Free Republic

Australia’s opposition leader conceded defeat on Sunday in a chaotic national election that has left Australia in a state of political paralysis for more than a week, while officials scramble to sort out who, if anyone, actually won the tight race. Vote counting was still underway from the July 2 ballot, but opposition leader Bill Shorten said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s ruling conservative coalition would eventually secure enough seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives to retain power. […] With Shorten’s center-left Labor Party out of the running, just two options remain: Either the coalition will form a majority government...

Cliff Williams has played bass in AC/DC since 1977. By the time the group’s current tour wraps up in September, he’ll have logged nearly 40 years with the Australian rockers. Apparently 40 years is long enough. Williams says his future plans don’t include continuing with AC/DC. “It’s been what I’ve known for the past 40 years,” Williams says. “But after this tour, I’m backing off of touring and recording.” […] “Losing Malcolm, the thing with Phil and now with Brian, it’s a changed animal,” Williams says of the band. As for his decision, “I feel in my gut it’s the...

One in three workers (33 percent) in Germany doesn’t use up their annual leave — and the trade and length of working week play a part. […] The more hours worked each week, the more likely workers are to sacrifice their holiday. Half of those who work 48-hour weeks or more skip their holidays, compared to just 26 percent of those who work part-time, less than 20 hours a week. The other key factor was job security; the more employees were worried about redundancy, the more likely they were to work through their holidays. …

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s popularity has rebounded after the British vote to leave the EU, an opinion poll showed Saturday, reversing a fall in her appeal caused by the refugee crisis. The poll was the second in a few days to suggest a popularity boost for the German leader. Saturday’s poll, commissioned jointly by Stern magazine and Die Welt newspaper and carried out by the Forsa market research institute, showed Ms. Merkel’s appeal up two points to 48 percent. “What’s more, three quarters of CSU supporters now back Merkel,” said Forsa director Manfred Gullner, referring to the southern German affiliate...

Iran said Saturday it will continue its ballistic missile program, after the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that the missile tests aren’t in the spirit of the country’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers. “Iran will strongly continue its missile program based on its own defense and national security calculations,” foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said in comments published on the ministry’s website. Iran’s missile program is not linked to the nuclear deal and does not conflict with the U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the agreement, he said. “Iran’s missile program has aimed at defense and it is not designed...

The black Army veteran who killed five Dallas police officers donned a protective vest and used a military-style semi-automatic rifle in the sniper slayings, officials said, an attack that layered new anxiety onto a nation already divided about guns and how police treat African-Americans. Micah Johnson was killed by a robot-delivered bomb Thursday after the shootings, which marked the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In all, 12 officers were shot just a few blocks from where President John F. Kennedy was slain in 1963. …

The United States last month expelled two Russian officials in response to an attack on an American diplomat by a Russian policeman in Moscow, the State Department said Friday, in a development that was sure to further strain already tense bilateral relations. The officials were expelled June 17, department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He didn’t immediately provide additional information. Kirby said the American was attacked June 6 by a Russian guard outside the U.S. Embassy compound. Kirby said the attack was “unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee.” …

The European Parliament on Thursday (7 July) urged Myanmar to end what it termed “brutal repression” and “systematic persecution” against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi insisted in May that her new government was determined to address deep hatreds in western Rakhine State, where tens of thousands of Rohingya are confined to squalid displacement camps after waves of deadly unrest with local Buddhists in 2012. But Kyi and her administration have been widely criticized for not speaking up sufficiently for the group in a country where nationalists even refuse to use the term “Rohingya,” which...

Iran is hoping to join an international project in southern France that hopes to build the first machine to generate significant amounts of energy using nuclear fusion, which is considered a clean, safe and virtually limitless form of nuclear power. Laban Coblentz, spokesman for the ITER project, said a high-level Iranian delegation led by nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari visited St. Paul Lez Durance on June 30-July 1, where the fusion device is being built. Coblentz said fusion-generated nuclear power has no significant weapons applications.Salehi was quoted by the Mehr news...

When Dallas police used a bomb-carrying robot to kill a sniper, they also kicked off an ethical debate about technology’s use as a crime-fighting weapon. In what appears to be an unprecedented tactic, police rigged a bomb-disposal robot to kill an armed suspect in the fatal shootings of five officers in Dallas. While there doesn’t appear to be any hard data on the subject, security experts and law enforcement officials said they couldn’t recall another time when police have deployed a robot with lethal intent. […] “If lethally equipped robots can be used in this situation, when else can they...

