Free Republic

Australia’s Parliament House on Monday lifted a short-lived ban on facial coverings including burqas and niqabs after the prime minister intervened.The department that runs Parliament House had announced earlier this month that “persons with facial coverings” would no longer be allowed in the open public galleries. Instead, they were to be directed to galleries usually reserved for noisy schoolchildren where they could sit behind soundproof glass. That announcement was made just as Parliament’s last two-week session was ending and had no practical effect. On Monday, the Department of Parliamentary Services, or DPS, said people wearing face coverings would be allowed...

A LIBERAL backbencher has called Kim Beazley a "fat so and so" after the Labor leader labelled him "weak" for supporting the Government's immigration laws. Mr Beazley and West Australian Liberal Wilson Tuckey traded verbal insults, their faces within centimetres of each other, as they arrived at Parliament House in Canberra this morning. The angry exchange came ahead of today's vote on the Government's controversial migration Bill. Some rebel Liberal backbenchers are threatening to cross the floor and vote with Labor against the changes. Mr Tuckey was speaking to reporters as Mr Beazley stood by, waiting for his turn to...

Headline: Two months of planning, 20 involvedNEW DELHI: The Delhi Police have established the suicide squad that stormed Parliament on Thursday comprised two Afghan nationals, two Kashmir residents and a Pakistan national. Top police sources said the probe also indicated the five arrived in Delhi early on Thursday morning. A contact picked them in the same Ambassador car used in the attack. The attackers had entered Delhi in a fruit truck from Jammu, through the northwest Delhi border. They were later driven to the Walled City area, where the car was "prepared" for the attack and the weapons handed over ...

In a little-noticed blurb in yesterday's London Times, India sentenced an al-Qaeda operative for his participation in the 9/11 attacks..... .....Mohammed Afroze was sentenced to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al-Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne and the Indian Parliament.

....On the day after the failed July 21 bombings in London, an Indian court in Delhi sentenced Mohammed Afroze to seven years in prison for his participation in a wider plot which had been planned for September 11, 2001. Afroze led another al Qaeda cell which planned to use commercial airlines as missiles to destroy several international targets. The Islamist terrorists intended to send a global message through coordination with the attacks on America. Their plan failed when the terrorists lost their nerve and fled Heathrow. ....AFROZE HAS ALSO ADMITTED to targeting the Rialto Towers in Melbourne, Australia. Australia has...