Free Republic

The Trump administration is close to striking a deal with Mexico on a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement, analysts said, but thorny issues are yet to be resolved with Canada, the third party in the trilateral pact. Reaching an agreement with Mexico would mark a breakthrough for the administration after a year of roller-coaster talks and tension with its longtime North American trading partners. President Trump has frequently threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, linked the renegotiations to his call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and slapped tariffs on Mexican and Canadian steel to apply pressure to make...

The spasm of Hamas-provoked violence that gripped the Gaza Strip and parts of southern Israel last week has temporarily halted for the time being. According to credible reports, Israel informed Cairo that it would begin targeting Hamas leaders and commanders if Hamas failed to rein in its assorted thugs and gangsters. Hamas heeded the call, and for good reason. Over the years, Israel’s various security branches have developed a penchant for liquidating dangerous enemies who seek to inflict harm on the Jewish State. Hamas is keenly aware of this fact having recently lost two of its operatives – Mohammad Zawari and Fadi...

Millions of people could pour into the European Union from Turkey in “another wave of migration” if the country’s economic crisis escalates into a full-blown collapse, some observers have claimed. Mainstream media periodical Newsweek suggests such a scenario “could have major political consequences” for globalist leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, who effectively opened the EU’s borders unilaterally in 2015 but has been under pressure since the onset of the subsequent migrant crisis and a historically poor performance in the 2017 federal elections. Turkey’s foreign policy is becoming increasingly erratic Islamist leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has eroded the secular...

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster follower denied right to wear colander in ID photos The Dutch council of state has ruled that Pastafarianism is not a religion, denying a follower of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster the right to wear a colander on her head in her passport and driving licence photo. Mienke de Wilde is now considering taking her case to the European court of human rights. The Netherlands’ highest court said de Wilde, a law student from Nijmegen, could not be exempted on religious grounds from a ban on headwear in ...

FRANKFURT, Germany — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia's President Vladimir Putin will have plenty to talk about when they meet Saturday — thanks in no small part to U.S. President Donald Trump, whose sanctions and criticisms over trade, energy and NATO have created new worries for both leaders. The two will meet at the German government's guest house outside Berlin and will give short statements beforehand but aren't planning a news conference, German officials have said. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert has said that topics will include the civil war in Syria, the conflict in Ukraine, and energy questions. Putin...

MEDELLÍN, Colombia — Faced with nearly incomprehensible inflation — 32,714 percent as of Wednesday — Venezuelan officials thought they had a solution: They changed the color of the bank notes and increased their denomination. Then they said they would lop off three zeros. And when that didn’t seem enough, they announced they would cut off two more. The tactics have left Venezuelans like Yosmar Nowak, the owner of a coffee shop in Caracas, convinced that there is no solution in sight and that the government cannot even bring down the price of a cup of coffee, an eye-watering 2 million...

Omarosa Manigault-Newman had a 'six-month fling' with the scandal-mired leader on a tiny Caribbean nation who was ousted from power and put on trial for corruption over claims he stole $16 million from public coffers, DailyMail.com can reveal. [snip] . They spent time on the island where he later built an $8 million mansion, nicknamed the 'White House,' which he is now accused of funding through graft...

It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle. How were the Chinese able to roll up the network? Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the...

Judicial Watch today released two batches, 184 pages and 45 pages, of newly uncovered emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the U.S. Department of State sent and received over her unsecure, non-“state.gov” email system. Five emails contain classified information. Judicial Watch obtained the documents in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed on May 6, 2015, after the State Department failed to respond to a March 4, 2015 FOIA request .. seeking: All emails sent or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her official capacity as Secretary of State, as well as all emails...

Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work. In the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, employees wrote that the project and Google’s apparent willingness to abide by China’s censorship requirements “raise urgent moral and ethical issues.” They added, “Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment.” The letter is circulating on Google’s internal communication systems and...

MANILA – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he is willing to step down if Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marco Jr., son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, replaces him, a presidential spokesperson said on Thursday. Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque announced that Duterte could step down from his post before the end of his term in 2022, if someone more qualified than current vice-president Leni Robredo, who has been critical of the president, occupied the vice-presidency. “He (Duterte) has said he thinks (former) senator Bongbong Marcos is one of the better qualified leaders to succeed him,” Roque said in a press conference.

