Free Republic

DUBAI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Fifty-five Iranians deported from the United States will return to their home country in the coming days, Iran's foreign ministry said on Sunday, in the second such deportation under President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. In September, officials said the U.S. had identified about 400 Iranians to be deported, with a first flight carrying 120 people making its way to Tehran via Qatar's capital. "In the coming days, about 55 nationals will return to Iran...This is the second group being returned to Iran in the latest months," Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said, adding that...

FBI special agent T. Scott Hendricks has filed an affidavit explaining why Southwest Airlines diverted a San Diego-Chicago flight to Amarillo late Monday and booted six passengers off the flight. The six, said to be members of a San Diego area soccer team, were subsequently arrested and charged with “interference with a flight crew and abetting.” Basically, according to Hendricks per Southwest, the passengers –Khalid Yohana, 19; Wasim Imad Shaker, 23; Essa Solaqa, 20; Ghazwan Assad Shaba, 21; Jonathan Khalid Petras, 20; and Saiman Hermez, 19– were refusing orders from the flight attendants, challenging their authority and being mean to...

Jacob Goldberg, who is still inside the cave rescue site, has this footage of divers arriving at the cave site, to be mobbed by reporters. Reporters and all those not directly involved in the rescue operation have been banned from entering the site, and those already inside have been give until 9am to clear out.

BANGKOK (AP) — Now that the missing Thai soccer team has been found, the next step is determining how to get the boys and the coach safely out of a partly flooded cave in northern Thailand. A look at the options and why extracting the 12 boys and the coach could take some time:THE CAVE IS HUGETHE CAVE IS HUGETham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai province stretches under a mountainside for up to 10 kilometers (6 miles), much of it a string of narrow passageways that lead to wide chambers and then back to narrow passageways. The rocky...

A top Thai official said Tuesday that heavy rains forecast for the coming days could worsen floods in the mountain cave where 12 boys and their soccer coach were located after being missing for more than a week, forcing authorities to speed up their extraction. ... Officials said Tuesday that the boys, aged 11-16, and their 25-year-old coach were mostly in stable medical condition and have received high-protein liquid food. Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda, a member of the country's ruling military junta, said Tuesday that the boys may need to swim out using diving equipment ahead of bad weather forecast...

Six people have been pulled out alive from the wreckage of a chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team that crashed in Colombia, killing 75 people, while en route to a championship match, officials said.

Harvard University shut down its men's soccer team because men on the team secretly rated the attractiveness of girls on the girl's soccer team. Harvard announced on Thursday that it was canceling the rest of the season for its men’s soccer team after university officials uncovered what they described as a widespread practice of the team’s players rating the school’s female players in sexually explicit terms. Lawyers for the university began investigating the men’s team after the college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported last week that a player created a nine-page document in 2012 with numeric ratings, photos and lengthy...

/begin my excerpts RFA: N. Korean National Soccer Team Put to Ideological Criticism Session after their Return 2010-07-27 09:33 According to report by Radio Free Asia (RFA) on July 27, N. Korean national soccer team, who lost all three games including 0-7 rout by Portugal at 2010 World Cup Soccer Tournaments, was put to ideological criticism session after their return. Quoting a Chinese businessman who is a reliable source of N. Korean affairs, it reported, "On July 2, there was an 'ideological struggle' session at People's Cultural Palace in Pyongyang for players of national soccer team who took part in...

BAGHDAD - There were no cheering crowds or ticker tape parade Friday along the dangerous airport road to greet Iraq's Asian Cup soccer champs. And the team's captain, a Sunni who scored the winning goal, didn't even return because he feared for his life. But several hundred fans waved Iraqi flags and scuffled with police as they pushed through airport security to greet the country's soccer heroes as they stepped off a charter plane about 7 p.m. Police wielded truncheons against some in the crowd who were trying to touch goalkeeper Nour Sabri. He was hoisted onto the teammates' shoulders...