Free Republic

Fighting has flared up again in the Ukraine. The Egyptians are sending soldiers into Libya as another North African state collapses into chaos. The militants of Islamic State are spreading their influence across the region. You’d think Barack Obama might have bigger foreign policy issues to worry about than a small state of 10 million people on the eastern edges of the Mediterranean. But Greece may be about to turn from a European into an American problem. As the game of brinkmanship between the radical Syriza government elected last month and the European Union gets played out, it has become...

Five years ago I was invited to become the chief political commentator of the Telegraph. It was a job I was very proud to accept. The Telegraph has long been the most important conservative-leaning newspaper in Britain, admired as much for its integrity as for its superb news coverage. When I joined the Telegraph had just broken the MPs’ expenses scandal, the most important political scoop of the 21st century. I was very conscious that I was joining a formidable tradition of political commentary. I spent my summer holiday before taking up my duties as columnist reading the essays of...

US State Department reported to say Israelis would ‘twist details’ to undermine negotiations European officials have confirmed that the US State Department cautioned them against providing Israel with sensitive information on the current round of negotiations with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The account came amid vehement denials by the White House and State Department that they had stopped updating Jerusalem on the progress in the talks, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted Monday that Israel was indeed being kept in the dark. The report quoted an unnamed European official involved...

The White House is accusing Israel of "cherry-picking" information that distorts the U.S. position in nuclear talks with Iran. “There's no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There's no question about that,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a press briefing on Wednesday. "We've also been very clear about the fact that the United States is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of...

A former chairwoman of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee says she has left the party to support UKIP at the general election. Harriet Yeo, a councillor in Kent, said she had become "disillusioned" with Labour's stance on Europe. She said she only trusted UKIP to offer a choice on the UK's membership of the EU. But she will not join the party. Labour said it was united on Europe and than an EU exit would "cost British jobs and influence". Ms. Yeo claimed the majority of Labour's shadow cabinet wanted a referendum on the EU, but "are being told to...

Channel 4 documdrama UKIP: The First 100 Days has prompted more than 700 complaints to media watchdog Ofcom since its broadcast on Monday night. The program depicted rioting on the streets after UKIP win the general election, mixing archive footage with imagined scenes. Channel 4, which has defended the programme, has also had 250 complaints. Ofcom said: "We will assess these complaints before deciding whether to investigate or not." UKIP party leader Nigel Farage is among those who have condemned the programme. "Looks like 100 Days of UKIP may well have backfired on Channel 4. A biased, partisan depiction of...

One of Labour's most senior figures has resigned from the party and will be supporting Ukip because of Ed Miliband's failure to offer a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. Harriet Yeo, who was chairman of Labour's ruling body between 2012 and 2013, is so disillusioned with Mr Miliband's refusal to offer a vote that she will be throwing her support behind Nigel Farage's party. She represents the most senior Labour figure to switch allegiances to Ukip to date, although there are suggestions that several Labour MPs are considering defecting.

Republican White House hopefuls have long treated London as a useful backdrop. Ronald Reagan met Margaret Thatcher three times there before he won his party’s nomination (and before she had moved into Downing Street). But this time the parade of aspirants is faster and thicker than before. Staging a London photo-op conveys two messages — it shows foreign policy credentials and asserts the value of old alliances. Both are qualities President Barack Obama supposedly lacks. Visiting the UK is shorthand for a resurgent post-Obama America. In practice, however, London-as-prop is only highlighting the dearth of thinking on both sides of...

Ukip leader will speak at CPAC summit where plastic fetuses are handed out by anti-abortion activists. Nigel Farage will speak alongside some of the most extreme conservatives in US politics Nigel Farage will speak alongside Sarah Palin and some of America's most extreme Right-wing conservatives at a conference in Washington next week. The Ukip leader will share a stage with a host of gun activists, Tea Party leaders and anti-abortion campaigners at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Visitors to the summit are sometimes handed plastic fetuses by Evangelical Christian activists as a symbol of their opposition to abortion,...

Channel 4 was last night accused of anti-democratic ´fear-mongering´ for airing a controversial drama about what life would be like with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. UKIP: The First Hundreds Days painted a highly-critical vision of Britain under UKIP rule, including a country divided by race riots, mass unemployment and a crashing economy. Channel 4 said it ordered the drama - which lampooned UKIP, its leaders and its supporters - as a way of engaging people in politics in the run-up to the May General Election.

