Free Republic

LONDON— When Poland’s right-wing Prime Minister Beata Szydlo swept to an election victory late last year, one of the first things her government did was remove the blue European Union flag from the backdrop of her news conferences, and leave only the red and white Polish flag. It was a symbolic, patriotic gesture that signaled a more distant relationship with Brussels. At the same time in Austria, more than 260,000 citizens signed a petition that forced the Austrian parliament to open a discussion on a referendum to leave the European Union. Eurosceptics in both countries are now watching Britain’s march...

From the steep heights above Shenandoah, the limits of this square-mile coal-boom settlement are defined by culm banks on one side of the valley floor and the Mrs. T's pierogi factory on the other. Thomas O'Neill, the town's former mayor, stood on his daughter's back deck on Wednesday and pointed out the landmarks: the golden dome of the nation's oldest Ukrainian Greek Catholic church, the smoking cogeneration plant on the far hill that makes electricity by burning the coal waste of the town's mining past, and a low point in the valley - the park where an undocumented Mexican immigrant...

Minutes after the last kick and punch were thrown in a fatal beating in a public park in Shenandoah on a summer night in 2008, the cover-up began, federal prosecutors say. Instead of investigating the vicious beating of Luis Ramirez, police officers of the small borough helped the young men conceal evidence and concoct a less-damaging version of what happened that night, advising the young football players that they "needed to get their stories straight" because the man they had just beaten might die, according to an indictment. The Mexican immigrant's last conscious moments were spent hearing "Go back to...

The Shenandoah police chief and two officers under his command are charged with orchestrating a cover-up in the fatal beating of a Mexican immigrant by altering evidence or lying to the FBI in a hate crimes case against two popular football players. The former Shenandoah High School athletes, 19-year-old Derrick Donchak and 18-year-old Brandon Piekarsky, have now been charged with a federal hate crime, accused of beating Luis Ramirez in a park on a night in July 2008 as they headed home from a party, the Justice Department said Tuesday in Washington. State prosecutors who tried unsuccessfully to win ethnic...

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund has launched an online petition asking for signatures urging the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the death of Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala and bring federal charges against the defendants who were acquitted on most county charges Friday. “There’s a strong federal interest in eradicating the bias that motivated the violence and a fed prosecution is definitely in the public interest,” MALDEF staff attorney Gladys Limon said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Two Shenandoah area teens were found not guilty of the most serious charges facing them in relation to the death...

POTTSVILLE — Two Shenandoah teenagers were acquitted late Friday night of killing illegal Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez Zavala. Brandon J. Piekarsky, 17, of Shenandoah Heights, and Derrick M. Donchak, 19, of Shenandoah, were convicted of simple assault. The Schuylkill County jury also convicted Donchak on three counts of corruption of minors and three counts of furnishing alcohol to minors. The defendants hugged each other after the verdicts were read, and friends and family members clapped. Jurors deliberated for nearly eight hours before reaching their verdict around 10:45 p.m., Friday. The all-white jury of six men and six women began deliberating...