Free Republic

A series of scandals has blighted Denmark's Armed Forces at a time when the Scandinavian country and member of the NATO alliance is building up its defenses, chiefly as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The events have so far led to the dismissal this week of Denmark’s top military chief, Gen. Flemming Lentfer, who failed to inform the defense minister about an incident on the frigate HDMS Iver Huitfeldt last month while deployed to the Red Sea, where it was part of a U.S.-led operation to defend commercial shipping against Houthi militants. On Thursday, a technical error onboard...

Ukraine claimed “another unbelievable success” on Tuesday morning, stating it had shot down six ‘hypersonic’ missiles over Ukraine overnight, stating that the damage on the ground in Kyiv this morning was caused by falling missile debris. Six Kinzhal (Dagger/Killjoy) ‘hypersonic’ missiles were shot down over Ukraine overnight, as well as nine cruise missiles, three ballistic missiles, six suicide drones, and three reconnaissance drones, the Ukrainian government claimed Tuesday morning.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash has been shipped from Russia to Venezuela, providing a lifeline to the South American country as U.S. sanctions limit its access to the global financial system. A total of $315 million of U.S. dollar and euro notes were sent in six separate shipments from Moscow to Caracas from May 2018 to April 2019, according to data reviewed by Bloomberg from ImportGenius, which compiled Russian customs records it obtains through private sources. ...As a consequence of the scrutiny, the central bank is conducting more transactions in cash, sometimes offering local clients access to euro...

An analysis of ancient DNA from a 24,000-year-old Siberian skeleton generates a new model for the original peopling of the Western Hemisphere. Native Americans may not have descended from East Asians who crossed the Bering Land Bridge more than 15,000 years ago, according to a new genomic analysis of a millennia-old Siberian skeleton. A portion of the nuclear DNA recovered from the upper arm bone of a 4-year-old boy that was buried near the Siberian village of Mal’ta about 24,000 years ago is shared by modern Native Americans and no other group. But the boy appears to have been descended...

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and France's general consul in Jerusalem signed an agreement, Sunday, under which the government in Paris will contribute 10 million Euros to the PA budget. The two sides said, in a joint announcement, that the agreement "reflects a French decision to contribute to a solution of the economic crisis..."

PARIS — The call to Vincent Grandil’s Paris law firm began like many others that have rolled in recently. On the line was the well-paid chief executive of one of France’s most profitable companies, and he was feeling nervous. President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. “Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil. The lawyer’s counsel: Wait and see. For now, at least. “We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether...

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

SNIPPET: "A gunman threatened to detonate a car bomb and claimed links to al-Qaida while robbing an American Express office on the Magnificent Mile this afternoon, police said. About 4:20 p.m., a man approached a female employee in the American Express travel service office at 605 N. Michigan Ave. at first trying to buy euros and showing her a gun in his waistband as he demanded money, said Near North District Captain Leo Crotty." SNIPPET: "The man, described as 6 feet tall, 200 pounds and possibly of Middle Eastern descent, went on to instruct all the office employees they had...

MILAN (AFP) – Italy has a record public debt of 1.813 trillion euros, an increase of 0.8 percent in a month, the Bank of Italy warned on Monday, three weeks after the centre-right government acted to cut overspending. In March, the figure stood at 1.797 trillion euros (2.2 trillion dollars), the central bank said when issuing data for April, without indicating the percentage of gross domestic product that the latest figure represents. Last year public debt reached 115.8 percent of GDP, and it is forecast to rise to 118.4 percent this year. In a bid to clean up public finances...

In one of the many new age music albums, there is a song called "Fly Away" and the constant refrain is "Fly Away, Fly Away, Fly Away," and the refrain really describes what you can do with this new invention. The catch is of course with this, you can only fly away in your imagination. TFT INSTRUMENTS Company has designed a new flight simulator that can be used for entertainment (with both movie studio sets/movie productions), airports, and shopping centers.

Morgan Stanley has warned that the Greek debt crisis is setting off a chain of events that may prompt German withdrawal from the eurozone, with grim implications for investors caught off-guard. Greeks rush to test their luck in the Joker lottery with its ?19m jackpot as the country's borrowing rate shot up again above 7pc. "The backstop package for Greece and the ECB's climb-down on its collateral rules set a bad precedent for other euro area states and make it more likely that the euro area degenerates into a zone of fiscal profligacy, currency weakness, and higher inflationary pressures over...

