Free Republic

Conservative Party interim leader Candice Bergen demanded an end to trucker-led “Freedom Convoy” protests blockading international borders on Thursday, urging anti-mandate demonstrations to end. Her statement in the House of Commons appeared to be a dramatic shift from her initial support for the protests, which have lasted nearly two weeks in the national capital, Ottawa, but have begun to dispute Canada-U.S. supply chains through blockades along Canada’s southern border. Ambassador Bridge, the largest American-Canadian crossing, has come to an ongoing standstill this week as hundreds of trucks park themselves on and around it, inhibiting international traffic.

OTTAWA -- Manitoba MP Candice Bergen is waking up with a new job today: unifying the Conservative caucus. The party's former deputy leader was elected by her colleagues to serve as interim leader after a majority of MPs ousted Erin O'Toole from the top job. Bergen faces a caucus that has spent weeks divided and angry over O'Toole's leadership since last year's election loss. The party must also start preparing to pick a permanent leader. It will be the third such race in the past five years. Party president Rob Batherson told members that its national council will be appointing...

WASHINGTON - Osama Bin Laden talks tough, but other mujahedeen laughed at him in Afghanistan because he would get scared and bolt when under fire, a new documentary reveals. "When Bin Laden used to hear the explosions, he used to jump. He used to run away," his longtime friend Hutaifa Azzam says on "CNN Presents: In the Footsteps of Bin Laden." "I still remember that me, and my elder and younger brothers, we used to laugh," says Azzam, the son of Bin Laden's mentor in radical Islam, Abdullah Azzam. Abdullah Azzam and Bin Laden jointly created a mujahedeen support organization...

The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether a large mansion party in Alpine broke the governor’s limits on gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. On Saturday, hundreds of partygoers crammed together at a bash, mainly outdoors, at a home on Hemlock Drive from the early afternoon to about 10 p.m., said Alpine Mayor Paul H. Tomasko. He said he does not know the exact number of attendees, but said a majority were not wearing masks or social distancing. He said the party was held by people renting the house with the knowledge of the owner. “Most everyone should be aware...

The rugged west coast of Norway, home to thousands, is a challenge to travel along by car. It takes time. A long time. The harsh weather conditions make it an unpredictable route, with roads often closing and ferries often cancelling their departure due to snow, heavy winds or high waves. A continuous E39 highway that is accessible 24/7, with fixed links between islands and the mainland will make the western coast more accessible for people who inhabit the coast, but also for tourists and for the transportation of goods. Currently, 1,000km of road need to be improved The Norwegian parliament...

You Tube -- Resisting immigration? Maybe it's just in our natureImmigration officials last week arrested 105 people in New Jersey suspected of being in the country illegally, including four people with international criminal warrants. This came the same week that state officials announced new rules on how local police will handle immigration matters.ICE said the arrests had been planned before state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal released his directive, which the federal agency has criticized. The policy prevents police from inquiring about a person's immigration status unless it is relevant to an investigation. Jails also will not be allowed to detain...

A Nazi submarine described as an 'underwater Chernobyl' is being sunk into sand to stop deadly chemicals leaking into the sea and the surrounding bed. The wreckage of the German U-boat was left with 1,800 canisters of toxic mercury seeping into the sea off Bergen in Norway. U-864 was torpedoed by a British submarine in early 1945 as it headed for Japan carrying jet parts. The vessel left Kiel in Germany on December 5, 1944, but the hull was damaged in an attack and the captain headed for Norway to carry out repairs.

Rosenstein Meeting To Watch Kavanaugh... Shined up with tweets about dating Donald Trump, fourth-wall-cracking quips and Roseanne implosion asides, the revival of Murphy Brown is very meta. Yet despite those lofty lunges, the CBS sitcom still led by Candice Bergen just can’t grasp the big-picture reality of 2018. To put it another way, FYI, if you really don’t want to “tarnish” your legacy, to quote Bergen’s now-unretired TV journalist Brown in the first episode of this de facto 11th season, then hit the reset button on this revival ASAP before irrelevance comes knocking.

Last year, Norway made headlines with its major crackdown against child abuse dubbed Operation Dark Room. In recent months, the investigation has grown to involve more suspects and cases. Norwegian police are particularly worried about child abuse happening abroad.So far, the Norwegian police have revealed at least 300 cases where children were grossly abused and exploited. In several cases the police have been investigating, small children in the Philippines were sexually abused in front of camera on order from Norway. The assaults were streamed online, and Norwegians paid to watch the abuse. The price for such a grim spectacle varied between $20 and $50, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is returning to Pennsylvania on Saturday. He'll be holding a 7 p.m. rally in Manheim, Lancaster County, according to Trump's campaign website. It will be held at Spooky Nook Sports, the largest indoor sports complex in the country. Trump also is scheduled to hold a fundraiser Saturday evening in Bergen County, N.J. Tickets for the Trump Victory fundraiser start at $5,000 per person, according to an invitation obtained by the Morning Call....

