Free Republic

George Soros' alleged meddling in European politics has caught the attention of Congress. Concerns about Soros' involvement most recently were raised by the Hungarian prime minister, who last week lashed out at the Soros "empire" and accused it of deploying "tons of money and international heavy artillery." But days earlier, Republican lawmakers in Washington started asking questions about whether U.S. tax dollars also were being used to fund Soros projects in the small, conservative-led country of Macedonia.

What would Open Society Foundation (OSF) president and fund manager George Soros want with the small, landlocked nation of Macedonia? As it turns out, plenty. The Daddy Warbucks of progressive causes is working overtime to weaken European borders and facilitate the flow of refugees from the Middle East by sending money to disrupt nations holding both democratic elections and cracking down on illegal immigration. But he hasn't done it alone. The U.S. State Department has been working right alongside him. The aid that the U.S. has provided to Macedonia during their long friendship has been channeled through the U.S. Agency...

A huge police presence is in the German city of Saarbrücken, next to the French border, and officers have sealed off the area. A police official said the man seemed to be in an "exceptional psychological situation" and there were no indications it was a terrorist-related incident. It remained unclear how he came by his injuries. Counter-terrorism officers have been scrambled to the scene and it is believed staff at the "Dubrovnik" restaurant on Kupfergasse Road managed to escape when the gunman entered the building at 9.15am on Sunday. He is thought to have ordered staff out of the building...

Macedonian police fired tear gas as migrants screamed “Allah hu Akbar” and tried to break through the border fence from Greece in a series of clashes that left over 200 people injured on Sunday. The illegals attempted to overwhelm police by charging in large numbers, tearing down the chain-link fence and throwing rocks and tear-gas bombs at Macedonian police. The incident happened at the Idomeni border crossing, which is fast becoming infamous as a flashpoint for violence as thousands of stranded migrants try to break through the border into Macedonia to continue their journey to northern Europe. Now the Greek...

Heavily armed Macedonian police deployed tear-gas launchers, rubber bullets and stun grenades at the border with Greece this morning as an organised migrant invasion attempted to force the fence. Thousands of anonymous leaflets written in Arabic had been in circulation at the 11,000-man Idomeni migrant camp, calling on the inhabitants to rise up together this afternoon and to charge down the fence stopping them from moving north into continental Europe. A rumour had also been circulating that the border was to be opened by Macedonian authorities at 9am this morning. Declaring “Today we either break the border fence or die”,...

Migrants have clashed with Macedonian police after trying to scale the fence separating Greece from Macedonia in the border town of Idomeni. Macedonian police used tear gas and stun grenades in an attempt to keep the migrants at bay and they responded by throwing rocks at the police. Greek police were standing by, not interfering. ... The clashes began soon after some 500 of the more than 11,000 migrants stranded at a camp on the Greek side of the border responded to rumors the border was about to open by gathering close to the fence. A delegation of five migrants...

Greek police officials say Macedonian authorities have imposed further restrictions on refugees trying to cross the border, saying only those from cities they consider to be at war can enter. The officials said the restrictions imposed Sunday means that people from Aleppo in Syria, for example, can enter Macedonia from Greece, but those from the Syrian capital of Damascus or the Iraqi capital of Baghdad cannot.

An incomplete inscription might reopen the debate about the identity of the owner of a tomb from the Alexander the Great era, according to new research into blocks from the circular retaining wall of the mysterious mound. The tomb was unsealed in northern Greece 18 months ago. Dated to between 325 B.C. -- two years before Alexander the Great's death -- and 300 B.C., the tomb is located in Amphipolis, east of Thessaloniki, and is billed as the largest of its kind in the Greek world, measuring more than 1,600 feet in circumference. According to study author Andrew Chugg, a...

Turkey is under growing pressure to consider a major escalation in migrant deportations from Greece, a top European Union official said Thursday, amid preparations for a highly anticipated summit of EU and Turkish leaders next week. European Council President Donald Tusk ended a six-nation tour of migration crisis countries in Turkey, where 850,000 migrants and refugees left last year for Greek islands. [...] Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum-seekers. And he wasn't clear who would actually carry out the expulsions: Greece itself, EU border agency Frontex or even other organizations like NATO....

Macedonian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of migrants who stormed the border from Greece on Monday as a deeply divided Europe traded barbs over the biggest humanitarian crisis in decades. As frustrations boiled over at restrictions imposed on people moving through the Balkans, migrants trapped on the Greece-Macedonia border tore down a metal gate in the barbed wire fence. A Reuters witness said Macedonian police fired several rounds of teargas into the crowd and onto a railway line where other migrants sat refusing to move, demanding to cross into the country. Many of the migrants, fleeing war and poverty...

