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Top Russian mobster Ivankov dies October 10, 2009 One of Russia's most notorious mafia kingpins, Vyacheslav Ivankov, known by his nickname of Yaponchik, or Little Japanese, has died in Moscow after suffering serious injuries in an assassination attempt in July. "Investigators have received official confirmation from a Moscow clinic of the death of Vyacheslav Ivankov," the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office said in a statement on Friday. Ivankov was shot in the stomach as he left a glitzy Thai restaurant in Moscow on July 28. The shot was fired by a sniper who hid 70 metres away in...

NEWARK, N.J. — A private security guard at Newark airport in New Jersey has been arrested on charges of threatening President Barack Obama. Obama is scheduled to land at Newark Liberty International Airport around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. He is campaigning for Gov. Jon Corzine. Port Authority spokesman John Kelly says 55-year-old John Breck allowed police to search his Linden home. He says officers found 43 firearms. An official with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity says someone reported overhearing Breck making threatening comments at an airport coffee cart Wednesday morning. The official was not authorized to...

TEHRAN, Iran – A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard and at least 37 others Sunday near the Pakistani border in the heartland of a potentially escalating Sunni insurgency. The attack — which also left dozens wounded — was the most high-profile strike against security forces in an outlaw region of armed tribal groups, drug smugglers and Sunni rebels known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised sharp retaliation. But a sweeping offensive by authorities is unlikely. Iranian officials have been reluctant to open full-scale military operations in the southeastern border zone,...

Several top commanders in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have been killed in a suicide bombing in the volatile south-east of the country. Iranian interior ministry said 29 people died in the attack, in the Pishin region of Sistan-Baluchistan, and at least 28 were injured. Shia and Sunni tribal leaders were also killed. A Sunni resistance group, Jandullah, said they carried it out.

I'm watching a collection of old news footage from the JFK assassination on the History Channel right now, and was wondering if any Freepers have any theories about what really happened. I figure with the great wealth of knowledge here on Free Republic, there's got to be some pretty good theories waiting to be shared.

Is there anything left to be said—or seen—when it comes to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Just you wait. JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America, a two-part, four-hour special airing on History [Sunday, October 11, 9/8c and Monday, October 12, 9/8c] takes viewers back to November 22, 1963 and tells the story via a timeline using only archival news footage, much of which will be new even to assassination buffs. There is no narration (sorry, Peter Coyote). There are no talking heads. The project’s exec producers Nicole Rittenmeyer and Seth Skundrick used a similar technique in last year’s...

On Sunday night, the History channel be gins a remarkable three-hour, two-part program on the assassination of JFK, perhaps the best on that subject you will ever see. And even if you think you've seen it all and can't bear to see it again, well, then think again.

Obama Assassination Poll Rocks Facebook September 28th, 2009 by Adam Ostrow Politics and social media can sometimes be an explosive combination. But now, a poll posted to Facebook through a third-party application has gone so far as to draw the attention of the US Secret Service. The poll, which has since been pulled, asked the question: “Should Obama be killed?” and offered users four multiple choice answers. According to Talking Points Memo, who obtained a screenshot of the poll, more than 750 users voted in the poll before it was pulled by Facebook. Facebook, meanwhile, offered the following statement to...

Imagine writing hundreds of words about the death of Abraham Lincoln, without mentioning the name of his assassin. Or writing about 9/11 but putting the word "hijackers" in scare quotes... (Oh wait: if you endorse that kind of writing, you might actually earn yourself a short lived White House czarship. So scratch that...) Last night I stumbled upon a post at Media Matters -- or, as I like to call it, the George Soros Steno Pool. Media Matters is a leftwing "media watchdog" that monitors conservative talk radio and FOX News, then refutes their daily "lies."

Blackwater involved in Bhutto and Hariri hits: former Pakistani army chief Tehran Times Political Desk TEHRAN - Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Blackwater later changed its name and is now known as Xe. General Beg recently told the Saudi Arabian daily Al Watan that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green light to carry out terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi,...

The day his brother was shot in Dallas, Ted Kennedy had to tell his father the news, and wondered who was behind it. Case Closed: Oswald and the Assassination of JFK author Gerald Posner reports.It was 12:45 in Washington D.C. on November 22, 1963. Teddy Kennedy, who had been a senator for less than a year, was presiding over the Senate, a thankless clerical job assigned to junior members. The chambers were almost deserted, but a few senators were debating a mind-numbing bill about federal library services. It was nearly time to break for lunch when the Senate’s press liaison...