From the WSJ: LONDON—The yield on Greek 10-year bonds rose to nearly 7.6% Thursday, a fresh record high, increasing chances that Greece may need a bailout as concerns about Greek banks and the nation's solvency mount. Note that Greece's deficit this year as a percentage of GDP is about equal to ours in the United States. Note also that our Ten Year is trading 3.84% this morning. If it blows wide as Greece's did, it's too late. I know I'm sounding like a broken record on this, but...... Washington, listen up - our debt ratios may look "better", but only...

If he rages naked at his aides it’s because he can do nothing about anything that matters In the old days, I used to wake up to the morning paper, neatly folded on a silver salver and presented by my valet along with the kedgeree and the brace of grilled quail. Now I wake up to an inbox of Internet stories forwarded by readers that cumulatively feel like the front page from some bizarro kingdom cooked up for an unpersuasive dystopian satire. For example, a headline from the Washington Examiner: “Transsexual Cabaret Performer Vomits on Susan Sarandon.” An accident? Or...

What is it about Americans? Change terrifies us. Even little changes. We fought the introduction of ZIP codes. We resisted direct dial telephony. We battled fluoridated water -- some fight still -- as a communist plot. What's our problem? Just plain crazy? Or are we so self-satisfied, do we really believe our present reality, whatever it happens to be, so wonderful that any conceivable derivation from the status quo would be, by definition, a decline? Do we really believe that? We are able to adopt certain new things. Everyone in America picked up a cell phone easily enough. There was...

The Presidency of the Council of the EU closely followed the course of the Presidential elections held on 12 June 2009 and notices Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected for the second term as the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Presidency is concerned about alledged irregularities during the election process and post-electional violence that broke out immediately after the release of the official election results on 13 June 2009. The Presidency hopes that outcome of the Presidential elections will bring the opportunity to resume the dialogue on nuclear issue and clear up Iranian possition in this regard. The...

The Times interviewed Paul Oquist, D’Escoto’s senior adviser for the conference, who sat beneath portraits of Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, among others. While meaningless United Nations hand-wringing over the North Korean nuclear weapons program garners the headlines, the world body is moving ahead with a global conference to lay the groundwork for world government financed by global taxes. The communist head of the U.N. General Assembly is leading the effort, but he is getting crucial support from "progressive" economists who advise the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party. The United Nations...

"We accept euros," say signs in the windows of several Manhattan retailers. The Continental currency is up 14% against the dollar the past 12 months. Measured against a basket of currencies of big economies, the dollar is at a 25-year low. The pendulum may be about to swing the other way, however. Europe's growth rate is expected to sputter to 1.7% this year from 2.6% in 2007. If the European central bank cuts interest rates to kick-start the economy, the dollar will benefit. Foreign direct investment into the U.S. is also increasing the demand for dollars; it rose 62% in...

The euro has suffered its sharpest drop in four years as a blizzard of weak data from Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain spark fears that economic contagion may be spreading from the Anglo-Saxon world to Europe. Spain's business federation warned that Spanish unemployment will rise by 500,000 by the summer unless the government takes "valiant measures" to offset the housing and construction crash. "For every dwelling not built, two workers will lose their jobs," said the group's president, Gerardo Diaz Ferran. The country's credit group ASNEF said the volume of personal loans had dropped 30pc in the first quarter, the...

The fallout in Germany from exposure to America's subprime crisis may be far bigger than previously feared. One major newspaper puts estimated losses at a whopping 70 billion euros, while a prominent politician warns that the US recession has already arrived in Germany. German banking executives fear the current financial crisis is quickly shaping up to be the worst since 1929. Friday, Bild newspaper cited banking insiders who predict that total losses at German banks from the American subprime mortgage loan crisis could hit the €70-billion ($111 billion) mark. The paper reports that Germany's banking supervisory authority BaFin has calculated...

CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA has decided to sign some oil contracts in euros in the face of a plummeting dollar, local media reported, citing officials. "There are some contracts in euros, contracts for crude, products and spot markets in euros. This is a subject which we are working on," said energy minister and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) chief, Rafael Ramirez, in an interview with the journal El Universal published Friday. It remained unclear which oil sales would require payment in euros. Venezuela, Latin America's leading petroleum producer, has previously backed Iran's proposals for OPEC to abandon...