Free Republic

Mecca, 25 Nov. (AKI) - The grandmother of US president Barack Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the 'Hajj' or Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a Saudi daily said on Wednesday. Sarah Obama, 87, is being accompanied by a nephew and Obama's cousin, Omran. On Wednesday Sarah Obama was in the valley of Mina with an African delegation, according to the Saudi daily Okaz. Obama, the mother of the American president's father, lives in a village in Kenya and is one of the many guests of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud....

August 15, 2007 7:00 AM Biscet Forever Silence is SiCKO. By Peter Kirsanow When Michael Moore traveled to Cuba to film scenes for his movie SiCKO, he failed to meet with a Cuban physician by the name of Oscar Elias Biscet who could’ve provided fascinating insights into that country’s medical system. It’s a shame Moore didn’t prevail upon his pals in the Cuban government to arrange a visit. An interview with Dr. Biscet easily would’ve been the most compelling scene in the movie. The difficulty, however, is that such an interview would’ve presented awkward problems both for the movie’s narrative...

Ex-insider: Cuba has bioweaponsA former top Cuban military official said Cuba is manufacturing biological weapons. BY FRANCES ROBLES frobles@MiamiHerald.com The former chief of Cuba's military medical services is calling for international weapons inspections of a secret underground lab near Havana, where he says the government is creating biological warfare agents like the plague, botulism and yellow fever. Roberto Ortega, a former army colonel who ran the military's medical services from 1984 to 1994, defected in 2003 and now lives in South Florida. After living here quietly for four years, this week Ortega went on the Spanish-language media circuit to denounce...

Nicaragua candidate dies suddenly A candidate in Nicaragua's forthcoming presidential elections, Herty Lewites, has died suddenly of a heart attack. Mr Lewites, 65, a centre-left ex-mayor of Managua, had broken with ex-president Daniel Ortega's Sandinista Party and was third in a recent poll. His candidacy had been expected to split the Sandinista vote and harm Mr Ortega's chances of regaining power. A recent poll gave Mr Ortega a narrow lead over his main conservative rival ahead of the November vote. Breakaway movement Mr Lewite's party president Dora Maria Telle told the Associated Press news agency he had suffered from long-standing...

Heart strings A gift of 100 ukuleles brings a touch of aloha spirit to 29th Brigade Combat Team members in Iraq By Gregg K. Kakesakogkakesako@starbulletin.com One hundred ukuleles are strumming up smiles from Southern California to Iraq, where soldiers of Hawaii's 29th Brigade Combat Team are sharing their love of the instrument. It started out as a simple idea of Anita Coyoli-Cullen, blossomed under Shirley Orlando, and then the aloha spirit just exploded. "I wanted to send ukuleles to the troops in Iraq," Coyoli-Cullen of Huntington Beach, Calif., said in a phone interview, "and a bit of aloha because I...

May 16, 2005, 10:30 AM ET Jimmy Martin, one of the greatest vocalists in bluegrass, died Saturday (May 14) in a Nashville hospice where he was battling bladder cancer. He was 77. In 1949, Martin replaced Mac Wiseman in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, the premier bluegrass group, and served as the group's guitarist and lead vocalist until 1954. His tenor vocals were featured on many of the Monroe band's recordings for Decca -- perhaps most memorably on the gospel sides collected in 1969 on "A Voice From on High." After recording with the Osborne Brothers in the mid-'50s, Martin...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - A life-size bronze statue of Hoagy Carmichael will be erected near the Indiana University off-campus hangout where the songwriter composed "Stardust" almost 80 years ago. The statue, depicting Carmichael seated at a piano, was designed by Bloomington sculptor Michael McAuley and is planned to be completed by May 2006. A ceremony announcing plans for the Hoagy Carmichael Landmark Project will be at Peoples Park on April 23. "It serves a dual function, to recognize the music world as well as the music community, and it's very natural for us to be interested in being part of...

One Marine vs. 20 Idiots--Guess Who Wins? On Friday we noted that a score of Ohio University students and others had staged a "die-in" to protest the liberation of Iraq. The Post, the student newspaper, carried a letter from Marc Fencil, a senior who is also a Marine currently stationed in Iraq, that is so excellent we reprint it in full: It's a shame that I'm here in Iraq with the Marines right now and not back at Ohio University completing my senior year and joining in blissful ignorance with the enlightened, war-seasoned protesters who participated in the recent "die-in"...

Official says hundreds of U.S. citizens likely died in gulags Friday, February 11, 2005 Posted: 9:36 AM EST (1436 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. military service members may have been imprisoned and died in Soviet forced-labor camps during the 20th century, according to a Pentagon report to be released Friday. Researchers for the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs have been investigating unconfirmed reports of Americans who were held prisoner in the so-called gulags. "I personally would be comfortable saying that the number [of Americans held in the gulags during the Cold War and Korean War] is in the hundreds," said...

Monday August 6 12:04 PM ET Dissidents Said Held in Cuba Crackdown HAVANA (Reuters) - Authorities detained Cuban opposition activists over the weekend to block protests planned to coincide with the seventh anniversary of an anti-government riot in Havana that led to a mass migration to the United States, dissident sources said on Monday. Most of the detentions appeared to be temporary measures to stop gatherings and a march that had been planned by the dissidents for Sunday, a local human rights' group said. ``We still don't have figures, but it seems there were dozens of arrests,'' said Gerardo Sanchez, ...

By Scott Holleran AST week's Associated Press headline said it all: "Castro praises Powell." A compliment from a tyrant generally means that America's foreign policy is in trouble and -- thanks to the man whom Castro praised -- it is. Though considered political heresy to say so, Secretary of State Colin Powell's first 100 days in office, dominated by conflicts with communist China and now an inexcusable rebuke by the United Nations, have been a disaster for America's national security. First, Powell made widely unreported remarks contradicting Bush's hands-off policy toward the Middle East. More recently, Powell is trying to ...

On Monday, I wrote about René Montes de Oca Martija, the Cuban dissident and human-rights activist who had escaped from prison on April 20. He told me during our interview on Saturday that he expected to be arrested again very soon — but wanted to get his story out, particularly as concerned his twelve-year-old son, who is in need of medical care and being denied it by the regime. The son is also being beaten by thugs at school with the obvious blessing of the authorities. I report sadly that what Montes de Oca had predicted, has now come to ...