In recent days, the media has remarked extensively on the concern that President Obama’s life might be threatened by various hate groups and ostracized conservatives. It is true that assassinations have a strong historical precedent, and that a good cause attracts everyone, unfortunately even some whackos. (John Brown, for instance, comes to mind for Abolitionism.) Unfortunately, the situation isn’t as simple as the media wants to make it. As his health care program grinds to a halt in the face of a minority opposition in congress and he is less and less able to deliver on all of the massive...

John William Yettaw thought he was on a mission from God to save Aung San Suu Kyi. But the American ended up inadvertently extending her house arrest. It started with his now infamous swim in May. Overweight, asthmatic and suffering from borderline diabetes, he arrived at the back door of the Nobel Peace laureate's home and lay down exhausted, with cramps in both legs. Suu Kyi's two companions heard him moaning but let him in only after dawn. Then Suu Kyi herself told him to get out, allowing him to stay two nights when he complained of ill health instead...

Things are getting ugly for Obama and Co. The majority of Americans disagree with Obama on almost every major policy issue, and his personal approval rating is finally starting to reflect that. It's like I heard Ann Coulter say tonight, apparently the American people forget (after several elections) just how bad Democrat leadership is until they have it again. Here's your daily dose of reality: http://diggsandburies.blogspot.com/

Natalia Estemirova, a top human rights activist, is the latest critic of the Russian government to have met an untimely demise. She was kidnapped and then killed in Ingushetia on July 15, the latest casualty in a long list of murders making Russia the third deadliest country for journalists. As the Telegraph puts it, “there used to be three key people when it came to uncovering human rights abuses in Chechnya — the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the lawyer Stanislav Markelov, and the human rights researcher Natalia Estemirova. In the space of less than three years, they’ve all now been murdered.”...

Four men abducted Estemirova, the leading Russian human rights worker in the troubled Caucasus region, as she left her home in Grozny at about 8.30 a.m. Wednesday, July 15. Members of her organization, Memorial, started a public outcry. In the midst of it, her body was found with two gun shots to the head, execution style. Her lifeless body was dumped in Ingushetia, a neighboring republic. Could this be the tipping point? In previous such murders — and there have been many — the finger-pointing has been somewhat wobbly. The regime of Ramzan Kadyrov, the 32-year-old leader who runs Chechnya...

Farouk al-Kaddoumi, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization leader, claims that Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas was directly involved in the murder of former PA chairman and terrorist leader Yasser Arafat.

SNIPPET: "Hanna, a Christian, was driving with his daughter in Kirkuk when gunmen pulled him from the car and shot him dead, police there told the German Press Agency dpa. His daughter witnessed her father's murder, which took place in the predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Dumiz, police added...."

We never know how God will use us in His divine providence to accomplish His will, but we do know His providence in how things unfold. God used my mother to save the life of Pope John Paul II through a series of events that led up to the day he was shot. My Mother, Claire LeBlanc, (photo top right), led pilgrimages to Rome for over 20 years. In advance of her trips, Cardinal Medeiros of Boston would write to the Vatican to arrange for a group pass to the Papal audience that would be waiting for her upon...

Peter Pilz, the Austrian Green party's spokesman on security, recently accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of taking part in the July 12, 1989 assassinations of Mr. Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou -- the Secretary- General of the Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party -- and two of his colleagues in Vienna, Austria. "I have no doubt he was involved", said Pilz, adding that Ahmadinejad may have pulled the trigger on one of the guns used to kill the men: Pilz said new eye-witnesses had come forward who had identified Ahmadinejad as being involved in the assassination of Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran chief Abdul Rahman...

An Iranian man said to have released the genuine result of last Friday's presidential election is reported to have been killed in a suspicious car accident. Mohammad Asgari, who worked for the Iranian interior ministry to protect the security of its IT network allegedly released results showing that the government used new software to rig the result, reports the Guardian's Saeed Kamali Dehghan, citing unconfirmed reports.

Presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr. will be allowed to obtain a D.C. driver's license and spend more time at his mother's home in Virginia under a ruling yesterday by a federal judge. The decision is the latest in recent years expanding privileges for Hinckley, who has been held at St. Elizabeths Hospital since he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan, his press secretary and two law enforcement officers. The psychiatric hospital is seeking to gradually increase Hinckley's freedom so that doctors can evaluate whether he is nearing the point...

Palestinian sources reported Tuesday that former US president Jimmy Carter was the target of a thwarted assassination attempt, according to Israel Radio. Reportedly, there was a cluster of explosive devices stashed near a road he was scheduled to travel during a visit to the Gaza Strip.

Close aides of Kim Jong-un, the 26-year-old third son and heir apparent of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, last week attempted to assassinate the leader's first son Jong-nam, KBS reported Monday citing Chinese government sources. Aides to Kim Jong-un planned to assassinate Jong-nam, who lives in Macau, after first eliminating his close aides in North Korea. The sources said, "It seems they tried to assassinate Kim Jong-nam without telling Kim Jong-il." The plan was foiled when the Chinese government found out about it early last week. "The Chinese government warned North Korea to stop the assassination attempt, and sent intelligence...

