Free Republic

The UK Labour Party has been charged with spewing anti-Semitic sentiments in recent years. In a 2013 speech at the Palestinian Return Center in London, for instance, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the following: Where, then, lies the grievance with Corbyn? At that meeting on Sunday, Jewish Labourites were not opposing the party leader for championing the Palestinians. They were opposing him for, to take one example, his 2013 attack on a group of “Zionists” he’d encountered, where he tackled them not on their arguments but on ethnic grounds, noting that despite “having lived in this country for a very...

LONDON—British authorities charged two men that they believe are Russian military intelligence officers with the attempted murder of a former spy and his daughter in March, an incident that prompted the largest-ever collective expulsion of Russian diplomats from the West. Prosecutors charged the men—named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov but those names are believed to be aliases—with four offenses related to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, who has lived in Britain since a 2010 spy exchange with Moscow. The charges also included conspiracy to murder and the use and possession of nerve agent Novichok. In a statement to lawmakers...

British authorities on Wednesday indicted two men for the March chemical-weapons attack on a former Russian double agent on British soil. The new details add to the evidence that Vladimir Putin’s regime is responsible, but its reckless methods are the real stunner. Police and prosecutors allege the men they identify as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov—almost certainly pseudonyms—arrived at London’s Gatwick airport on Friday, March 2, smuggling the weapons-grade nerve agent Novichok in a small counterfeit perfume bottle. They ferried the chemical on suburban trains and the Tube through central London to a hotel, where nonfatal quantities of Novichok were...

SOFIA (Reuters) — French President Emmanuel Macron ruled out on Thursday any trade war with the United States over its withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal as a wave of European companies quit business with Tehran, fearing the global reach of U.S. sanctions. European Union leaders united behind the 2015 accord, and Brussels announced it would launch a legal process banning EU-based firms from complying with the sanctions that U.S. President Donald Trump has reimposed on Iran. However, corporations face the choice of trading with the biggest economy in the world, the United States, or with Iran, risking sanctions and...

WASHINGTON — America's allies in Europe are plotting ways to bypass President Donald Trump's sanctions on Iran as they work to keep the nuclear deal alive without the United States. With a second round of U.S. sanctions set to take effect in November, European officials are working at cross-purposes with Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign as they try to preserve as much business as possible with Iran. The goal is to persuade Iran's leaders to stay in the deal for a few more years — perhaps long enough for Trump to be replaced and for a new U.S. president to rejoin...

Police have named and charged in absentia two Russian suspects in the novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov flew into Gatwick on an Aeroflot flight on 2 March, two days before the Skripals were poisoned with the nerve agent.

Two Russian nationals have been named and charged over the novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, Wiltshire. British police and prosecutors made the announcement on Wednesday. Police said the two men were travelling on authentic Russian passports under the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov and arrived in the UK on an Aeroflot flight days before the attack. The Crown Prosecution Service said there was enough evidence to charge them.

This weekend, the WikiLeaks Twitter account claimed that cybersecurity expert Arjen Kamphuis went missing on August 20, two days before he was scheduled to fly to Amsterdam. This comes amid concerns about the security of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is about to end his six-year self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Norwegian police have opened an investigation into the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's associate, who was last seen in the northern Norwegian town of Bodo on August 20. ...

British police said Monday that they arrested 131 suspects tied to online child sex offences last week in police raids, and are calling for the technology industry to increase its help in stopping the abuse. Teachers, a children's entertainer and a former police officer were among those arrested in the police raids as part of a massive crackdown by the British National Crime Agency (NCA) and police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Over the course of a week-long operation, more than 200 raids took place and 164 children were safeguarded, the NCA said. The arrests were announced...

After a long, hot summer beset by record temperatures, drought and deadly fires, imagine my shock, on returning to the European parliament, to be confronted with a report that denies the reality of climate change. Some of the claims made by the report’s author, the Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew, are pretty hair-raising. For instance, he claims that the effect of CO2 levels on our climate is “negligible”, and that it is “one of agriculture’s greatest friends”. Agnew claims there is a lack of concentration of CO2 and as a result there is no problem for the EU to solve. So...

Earlier, the former US Secretary of State said that President Trump’s decision in May to leave the 2015 Iran nuclear deal “weakens our security, breaks America’s word [and] isolates us from our European allies.” In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation”, former US Secretary of State John Kerry berated President Donald Trump for having described the Iran nuclear accord, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as the “worst deal ever.” “Unfortunately — and I say this sadly — more often than not, he really just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He makes things up. And he’s...

