Free Republic

Original title too long - BREAKING: Honduras Arrests Five Syrians With Fake Greek Passports Heading To U.S.A. – Three More Arrested In St. Maarten Two separate incidents with common attributes. Two independent groups of Syrian males traveling on fake Greek passports trying to gain entry into the U.S. The first group of three was identified/captured in Saint Maarten after a flight from Haiti. The second group of five were identified/captured in Honduras. Group #2 – Honduran authorities have detained five Syrian nationals who were trying to reach the United States using stolen Greek passports, but there are no signs of...

A.M.Costa Rica: If the unlikely combo of President Barack Obama and Pope Francis did good for the Cuban people by re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, then why are Cubans fleeing their island nation by the thousands? In re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, Obama and the pontiff didn’t help the oppressed people of Cuba under Communist rule, but only enabled the human rights ignoring Castro brothers. Here are the results of the Obama Cuban legacy:

...Authorities said around 100 shell casings where found at the scene of the crime. Some 800 meters from there, investigators found the abandoned black SUV partially burned in a presumed attempt to hide evidence.

Footage captured a Spanish aircraft flying nail-bitingly close to cars as it came into land at Costa Rica’s Juan Santamaría airport on Sunday. The video, taken by Carlos Rojas and uploaded onto Youtube, shows Iberia flight 6313 from Madrid coming into land at the Central American country's airport. But as the Airbus A 340 approaches landing it appears to come dangerously close to cars parked at the end of the runway and misses the airport perimeter fence by just a few meters. The landing provoked a flurry of comments on social media from local residents about the “narrowly averted disaster”...

When a college student disappeared in Costa Rica last summer, his father — legendary Alaskan adventurer Roman Dial — went searching in Central America's deadliest wilderness. He's still looking. Early last April, a 27-year-old biology student named Cody Roman Dial set out into the remote jungle of northern Guatemala. Equipped with a crude map and a compass, he planned to traverse the Petén, a lowland rain forest teeming with snakes, illegal gold miners, and cocaine traffickers. His biggest concern, though, was dehydration — save for jeep-track mud puddles, the area lacks ready sources of freshwater. Cody had spent the previous...

You are not alone look beside you and find me filling your Wellspring with hope even now as the enemy flees with his lies and " T "rue hope becomes your warmth and understanding, that My light is upon you to shed all darkness and though things now seem out of reach "Truly " (( ( I AM ) )) and this is all you Truly need to know for I have already laid out your steps before Me and nothing can alter your path in Me alone . So come closer and completely dissolve all your worries into Me...

Retired attorney Kurt Richard Haskell conjectured on the Paris attacks on Sunday during an interview from Costa Rica with 1776 Channel, which can neither confirm nor readily dismiss his theories. “The Muslims being used in these plots are being trained overseas by undercover CIA pretending to be Al Qaeda/ ISIS. I think all of them were trained that way. They think they are in terrorist training camps when they are instead being trained to be patsies.” -Kurt Haskell during interview with 1776 Channel Haskell ran for U.S. Congress in 2012 as a Democrat in Michigan’s 7th District where he received...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has banned two American lawmakers from his country after they helped push through legislation last week to ban Venezuelan officials from the United States. “Just like they [U.S. officials] have their lists, we can make our own lists in Latin America of those who shouldn’t enter our country,” Ortega told Costa Rica’s Tico Times. Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen laughed off Ortega’s ban, The Miami Herald reported. …

US President Bush has, once again, suspended the relocation of the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital, Jerusalem. Bush did this by asserting that US national security will be harmed if he implements the US law requiring the move. Bush’s refusal to take concrete measures recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has caused some to question the US President’s reputation as a ‘friend of Israel’. Congress overwhelmingly approved the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act in 1995, mandating that the US Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by May 1999 and that the US recognize Jerusalem as...

W I R E D cannot be directly posted or excerpted from, but they have a somewhat relaxing article about something called "Nature Zen", in this case recordings about various birdcalls and songs in the early morning in Costa Rica and Queensland Australia (Bewdy!). Lots of links and recordings available at the site, and be careful you do not fall asleep listening to them. :) Ignore the link at the top of the thread, it only leads back to the FR index page -have you donated yet? Here is the link to the article: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/nature-zen-audio-library-of-nature/ Kind of graphics heavy due...

