Free Republic

Council on Foreign Relations member Qanta Ahmed weighed in on Sunday on the anti-government protests that had erupted at Iranian universities across the country on Saturday in response to Iran’s admission that it unintentionally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane killing all 176 people on board, saying that she thinks “this regime, for the first time ever, is seriously threatened.” Ahmed, a Muslin scholar, made the comment on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday adding that the regime “is in its most fragile and precarious time probably since 1979.” “They’ve had a disastrous outcome to their attempt of intimidating the...

MH17 flight feared to have been shot down over Ukraine was taking a significantly different route to the usual course for flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, according to aviation expert. The crashed MH17 flight took a route 300 miles to the north of its usual path, an aviation expert has said. Robert Mark, a commercial pilot who edits Aviation International News Safety magazine, said that most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur normally travelled along a route significantly further south than the plane which crashed. Malaysia Airlines has insisted its plane travelled on an "approved route"...

The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama have discussed the Malaysia Airlines plane incident over eastern Ukraine., according to wire reports. The Kremlin website published a statement late Thursday that says "the Russian leader informed the U.S. president of the report from air traffic controllers that the Malaysian plane had crashed on Ukrainian territory, which had arrived immediately before the phone call." The statement gave no further details about what the leaders discussed with regard to the plane crash. The rest of the phone call was dedicated to the general situation in eastern Ukraine, and recent...

Obama to make statement on Ukraine at 11:30 a.m. EDT: White House by Amy Tennery (Reuters) 8:50 AM