The attacks on US targets culminating in the September 11 suicide hijackings were only a fraction of the onslaught planned by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, it emerged yesterday. Over the past three years, US intelligence detected plots against US embassies in 14 countries, mostly in Asia and Africa, and there were over 600 more "credible threats" of attacks. Some were thwarted by arrests or stepped up security. Others appear to have been suspended or may still be pending. The global extent of al-Qaida's terrorist ambitions is revealed in a new book by Peter Bergen, CNN's terrorism analyst, who interviewed ...

As the President continues to struggle with a strategy regarding what we should do about ISIS, one of the key questions being batted around is how to define the precise level of threat which ISIS poses to the United States. It’s a valid question, actually, so it was with interest that I followed a link on this subject to an opinion piece by CNN’s national security analyst, Peter Bergen. The title gives a fairly solid summary of the contents. ISIS threat to U.S. mostly hype. ISIS has Americans worried. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a recent Pew Research poll said...

BERGEN NY-- Police have accused a PTA president of giving marijuana and wine to his 14-year-old daughter and her underage friends. James Howard, 42, was charged Thursday with three counts of endangering the welfare of a child and four counts of unlawfully dealing with a child. The longtime president of the Byron-Bergen Central School PTA gave his daughter and two others a small amount of marijuana as he drove them around April 11, said Sheriff’s Investigator William Ferrando. A fourth girl in the car refused to smoke it, he said. After they returned to his home, Howard gave all four...

On CNN, Peter Bergen stated that the terrorist bombings in Boston was "likely right-wing" extremists. Here's the quote: "One of the things that I'd be looking at, once the device, if it is a device, is found, what kind of explosives were used. If it, for instance, if it was hydrogen peroxide, sort of a signature of al Qaeda. If it was more conventional explosives, which are much harder to get hold of now, it might be some other kind of right wing extremists... "We've also seen other extremist groups, right wing groups, attacking, for instance, trying to attack the...

NEWARK — Two New Jersey men intent on killing American troops were arrested Saturday as they boarded flights to link up with a virulent jihadist group in Somalia, authorities said. The men, both North Jersey residents, were charged with conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism through a group tied to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, according to officials familiar with the details of the arrests. Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 26, of Elmwood Park were apprehended at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens before they could board separate flights to...

Two men in Norway have made a splash on Google Streetview by chasing down the internet giant's camera van dressed in full scuba gear and waving pronged forks. Photos show the pair of pranksters in Bergen, south western Norway, patiently waiting in the sun on deck chairs for the Google van to pass by. PHOTOS: Google van ambushedWhen the van finally arrives, the men leap up and chase it all the way down the street waving their forks. Norway's Aftenposten newspaper reports the stunt took place during the country's previous summer as Google vans were photographing the region's roads. But...

****** The conventional wisdom after the fall of the Taleban was that tracking bin Laden down would not make much of a difference to the larger War on Terror. At a March 2002 press conference, President Bush referred to bin Laden as “a person who’s now been marginalised”. In 2005 the CIA even closed “Alec Station”, its dedicated bin Laden unit that had been given the mission of hunting al-Qaeda’s top leaders, and reassigned its analysts and officers to other counterterrorism missions. Senior CIA officials believed that al-Qaeda was no longer the hierarchical organisation it once had been. Although it...

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081207/peggy-noonan-lesley-stahl-and-friends-raise-more-money-wThe purse strings haven’t completely closed for start-ups looking to raise money–even niche Web sites that hope to stay afloat by selling advertising. Wowowow.com, a site launched earlier this year, which targets women over 40, has raised a $1.5 million round led by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group and the Rhime Group. No word on valuation, but I’d guesstimate Wowowow.com’s investors peg its value in the high 9-figure range. The company has now raised $3.1 million in less than a year. The five founders–former publisher Joni Evans, “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl; New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith; ad exec...

Excerpt from interview with Peter Bergen, author of "The Osama Bin Laden I know: Inside the secret world of Osama Bin Laden" by Frank Stasio on National Public Radio. Peter Bergen: "(Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden) had sort of philisophical differences and they competed for money ... they really only came together as the Iraq war heated up and Zarqawi never swore an oath of allegiance to Bin Laden until 2004, two years into the war. So, Colin Powell had, at his famous U.N. presentation, said Zarqawi was the best evidence for this sort of Al Qaeda/Saddam Hussein...