Russian women suffering domestic violence are being deterred from going to the police since its partial decriminalisation last year, campaigners have claimed after a dramatic fall in reported incidents. The state statistics, released in July, reveal that the number of cases of domestic violence reported to the police in 2017 almost halved since physical abuse became punishable by a fine rather than time in prison. Controversial amendments to Russian law decriminalised some forms of domestic violence in February 2017. The changes mean violence against a spouse or children that results in bruising or bleeding but not broken bones is punishable...

A Muslim man who immigrated from Jordan to the United States was found guilty of participating in an “honor killing” plot — including a plan to kill his own daughter for converting to Christianity — and was sentenced to death by a jury in Houston on Tuesday. Although the “honor killings” were to include five victims, the Muslim father, Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, was also found guilty of murdering his daughter Nesreen’s new husband, Coty Beavers, 28, and her best friend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, 30, reported the Houston Chronicle. Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan apparently was enraged over his daughter’s conversion from Islam to...

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., cited a New York Times op-ed published Thursday, after Brennan’s security was revoked, in which Brennan wrote that Trump’s claims of no collusion were "hogwash," saying the only remaining questions were whether the collusion amounted to a criminal conspiracy and whether the Trump team obstructed justice in order to cover up the collusion Brennan alleged. Burr said that if in fact Brennan had information that proved the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power, he should have provided that information to special counsel Robert Mueller, rather than writing about it...

Verified account @davidjoachim Follow Follow @davidjoachim More David S. Joachim Retweeted David S. Joachim *MANAFORT JURY ASKS JUDGE TO REDEFINE `REASONABLE DOUBT' David S. Joachim added, David S. Joachim Verified account @davidjoachim Breaking via @TheTerminal: *MANAFORT JURY ASKS QUESTION OVER FBAR FILING *MANAFORT JUDGE TELLS JURY TO RELY ON COLLECTIVE EVIDENCE *MANAFORT JURY ASKS ABOUT DEFINITION OF SHELF COMPANY… 2:15 PM - 16 Aug 2018

On Wednesday Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended the company’s decision to put Infowars founder Alex Jones in a seven-day “timeout”. Dorsey said, “I feel any suspension, whether it be a permanent or a temporary one, makes someone think about their actions and their behaviors,” Dorsey said. In the same week that Jack Dorsey is lecturing on “appropriate actions and behavior” Twitter just certified racist New York Times writer Sarah Jeong with a blue check mark. And now this Twitter shut down two top Iranian activist’s pages today.

The United States has confirmed plans to more double the number of troops based in Norway, a move Russia has already criticized as “clearly unfriendly”. The Norwegian Defense Ministry on Wednesday said that the US had recently informed them that they would push forward with a plan to increase the number of US marines stationed in Norway from 300 to “up to 700”. […] When the plans were first floated in June, Russia’s embassy to Norway complained that they contravened assurances Norway gave the Soviet Union when it joined NATO in 1949 that no foreign combat troops would be stationed...

It was Chinese New Year, a weeklong celebration of fireworks and family to scare up good fortune and dispel evil spirits, when the killer went on the prowl again. He picked a young worker walking home, and followed a ways behind. He’d done it before, many times, enough to perfect his technique, but things did not go as planned that winter’s night. His crimes were already notorious and the target realized the danger; she fought back tooth and nail, locked the door, and frantically called her husband. It was then, she said, that her would-be killer reappeared, grinning outside her...

Craig Unger Author "House of Trump, House of Putin" "This book tells the story of the greatest intelligence operations in history, an undertaking decades in the making, through which the Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth."

Shortened title. Full tile: Bleeding-Heart Liberals Bike Through Tajikistan to Prove “Evil Is a Make-Believe Concept” — Are Stabbed Dead By ISIS A young American couple quit their jobs to bike across central Asia. he couple, Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, were posting about their adventures online. Jay wrote that “evil is a make-believe concept” in one of his last posts. The couple wanted to share their openheartedness with all of the people they met on their journey. In Tajikistan they were murdered by ISIS. Both cyclists were found with several knife wounds. ISIS posted a photo after killing the...