Free Republic

“They’re taking benefits from the American taxpayer to subsidize their life in another country.” Cuban immigrants are cashing in on U.S. welfare and returning to the island, making a mockery of the decades-old premise that they are refugees fleeing persecution at home. Some stay for months at a time — and the U.S. government keeps paying. Cubans’ unique access to food stamps, disability money and other welfare is meant to help them build new lives in America. Yet these days, it’s helping some finance their lives on the communist island. America’s open-ended generosity has grown into an entitlement that exceeds...

A South Florida man has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in Key West. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Harlem Suarez, a/k/a “Almlak Benitez,” 23, of Key West was posting extremist rhetoric on his Facebook page which promoted the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a foreign terrorist organization. That caught the attention of the FBI. The criminal complaint states Suarez told an undercover FBI informant that he wanted to make a “timer bomb.” Suarez bought galvanized nails, which were to be hidden in a backpack and remotely detonated by cell phone,...

Health officials were called to Newark Liberty International Airport to meet a plane on the runway Saturday, after a passenger began vomiting while en route from Brussels, officials said. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were on their way to meet the plane Saturday afternoon after it landed at Gate 54, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The plane, United Airlines Flight 998, was carrying 255 people, according to the Port Authority. The incident comes amid concerns that the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa could be spread by international travelers. The...

An armed employee who was trying to shut down water filtration equipment at a northwest suburban water reclamation plant has been taken into custody. 911 callers reported an armed man, possibly with a hostage, trying to shut down equipment just before noon at the Fox River Water Reclamation District at 875 Dana Dr. in Elgin, according to Elgin police. Officers found the man, armed with a handgun, near the building and attempted to negotiate with him, police said. The man refused to surrender and officers used a rubber bullet, similar to a bean bag round, to incapacitate him. The man...

As a bright, eager student at Cambridge University, with one degree already under her belt, Nabilah Phillips could look forward to a successful career and comfortable future. After completing her engineering PhD she would, perhaps, take up a coveted, highly-paid job in industry, or stay on as an academic lecturing the next generation. Instead, however, Nabilah, now 35, took an extremely unexpected path.She abandoned her studies, forfeiting her hard-won university place and entered a polygamous marriag e, becoming the second wife of London businessman Hasan Phillips, 32 — who has since acquired a third wife. Nabilah, her husband and his...

About two weeks after he went missing, police announced an NIH scientist has been found dead in his car. Martin John Rogers, 54, left his Gaithersburg home around 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 21 to go to work. As he was leaving, he told his wife of 25 years that he was going to a meeting -- but his co-workers said he never showed up to work that morning./SNIP/ Martin Rogers had worked at the National Institutes of Health for 15 years and specialized in tropical diseases.

Many African American church leaders told News 4 a man pretending to spread messages of peace is actually escalating violence in Ferguson. Pastors are pointing the finger at Malik Shabazz, the former leader of the New Black Panther Party, and many church leaders want him to leave Ferguson. “I am upset with a certain group of them that are rebel rousers. We know them by name. Last night was the scariest night of my life,” said Pastor Mike Robinson. Robinson said there is growing concern over Shabazz and what he is doing in Ferguson.

Opportunistic radical groups from across the country are flocking to Ferguson, Missouri to take advantage of the death of Michael Brown, a young black male shot by local police. One of the first to arrive in town were communists from Chicago. They’re members of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. The party’s stated purpose is to lead the masses of people in making a revolution in the United States as part of revolutionary struggles worldwide, with the ultimate goal of communism—a classless world where exploitation, oppression, and all destructive divisions among people are eliminated and all people would be free to...

Three alleged members of a Mexican drug cartel are in jail after allegedly bringing their brutal tactics north of the border and using them on a South Carolina man who owed them a $200,000 drug debt. The FBI says the men kidnapped a 23-year-old from his hometown in St. Matthews, South Carolina, on July 9 and held him for nearly a week while they tried to extort up to $400,000 from his family. He was rescued mostly unharmed early Tuesday from a home in rural Roseboro, North Carolina, where he was found chained to the floor and blindfolded. Authorities say...

