Free Republic

Iran quadrupled its uranium-enrichment production capacity amid tensions with the U.S. over Tehran's atomic program, nuclear officials said Monday, just after President Donald Trump and Iran's foreign minister traded threats and taunts on Twitter. Iranian officials made a point to stress that the uranium would be enriched only to the 3.67% limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, making it usable for a power plant but far below what's needed for an atomic weapon. But by increasing production, Iran soon will exceed the stockpile limitations set by the accord. Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for...

OCONEE CO., SC (WSPA) - Deputies in Oconee County are asking people to be vigilant after a threat was made against churches in the county. According to the Oconee County Sheriff's Office, a juvenile made a threat to "harm a nonspecific church by the use of a firearm" on social media. Investigators say the social media post was made last week and deputies were made aware on Tuesday. The Oconee County Sheriff's Office, Westminster Police Department, SLED, and the FBI are investigating the threat. Investigators say they believe the threat is for a certain area but no specific people or...

The C.I.A.’s concerns were not unwarranted. In 2019, the Russians undertook an elaborate operation to find Mr. Poteyev, forcing a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help. The scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was an unlikely spy. He studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a source of pride for his family, with a history of charitable work and no criminal past. But the Russians used Mr. Fuentes’s partner as leverage. He had two wives: a Russian living in Germany and another in Mexico. In 2019,...

ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy since September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.

Vatican spy story takes center stage as fraud trial resumesVATICAN CITY — The Vatican's big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a new spy story taking center stage that is more befitting of a 007 thriller than the inner workings of a papacy.According to written testimony obtained Thursday, one of Pope Francis' top advisers brought in members of the Italian secret service to sweep his office for bugs and commissioned intelligence reports from them, completely bypassing the Vatican's own police force in the process.The reported actions of Archbishop...

Arnav Gupta appears to have grown up in Bethesda, Maryland. An online search of records indicates that he graduated from the Landon School, a private college prep school for boys, in 2004. His picture was also included in a Landon Magazine article from 2013 that highlighted what alumni were up to. Gupta was pictured at Everest Base Camp in Nepal. You can see that page here. After high school, Gupta moved to Boston for college. He studied International Relations and Affairs at Boston University. He appears to have graduated in 2008. Arnav Gupta worked as a personal trainer while he...

A man sets himself on fire Wednesday on the Ellipse in downtown Washington, across from the White House, the Secret Service said. A spokesman for the Washington Fire Department tells CNBC, “I can confirm that we’ve transported one patient with burns from the Ellipse and we’re now on the scene assisting law enforcement,” referring to Park Police and U.S. Secret Service officers. Alina Berzins says she was visiting the National Mall with two of her cousins from Bolivia when “we saw this man” on the Ellipse and “he starts running, and then we saw him covered in flames.”

Link only - https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/dec/20/documents-allege-payments-arkansas-woman-company-u/?news-arkansas

On Feb. 3, long-time Trump associate Felix Sater filed a cross-complaint in a New York federal court. The complaint alleges that Russian and Kazakhstan-connected individuals and entities conducted “a shadow intelligence operation of Sater and Trump for the purpose of manufacturing information to harm Donald Trump politically,” including by providing Christopher Steele a PowerPoint presentation riddled with lies Steele later fed to the FBI. Sater’s cross suit comes nearly three years after the City of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and BTA Bank filed suit against Sater, two of the companies he owned, a former business associate, and that associate’s LLCs, in City...

A criminal IRS investigation into Hunter Biden — President Biden’s son — appears to have convened a grand jury as far back as May 2019, a confidential subpoena served to JPMorgan Chase bank reveals. The subpoena also seeks bank records of James Biden, the president’s brother, which appears to be the first time another Biden family member has surfaced in connection with the investigation. The document, obtained by Breitbart News, specifically demands information on related transactions between JPMorgan Chase Bank, which the document calls “correspondent bank,” and the Bank of China, which the document calls the “originating or beneficiary bank.”...