N. Korea: Kim Jong-un tried to kill his half-brother Jong-nam recently Exclusive from KBS Evening News at 9 PM in S. Korean time(No link yet.) Chinese found out the plot in time to intercede and foiled the plot according to the news. Chinese dispatched security agents to Macau, where Kim Jong-nam stayed, and bolstered his security. Since then, he was moved to another location and under Chinese protection now.

newspaper ad calls for Obama assassination

On Friday night, prominent Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour was attacked in Giza, sustaining first-degree burns to his face and losing 20% of his hair after a young assailant sprayed him with flames from a pesticide aerosol. Naturally, the immediate suspect is the Egyptian government, which has persecuted Nour and his Ghad party relentlessly since Nour finished a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in the 2005 elections. However, many analysts have been reluctant to accuse the regime of ordering the attack for three key reasons:

(Note offensive language in third paragraph) By David Ljunggren OTTAWA, May 25 (Reuters) - Canada's public broadcaster was wrong to show a skit that joked about the possible assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama and suggested he could be a thief, an industry panel ruled on Monday. The New Year's Eve "Bye Bye" comedy program -- shown by the French-language Radio Canada network -- generated more than 200 complaints. In one segment, two hosts discussed Obama's election in November 2008. Obama, who took office in January, is the first black U.S. president. "We're not racists. It will be good to...

US journalist Seymour Hersh yesterday contradicted news reports being published in South Asia that quote him as saying a “special death squad” made by former US vice-president Dick Cheney had killed Benazir Bhutto. The award-winning journalist described as “complete madness” the reports that the squad headed by General Stanley McChrystal the new commander of US Army in Afghanistan had also killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafique al-Hariri.

On April 4, 1996, the subject of my radio show in Kansas City was Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown. He and 34 others had died the day before when their Air Force plane crashed into a Croatian mountainside. Not one to shy from exploitation of a tragedy, President Clinton was busily profaning the memory of Martin Luther King – who had been killed on April 4, 1968 – by comparing King's mission to Brown's. What Clinton did not say was that Brown had gone to Croatia to broker a sweetheart deal between the neo-fascist strongman who ran Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, and...

About a half hour ago a car plowed into several spectators watching the Queen of the Netherlands riding by in a "Queen's Day" procession. At least 14 people are said to be wounded. The car drove through the crowd about 15 seconds after the Queen's open air bus went past, and video shows that the Queen's entourage observed what happened. No further information. Will look for hard link . . .

Isn't this scene in the movie, JFK from official government documents?

Mystery deepened on Friday surrounding the breakup of a suspected assassination plot against Bolivian president Evo Morales that left three dead, as opposition leaders cast doubt on the government's story and said it was using the plot to influence coming elections. The hazy details of what happened on Thursday, in accounts by Bolivian authorities, seem lifted from the pages of a Hollywood script. An alleged plot against the president and other top officials was broken up by an elite police squad. Three men were killed in their underwear after a half-hour shootout at a hotel. Allegedly among the dead were...

Today is the 144th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865, just days after the end of the Civil War. Lincoln died the following morning at a home across the street from the theater where he was carried. Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head just below the left ear. The video above relives the details of the awful day. The video below goes more in depth about the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, and the plot to assassinate Lincoln...

CNN interviews Life magazine photographer who had exclusive access to Martin Luther King, Jr April 4th, 1968 in Memphis. See all photos at Life.com. On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. They raced to the scene and there, incredibly, had unfettered access to the hotel grounds, Dr. King's room, and the surrounding area. For reasons that have been lost in the intervening years, the photographs taken that night and the next day were never published....

Here is CBS News video of Walter Cronkite announcing the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 41 years ago today, April 4, 1968. King was shot to death while he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray. Below is audio of Robert F. Kennedy announcing the news of King's death to a crowd in Indiana. Robert Kennedy would himself be assassinated just two months later after winning the California Primary in the race for the Democratic Nomination for President in 1968 . . . . . (Watch Videos)

The Russian authorities have confirmed a prominent opponent of the pro-Kremlin Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai on Saturday. Diplomats said Sulim Yamadayev's body had been identified by his relatives. Mr Yamadayev fell out with Mr Kadyrov last year and was sacked as commander of an elite security forces battalion.

