The troops will assist police carrying out checks on people...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday criticized an eastern European proposal to close the Balkans refugee route and vowed to push for a plan with Turkey to reduce the influx, at an EU summit. Merkel, under heavy pressure at home to reduce arrivals, supports a plan under which transit country Turkey would seal its borders and then fly refugees to Europe where they would be settled under an EU quota system. However, most countries in the European Union have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, and the so-called Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - have openly...

Cleopatra may not have been ancient Egypt's only female pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty -- Queen Arsinoë II, a woman who competed in and won Olympic events, came first, some 200 years earlier, according to a new study into a unique Egyptian crown. After analyzing details and symbols of the crown worn by Arsinoë and reinterpreting Egyptian reliefs, Swedish researchers... suggest that Queen Arsinoë II (316-270 B.C.) was the first female pharaoh belonging to Ptolemy's family -- the dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years until the Roman conquest of 30 B.C. While researchers largely agree on Arsinoë's prominence...

MIGRANTS attempting to march across Europe have been waving placards saying ‘open or die’ after being stopped by closed borders and barbed wire.A group of men waving the menacing home-made banner grew angry as they were stopped in their tracks at the border between Macedonia and Greece. Macedonia is the latest country to erect a border fence. The tiny, landlocked state has begun building a fence along its border with Greece, blocking a key transit route for migrants travelling from Turkey to northern and western Europe. Macedonia insists it will allow those fleeing war-zones to continue to pass through, meaning...

Tensions peaked at Greece’s border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the weekend after the FYROM army started building a border fence to keep out would-be migrants. FYROM border guards were photographed by foreign news agencies as they erected a 2.5-meter-high fence along the Greek border on Saturday. A FYROM army source quoted by Agence France-Presse said the crossing from Greece to FYROM would remain open and that the fence was aimed at ensuring migrants did not try to slip across at other spots. FYROM authorities had indicated in recent weeks that they might build a fence to...

Macedonia, along with other Balkan countries on the migrant route, began turning away "economic migrants" nearly two weeks ago. Human rights groups have criticised the decision, under which only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans are allowed through. The new restrictions triggered days of protests from Iranians, Pakistanis, Moroccans and others stranded in squalid tent camps on the border. Some Iranians have sewn their lips shut. One man on Saturday threw himself on railway lines before the police, screaming and flailing. ... Earlier on Saturday, Macedonian soldiers began driving metal poles about three metres high into the cold, muddy ground, building a...

Migrants have blocked rail traffic at the Macedonian border as they protested against a decision to only allow Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis to cross there from Greece. Several sewed their lips together with cord, with at least one declaring a hunger strike before sitting down in front of lines of Macedonian riot police.

The discovery of the Acra last week is "a dream come true" for archaeologists, who have been speculating on the citadel's location for 100 years, the IAA said. The discovery of Acra comes at a delicate time, for it reveals the story of the Maccabees, Antiochus and the coming Antichrist. All this is understood once we connect the dots and see the parallels between the Grecian Empire at the time of the Maccabees harassing God's people and the Antichrist who is also from the same empire (Asia Minor) harassing God's people today.

Archaeologists in Greece have found Roman remains in a submerged ancient port on the Cycladic island of Kythnos, the Greek culture ministry said today. The archaeologists found the bearded head of a man and the torso of a warrior wearing a Roman-era breastplate at a depth of 2.5 metres underwater in the island bay of Mandraki last month. It is unclear whether the fragments were part of the same statue. They had apparently been used as building materials in a wall running along the harbour, the ministry said. The age of the fragments has not been certified. The Romans became...

On Monday afternoon, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) sent a newsbrief to reporters in Jerusalem, calling for a press conference the following day to announce the “solution to one of the greatest questions in the history of Jerusalem.” Tuesday’s announcement did not disappoint: On site, in Jerusalem’s City of David, archaeologist Doron Ben-Ami announced that the famed Akra (citadel) of Antiochus Epiphanes had been discovered. Up until that announcement, little had been found testifying to the massive Hellenistic intrusion into the city early in the second century B.C. Yet here, at the northwestern portion of the City of David, a...

A recent discovery by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem’s City of David may reveal the answer to one of archaeology's most enduring mysteries: the location of the Greek Acra citadel. The exact location of the famous stronghold built by Antiochus IV, to control Jerusalem and monitor activity on the Temple Mount, has long been unknown due to the paucity of architectural remains that can be traced to the Greek presence in Jerusalem. Over the past 100 years of archaeological research in Jerusalem, numerous theories have been put forth identifying the location of the Acra, which was eventually overtaken by...

BATROVCI, Serbia/OPATOVAC, Croatia (Reuters) - Serbia threatened to retaliate on Tuesday after Croatia halted all cargo traffic from its eastern neighbor, with relations between the ex-Yugoslav republics starting to fray over the flow of migrants across their joint border. More than 30,000 migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, have entered European Union member Croatia from Serbia since Tuesday last week, when Hungary barred their entry to the EU over its southern border with Serbia with a metal fence. They are being bussed by Serbia direct to the Croatian border, having entered Serbia from Macedonia. Croatia says it cannot cope with...

Take a look at this video of Muslim “refugees” in Macedonia on their way to the rich infidel countries of Western Europe. It’s actually an ancient strategy, straight from the Islamic playbook called The Hijra (Arabic: هِجْرَة‎ hijrah), also called Hegira or Hejira, the migration or journey. Hijra is one of the most effective methods of jihad which requires no military or wars. But it is an invasion nonetheless, and the politically-correct, humanitarian West is inviting it with open arms. Guess what happens next?

Well, it was only a matter of time before this happened. I mean, ISIS is already claiming thousands of ISIS fighters are sneaking into Europe as part of the refugee crisis. So a hint of an ISIS friendly fighter crossing a border was inevitable.As you can see in the image it’s very difficult to dispute what appears before your eyes. It’s the same guy, but whether or not the guy was at one point personally allied with ISIS is somewhat open for dispute. That said, the unit he commanded was almost certainly fighting with ISIS forces. His name is Laith Al Saleh....

Break for the border: Thousands of migrants storm police lines and leap over razor wire to reach Macedonia from Greece Macedonia was forced to close its border with Greece on Thursday after declaring a state of emergency in the country Families have been kept waiting in the open for 48 hours, with no access to food and no shelter from the pouring rain But after several attempts to break through the border security forces, the 3,000-strong crowd smashed defences Police have been holding back the rioting crowd with batons while hurling stun grenades straight into the crowd Migrants from Middle...

GEVGELIJA, Macedonia (Reuters) - Thousands of migrants stormed across Macedonia's border on Saturday, overwhelming security forces who threw stun grenades and lashed out with batons before apparently abandoning a bid to stem their flow through the Balkans to western Europe. Some had spent days in the open with little or no food or water after Macedonia on Thursday declared a state of emergency and sealed its borders to migrants, many of them refugees from war in Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East. But by nightfall on Saturday, thousands had crossed the frontier, milling around the border town of...