Free Republic

Hayatullah Dawari is a former doctor in Philadelphia who treated American troops in his native Afghanistan while working with the American Red Cross, according to his lawyer. But in the eyes of the United States government, Dawari has been working with an anti-Western insurgent group in Afghanistan with ties to al Qaeda. According to court documents, Dawari has been in touch with HIG associates in Pakistan and in January was the intended recipient of a book sent from Pakistan containing a secret message glued between two pages.

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, burying some of their victims alive and kidnapping hundreds of women, a Baghdad government minister said on Sunday. Iraq's human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters that he had evidence that the Sunni militants had thrown the Yazidi dead into mass graves, adding that some of those buried alive were women and children. About 300 women had been forced into slavery, he said.

WITH HIS dreamy eyes, well-groomed beard and razor-sharp cheekbones, Omar Borkan Al Gala is undeniably handsome. And according to US website Jezebel he’s one of three men who were deported last week from Saudi Arabia - reportedly because of his good looks. The first images of the swoonsome Dubai-based actor and photographer emerged after Arabic newspaper Elaph reported a trio of hunks had been deported from Saudi Arabia over fears women would find them irresistible.

Abbott said requiring voters to present government issued IDs is “the first step in the process is to ensure that only those that are legally allowed to vote actually vote.” Under the law, seven forms of identification are accepted at Texas polling stations, among them state drivers’ licenses and identification cards, election identification certificates, military IDs, passports, citizenship documents with photos, and concealed handgun licenses. And noticeably absent from that list: student identification cards. Ryan Haygood, director for the Legal Defense Fund’s political participation group, said student IDs were specifically left off the list because they fail to prove whether...

It's International Cat Day, feline lovers. Time to celebrate those furry friends. According to the website Days of the Year, about 500 million cats are scurrying around the world. And dog lovers - your day is Aug. 26.

For 35 years, since Iranians seized the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, and kept the Americans in it as hostages, the United States has been at war with radical Islamists. They knew it. We hid from it. Now, in an arc of terror from Boko Haram in Nigeria through Hamas in Gaza to ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, there is a clear wave of vicious religious warfare being waged against civilization by fanatics who openly promise and engage in genocidal killing. ISIS has made its murderous intentions painfully clear. It has proven in town after town that it...

President Obama touted the newly passed Veterans Affairs reform bill Thursday as he signed the measure into law and lamented the scandal that triggered it. But a review of records by Fox News shows the president – despite the urgency he placed publicly on the crisis – only met one-on-one with then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki once during the scandal. The records, provided through a Freedom of Information Act request, showed they met on May 30, the day Shinseki resigned.

Now, the population of the cormorants on East Sand Island has burgeoned from about 100 breeding pairs to 14,900, and a federal agency wants to have thousands of the seabirds shot to protect the fish, including some that are protected or endangered. The birds eat lots of endangered wild fish, as well as hatchery stocks — an estimated 11 million a year — mainly in May as the young fish head for their years in the ocean. In June, the corps released its plan to kill 16,000 of the birds. A public comment period has been extended to Aug. 19....

Just 13% of Americans say the government can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time, with just over three-quarters saying only some of the time and one in 10 saying they never trust the government, according to the poll. "The number who trust the government all or most of the time has sunk so low that it is hard to remember that there was ever a time when Americans routinely trusted the government," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. The poll was conducted for CNN by ORC International from July 18-20, with 1,012 adult...

HOLMES BEACH, Fla. – An 80-year-old Florida woman grabbed her gun and called 911 during a home invasion. While the burglars were breaking a window to her residence, the police dispatcher told her to “put the gun down.” Huh? Logan was all alone — her husband was playing bridge at a friend’s house. That’s when she took matters into her own hands. She grabbed her gun and dialed the police emergency number as she headed downstairs. “When I called 911 she kept saying put the gun down, put the gun down, and I said I’ll put the gun down when...

"This is the biggest and most complex Ebola outbreak in history," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement. "It will take many months, and it won't be easy, but Ebola can be stopped," he said. "We know what needs to be done." Ebola spreads through contact with organs and bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and other secretions of infected people. It has no known cure.

Lisa Mason had taken out close to $100,000 in student loans in order to pay for nursing school, and was making payments on the debt when she died. Steve Mason said he and his wife, who had co-signed the loans, were contacted immediately after his daughter’s death and were told they must start making payments. “We knew if she didn’t pay her debt we would be responsible by co-signing, but we didn’t know that if she died the debt would fall to us,” he said. Mason said his daughter’s debt has ballooned to $200,000 and the payments exceed $2,000 a...

The first test will come Tuesday, when Dr. Milton Wolf tries to end Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts' 33-year run in Congress. Wolf, a radiologist who also happens to be a second cousin of President Obama, has taken heat for Facebook postings of X-rays of gunshots wounds -- while Roberts has awkwardly attempted to laugh off questions about whether he indeed lives in Kansas.

Three top secret, experimental vials stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save two American missionary workers who had contracted Ebola, according to a source familiar with details of the treatment. A representative from the National Institutes of Health contacted Samaritan's Purse in Liberia and offered the experimental treatment, known as ZMapp, for the two patients, according to the source. The drug was developed by the biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. The patients were told that this treatment had never been tried before in a human being but had shown promise in...

When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air. The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent. The piglets were then placed in a room...

SYDNEY — A newly-adopted cat has been credited with saving the home of its new family. Tilly, a tabby, alerted her owner Matt Clayton to a fire in the roof of the family home in Melbourne, Australia. As he was leaving for work later than usual, Tilly refused to move out of his way. Instead she starred at the ceiling, purring repeatedly. There was a silent, odourless fire in the roof but traces of danger were hidden. At Tilly's insistence, Matt gently touched a down-light and smoke came billowing out. He said the straw insulation would have caught alight and...

Lucy’s family could not afford surgery, so they contacted a dog rescue group who found a pilot who was also a doctor and agreed to do the surgery. A vet in Asheville volunteered to do the $5,000 surgery and even included transportation. It was all through an organization called Pilots N Paws.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said on Sunday that the unaccompanied children who have streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border in increasing numbers are a “side issue” compared to the illegal immigrants who have committed crimes. “What we are substantially more concerned about in the state of Texas, and I will suggest to you, across this country, are the 80-percent-plus individuals who don’t get talked about enough who are coming into the United States illegally and committing substantial crimes,” the Republican governor said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Since September 2008, he told host Candy Crowley, 203,000 illegal immigrants have been...

A test for Ebola has been carried out on a female passenger who died after arriving in the UK from The Gambia. The Department for Health said the test on the woman, who landed at Gatwick Airport on Saturday, came back negative on Sunday afternoon.

But the sales won't be so sweet starting this fall. Campus bake sales—a mainstay of school fundraisers—are going on a diet. A federal law that aims to curb childhood obesity means that, in dozens of states, bake sales must adhere to nutrition requirements that could replace cupcakes and brownies with fruit cups and granola bars. The restrictions that took effect in July stem from the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by first lady Michelle Obama and her "Let's Move!" campaign. The law overhauled nutrition standards affecting more than 30 million children. The law also required the U.S. Department of...