Here is video from twenty-eight years ago today, March 30, 1981, when John Hinckley attempted to assasinate President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was shot and came perilously close to death, but recovered. The video also has Reagan talking about being shot, and shows him speaking before a Joint Session of Congress on April 28, 1981 after recovering from his wounds. Reagan was one-of-a-kind! How we need someone like him again today. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Cownell alum Keith Olbermann has a tough job. Imagine going on TV every night and trying to outdo your own prior outrage. I mean, once you’ve called someone worse than the Nazis you really got nowhere to go but down. So it is that, with the audacity of a dope, our intrepid Cownell grad Keith went on the air two nights in a row hissy-fitting that Dick Cheney was running an “assassination ring” out of his office. Yes, seriously. An “executive assassination ring” he called it.

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau – Renegade soldiers assassinated the president of Guinea-Bissau in his palace Monday, hours after a bomb blast killed his rival, but the military said that no coup was in progress in the fragile West African nation. The military statement broadcast on state radio attributed President Joao Bernardo Vieira's death to an "isolated" group of unidentified soldiers whom the military said it was now hunting down.

Letter and bullet received 'threatening Nicolas Sarkozy's life' A French senator said Friday that he received a letter threatening his life and that of President Nicolas Sarkozy. The envelope also contained a bullet, Sen Jacques Blanc said. Last Updated: 8:28AM GMT 28 Feb 2009 He was the second senator to receive a death threat this month. State prosecutor Rene Pagis said antiterrorist officers are investigating. Mr Blanc, of the governing UMP party, told The Associated Press the letter also threatened government ministers, but he did not provide details. Mr Blanc said he was travelling when the letter arrived at his...

The air force chief of Azerbaijan, an oil producing state in the fragile southern Caucasus region, was shot dead outside his home on Wednesday, officials said. General-Lieutenant Rail Rzayev was the most senior official to have been killed in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, a country where Russia and the United States vie for influence, since the 1990s. It was not immediately clear whether the motives for the killing were political. "At approximately 8 a.m. (0400 GMT) at the entrance to his home the head of the air force and missile defense system was shot in the head and later died of his...

Do you believe that the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the result of shots fired by a lone assassin from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository? Or are you one of many who believe it was a conspiracy that involved the highest levels of our government? The case is not closed regarding what actually happened on that fateful day. The late President Gerald R. Ford, the last surviving member of the Warren Commission admitted that the CIA destroyed pertinent documents, covering up the investigation of the assassination, in a recently published...

Do you believe that the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the result of shots fired by a lone assassin from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository? Or are you one of many who believe it was a conspiracy that involved the highest levels of our government? The case is not closed regarding what actually happened on that fateful day. The late President Gerald R. Ford, the last surviving member of the commission admitted that the CIA destroyed pertinent documents, covering up the investigation of the assassination, in a recently published book....

I received an e-mail from Sun-ae Evans, a Korean staff member at the Smithsonian who had been my guide during a visit to U.S. libraries and other institutions. "With the Smithsonian extremely busy in preparation for the Lincoln bicentennial, I came to think about Korea. The gun that was used to assassinate president Park Chung-hee, the clothes he wore that day, the bottles of liquor and glasses, and the other miscellaneous items -- are they being well preserved?" What we safeguard now can become important in the way the items related to Lincoln have. Korea is changing very quickly, and...

On ABC's local Chicago broadcast, they made it awfully clear that Blago was losing his security detail. They just kept repeating it. Hmmm, I wonder why? Don't be surprised if he's found dead in an 'accident' in the near future. After all, he could bring down a LOT of Rats, maybe even... THE ONE.

Legacy of Secrecy also entails why and how Robert Kennedy tried to bring justice to his brother's killers and died in the process. Legacy of Secrecy shows how Carlos Marcello was involved with Martin Luther King's assassination. Legacy of Secrecy also goes so far as to link Jimmy Hoffa's murder to all of this too.

Lasantha Wickrematunge served as the Editor of The Sunday Leader paper in Sri Lanka. He wrote about current issues and corruption in the Government. During his tenure he was attacked three times. On January 8th, 2009, he was assassinated. Amnesty International was asked to execute an international probe. The request was declined. In his last communication to his friend, the President of Sri Lanka, Mr. Wickrematunge said, “In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Former Alabama first lady Cornelia Wallace, who threw herself over Gov. George C. Wallace when he was shot in a 1972 assassination attempt, has died in Sebring, Fla. She was 69. Wallace's cousin, Melissa Boyen, said the former first lady died Thursday from cancer. Cornelia Wallace was the niece of two-term Gov. James E. "Big Jim" Folsom. The dark-haired beauty, known simply as "C'nelia," married George Wallace on Jan. 4, 1971 – just days before he began his second term as governor. It was the second marriage for both. The union marked a merger between Alabama's two...

Egypt is demanding Iran bring to justice the authors of an advertisement calling on Iranians to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The advertisement was published by the Iranian Fars News agency on Sunday by a student group.