Hundreds of migrants attempted to break through a fence on the Greece-Macedonia border by charging it with a home-made battering ram. Authorities fired tear gas and stun guns as thousands of refugees congregated at the border to cross into the Balkan country in a bid to make their way across Europe. It comes as Macedonia as well as EU members Slovenia and Croatia and Serbia imposed a daily limit of allowing just 580 migrants into the country per day.

Austria has proposed sending its soldiers to Macedonia to strengthen Macedonian borders amid the refugee influx, Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said Wednesday. Austria has earlier placed daily limits on the number of people entering their territory and the number of asylum applications. "Austria is in favor of strengthening border controls along the "Balkan route' and offers support for Macedonia in the form of troops," Doskozil said before a meeting with the ministers of the Balkan countries, as quoted by Der Spiegel magazine. A ministerial conference on the migrant crisis is taking place on Wednesday in Vienna with the...

The increase to 1,450 soldiers and reservists comes after criticism on Austria last week for saying it would only accept 80 asylum seekers. Austria said Sunday it is beefing up the army at its borders to deal with the inflow of migrants, with 450 more troops from Monday and military police on standby in case of trouble. The increase to 1,450 soldiers and reservists comes after Austria drew criticism last week for saying it would only accept 80 asylum seekers and let 3,200 migrants pass through the country per day. The troops will assist police carrying out checks on people...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday criticized an eastern European proposal to close the Balkans refugee route and vowed to push for a plan with Turkey to reduce the influx, at an EU summit. Merkel, under heavy pressure at home to reduce arrivals, supports a plan under which transit country Turkey would seal its borders and then fly refugees to Europe where they would be settled under an EU quota system. However, most countries in the European Union have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, and the so-called Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - have openly...

Cleopatra may not have been ancient Egypt's only female pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty -- Queen Arsinoë II, a woman who competed in and won Olympic events, came first, some 200 years earlier, according to a new study into a unique Egyptian crown. After analyzing details and symbols of the crown worn by Arsinoë and reinterpreting Egyptian reliefs, Swedish researchers... suggest that Queen Arsinoë II (316-270 B.C.) was the first female pharaoh belonging to Ptolemy's family -- the dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years until the Roman conquest of 30 B.C. While researchers largely agree on Arsinoë's prominence...

MIGRANTS attempting to march across Europe have been waving placards saying ‘open or die’ after being stopped by closed borders and barbed wire.A group of men waving the menacing home-made banner grew angry as they were stopped in their tracks at the border between Macedonia and Greece. Macedonia is the latest country to erect a border fence. The tiny, landlocked state has begun building a fence along its border with Greece, blocking a key transit route for migrants travelling from Turkey to northern and western Europe. Macedonia insists it will allow those fleeing war-zones to continue to pass through, meaning...

Tensions peaked at Greece’s border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the weekend after the FYROM army started building a border fence to keep out would-be migrants. FYROM border guards were photographed by foreign news agencies as they erected a 2.5-meter-high fence along the Greek border on Saturday. A FYROM army source quoted by Agence France-Presse said the crossing from Greece to FYROM would remain open and that the fence was aimed at ensuring migrants did not try to slip across at other spots. FYROM authorities had indicated in recent weeks that they might build a fence to...

Macedonia, along with other Balkan countries on the migrant route, began turning away "economic migrants" nearly two weeks ago. Human rights groups have criticised the decision, under which only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans are allowed through. The new restrictions triggered days of protests from Iranians, Pakistanis, Moroccans and others stranded in squalid tent camps on the border. Some Iranians have sewn their lips shut. One man on Saturday threw himself on railway lines before the police, screaming and flailing. ... Earlier on Saturday, Macedonian soldiers began driving metal poles about three metres high into the cold, muddy ground, building a...

Migrants have blocked rail traffic at the Macedonian border as they protested against a decision to only allow Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis to cross there from Greece. Several sewed their lips together with cord, with at least one declaring a hunger strike before sitting down in front of lines of Macedonian riot police.

The discovery of the Acra last week is "a dream come true" for archaeologists, who have been speculating on the citadel's location for 100 years, the IAA said. The discovery of Acra comes at a delicate time, for it reveals the story of the Maccabees, Antiochus and the coming Antichrist. All this is understood once we connect the dots and see the parallels between the Grecian Empire at the time of the Maccabees harassing God's people and the Antichrist who is also from the same empire (Asia Minor) harassing God's people today.