Free Republic

A New Jersey man is accused of being a secret Hezbollah operative in the United States for more than a decade, surveilling potential attack sites in New York City, Boston and Washington, prosecutors said Thursday. Alexei Saab, 42, from Morristown, was charged under a nine-count indictment in connection with a range of alleged terror activities. They included providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and receiving military-style training from that group, the Justice Department said. “Even though Saab was a naturalized American citizen, his true allegiance was to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible for decades of terrorist...

We must stand up to terrorism,” bleated Hillary Clinton a few days ago in a tweet expressing outrage against BokoHaram, the jihadist organization that has abducted hundreds of young girls in Nigeria. Yet, when she was actually in a position to stand up to Boko Haram’s terrorism as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton instead protected the group.At the Daily Beast, Josh Rogin reports: The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - UN: 5 killed in headquarters collapse in Haiti quake; over 100 missing including mission chief.

Alleged spy seen in video calling Saddam 'our inspired leader' ILLINOIS -- Prosecutors say he spied on dissidents, reported to U.N. mission honeycombed with secret agents. By MIKE ROBINSON Associated Press Writer CHICAGO (AP) -- Jurors watched a video Tuesday in which a man accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents for Saddam Hussein's intelligence service described the dictator as "our inspired leader" and spoke scornfully of "American colonial imperialism." "A light has illuminated our path and our procession toward the struggle and the liberation," Khaled Dumeisi said in describing Hussein at an April 2001 birthday party for the dictator at...

UNITED NATIONS -- There are no "Obama 2008" buttons, banners or T-shirts visible here at U.N. headquarters, but it might be difficult to find a sliver of territory in the United States more enthusiastic over the prospect of the Illinois senator winning the White House. An informal survey of more than two dozen U.N. staff members and foreign delegates showed that the overwhelming majority would prefer that Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency, saying they think that the Democrat would usher in a new agenda of multilateralism after an era marked by Republican disdain for the world body. Obama supporters...

<p>UNITED NATIONS -- There are no "Obama 2008" buttons, banners or T-shirts visible here at U.N. headquarters, but it might be difficult to find a sliver of territory in the United States more enthusiastic over the prospect of the Illinois senator winning the White House.</p>

Oh, now this could be fun. Not for the shoes stuff, but rather to see the body language between Sen. Hillary Clinton, who some Democrats think should have been the party's vice presidential nomineeNew York Senator and former Democratic presidential candidate but not vice presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who many Republicans think should be the country's first female vice president. A coalition of Jewish groups announced Tuesday that the two most prominent women in American politics at the moment would be among those attending a Monday morning rally at the United Nations in New York...

Hans Janitschek, an Austrian journalist who spent years as a U.N. consultant and also served as secretary general of the Socialist International organization, died suddenly at U.N. headquarters. He was 73. His wife, Friedl, said Friday that Janitschek died last week and the cause of death was believed to be a heart attack. Janitschek became foreign editor of Austria's largest daily newspaper, Kurier, in 1959. He joined the Austrian Foreign Service in 1964 and was sent to the United States as director of the Austrian Information Service. He was appointed special assistant to Bruno Kreisky, then-chairman of the Austrian Socialist...

UNITED NATIONS - The woman who died after falling from the U.N.'s Secretariat Building was a 44-year-old employee of the World Health Organization's International Computing Center, a U.N. spokeswoman said Monday. U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe identified the woman who fell from the 19th floor Sunday as Maria Gabriela Di Biase. Police and U.N. security officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the woman had jumped from a window after showing up to work early in the morning. Okabe said there was no suspicion of foul play. The police...

UNITED NATIONS - A woman who worked for the United Nations died Sunday after falling from the 19th floor of the U.N.'s Secretariat Building, authorities said. ADVERTISEMENT Police and U.N. security officers at the scene, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the 45-year-old woman had jumped from a window after showing up to work early in the morning. "A U.N. agency staff member died after falling from the 19th floor of the U.N. Secretariat Building," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. "At this time there is no suspicion of...

