Free Republic

As economists expect another cut in Poland's interest rates, Wednesday, the European Commission has cut its forecast for Polish GDP growth in 2014. "Growth in Poland will slow in the last months of the year due to a decline in exports as demand in the eurozone slows,” the EC says, adding that Poland's economy is also being hit by the Russian embargo on food imports from the EU. The commission has cut its prediction for Poland's economic growth this year from the 3.2 percent it forecast in May to 3 percent. GDP growth in the EU as a whole will...

It’s no secret that Barack Obama wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, although his zeal for the project has often been questioned. Obama’s first action as President consisted of a directive to close the prison, but almost six years later, it’s still in operation — and relatively popular, at least in contrast with the alternatives. Obama has embarked on a strategy to close Gitmo through default by emptying it of its detainees, but there has been one impediment to that strategy. Congress requires the Secretary of Defense to attest that any released detainees pose no threat...

Michèle Flournoy, widely seen as the front-runner to replace Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense, abruptly took herself out of the running for the job Tuesday, complicating what will be one of the most important personnel decisions of President Barack Obama's second term. Flournoy, the co-founder and CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank that has served as a farm league for future Obama administration officials, would have been the first female secretary of defense had she risen to the position. The news of her decision to withdraw was first reported by...

Strasbourg, France • Pope Francis on Tuesday urged European leaders to reject a "throwaway culture" that treats people like "cogs in a machine" too easily discarded through abortion and euthanasia. Francis made the comments Tuesday to the European Parliament during a brief visit meant to highlight his vision for Europe a quarter-century after St. John Paul II travelled to Strasbourg to address a continent still divided by the Iron Curtain. In a highly critical address amid tight security, Francis blamed "selfish lifestyles" and "uncontrolled consumerism" for promoting alienation and indifference to the poor during a time of economic crisis....

Hong Kong moves to clear unruly protest site By Kelvin Chan November 26, 2014, 12:03 am TWN HONG KONG -- Hong Kong authorities began clearing a 2-month-old pro-democracy protest site in Mong Kok district Tuesday, risking confrontation with demonstrators in the neighborhood, a flashpoint for previous violent clashes with police and angry mobs. A total of 80 people were arrested, police said. Twenty-three were detained for contempt of court after police warned them not to interfere with workers and bailiffs enforcing a court order to remove obstructions from part of the protest area, one of three sites in the city...

Survey shows ‘Netanyahu closer to the American people than Obama’ on Iran, says pollster Frank Luntz More than two-thirds of Americans oppose a deal with Iran that would allow it to maintain nuclear weapons capabilities, according to a new survey by American political strategist Frank Luntz. Americans are also overwhelmingly mistrustful of Iran, and consider it to be the country that poses the greatest threat to the United States. The survey, shown to The Times of Israel on Tuesday, the day after US-led talks with Iran were extended till next July, also found an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the...

The United States is preparing to increase the number of troops it keeps in Afghanistan in 2015 to fill a gap left in the NATO mission by other contributing nations, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation. The final numbers are still being agreed, but there will be at least several hundred more than initially planned, one of the sources said. "If they hadn't done that, the mission would have lost bases," the source said. Under the U.S. commitment, described as a "bridging solution" until other nations fulfill their pledges later in the year or the troops...

MOSCOW (CBS St. Louis/AP) — The violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, reflect simmering U.S. tensions over racial discrimination that could undermine the country’s stability, a senior Russian diplomat said Tuesday. The comments by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights envoy, Konstantin Dolgov, were among the sharpest from a foreign official as images of violent protests in Ferguson topped newscasts around the world. The protests came after a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black man, 18-year-old Michael Brown. “The developments in Ferguson and other cities highlight serious challenges to the...

According to the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project, 6.9 percent of K-12 students had parents of illegal immigrants in 2012, while far less — 1.4 percent — of all students were illegal immigrants themselves. Nevada had the biggest percentage of students with parents who were illegal immigrants, followed by California, at 13.2 percent; Texas, at 13.1 percent; and Arizona, at 11 percent. The figures come from a new report that says there were an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2012 (the latest year for which there is data), the same as in 2009. (The...

Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official who was viewed as a front-runner to replace outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, has taken herself out of contention for the Cabinet post. Flournoy on Tuesday sent a letter to the board of directors for the Center for a New American Security saying she plans to remain in her position as the think tank’s chief executive officer,Foreign Policy reported. Flournoy had previously served as undersecretary of Defense for policy from 2009 to 2012, working under both Robert Gates and Leon Panetta. She was viewed as a possible replacement for Panetta when he announced his...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran and the lone Republican on Obama's national security team, has been fired. And John McCain's assessment is dead on. Hagel, he said, "was never really brought into that real tight circle inside the White House that makes all the decisions which has put us into the incredible debacle that we're in today throughout the world." Undeniably, U.S. foreign policy is in a shambles. But what were the "decisions" that produced the "incredible debacle"? Who made them? Who supported them? The first would be George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, a war...

