Free Republic

Politicians in the United States and Canada are taking steps to remove Russian products, including vodka, from store shelves as Russia continues its military offensive against Ukraine. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) took to Twitter Saturday to announce that he has signed an executive order instructing the state’s wine and liquor outlets “to begin removing Russian-made and Russian-branded spirits from our liquor and wine outlets until further notice.”

A recent exchange between two prominent figures in Florida has exposed a seamy underside of the pro-illegal immigration efforts of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and their connections with Joe Biden supporters. In the early 1960s, a clandestine American effort spirited some 14,000 Cuban children between the ages of six and twelve out of Cuba after Castro seized power. Most of them came to Florida, where they were cared for by agencies including the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami. The effort was dubbed “Operation Pedro Pan” (Spanish for “Peter Pan”). This past February 7, pro-life Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Lt. Gov....

UBS Group AG triggered margin calls on some wealth management clients that use Russian bonds as collateral for their portfolios after marking down the value of debt issued by the country and its corporations. The Swiss wealth manager is calling on some investors to add either cash or securities to their portfolio after cutting the lending value of some Russian bonds to zero, people with knowledge of the matter said. While the sovereign bonds still trade around 50 cents on dollar, and many Russian corporate bonds are well above that, UBS’s move signals it essentially will no longer accept them...

When the Russian army marches through Ukraine, they may just be met a battalion made up of “babushkas.” A group of older women has been volunteering in Ukraine since Russian separatists began conflict in the country eight years ago. During the conflict between Ukranian nationalists and Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, these women have helped move supplies, provide medical care and build a lookout tower. Now, the Russian army has invaded. On Feb. 14, 79-year-old Valentyna Konstantinovska already knew a Russian invasion of a wider scale was a possibility. She said she would not hesitate to fight when it...

Recent weeks witnessed acts of vandalism at Catholic churches and cemeteries across the U.S. While some of the alleged perpetrators were young boys or possibly mentally ill men, police are still investigating several cases of serious damage, including arson at a Catholic school in Ohio. Early on Feb. 24, police in the Norristown, Pa. area found vandalism at three Catholic cemeteries. They were called to St. Benedict Cemetery in Plymouth Township due to vandalism, specifically swastikas painted on headstones. They found more swastikas painted on headstones at Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Conshohocken and at St. Matthew Cemetery in Whitemarsh...

Man allegedly instigated Islamist terrorism while in jail(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 21 - A 43-year-old self-proclaimed imam who allegedly called for the Vatican to be destroyed has been sent to trial in Turin. Bouchta El Allam, who is of Moroccan origin and was detained by Carabinieri police in May 2021, is accused of instigation to commit crimes for terrorism. The trial is set to start in March. The alleged wrongdoing regards Jihadi propaganda that the man alleged promoted during a spell in jail in Alessandria for a drug-related felony between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2021. (ANSA).

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 26 (Reuters) - SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk said on Saturday that the company's Starlink satellite broadband service is available in Ukraine and SpaceX is sending more terminals to the country, whose internet has been disrupted due to the Russian invasion. "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route," Musk tweeted. He was responding to a tweet by a Ukraine government official who asked Musk to provide the embattled country with Starlink stations.

Dominican Republic Bishop Víctor Masalles described some of the international pressure the country faces to legalize abortion and write LGBT 'protections' into law.BANÍ, Dominican Republic (LifeSiteNews) — Legislators in the Dominican Republic “received a warning from the American embassy that if they don’t legalize abortion” and write LGBT protections into law, “they’re gonna be without visa[s],” one of the nation’s Catholic bishops said. Bishop Víctor Masalles of the Diocese of Baní told LifeSiteNews that the pressure the Dominican Republic is facing to legalize abortion is intense. In the Dominican Republic, “the government knows the Congress is pro-life, and that’s a...

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have assured that shortly after 8:30 p.m. they have “neutralized” the Chechen general, Magomed Tushayev. Apparently, he could have been killed near Kiev, in the area known as Hostome. Tushayev He was in charge of the 141 motorized regiment of the so-called Kadyrov guard: one of the most elite units in Chechnya and whose contingent would be made up of about 400 men.

