Free Republic

SR 71 pilot Brian Shul suddenly died last night in Reno, Nevada, at age 75, of a cardiac arrest.

JTA - Speaking at a synagogue in Florida, Ivanka Trump assured Jewish voters that her father would “100 percent” move the US embassy to Jerusalem if he is elected president. Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism in 2010 and is married to a Jewish man, called her father, the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, an “unbelievable champion” for the State of Israel and for the Jewish people during a talk on Thursday at The Shul of Bal Harbour in Surfside, Florida, the Jewish Insider reported. “You won’t be disappointed,” she told the audience during the talk, which was filmed in...

Tired of politics? Set aside some time, get a glass of what you like and settle in. Brian Shul is the real McCoy. He crashed at the end of the Vietnam War in Cambodia, with very little chance of survival... and beat the odds. He is funny and informative; he did it and lived to tell the story. There are very few around like him. There are good public speakers, and then there's Brian Shul. He talks about life's choices and outcomes, but laced within his message are incredible stories of his years as an SR71 Blackbird pilot. The SR...

As a former SR-71 pilot, and a professional keynote speaker, the question I'm most often asked is "How fast would that SR-71 fly?" I can be assured of hearing that question several times at any event I attend. It's an interesting question, given the aircraft's proclivity for speed, but there really isn’t one number to give, as the jet would always give you a little more speed if you wanted it to. It was common to see 35 miles a minute. Because we flew a programmed Mach number on most missions, and never wanted to harm the plane in any...

So it was with great surprise, when at the end of one of my presentations, someone asked, "What was the slowest you ever flew in the Blackbird?" This was a first. After giving it some thought, I was reminded of a story that I had never shared before, and relayed the following.

A rabbi in New Jersey got himself arrested after allegedly getting hot under the collar. But now - also hot under the collar - is the orthodox Jewish community of Lakewood, New Jersey. Rabbi Yosel Bursztyn allegedly scuffled with an officer during a traffic stop, but those in the community claim the officer over reacted. Eyewitness News reporter Marcus Solis has the story. The police union says it had no doubt the officer will be ultimately cleared of using excessive force because part of this dispute was captured by the patrol car's on-board recording system. But that's of little comfort...

MALACHOVKA, Russia – Jewish residents of Malakhovka are in shock in the wake of a fire that broke out in the community's historical synagogue. The blaze began around 6:30 AM on May 10th, quickly engulfing this historic wooden construction. Although firemen arrived soon after the fire broke out, it was already impossible to rescue the building. Residents neighboring the Synagogue building noticed that the fire began on the upper floor, where a burglar had penetrated the building. The town's Mayor, the Chief of Police and a group from the Federal Security Service had arrived on site by 9 AM. The...

Malakhovka, Russia: A fire roared through a synagogue in a Moscow suburb early Tuesday, burning down much of the wooden structure in an incident that Jewish leaders blamed on anti-Semitism. The synagogue in the town of Malakhovka, 12 miles southeast of Moscow caught fire at about 6 a.m., and the flames quickly engulfed the entire one-story building. Firefighters were unable to prevent damage to the building's interior and roof. Investigators said there was no evidence of arson, but Jewish leaders such as Borukh Gorin, a spokesman for the Federation of Russia's Jewish Organizations, insisted that the synagogue had been set...