Alzheimer’s Breakthrough: Scientists Home In On Molecule Which Halts Development of Disease Cambridge scientists raise prospect of new generation of treatments after finding technique to limit development of biggest cause of dementia By John Bingham, 16 Feb 2015 Scientists have found a method which could potentially stop the growth of Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks, raising the prospect of a wave of new treatments for the condition. A team at Cambridge University, working with partners in Sweden and Estonia, has identified a molecule which can block the progress of Alzheimer’s at a crucial stage in its development. Not only is...

Mohammed Ammer Ali, 31, was arrested in a joint raid by north-west counter terrorism unit and Merseyside police.A man from Liverpool has been charged with attempting to obtain a chemical weapon, police have said. The 31-year-old was arrested following a joint raid by the north-west counter-terrorism unit (NWCTU) and Merseyside police. He was named as Mohammed Ammer Ali, of Prescot Road, Liverpool, and will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday. The charge followed an investigation by NWCTU and Merseyside police, according to Greater Manchester police (GMP). He is accused of attempting to have a chemical weapon in his possession...

Greece is on a collision course with the eurozone’s creditor powers after emergency talks ended in acrimony on Monday night, triggering the most serious political crisis since the launch of the euro. The Leftist Syriza government reacted with fury to eurozone demands that it must stick to the country’s discredited austerity plan, describing the draft text as “absurd and unacceptable”.

Greece's pleas to stop the "fiscal waterboarding" of its devastated economy are substantively no different from President Obama's repeated warnings to Germany to stop bleeding the euro area economy with excessive fiscal austerity. Sadly, the president's reportedly more than a dozen phone calls to the German Chancellor Merkel in 2011 and 2012 urging supportive economic policies in the euro area fell on deaf ears. These calls were not just brushed aside; they were plainly ridiculed as Chancellor Merkel kept telling the media that "it made no sense to be adding new debt to old debt." But -- worrying about one-fifth...

There’s a minor domestic crisis in any family when the fridge-freezer breaks down. Wasted food; no fresh milk; pools of water on the kitchen floor. But for some households, the demise of the washing machine, the tumble dryer or the telly is more than a hiccup – it throws up a major financial challenge. That’s where firms like BrightHouse come in: pop into one of its 291 stores, and instead of having to find several hundred pounds up front, you can replace a busted appliance for a much more manageable £10-£15 a week. Except there’s a sting in the tail....

The Conservatives have opened up a four-point lead over Labour after the biggest surge in their support for two years, a poll has suggested. A Guardian/ ICM poll showed that the Tories are six points up to 36 per cent, only one point short of their result in the 2010 General Election. Labour support fell one point to 32 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats were also down a point to 10 per cent.

REPLACING Trident with a nuclear deterrent dropped from the air would save up to £13 billion for priority defence equipment spending, a think-tank has claimed in a new report. Trident nuclear submarines at Faslane are an “expensive and excessive” solution to the UK deterrence requirements and would have been ineffective even during the Cold War, CentreForum said in its analysis. Instead, the UK’s forthcoming F-35 Joint Strike Fighters – a stealth aircraft bought for conventional missions – should be adapted to deliver a “minimum nuclear deterrent” based upon a stockpile of 100 British built B61-12 nuclear bombs, the “independent liberal”...

Forty years after the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the formerly homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country, violent crime has increased by 300% and rapes by 700%. Sweden is now number two on the list of rape countries, surpassed only by Lesotho in Southern Africa. Significantly, the report does not touch on the background of the rapists. One should, however, keep in mind that in statistics, second-generation immigrants are counted as Swedes. In an astounding number of cases, the Swedish courts have demonstrated sympathy for the rapists, and have acquitted suspects who have claimed that the girl wanted to...

The attack on President Putin by British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond and the laughter and jeering during the intervention by Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov underlines the notion that the West, in general terms, is governed by cliques of incompetent, insolent upstarts who in the private sector would be unemployable. As for Philip Hammond calling President Vladimir Putin a "tyrant" then going on to speak about dictators, then there is one word in response: Resign! Whatever his personal views, which can interest nobody, the British Foreign Secretary is head of his country's diplomacy and gratuitous, unfounded quips like that...

Students Used To Take Drugs To Get High. Now They Take Them To Get Higher Grades 14 February 2015 The use of so-called ‘smart drugs’, bought on the internet, to boost mental performance is rife in British universities. So can we all benefit from ‘having an edge’, or is it just a form of cheating that should be banned? It’s still more than three months until finals, but there’s a whiff of panic in the air of the Edinburgh student flat where I’m having dinner. “Everybody’s feeling it,” says Suzy. Feeling what? “The pressure. There’s just so much pressure.” About...