Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Police are hunting a kidnap gang who tied up and apparently tortured an Asian man before dumping him in a car in a busy city centre, surrounded by a belt of canisters which they claimed were a bomb." SNIPPET: "The "bomb belt" was made up of half-a-dozen gas canisters, which would have killed the man if the gas had ignited, as well as exploding the car's petrol tank. Apart from the police helicopter, a no-fly zone was imposed on the area, causing diversions for light aircraft operating out of Birmingham airport. Firefighters were on standby at the scene throughout...

An explosion at a scrap metal plant in Muskogee Tuesday evening has heavily damaged the facility and damaged homes and businesses nearby. Witnesses say the explosion shortly after 8 PM, sounded like a bomb. Muskogee Police are in the process of securing the area around the Yaffe Iron and Metals Company plant. A night shift was working in the plant and officials believe there may be fatalities, but none have been confirmed. Police have setup a temporary shelter at the city's Civic Center downtown. The plant is located at G and Lexington Streets in Muskogee. There are reports of several...

Ridgeley, West Virginia — Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has been faxing confidential information about hundreds of its customers to a scrapyard operator in West Virginia for more than three years, and he can't get them to stop. Wade Peer says he has been overwhelmed since 2001 by internal CIBC fund transfer request forms containing the social insurance numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and detailed bank account data of several hundred bank customers. "Had I been a bad guy, I could have got credit cards in their name, I could have assumed their identity. I could have transferred money out...

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003. The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program. The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. weapons experts have found 20 engines used in banned Iraqi missiles in a Jordan scrapyard along with other equipment that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, an official said Wednesday. The discoveries were revealed to the U.N. Security Council by acting chief U.N. inspector Demetrius Perricos during in a closed-door briefing. The text was obtained by The Associated Press. The U.N. team was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrapyard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check...