More than half a million retirees receive their Social Security benefits abroad, according to International Living , a monthly newsletter focusing on retiring overseas. The Social Security Administration currently sends 613,650 retirement-benefit payments outside the U.S., more than double the 242,128 benefit payments sent abroad in 2002. And even that data likely under-represents the actual number of Americans retired overseas, says Dan Prescher, 60, special projects editor of the newsletter. (International Living gets much of its financial support from advertisers who sell overseas real estate to retirees, and other services for those wishing to relocate.) “San Diego has some of...

Navi Pillay said Tel Aviv's two-week onslaught on Gaza - which has cost more than 650 Palestinians lives - would be thoroughly investigated. Ms Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the attacks have destroyed houses and hospitals and killed civilians. "These are just a few examples where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes. "Every one of these incidents must be properly and independently investigated." According to Gaza officials, 475 houses have been destroyed and 2,644 damaged, while 46 schools, 56 mosques...

GENEVA, July 23 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday launched an international inquiry into human rights violations and crimes that may have been committed by Israel during its military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned the Israeli assault which it said had involved "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks", including aerial bombing of civilian areas, collective punishment, and the killing of more than 650 Palestinians. At the end of an emergency session, the 47-member forum adopted a resolution presented by Palestinians by a vote of 29 states in favor, 1 against (the United States) with 17...

We are told that the children from Central America invading our southern border are seeking a life free of political persecution with opportunities to advance their educations. OK, I can understand that. What I can’t understand is why these children have to undergo the travails of threading their way through the iniquity and corruption of Mexico to attain their goals in the United States when there exists a very attractive alternative right in their own backyard. Way back in the late 1940’s Costa Rica disbanded its army and promulgated laws to ensure that all of its young people were entitled...

Many observers misunderstood the Hobby Lobby dispute and others like it as a First Amendment case, but it wasn’t. It primarily related to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), with an indirect reference to the constitutional freedom of religious expression. A case in Louisiana may be the real McCoy, though. The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional — an order that would result in automatic excommunication and damnation, according to the doctrine and canon law of the Catholic Church: The state high court’s decision, rendered...

TRES RIOS, Costa Rica (AP) — On a warm spring day, Floribeth Mora was in her bed waiting to die from a seemingly inoperable brain aneurysm when her gaze fell upon a photograph of Pope John Paul II in a newspaper. "Stand up," Mora recalls the image of the pope saying to her. "Don't be afraid." Mora, her doctors and the Catholic Church say her aneurysm disappeared that day in a miracle that cleared the way for the late pope to be declared a saint on April 27 in a ceremony at the Vatican where Mora will be a guest...

The newest member of the city of Boulder’s Human Relations Commission has been living in the country illegally for the past 20 years. The city council appointed Jose Beteta, who was born in Costa Rica, to the vacant position after voters in Boulder eliminated the requirement that board members be registered to vote. The very board to which Beteta was appointed suggested that the measure be put on the November ballot. The Human Relations Commission promotes diversity in Boulder and enforces the city’s Human Rights Ordinance, according to the Denver Post.

Official Communiqué - To the Confused Catholics of Costa Rica and Abroad - The purpose of this statement is to present a summarized report of the situation in Costa Rica, particularly in the Archdiocese of San José, in relation to the Mass of Ages, also called the Tridentine Mass, Traditional Latin Mass or Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Una Voce Costa Rica, member of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce, a federation with recognition from the Holy See, has been working in recent years for all Catholics in Costa Rica to enjoy what in the letter accompanying the Motu Proprio...

Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view. The contents of these files are partially known -- and intriguing -- and conspiracy buffs are not the only ones seeking to open them for a closer look.

Colombia has announced it is negotiating with China to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America. The plan is to create a "dry canal" where the Pacific port of Buenaventura would be linked by rail, across Colombia, to the Atlantic Coast. Trade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year. The announcement came from the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, who told the Financial Times that the project was "a real proposal... and it is...