MOSCOW, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia's Chechnya region and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Saturday that Chechen fighters had been deployed to Ukraine and urged Ukrainians to overthrow their government. In a video posted online, Kadyrov boasted that Chechen units had so far suffered no losses and said Russian forces could easily take large Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, but that their task was to avoid loss of life.

BEIJING — As Russia wreaks havoc in Ukraine, Moscow has a powerful economic ally to help it resist Western sanctions: China. Chinese purchases of oil from Russia in December surpassed its purchases from Saudi Arabia. Six days before the military campaign began, Russia announced a yearslong deal to sell 100 million tons of coal to China — a contract worth more than $20 billion. And hours before Russia began bombing Ukraine, China agreed to buy Russian wheat despite concerns about plant diseases. In a throwback to the 1950s, when Mao Zedong worked closely with Joseph Stalin and then Nikita Khrushchev,...

Trump just announced he’s running in 2024…"We did it twice, and we'll do it again. We'll be doing it again a third time."#Trump2024 pic.twitter.com/Y6XH4f6LV5— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) February 27, 2022Hot off the presses in the last 10 minutes. Trump at CPAC.

EXCLUSIVE: ORLANDO, Fla. — Former President Trump warned that Russia’s multi-front invasion in Ukraine could lead to "world war" and told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration is going to have to "do a lot more than just sanctions" to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to ESPN, Rublev, the seventh-ranked player in the world, made the anti-war gesture shortly after advancing to the final at the Dubai Championships by beating Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz. Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev writes “No war please” on the camera following his advancement to the final in Dubai. pic.twitter.com/GQe8d01rTd — TSN (@TSN_Sports) February 25, 2022 “In these moments, you realize that my match is not important. It’s not about my match, how it affects me,” Rublev said. “What’s happening is much more terrible. Given the threats a Russian athlete can face from its government, this is what speaking truth...

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), who has accused Republicans of enabling Russia, took maximum campaign donations from a top lobbyist for Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind an oil transportation project dubbed "Putin’s pipeline." Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, received $2,900 last year from Vincent Roberti Sr., the chairman of lobbying powerhouse Roberti Global. Roberti gave $5,400 to Swalwell’s campaign in 2018. Roberti Global received $2.4 million in 2021 from Nord Stream 2 AG, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Russian oil giant Gazprom. Critics of the 761-mile pipeline have long said it would allow Vladimir Putin to...

NOTE: See video embedded in article. As Western allies levy increasingly harsher economic sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the latest target involves Russia's access to SWIFT. An acronym for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, SWIFT is a messaging system founded in 1973 that allows large financial institutions to send money to each other. The Belgian-based cooperative is used by more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories, including Russia. It handles 42 million messages a day, facilitating trillions of dollars worth of transactions. Russia accounted for 1.5% of SWIFT transactions...

Everyday bravery is on display in Ukraine as powerful video harkening back to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests shows Ukrainians trying to stop Russian tanks with only their bodies. Video filmed in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmach shows unnamed men confronting a line of invading Russian tanks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is “furious” that his invasion of Ukraine hasn’t been “easy” after Russian troops have been unable to take even one major city in three days of fighting, according to a member of the European Union Parliament who said he was citing Ukrainian intelligence reports. “Putin is furious, he thought that the whole war would be easy and everything would be done in 1-4 days,” tweeted Riho Terras, who is also the former defense chief of NATO member Estonia, said in a lengthy thread on Twitter.

A CHEERFUL HEART IS GOOD MEDICINE Proverbs 17:22 A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones. Which came first the chicken or the egg? We may never know the answer to this question, but when it comes to living a fulfilled life, the joy precedes the good feelings. As a matter of fact, the joy is the antidote to the woes of life. Humor is great medicine. Humor helps us to see the big picture. It provides us with a new context by which to view our situation. It gives us a...

During an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) argued that President Joe Biden has handled the crisis with Russia and Ukraine “masterfully.” And that while “We should have provided more to Ukraine,” “that’s not President Biden’s fault, that’s the fault of prior administrations.” Wild said, “I think President Biden has been handling this masterfully. I think he has done an excellent job of both leading and unifying our allies, and I’m proud of that. There are a number of mistakes that have been made over the last decade. We should have provided more to Ukraine, and that’s...