Free Republic

There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiancés, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl. The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where...

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama gave a speech in Cairo that he referred to as "A New Beginning." In that speech in June, 2009, Obama identified the United States as one of the causes of turmoil and violence in the Middle East. He never said the words, "I'm sorry," but his tone was apologetic as he viciously criticized the Israeli "occupation and the US invasion of Iraq. Yesterday, almost 10 years later, American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave the speech that Obama should have given. It was unabashedly pro-American and identified America as a force for good in...

The United Arab Emirates is re-opening its embassy in Damascus, the Syrian regime said Thursday, in a major public step towards welcoming Bashar al-Assad back into the fold of Arab leaders after years of estrangement...as it has become increasingly clear that Assad is likely to stay in power and prevail over downtrodden rebel forces, Syria’s Arab neighbours have begun moving to restore diplomatic ties with the former pariah. The re-opening of the UAE’s embassy in Damascus would be the most significant public step so far towards Assad’s rehabilitation in the Arab world. The move is likely to have been coordinated...

President Trump’s surprise decision to rapidly withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria is meeting with intense criticism by foreign policy experts, who denounce it as strategically stupid, reckless for national security and a blow to America’s global credibility. But inside Syria, the consequences are even more serious. For one example, 50,000 Syrian civilian refugees living under the direct protection of the U.S. military are suddenly fearing for their lives. For three years, civilians living in the Rukban refugee camp in the southeastern Syrian desert have survived because of the protection of U.S. forces encamped 10 miles away on a base...

In a hotel conference room in Denizli, Turkey, about 60 Iranians sing along to songs praising Jesus mixed with Iranian pop music. When the music stops, American pastor Karl Vickery preaches with the help of a Persian translator. "I'm not famous or rich. But I know Jesus. I have Jesus," he says, with a Southern drawl. The Farsi-speaking Christian converts shout "Hallelujah!" and clap.

CAIRO - Egypt’s Christians are optimistic following the first Coptic mass in Saudi Arabia. Dozens of Coptic Christians attended the mass at a tourist facility in Riyadh. The mass, Egypt’s Christians said, reflects the tremendous changes happening in Saudi Arabia. “It even portends more change in that great country in the future,” said Father Polis Halim, spokesman of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church. “Saudi Arabia is showing an admirable degree of tolerance that gives us a lot of hope.” The story began in May when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz visited Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in...

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Erdogan, Mr Abbas, members of the clergy, foreign guests, friends, Let me congratulate you from all my heart on the opening of Moscow’s rebuilt Cathedral Mosque. This is a big event for all Muslims in Russia. One of Moscow’s oldest mosques stood on this historical site and has undergone reconstruction that now makes it the biggest in Europe. It was given a magnificent modern new look worthy of the capital of our united, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country. This new mosque is worthy of Russia, in which, I want to stress, Islam, under our country’s...

Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that the country will continue to export oil despite fresh U.S. sanctions, which he described as “psychological war doomed to failure.” “We will not yield to this pressure which is part of the psychological war launched against Iran,” he said on state TV. “They have failed to stop our oil exports. We will keep exporting it ... Your regional policies have failed and you blame Iran for that failure from Afghanistan to Yemen and Syria,” he added, to chants of “Death to America!”. Rouhani also said that the U.S. lacked international support for...

So back to the tragic murder of Jamal Khashoggi. My intelligence sources tell me he had worked as an intelligence agent for the Saudi intelligence service, GID, for around 20 years. At one point he was sent by GID to Sudan to meet Osama bin Laden and to try to lure him away from terrorism. He failed. Khashoggi had always been close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the people who took over Egypt under Morsi following the so-called Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Islamist organisation dedicated to the introduction of Sharia and the creation of an Islamic caliphate....

From the window of a helicopter crossing the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the Emirati military base looms into view — an expanse of clay-coloured barracks guarded by US Patriot missile systems. This used to be a quiet corner of Yemen, its palm-fringed beaches reaching for miles. Now Emirati forces have made it a showcase of increasing military might. Once best known for holiday beaches and a lackadaisical approach to tax regulation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have become one of the most powerful and interventionist forces in the Middle East.

At least seven people were killed and at least 19 others were injured in an attack on several buses carrying Coptic Christians near a monastery in Egypt on Friday, according to a spokesperson for Egypt's Coptic Church. Gunmen attacked two buses and a microbus on a road near the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor, in Minya, south of Cairo, the spokesperson said. One of the buses was carrying 28 members of a family that had traveled to the monastery for the baptism of one of its children, six of whom were injured, according to the spokesman. At least seven...

Link only. Cannot be copied due to AP rules.

Turks and Saudis have been enemies for centuries. Now the Khashoggi investigation has rekindled their fierce rivalry—and may upend the politics of the Middle East. Two centuries ago, in the fall of 1818, the Saudi monarch was brought to Istanbul in chains. He was displayed in a cage to the cheering crowds outside the Hagia Sophia mosque, and then, amid celebratory fireworks, his head was chopped off. This gruesome episode in the shared history of Turkey and Saudi Arabia hasn’t been mentioned in public as the two countries have clashed over the Oct. 2 killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal...

Turkey announced the street leading to the new U.S. embassy being built will now be renamed to “Malcolm X Road” after the slain black Muslim civil right leader. According to Bloomberg News, news of the street rename came by way of a tweet made by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s hardline halt to arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may jeopardize a big UK-led Eurofighter order from Riyadh and could hit jobs at a shipyard in struggling northeastern Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been more outspoken than fellow major arms exporters the United States, Britain and France about stopping sales to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggi’s case is cleared up, a stance that a senior conservative ally said could also affect previously approved orders. Berlin is now reviewing all Saudi sales, including contracts approved in September for more patrol...

Was the assassination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald still getting as much media coverage three weeks after his death as it did that first week after Nov. 22, 1963? Not as I recall. Yet, three weeks after his murder, Jamal Khashoggi, who was not a U.S. citizen, was not killed by an American, and died not on U.S. soil but in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, consumes our elite press. The top two stories in Monday's Washington Post were about the Khashoggi affair. A third, inside, carried the headline, "Trump, who prizes strength, may look weak in hesitance to...

The disappearance of Saudi journalist and former kingdom insider Jamal Khashoggi sent shockwaves across the Middle East and Washington. On October 10, President Donald Trump said that the US was “demanding” answers after the writer went missing while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Tuesday. American Senators and congressmen have urged the White House to support an investigation into the missing man’s whereabouts and Vice President Mike Pence has offered FBI support. U.S.–Saudi relations, which have warmed under Trump after being on the rocks during the...

ISTANBUL — His killers were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. They severed his fingers and later beheaded and dismembered him, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official on Wednesday. Mr. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, and within two hours the killers were gone, the recordings suggested. The leaking of such details, on the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was visiting Turkey, reflected an escalation of pressure by the Turkish government on Saudi Arabia and the United States for answers on the fate of Mr....

Over the weekend Donald Trump warned of "severe punishment" if an investigation concludes that a Saudi hit team murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Riyadh then counter-threatened, reminding us that, as the world's largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia "plays an impactful and active role in the global economy." Message: Sanction us, and we may just sanction you. Some of us yet recall how President Nixon's rescue of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War triggered a Saudi oil embargo that led to months of long gas lines in the United States, and contributed to...