Free Republic

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala puts it bluntly: “Venezuela has become hell.” The photographer had just returned from one of his latest trips to the South American nation when he talked to TIME, and he was visibly affected by the chaos he had witnessed there. “There’s a complete collapse of society,” he said. Once an example for the continent, Venezuela is now a country in freefall. “It’s hard to find food, there’s no medicine,” said Ybarra Zavala. “If you have to have surgery, you need to bring everything with you: the bandages, the gloves, everything. There are no anesthetics.” Ybarra Zavala was...

The Orlando gay club gunman's father has well-known anti-American views and is an ideological supporter of the Afghan Taliban. A new message posted by the father on Facebook early Monday morning also makes it clear he could have passed anti-homosexual views onto his son. Seddique Mir Mateen, father of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen, who died in a shootout with police after killing at least 49 people early Sunday morning, regularly attended Friday prayers at a Florida mosque with his son. Seddique Mateen hosts a program on a California-based satellite Afghan TV station, aimed at the Afghan diaspora in the in...

During a brief interview on MSNBC, Clinton said she was "eager" to speak to authorities and "pleased to have the opportunity" to assist the Justice Department. Clinton would not say, however, if she has been told whether or not charges would be filed against her. "I am not going to comment on the process," she told Chuck Todd, just hours after she was interviewed by the FBI. "I have no knowledge of any timeline," she added. "This is entirely up to the department." Clinton reiterated that she never sent or received material marked classified on her private server. "I'm going...

With insurers struggling to make money and access to plans severely limited, top South Carolina health officials warn the Obamacare health insurance marketplace is on the verge of collapse. Obamacare was supposed to create a competitive platform for customers to shop for coverage. But in most South Carolina counties, HealthCare.gov more closely resembles a monopoly dominated by the largest private health insurance company in the state - BlueCross BlueShield. Without reform, health officials say the entire system is in jeopardy. "The way it's going right now, it's probably going to implode in the next year or two," said Dr. Pat...

Hillary Clinton, courting young voters and the broader Democratic base, has promised to one-up President Obama on climate change, vowing to produce a third of the nation's electricity from renewable sources by 2027, three years faster than Mr. Obama, while spending billions of dollars to transform the energy economy. A half-billion solar panels will be installed by 2020, she has promised, seven times the number today, and $60 billion will go to states and cities to develop more climate-friendly infrastructure, such as public transportation and energy-efficient buildings. She would put the United States on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...

NO DOUBT it's difficult to refuse a visit with a former president of the United States. Still, Attorney General Loretta Lynch should have found a polite way to excuse herself when Bill Clinton dropped by her airplane, parked next to his at a Phoenix airport Monday. Given that Ms. Lynch has ultimate responsibility for the federal investigation related to Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state. Our view of the matter, stated in previous editorials and supported by a fair reading of the law and publicly available evidence, is that Ms....

Mexico's air force has been flying tons of grain into Oaxaca state in the south of the country to deal with dwindling food supplies caused by roadblocks set up by protesting teachers. Last month, eight people were killed in Oaxaca in clashes between the demonstrators and police. The protesters oppose reforms that allow the federal authorities to remove teachers who fail evaluation exams.

The Fourth of July holiday is Monday, and if the long holiday weekend is anything like previous years, it could be one of the most violent of the summer. The total number of Chicago shootings rises significantly during the summer months ­- - June, July and August. Those three months have the most shootings per month of the year from 2012 to 2015 combined, the years the Tribune has tracked the data. June, the lowest of the summer months, has a total of 1,137 shootings from 2012 to 2015, which is nearly 150 more than the nearest month, May.

A long-awaited report on the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi details an array of bureaucratic miscues and inter-agency blunders but does not specifically blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for events that led to the deaths of four Americans. One section of the report seems to allege that U.S. officials fundamentally misunderstood who their allies were at the time. The report found that 35 Americans were saved not by a "quasi-governmental militia" as previous reports concluded, or even a group the U.S. saw as allies. Instead, the report determines that the Americans were saved by the "Libyan Military Intelligence,"...

President Obama signed a bill into law Wednesday that places stronger regulations on chemicals present in nearly every product Americans use, including detergents, clothing, paint thinners, cleansers and automobiles. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act passed by Congress early this month in a rare bipartisan vote. It updates the Toxic Substances Control Act, which had not been reauthorized since the Ford administration in the mid-1970s. The new law gives the Environmental Protection Agency more oversight and stronger tools to monitor chemicals that in some cases could cause cancer and other health problems in adults and...