NEW YORK (AP) ― Police were investigating the discovery of a woman's body Sunday morning on the rear lawn of the United Nations Secretariat Building. There were no apparent signs of criminality, but authorities were still investigating, said New York Police Detective Martin Speechley. The cause of death was to be determined by the medical examiner. The woman appeared to be a worker at the building, Speechly said. No identity had been released. The body lay draped under a white sheet, flapping in the wind with rocks put around the edges to keep it down, less than several dozen...

Now that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has spoken at Columbia University, it's on to the United Nations, where there's a tight security net. As many as 25,000 people from around the metro area and the country flocked to the U.N. to protest Ahmadinejad's visit. Many are demanding an end to Iran's nuclear threat. The NYPD's eye in the sky took security pictures. On the ground, beefy machine-gun toting cops provided an extra layer of protection for Israel's foreign minister as she demand Iran's president be reigned in by the world community. "There's a need to stop Ahmadinejad," Tzipi Livni said....

Okay, you can come out from under the bed now. The United Nations says the nerve gas stored - unmarked and unidentified - in one of its offices for about 10 years posed "no immediate risk or danger." Neither were "toxic vapors" found in the air. Is this not completely reassuring? No one seems to know why the stuff - believed to be phosgene, which killed a lot of folks back in World War I and, due to Saddam Hussein, more recently in Kurdish villages - was at UN headquarters instead of locked away in a lab. Apparently it had...

<p>ABC reported on their website blog about 20 min ago that United Nations weapons inspectors discovered six to eight vials of a dangerous nerve gas, phosgene, as they were cleaning out offices at a U.N. building in New York this morning, federal authorities tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The federal authorities said the office, in a U.N. building near headquarters, was being evacuated and the White House had been notified at 10 a.m. New York police and fire officials said federal authorities had not notified them of any problem at the U.N. building, as of 11 a.m. A U.N. spokesperson said a statement would be issued shortly.</p>

Bible scholars claim to have fixed the bug in their decoding that caused their earlier mistaken predictions. As a result they have so many different scriptural calculations leading to the same month for the UN bomb, that "coincidence is no longer an option" for their research team.

The deteriorating condition of the United Nations headquarters should be a source of concern for firefighters and Turtle Bay residents who might be exposed to asbestos in the event of an emergency at the U.N.,Senator Schumer said. At a news conference yesterday, Mr. Schumer pledged to ask Secretary-General Annan and America’s U.N.ambassador, John Bolton, to focus their attention on guiding to completion a plan to renovate the U.N.’s landmark building. The plan will cost an estimated $1.9 billion. *snip* U.N. efforts to go forward with the renovations suffered a serious setback in May when the project head, Louis Frederic Reuter,...

Senator Charles Schumer is warning that the aging U.N. headquarters is a "death trap" waiting to happen. Schumer says the building has fallen into disrepair after 50 years. He's urging U.N. officials – including Secretary General Kofi Annan – to jump-start renovations. The senator says the building lacks a sprinkler system and has aging steam pipes that could explode. Schumer says despite the deteriorating conditions, nothing has been done. "While the blue-green windows of the Secretariat building glisten on the outside, on the inside of the building, things are crumbling. These problems are not new. The U.N. has known about...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) (C) arrives to speak at a rally to show U.S. solidarity with Israel in the conflict with Hizbollah near the headquarters of the United Nations in New York July 17, 2006. REUTERS/Jeff Zelevansky (UNITED STATES)

UNITED NATIONS, April 6 (Reuters) - The United States is quietly blocking the start of a long-awaited renovation of United Nations headquarters in hopes of keeping down costs, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton acknowledged on Thursday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked for an authorization of $100 million in new spending to get the work under way later this year, but Washington wants to commit to just $23 million at present, Bolton said. The plan has been languishing in the U.N. General Assembly's budget committee for the past three weeks, and diplomats said Washington was at this point the lone obstacle....

After Years Outside Law, Diplomats Come In From Cold POSTED: 12:43 pm EST December 9, 2005 NEW YORK -- For years, United Nations diplomats were notorious for running up millions of dollars in parking tickets -- then laughing off New York City's attempts to collect. Diplomatic immunity meant there was little U.S. courts could do about it, but the city's thousands of foreign officials have largely changed their ways since a threatened crackdown three years ago. New York's finance department says diplomats have gotten 90 percent fewer tickets since late 2002, when the U.S. threatened to revoke the plates of...