A 27-year-old Grandview man has been charged in the recent series of highways shootings, Jackson County prosecutors said Friday. Mohammed (Pedro) Whitaker was charged with 18 felony counts related to 9 incidents. Charges included shooting into a motor vehicle and hitting a victim. More charges may be added, prosecutors said. A series of at least 12 shootings started in early March. The latest shooting linked to the pattern occurred April 6. Three victims were wounded in the spree.

Go to link to see the live news conference. Perp is Mohammed Pedro Whitaker.

he Department of Energy said Thursday it expects to get underground next week to begin investigating the cause and extent of a mysterious radiation leak from the government's nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico. Officials said the inspections of the shafts that workers will use to access the half-mile-deep repository are complete and they are preparing to send an initial crew of eight into the mine early next week. The dump has been shuttered since mid-February, when radiation was released above ground and into the air around Carlsbad, contaminating at least 17 workers with low doses of radiation. Four...

A federal data-sharing system meant to prevent healthcare providers banned from one state's Medicaid program from billing another state's program isn't working as intended, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Two years after its creation, the data-sharing system contained no records from 17 states or the District of Columbia of doctors, nurses or other healthcare providers who had been "terminated," or banned from billing Medicaid, for fraud or other offenses, the independent auditor said in a report to be released Thursday. Reuters reviewed a copy of the report in advance of...

A drug ring that employed a vast network — including a voodoo priest — supplying methamphetamine across Central Florida and the U.S. was shutdown this week, the Polk County Sheriff's office announced Wednesday. The 13 suspects arrested Tuesday were among 25 couriers, distributors and street dealers identified in Operation Hoodoo Voodoo, the investigation of a multimillion-dollar meth pipeline from Mexico. Javier Flores, known as "El Don (The Boss)," supervised the shipments from his home in southern California and remains at large, according to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. On Tuesday, 44 pounds of the powerful amphetamine were seized at Love's...

So many teenage girls turned up dead in a vacant field on the outskirts of Mexico City that people nicknamed it the "women's dumping ground." They began showing up in 2006, usually left among piles of garbage. Some were victims of domestic violence, others of drug gangs that have seized control of entire neighborhoods in the gritty town of Ecatepec, northeast of the capital. The lot has since been cleared and declared an ecological reserve. But its grisly past is not forgotten and the killings have only accelerated. Dulce Cristina Payan, 17, was one of the victims. Two years ago,...

A judge has granted a temporary protective injunction against U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, after his wife filed paperwork accusing the Orlando congressman of shoving and injuring her during an incident this weekend. Lolita Grayson's petition for the injunction, dated Monday, says her husband pushed her against a door, causing her to fall to the ground, during a confrontation Saturday at their home on Oak Park Road, near Windermere. /snip After she refused, retrieved his mail and asked him to leave, Alan Grayson "then deliberately and with force pushed [Lolita Grayson] very hard against the front door, causing [her] to fall...

looks like 3 manhole covers have been clearly blown away pic.twitter.com/ElsYWvmOLf Sounded so big it had a shockwave.

Account information stolen during the Target security breach is now being divided up and sold off regionally, a South Texas police chief said Monday following the arrest of two Mexican citizens who authorities say arrived at the border with 96 fraudulent credit cards. McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Mary Carmen Garcia, 27, and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, both of Monterrey, Mexico, used cards containing the account information of South Texas residents. Rodriguez said they were used to buy tens of thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise at national retailers in the area including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys R...

In the heavily Roman Catholic country of Mexico, exorcisms battle the evil violence of drug cartels, priests say. Also blamed for syndicate savagery is the rising popularity of Santa Muerte, folk saint of narcotics kingpins and some two million Mexican followers. It was the most awful confession Father Ernesto Caro ever heard in 22 long years of serving the church. The sinner was a killer for the Los Zetas cartel, Mexico's most heinous crime syndicate. His specialty was chopping people into pieces, while they were still alive. "He said he smiled while he was doing it. He said he enjoyed...

A scathing discrimination complaint is pitting three appointees of Gov. Deval Patrick against his own administration, accusing it of paying a black male administrative judge more than three women who hold the same job, including former Democratic state Sen. Cheryl Jacques. The three Patrick-appointed administrative judges at the Department of Industrial Accidents say officials led by state labor boss Joanne Goldstein lavished a six-figure starting salary and prime downtown parking space on Judge Michael Williams, who, according to the complaint, has less experience. “Would you want to bite the hand that feeds you? None of us want to do that....