The scene was more surreal than the accusation: The 12-year NYPD veteran busted for hiring a hit man to whack her estranged husband now begging for his help. Imprisoned officer Valerie Cincinelli, her weeping audible via speakerphone Thursday in a Nassau County courtroom, proclaimed her innocence in a pair of murder-for-hire plots before directly addressing her skeptical spouse Isaiah Carvalho. “Isaiah, can you hear me?” asked Cincinelli in a disembodied voice as their divorce case hearing wound to a close. “Hello, can you hear me? You know I didn’t do this. You know me for how many years? You frickin’...

Screenshot from CBS interview in Dallas, May, 2019, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- In Garland, Texas, on 3 May 2015, Gregory Stevens, a veteran police officer with the Garland Police Department, was working off duty as armed security for the “Draw the Prophet” cartoon contest event.Pamela Geller organized the Draw the Prophet event as a response to Islamic demands that Western Civilization submits to Islamic censorship.The particular demand was no one would be allowed to draw images of the Prophet Mohammed or to mock him or make fun of him.The infamous attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices...

Levin contrasted the coronavirus pandemic with the Obama-Biden response to the 2009 swine flu epidemic, especially their decision to stop testing, on his national radio show “The Mark Levin Show” Thursday. Levin replayed a C-Span clip from May 2019 in which Ron Klain, a former chief of staff for Biden, says that the Obama-Biden response team “did every possible thing wrong.” We had a bunch of really talented, really good people working on it and we did every possible thing wrong and 60 million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time.” "Well, why didn’t they prevent it?" Levin asked....

A police report said that Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden returned a rental car in Arizona that contained a cocaine pipe days before the 2016 presidential election, according to a new report. Hunter Biden, whose legal first name is Robert, also left credit cards, a driver's license, a Delaware attorney general badge, a cellphone, and a U.S. Secret Service business card in the car, according to the police report obtained by Breitbart News. He had rented the car from Hertz in California and it was returned in Prescott, Ariz., after hours. The car keys were not properly deposited in a...

Raskin called the information an “irrelevant distraction” and questioned whether it was actually “urgent,” as the IG initially told congressional aides yesterday. https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1179498155764862982

A top FBI lawyer who fabricated evidence in a federal spy warrant against Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page is expected to plead guilty to federal charges brought by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Kevin Clinesmith, who is expected to admit to deliberately fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application, used to spy on a former campaign affiliate of President Donald Trump, was a top attorney in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) and a key agency attorney under fired former FBI Director James Comey. Clinesmith is the first individual to be charged as part...

<p>WASHINGTON - The sun had just dipped below the horizon Wednesday evening when the lights flicked off inside the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.</p> <p>Waves of cheers rolled up and down the ordinarily quiet street in the elite Georgetown neighborhood at the center of an intensifying standoff between backers of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and left-wing activists who oppose U.S. intervention and support President Nicolás Maduro.</p>

A simple visit to an obscure factory by Chinese President Xi on Monday is all it took to raise the specter that China could be contemplating cutting off supply of critical materials to the U.S. and potentially crippling large swathes of its industries. Also, fueled by political innuendo in Xi’s recent call for a new “Long March” in reference to a key founding tenet of the Chinese Communist Party, speculators are growing increasingly wary of Chinese export restrictions to the U.S., including rare earth minerals. As the world’s largest producer, the Middle Kingdom has a vice-like grip on rare earths...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The U.S. has opened up secret communications with Venezuela’s socialist party boss as members of President Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle seek guarantees they won’t face retribution if they cede to growing demands to remove him, a senior U.S. administration official has told The Associated Press. Diosdado Cabello, who is considered the most-powerful man in Venezuela after Maduro, met last month in Caracas with someone who is in close contact with the Trump administration, said the official. A second meeting is in the works but has not yet taken place. The AP is withholding the intermediary’s name...

China warned Canada that it needs to be aware of the consequences of aiding the U.S. in an extradition case involving Chinese tech giant Huawei that is believed to have sparked the detentions of two Canadians in China. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang’s comments came after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Both were arrested on Dec. 10 after Canada detained a Huawei executive wanted by the United States on fraud charges. […] “We hope that the Canadian side can have a clear understanding of...