Free Republic

KABUL - An Afghan father was on a quest for justice Monday after saying that his pregnant 14-year-old daughter was burned to death by her in-laws, the latest reported case of violence against women in the country. Afghanistan faces serious human rights issues, including physical and sexual violence against women and so-called honour killings that often involve immolation. The 45-year-old father, Mohammad Azam, said that he came to the capital, Kabul, to seek justice for his daughter Zarah. He told The Associated Press that she was tortured and set on fire by her husband's family last week. She died in...

TUNIS, July 15 (Reuters) - An attacker who drove a heavy truck into crowds in the French city of Nice killing at least 84 people came from the Tunisian town of Msaken which he last visited four years ago, Tunisian security sources said on Friday. The man, identified by French police sources as 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical or Islamist views, the sources said. Bouhlel was married with three children, they said. The sources did not say when he had last been resident in Tunisia. Msaken is about 10 km (six...

Crime went up in California in 2015, with year-to-year jumps not only in murders, robberies and car thefts but also in hate crimes against Muslims and assaults against police officers, according to statistics released Friday by Attorney General Kamala Harris.

(Watch video at link) The 5-year-old Idaho girl who was sexually assaulted by migrant boys from Sudan and Iraq has become a “prisoner in her own house” since the crime was allegedly committed more than three weeks ago, says a close friend of the family. That’s because one suspect’s family who was evicted from the apartment complex has still not moved out. The families of the three boys involved – two from Sudan ages 10 and 14 and a third from Iraq age 7 – were all evicted from the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls last week following publicity about...

Men and women pulling “suitcases full of cash” started showing up at Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport last year holding tickets for international flights bound for Africa. Transporting large amounts of cash overseas is perfectly legal. But it was who was carrying the money … and where it was going that caught the attention of law enforcement, according to a report by KING 5, the local NBC affiliate for western Washington. Those hauling the cash-laden cases were Somali-Americans who’d come to this country as refugees. They routinely send money back to Somalia. And many of the greenbacks headed to the jihadist-infested East...

Police in a U.S. town bordering Mexico have apprehended an undocumented, Middle Eastern woman in possession of the region’s gas pipeline plans, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. Authorities describe the woman as an “Islamic refugee” pulled over during a traffic stop by a deputy sheriff in Luna County, New Mexico which shares a 54-mile border with Mexico. County authorities alerted the U.S. Border Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) has been deployed to the area to investigate, sources with firsthand knowledge of the probe confirm. The gas pipeline plans in the woman’s...

Burying the lede — the suspect, a current or former Walmart employee, was said to be a Somalian man wearing khaki pants, KFDA-TV reports. Police said in a press release at 12:25 local time that no victims had been found inside the building and there is no ongoing shooting “at this moment.” It is not known if anyone was wounded elsewhere. The initial call was for a suspect who was actively shooting inside the store, according to police radio dispatches. You can listen to the initial police and fire radio dispatches below:

"Clinton to Paint Trump as a Risk to World Order." Thus did page one of Thursday's New York Times tee up Hillary Clinton's big San Diego speech on foreign policy. Inside the Times, the headline was edited to underline the point: "Clinton to Portray Trump as Risk to the World." The Times promoted the speech as "scorching," a "sweeping and fearsome portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in the coming months." What is happening here? As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and...

The latest report on the closure of “silent rooms” — de facto mosques — at German universities features protesting Muslims at the Technical University of Berlin. Muslims are angry at the closure of their mosque, and have been gathering for prayers inside and outside the main university building to pray in protest. When the university refused to back down, Muslims ratcheted the conflict up a notch, threatening the university and its president. Many thanks to Nash Montana for translating this brief news report, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

A group of asylum seekers sexually assaulted numerous women at a free concert in Germany at the weekend in attacks similar to those carried out in Cologne on New Year's Eve. Three Pakistani men are already under arrest after 26 women filed complaints that they had been improperly touched, fondled and groped during the festival in the city of Darmstadt. Police have said the number of complainants could rise. Between two and three more men are still being sought by police as victims receive counselling and authorities try to cool down rising tensions against migrants in general. All the complainants...

The spread of the Zika virus has become so alarming that more than 150 health experts from over a dozen countries published an open letter urging the postponement or relocation of the Summer Olympics scheduled for August 5-21 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Never before in world history have the Olympics been cancelled due to a public health crisis. “The Brazilian strain of Zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before,” the scientists warned. They added that an “unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain,...

A flesh-eating tropical disease is ravaging the war-torn Middle East, after Islamic State destruction created the ideal breeding conditions.

A decade ago, Anabel Garcia Romo, then a 17-year-old attending Garfield High School, took part in the epic May Day march through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. She was drawn to the protest because she had friends and family who were in the country illegally and she opposed a proposal in Congress that would have made them felons. Garcia called the day a defining moment in her life. But in the years since, nothing -- not even Donald Trump -- has compelled her back to the streets.

1. Interdependence between national security at home and security for those beyond our borders. ... Sanders believes Americans are more secure, not less, if U.S. policy helps people abroad escape fear and deprivation. ... Sanders would approach the goal in different ways, by helping people find safety and security primarily through nonmilitary means, and by addressing what he sees as the root rather than proximate causes of global instability. ...While Clinton has set a 65,000-person cap on refugees from Syria, Sanders says there is “no magic number.” Sanders says that welcoming civilians fleeing disaster and danger will do more to...

There are 55.3 million Latinos in America, nearly triple the 1980 population, and those under 18 years old are the largest group, a demographic fact likely to influence the future of the country, according to Census figures. The new report helps to complete the picture of the U.S. immigration population, which previous reports pegged at 61 million. According to Pew, 35.3 million, or 64 percent of the total number of the Latino immigrant population are Mexican-origin. A 2008 Pew report said that more than half of the immigrants from Mexico were illegally in the United States.

Having stamped out a number of tropical diseases – including malaria – decades ago, is America today complacent about a rising wave of infectious disease? By Carrie Arnold. 11 August 2015 One rainy Friday morning in March 2015, Dr Laila Woc-Colburn saw two patients with neurocysticercosis (a parasitic infection of the brain) and one with Chagas disease, which is transmitted by insects nicknamed ‘kissing bugs’. Having attended medical school in her native Guatemala, she was used to treating these kinds of diseases. But she was not in Guatemala any more – this was Houston, Texas.For half a day each week,...

[...] Today’s massive influx of people has been devastating to the middle class. “During the low-immigration period from 1948-1973, real median compensation for U.S. workers increased more than 90 percent. By contrast, real average hourly wages were lower in 2014 than they were in 1973, four decades earlier,” the report says. And the number of green cards doesn’t tell the whole story. In addition to permanent resident green cards, Washington has been handing out “temporary” work permits, such as H1B and L1 visas, referred to as “non-immigrant” visas. Immigration reform legislation supported by Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would...

Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, (l.), and Jose Fernando Villagomez, (r.), allegedly broke into the home of Marilyn Pharis on July 24. (Santa Maria Police Department)

Police arrested a man, Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, 29, in the horrific hammer attack and rape of a 64-year-old woman – who died eight days later – and shortly after discovered he was an illegal immigrant who had been previously jailed several times. An autopsy is being conducted on the victim, Marilyn Pharis, to see if her death was directly tied to the attack. Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts! In the meantime,...

As a sharper picture formed of a shy 15-year-old raised in a troubled and sometimes violent home, Adrian Jere Gonzalez appeared in court for the first time to face charges of raping and killing 8-year-old Madyson 'Maddy' Middleton.