The war hero who masterminded victory in the Battle of Britain later warned of a new 'terrible menace' the country faced before the UK joined the EU, it was revealed today. RAF supremo Sir Hugh Dowding claimed in 1961 that 'all the unemployables' of Europe would 'invade' Britain if the country were to join the then European Economic Community. Sir Hugh, nicknamed 'Stuffy' by pilots because he was so aloof, added that in doing so, the newly-formed organisation would 'succeed where Hitler failed'

British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has revealed direct links between terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan and cells in both Britain and “the whole of continental Europe”. The Tory MP revealed the threat in an interview with Sky News from Afghanistan’s northern city of Mazeer-i-Shareef. “What we see is a real threat posed by these groups to the UK and we’ve got to be acting as we are to ensure that we do not see future Manchester-style attacks,” Williamson told Sky’s correspondent. “We consistently see terrorist groups operating here in Afghanistan, [and] evidence of their links back not just to the...

2018 was the joint hottest summer on record for the UK as a whole, and the hottest ever for England, the Met Office has announced. It said highs for summer 2018 were tied with those of 1976, 2003 and 2006 for being the highest since records began in 1910. England's average temperatures narrowly beat those seen in 1976, they added. The heatwave saw soaring temperatures across much of the UK throughout June and July. Dry, sweltering conditions for weeks on end gave way to a more average August, said the Met Office. To the nearest 0.1C, all four years -...

So now we know what ‘the resistance’ really is. It’s the establishment. It’s the old political order. It’s that late 20th-century political set, those out-of-touch managerial elites, who still cannot believe the electorate rejected them. That is the take-home message of the bizarre political spectacle that was the burial of John McCain, where this neocon in life has been transformed into a resistance leader in death: that while the anti-Trump movement might doll itself up as rebellious, and even borrow its name from those who resisted fascism in Europe in the mid 20th-century, in truth it is primarily about restoring...

VIENNA - Iran has remained within the main restrictions on its nuclear activities imposed by a 2015 deal with major powers, a confidential report by the U.N. atomic watchdog indicated on Thursday. In its last report in May, the IAEA had said Iran could do more to cooperate with inspectors and thereby “enhance confidence”, but stopped short of saying the Islamic Republic had given it cause for concern. Thursday’s report to member states seen by Reuters contained similar language. It said the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog was able to carry out all so-called complementary access inspections needed to verify Iran’s...

A new NHS-backed treatment could dramatically improve the day-to-day lives of people plagued by severe asthma attacks and who require regular trips to A&E. The new procedure involves a tiny probe that resembles an egg whisk being inserted into the lungs. This emits heat that shrinks scarred, thickened lung tissue, and aids breathing....{snip} ...studies showed it reduced emergency hospital admissions for life-threatening asthma attacks by 55 per cent – and that benefits continue for ten years...

In the summer sky over rural Dorset, a swirling air battle rages. Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes vie for control of the air with Messerschmitt Me 109s, while Stuka dive-bombers plunge earthward, sirens screeching, to attack shipping off the coast. There’s a momentary miscalculation – and a Hurricane collides with a 109, slicing it in half. The stricken fighters spiral to the ground as above them RAF and Luftwaffe pilots, twisting and turning in a desperate mass dogfight, battle on regardless. This is the Battle of Britain, fought not in 1940 but in the present day – and at a...

A giant balloon depicting London mayor Sadiq Khan dressed in a yellow bikini has been launched over Parliament Square. A group of supporters watched the inflatable take to the skies. The crowd cheered and shouted, “higher, higher, higher” as the balloon was launched Saturday. Some wore t-shirts saying “Make London Safe Again”. Organisers had raised more than £58,000 ($75,000) to create the blimp in a protest against Khan’s policies. It was meant as a rebuke to Khan, who had earlier backed protesters’ right to launch a balloon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump as an angry baby during his July visit...

A British Bangladeshi Islamic State (ISIS) follower was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey court in London on Friday after he was found guilty of hatching a terror plot to behead Theresa May in a suicide attack on Downing Street. Naa'imur Zakariyah Rahman had been convicted of planning acts of terrorism at the end of a trial in July after it was claimed he wanted to bomb the gates of 10 Downing Street, kill guards and then attack the British prime minister with a knife or a gun. Rahman's plans were foiled as a result of a joint...