Germans are more satisfied with the EU following Britain’s vote to leave, according to the monthly ARD-Deutschlandtrend poll, carried out by political research institute Infratest Dimap. Fifty-two percent said that membership of the bloc has more advantages than disadvantages; this figure stood at 46 percent on June 24th, the day after Britain’s vote to leave, and 39 percent on June 21st leading up to the referendum. The poll has put the same question to voters regularly; back in 1999, just 20 percent had answered that the advantages of membership outweigh the disadvantages. […] However, Germans are not totally satisfied with...

Police in Lower Saxony have said that sporadic group sexual assaults have been reported at swimming pools in 2016, what they call a “new phenomenon.” […] This type of crime is “notable” because sexual crimes are usually “almost exclusively” committed by people acting alone. In all the instances of crimes carried out by groups — what the police describe as “a new form of criminality” — the perpetrators were not German, police say. …

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that a bill targeting sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws would “undermine the ability of local law enforcement to police their own communities to ensure public safety.” “Senator Toomey”s bill will undermine the ability of local law enforcement to police their own communities to ensure public safety. It would deny millions of dollars of critical community and economic development funding to cities and states that refuse to target immigrant families,” Reid said in a speech on the Senate floor. Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-Pa.) bill, the Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act,...

FBI Director James Comey told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday that he thinks the Justice Department is worried that the 1917 law criminalizing gross negligence in handling classified material is “invalid” and “would be challenged on constitutional grounds, which is why they’ve used it extraordinarily sparingly in the decades.” […] “Do you believe that since the Department of Justice hasn’t used the statute Congress passed, it’s invalid?” (Tim) Walberg asked. “No, I think they’re worried that it’s invalid, that it would be challenged on constitutional grounds, which is why they’ve used it extraordinarily sparingly in the decades,”...

Under an onslaught of Republican criticism, FBI Director James Comey vigorously defended the government’s decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her private email setup, rejecting angry accusations that the Democratic presidential candidate was given special treatment. […] Comey said investigators found no evidence that Clinton or her aides intended to break the law, even though they mishandled classified information. A misdemeanor statute requires the mishandling to be intentional, Comey said. A law that permits felony prosecution due to gross negligence has been used only once in the 99 years since it was enacted — and that was in a...

Senate Democrats sidetracked a $575 billion defense bill for next year late Thursday and threatened to shut down Congress’ work on spending legislation, accusing Republicans of shortchanging domestic programs. The move prompted the leaders of each party to testily accuse the other side of dysfunction. Both parties support the defense measure itself. But Democrats fear that if it is completed and sent to President Barack Obama, they would lose leverage with the GOP for future spending measures financing health, public works, law enforcement and other domestic programs. The Senate voted 50-44 to head off a Democratic filibuster of the bill...

Holding up a copy of the U.S. Constitution to make his point, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that a Republican-introduced gun bill will prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons while not infringing on Americans’ due process and Second Amendment rights. “There isn’t a person in Congress that wants a terrorist to get a gun. But we also want to make sure that we do not undermine those ongoing terrorist investigations that law enforcement is conducting,” Ryan said Wednesday at the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington. […] Ryan characterized the Homeland Safety and Security Act, which House Majority Leader Rep....

Two men were on Thursday pronounced guilty of sexual assault on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and handed probationary sentences. The Cologne court found a 21-year-old Iraqi guilty and handed down a one-year probationary sentence, reports Spiegel. The court said it was evident that Hussein A. had kissed a young woman against her will and had licked her face. […] An Algerian man, Hassan T., was also found guilty of being an accomplice to a sexual assault that was carried out by a group of 15 to 20 men. The 26-year-old told a man who was with the two female...

German firms expect exports to Britain to tumble five percent next year in the wake of the Britain’s vote to quit the EU, an industry survey showed on Thursday. The German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) also revised its projection for 2016 to a one-percent drop rather than five percent growth. The figures were based on a survey of 5,600 businesses that export to Britain following the June 23 referendum in which 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the EU. Britain is currently Germany’s third-largest export market, buying up €89 billion of goods in 2015. …

Scottish school leavers are being squeezed out of university by SNP government policies and the situation will get worse for middle-class children, according to an official report published amid warnings of an impending Brexit funding crisis. Audit Scotland found that a cap on places for Scottish and EU students, imposed so that free tuition is affordable to the public purse, has not kept pace with the increasing number of applications. Its report said this meant it has become “more difficult” for Scottish youngsters to win a place and warned that implementing Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to “widen access” to more youngsters...