For most of my career in international investing, I had always placed a great deal of faith in Switzerland's financial markets. In recent years, however, as the Swiss government has sought to hitch its wagon to the flailing euro currency and kowtow increasingly to U.S.-based financial requirements, this faith has been shaken. But this week (November 30th) a referendum in Switzerland on whether its central bank will be required to hold at least 20% of its reserves in gold, will offer ordinary Swiss citizens a rare opportunity to reclaim their country's strong economic heritage. It's a vote that few outside...

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. authorities need to tackle a "deep and festering" mistrust in some sectors of the population and examine how race relations affect law enforcement, the U.N.'s human rights chief said on Tuesday. About a dozen buildings in surburban Ferguson, Missouri, burned overnight and police fired tear gas at protesters angry that a grand jury had cleared police officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein at the United Nations said he was "deeply concerned at the disproportionate number of young African Americans who die in encounters with police officers,...

In 1991, Chinese military officers watched as the United States dismantled the Iraqi Army, a force with more battle experience and somewhat greater technical sophistication than the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Americans won with casualties that were trivial by historical standards. This led to some soul searching. The PLA hadn’t quite been on autopilot in the 1980s, but the pace of reform in the military sector had not matched that of social and economic life in China. Given the grim performance of the PLA in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union, something...

Kim Jong-un tours museum of US 'cannibal' atrocities North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has described Americans as "cannibals" after visiting an anti-US museum in Pyongyang By Leon Siciliano, and AFP, video source ITN 2:36PM GMT 25 Nov 2014 North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, under pressure over Pyongyang's human rights record, has toured a museum dedicated to alleged atrocities by US forces during the Korean War, state media said Tuesday. The visit to the Sinchon Museum of United States War Atrocities was aimed at rousing the whole country "to an all-out anti-US struggle," the state-run KCNA news agency said. It comes...

In case you were looking for an actual “war on women” as opposed to some fictional hysteria constructed for the entertainment of daytime cable news soap operas, you might want to take a look at Turkey. The new president of our “ally” in the region near Syria, Tayyip Erdogan, decided to opine on the subject of gender relations this week and he really wasn’t worried about mincing words. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said women cannot be treated as equal to men, and has accused feminists of rejecting motherhood. “You cannot put women and men on an equal footing,”...

The ISIS terror group believes that if it is Allah's will, the organization will take over much of the world. But at the moment, Allah doesn't seem to be on their side. -Analysis-BERLIN — According to the ISIS terror group's five-year plan, the entire northern half of Africa, and large parts of Europe and Asia, should be conquered by 2019. Then comes the rest of the world. It's a ludicrous plan, but it nevertheless remains a firm foundation of ISIS ideology. "Conquer, stay, expand" is the slogan of the Stone Age Islamists. It's time to restore Muslim honor, says ISIS...

The Economist removed a cartoon from an article on its internet edition that has been characterized as anti-Semitic. The cartoon was removed Tuesday from the weekly publication, where it ran alongside an article published on Jan. 18. The cartoon appears in the print edition of the magazine. An editor’s note appended at the end of the article titled “Negotiating with Iran: A Big Gap to Close,” about the difficulties between the United States and Iran over negotiating changes to Iran’s nuclear program, read: “The print edition of this story had a cartoon which inadvertently caused offense to some readers, so...

Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) is one of over 100 non-polio enteroviruses, according to the CDC. For most people infected, it causes flu-like symptoms, mild to severe. It spreads just like the common cold virus, through coughing, sneezing, handshakes, or touching a surface touched by someone with the infection. Over this past summer and fall, the United States, “has experienced a nationwide outbreak of enterovirus D68,” according to the CDC. For most infected persons, it’s just another cold. But “more severe infections can lead to hypoxia, meningitis, eye problems, heart involvement, and rarely paralysis.” This sudden surge in EV-D68 cases is perplexing...

The CDC reported nearly 1000 cases of Enterovirus D 68 have now shown up in 46 states ... Meanwhile the global spread of TB is getting worse. The World Health Organization reported nine million cases of the infectious disease last year—mainly in underdeveloped countries. 1.5 million people died from it. The WHO says TB is now the second fastest growing infectious disease killer after AIDS, and that it’ll take a lot more money to get TB under control. Doctors in Poland took to the internet this week looking for volunteers: specifically, patients with spinal cord injuries caused by a knife...