Eleven people were killed and at least 42 more - including a 3-year-old boy - were wounded in shootings across the city between Friday evening and early Monday, according to Chicago Police. The most recent homicide happened early Monday on the South Side. A 22-year-old man was shot in the back about 1:30 a.m. and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he later died. About 1:30 p.m., someone used a high-powered assault rifle to kill a 17-year-old boy outside a Catholic church in the Back of the Yards neighborhood during Sunday Mass. The boy was walking outside Holy Cross Church...

Police in the Afghan capital have told foreigners living outside protected compounds to travel with guards, after the kidnapping of an Indian aid worker last week added to a growing sense of insecurity in Kabul. The push is for the safety of residents, said Fraidoon Obaidi, chief of the Kabul police Criminal Investigation Department. "All foreign citizens and their offices in Afghanistan are terrorists' targets ... the kidnapping and criminal threat is very serious," he told Reuters. "This will be prevented only if they use security guards and escorts."

A second flight recorder with information on crashed EgyptAir Flight MS804 has been retrieved, Egyptian investigators said on Friday. The Egyptian investigation committee said preparations were under way to transfer the two flight recorders to Alexandria where they will be received by an official from the general prosecutor's office and investigators.

Dayton-based Premier Health is seeking an average 40 percent premium increase next year for the health plans its sells on Ohio's federally-run health insurance marketplace, while the area's largest marketplace insurer, CareSource, has proposed an average rate hike of about 14 percent, based on the latest rate filings with the Ohio Department of Insurance. Of the more than 266,000 Ohioans who signed up for marketplace plans by the end of open enrollment for 2016, about 88 percent, or nearly 235,000 consumers, were eligible to receive premium tax credits, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Islamic State's "terrorism capacity and global reach" have not been reduced, the director of the CIA said on Thursday, adding that the group has tens of thousands of fighters around the world, far more than al Qaeda had at its height. "Despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group's terrorism and global reach," Brennan testified. "We judge that ISIL is training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks," Brennan said, days after a gunman, who expressed allegiance to Islamic State, killed 49 people in Orlando, Florida.

Scientists from San Diego and a dozen countries around the world are gathered at the University of San Diego this week to share their latest research. Among some of the major topics at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference are climate change, heat waves and ocean acidification. Geophysicist Peter Ward, who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey for nearly three decades, discussed warming global temperatures during his Wednesday session. "There's a very interesting correlation between warming and volcanism at the end of the last ice age," Ward said. He said the past two years of record warmth...

UNICEF says most of the children migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy this year were unaccompanied by adults, making them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The children's agency says 92 percent of some 7,600 children who made the dangerous and often deadly crossing between January and May were unaccompanied minors. Spokeswoman Sarah Crowe told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that most were boys aged 15 to 17, and came from Somalia, Nigeria and Eritrea. She said boys and girls have faced prostitution, pedophilia rings and gangsterism.

A portrait of the Orlando gunman's wife began emerging on Tuesday, the day NBC News sources said she knew about the attack at the gay nightclub and tried to stop it. Noor Zahi Salman, 30, grew up in Rodeo, California, about 45 minutes away from San Francisco, is cooperating with the FBI but could still face criminal charges. On Tuesday afternoon, three FBI agents visited her childhood house between 3 and 4 p.m., and where her mother still lives with her 14-year-old sister, an FBI spokesperson confirmed to NBC News. The agents, who were in plainclothes rather than FBI jackets,...

SYDNEY, Australia - Australian researchers say rising sea levels have wiped out a rodent that lived on a tiny outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef, in what they say is the first documented extinction of a mammal species due to human-caused climate change. The rodent was known to have lived only on Bramble Cay, a minuscule atoll in the northeast Torres Strait, between the Cape York Peninsula in the Australian state of Queensland and the southern shores of Papua New Guinea. The long-tailed, whiskered creature, called the Bramble Cay melomys, was considered the only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier...

AMARILLO, TX (KFDA) - The Amarillo Police Department is reporting an active situation at the Amarillo Walmart at 4215 Canyon Drive. Early reports indicate an armed man is inside the store. APD and several other agencies including DPS, Amarillo Emergency Management and Randall County are on scene. There are unconfirmed reports of a possible hostage situation. Police are searching for a Somalian man wearing Kakhi pants.