Free Republic

MARIUPOL, Ukraine—As part of a joint Department of Defense-State Department effort to bolster Ukraine’s internal defense capabilities, the United States will be sending Army paratroopers to train Ukraine’s National Guard, a U.S. Army Europe spokesman confirmed to The Daily Signal Monday. U.S. Army Europe spokesman Donald Wrenn said paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade, which is based in Vicenza, Italy, will train six Ukrainian National Guard companies on internal security and territorial defense beginning at the end April. “There will also be some training for headquarters personnel,” Wrenn said, “focusing on the continued professionalization of Ukrainian staff members.”...

April 2, 2009 Italian authorities carry out raids against "Islamist radicals" across country SNIPPET: "Rome, 2 April (AKI) - Twenty-six foreigners suspected of links to international terrorism as well as aiding and abetting illegal immigration are being investigated by Italian police, after raids carried out on Thursday in various Italian cities. The raids were carried out in properties around the northern cities of Vicenza, Venice, Padova, Brescia, Como, Cuneo and Trento, the central city of Florence and the southern city of Caserta. The anti-terrorism and organised crime investigators in March 2007 began probing alleged Islamic fundamentalists attending the Via Dei...

By COLLEEN BARRY VICENZA, Italy - Tens of thousands of people marched through the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza under heavy police guard on Saturday to protest a planned U.S. military base expansion. The demonstrators, estimated by police to number 50,000 to 80,000, marched peacefully along the four-mile route as hundreds of policemen stood guard and helicopters hovered above. Some protesters wore T-shirts saying "Yankee Go Home" and others waved rainbow peace flags as the demonstration headed out from city's train station. It was not scheduled to pass the site of the planned expansion, where critics of the project keep...

ROME - Four Algerians were arrested Friday on terrorism charges in northern Italy, a police official said. ADVERTISEMENT The suspects were affiliated with the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian group said to have links to al-Qaida, said an official with the Carabinieri paramilitary police in the northern city of Padua. He asked that his name not be used because he was not allowed to talk to the media. The four were allegedly in charge of financing and recruiting new militants as well as acquiring false documents, including identity documents and work permits for immigrants, the official said....

HEIDELBERG, Germany (AFP) - The United States is going to reduce the number of American ground soldiers stationed in Europe to 24,000 from the current 64,000 troops within the next five to 10 years, a US army spokeswoman said. The proposed troop reduction would result in only four of the 13 main operating bases remaining. The four bases would be; Wiesbaden in central Germany, which would become the European headquarters for US ground forces, and Kaiserslautern in western Germany, Grafenwoehr in southern Germany and Vicenza in northern Italy, according to the spokeswoman, Elke Herberger. The number of US army barracks...