Free Republic

SANAA (AFP) — A Yemeni court on Tuesday granted a divorce to an eight-year-old girl whose unemployed father forced her into an arranged marriage this year, saying he feared she might be kidnapped. "I am happy that I am divorced now. I will be able to go back to school," Nojud Mohammed Ali said, after a public hearing in Sanaa's court of first instance. Her former husband, 28-year-old Faez Ali Thameur, said he married the child "with her consent and that of her parents" but that he did not object to her divorce petition. In response to a question from...

CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tighter restrictions on carry-on luggage, including bans on liquids, will disrupt air travel for at least several days and make it even more of a headache for passengers already sick of crowded planes and long lines, experts said. U.S. security officials banned passengers from carrying any liquids onto planes after British officials said they foiled a plot to bomb flights to the United States on Thursday. The new restrictions were sure to cause major disruptions for at least two or three days at airport security checkpoints as screeners scour carry-on bags for drinks, hair gels and...

Israel Defense Forces paratroopers caught a Palestinian boy aged 14 wearing an explosive belt at the Hawara roadblock, south of Nablus, in the West Bank on Wednesday afternoon. Sappers used a remote-controlled robot to pass scissors to the boy, Hussam Abdu from Nablus, so that he could cut the explosive belt off his body, and then safely detonated it in a controlled explosion. Abdu, who was taken in for questioning, said that he received NIS 100 to carry out a suicide attack. The IDF believes that Abdu was meant to detonate the 8 kg belt near the soldiers or close...