Free Republic

Suspect a Former Marine Corps Reservist ARLINGTON, Va. - UPDATE: FOX News has confirmed that the man taken into custody early Friday after being found near the Pentagon with suspicious materials in his backpack is former Marine Corps reservist Yonathan Melaku. 22-year-old Melaku was arrested in Arlington Cemetery overnight. He was believed to have a backpack containing 5 lbs of a substance that was labeled ammonium nitrate. Tests showed the material to be an "inert" substance. A notebook was also found in his bag with words such as Taliban and Al Qaeda. Melaku was a Lance Corporal Marine corps reservist...

According to the Spanish daily ABC, a Libyan rebel commander who played a key role in overthrowing the rule of Muammar Qaddafi previously participated in the May 2010 attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza aboard the Turkish-owned vessel the Mavi Marmara. The operation famously culminated in a deadly clash between Israel Defense Force commandos and “activists” armed with iron rods and knives aboard the ship. The paper’s source for the story is the rebel leader himself: Mahdi al-Harati, the commander of the so-called Tripoli Brigades, which are widely credited with having played a decisive role in the rebel...

NBC is reporting on yet another green scheme going belly-up and this one is a big one. Scott McGrew reports: Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, has shut its doors, according to employees at the campus. "I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website. Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

A rather unexpected voice just joined the chorus of the liberal media outcry over sex scandals among some Catholic clergymen: none other than Evo Morales, Bolivia’s socialist and neopagan president. A Neopagan Socialist... Indeed, Mr. Morales, leader of the Movement to Socialism, figured he should teach the Pope how things in the Church ought to be run. For those who may not know, he was inaugurated President of Bolivia in 2006 using indigenous pagan rituals.1 The Bolivian newspaper Los Tiempos, of Cochabamba (6/20/2006), described the ceremony: “Evo Morales assumed political power with a spectacular display of religious rituals alluding to...

LICAPA, Peru (AFP) – In a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes, men in paint-daubed boilersuits diligently coat a mountain summit with whitewash in an experimental bid to recuperate the country's melting glaciers. It's a bizarre sight at 4,756 metres (15,600 feet) above sea level. The man behind the idea is not a glaciologist but an inventor, Eduardo Gold. His non-governmental organisation Glaciares de Peru was one of 26 winners of the World Bank's "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition in November 2009. Gold has already begun work while he waits for the 200,000-dollar prize money to fund his...

Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of secret government documents to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, turns 23 in jail Friday. The Daily Beast’s Denver Nicks, in an exclusive interview with Manning’s attorney, reports on his solitary confinement, what he’s reading (from George W. Bush to Howard Zinn), and his legal strategy. The last time Bradley Manning saw the world outside of a jail, most Americans had never heard of WikiLeaks. On Friday, Manning, the man whose alleged unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified documents put the website and its controversial leader, Julian Assange, on the map, turns...

U.S. and Israeli diplomats agreed that the increasingly strained relationship between Turkey and Israel derives mostly from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hatred of the Jewish state, according to embassy cables posted by WikiLeaks.org. Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Gabby Levy described Erdogan as a “fundamentalist” who “hates us religiously” in a 2009 meeting with U.S. Ambassador James F. Jeffrey in Ankara, according to a cable sent from the U.S. embassy on Oct. 27 that year and released by WikiLeaks. “Our discussions with contacts both inside and outside of the Turkish government on Turkey’s deteriorating relations with Israel tend to confirm...

Federal authorities today for the first time asserted a direct link between one of the Pakistani men detained in Massachusetts last week and the alleged Times Square terror bomber. In an immigration court hearing this afternoon, a government witness testified that alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad’s cell number was programmed into Aftab Ali Khan’s phone. The government also contended that Shahzad’s first name was found on an envelope in Khan’s Watertown room. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent also testified that Khan’s wife, U.S. citizen Lila-Charlotte Fatou Sylla of Cambridge, had told ICE that the couple’s marriage was a sham “purely...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON — A US man has been charged after he compiled a hit list of 15 people he believed had harmed Muslim civilians and deserved to die, court documents showed Wednesday. Paul Rockwood and his wife Nadia were charged with lying to federal investigators about the compilation and content of the list, which Nadia Rockwood delivered to an unnamed individual in April at her husband's request." SNIPPET: "According to plea agreement documents obtained by AFP Wednesday, Paul Rockwood converted to Islam around late 2001 and soon "became a strict adherent to the violent jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki."...

IPT News June 9, 2010 SNIPPET: "The Turkish-based charity that helped drive last week's deadly confrontation with Israeli commandos has deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups. The Hamas ties are not in question. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and IHH officials simply do not acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group." SNIPPET: "U.S. officials have expressed concern over the fact that "IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years," but IHH is not a designated terrorist organization in the United States. It's fair to ask, why not?"...

"....The two presidents – Karzai and Obama – were on stage together in the East Room of the White House for forty minutes on May 12. They each talked about how they had differed in the past and how committed they are to going forward together. Both leaders expressed great hope in their mutual “quest for peace” and the forthcoming “Peace Jirga” or “reconciliation talks” to be held in Kabul at the end of this month. Neither leader – nor any of the journalists present – mentioned a “cease fire” or the unseen skunk at their picnic: Taliban leader, Mullah...