Free Republic

In the current environment of weaponised Western sanctions against Russia, and the critical importance of monetary gold reserves as Russia’s ultimate asset, a timely question to ask is where Russia’s gold reserves are actually stored. The location of Russia’s gold reserves is especially intriguing given the ongoing freeze of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves – dollar, euro, pound – by Western powers, and the fact that there is a US Congress Bill being introduced by some senators in Washington DC to try to ‘freeze’ Russia’s gold. At the outset, some clarifications. Most of the gold reserves of the Russian Federation are...

Israel, whose foreign currency reserves have traditionally been made up of Dollars, Euros and British Pounds, will add four new currencies – including the Chinese Yuan (RMB).Israel has added four new currencies – including the Chinese Yuan (RMB) – to its central bank holdings for the first time in the country’s history, Bloomberg reports. Israel’s Central Bank will also trim US Dollar (USD) and Euro holdings in a bid to diversify their foreign reserves.Israel’s foreign currency reserves, which last year exceeded $200 billion for the first time, have traditionally been made up of USD, Euro and British Pound (GBP) holdings....

Two rockets were fired Friday night from Gaza... One of the rockets exploded in an open area in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council. The second rocket exploded in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, and injured an Arab. Later on Friday night, another launch was identified. In none of the instances were the "red alert" air raid sirens sounded. The rocket which fell in Beit Hanoun exploded next to an UNRWA facility which serves as a school operated by the agency. As a result of the launch, one Arab at the site was injured and evacuated to a local hospital.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTfXCLv6nlM

Very few parts of Russian society have drawn more interest than the so-called “oligarchs.” These are incredibly wealthy men with political connections to Putin’s inner circle because, in the totalitarian kleptocracy that is Russia under Vladimir Putin, if you don’t have political ties to Putin’s inner circle, wealth doesn’t bring you power; it brings you a one-way trip to a Siberian labor camp. The first generation of Russian oligarchs emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, whose state control over the economy began to loosen under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, or restructuring reforms. Gorbachev’s successor as president, Boris Yeltsin,...

The war in Ukraine is not only about the future of Ukraine. Both Russian and US leaders are making it increasingly clear that the brutal fight for territorial control inside the former Soviet republic is but part of a larger superpower struggle that will determine a new balance of power around the world. In Iowa to talk about strategies for containing the soaring price of gas, US President Joe Biden termed Russian leader Vladimir Putin a “dictator” who is committing “genocide.” This came a mere two weeks after Biden distressed many of his own staffers by going off-script to invoke...

A supply chain nightmare One in five container ships is now stuck at ports worldwide, with 30% of the backlog coming from China. And Lars Jensen, the CEO of the shipping container industry consulting firm Vespucci Maritime, told Fortune that the full impact of China’s policies will only begin to reveal itself over the coming weeks. “Companies are beginning to panic. The downstream impact is coming, and it’ll be heavy.” John Bree, the chief risk officer at Supply Wisdom, said. “The latest China lockdowns combined with the Russia-Ukraine war is too heavy a burden. The global chaos is going to...

Rogozin said in an interview with Russian state TV that the missiles would be deployed with a unit in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, about 1,860 miles east of Moscow. He said they would be placed at the same sites and in the same silos as the Soviet-era Voyevoda missiles they are replacing, something that would save 'colossal resources and time'. The Sarmat missile is said to be the world's longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of striking a target 11,200 miles away - meaning it could easily strike targets in the US and Europe. Western military experts said the Sarmat...

An hour after a man fired shots indiscriminately in the Van Ness neighborhood on a busy Friday afternoon, Raymond Spencer updated the Wikipedia page for the nearby Edmund Burke School. “A gunman shot at the school on April 22, 2022,” Spencer wrote. “The suspect is still at large.” Police later identified Spencer from Fairfax, Va., as a person of interest in the shooting before announcing that a suspect was found dead that night in a nearby Van Ness apartment surrounded by firearms and ammunition. On Saturday, D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said the gunman fired more than 100...

Opinion polling released just days before Sunday’s French presidential second round vote has put little distance between President Emmanuel Macron and populist challenger Marine Le Pen. A poll released Thursday by the firm Odoxa has Macron and Le Pen just six points apart, with Macron receiving 53 per cent in the polling and Le Pen receiving 47 per cent. According to Odoxa, President Macron is having great difficulties in wooing voters who turned out for other candidates in the first round of the election, and has not been able to attract more than 50 per cent of the voters of...

Frustration is boiling over in Shanghai, as residents increasingly chafe under weeks of draconian coronavirus lockdowns. On Chinese social media Saturday web users fought to share a six-minute video called “The Voice of April.” The footage showed a panorama of the city’s empty streets, while also featuring voices of locals complaining about food and medical shortages that have plagued the metropolis.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a press conference on Saturday he is hoping Asian countries will “change their attitude” towards Ukraine as European countries have done. Zelensky said that NATO not accepting Ukraine as a member was a “gross mistake” and that some of the alliance’s European member states had underestimated the country. He added, however, that Ukraine’s “unity” and “strength” in response to Russia’s invasion “managed to change the attitude of the alliance and the European member states” toward the country.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is leading a delegation of Republican lawmakers to the southern border in Texas on Monday, his office announced on Saturday. McCarthy and nine other Republicans will be traveling to the southern border at Eagle Pass, Texas, in the minority leader’s second congressional delegation to the southern border this Congress, his office noted.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — It’s unknown how long a stay will hold off the execution of Richard Bernard Moore — South Carolina’s first-ever inmate to be put to death by a firing squad — as his attorneys pursue legal challenges. But the issuance of Moore’s death warrant, initially planned to be carried out April 29, has renewed interest in how a state puts in motion its plans to shoot an inmate to death. HOW IS THE EXECUTION CARRIED OUT? The agency spent $53,600 in state funding on renovations, including the installation of bullet-resistant glass between the death chamber and witnesses,...

A conservative school board member fired back at a liberal colleague who tried to silence a parent at a school board meeting on Tuesday in Florida. Bridget Ziegler confronted chair Jane Goodwin at the Sarasota County School Board meeting when Goodwin targeted Melissa Bakondy as Bakondy began speaking, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit his war-torn country on Sunday.

Saturday within the Octave of Easter Mark 16:9-15 Friends, in today’s Gospel, the risen Lord commissions the eleven Apostles to proclaim the Good News to everyone. And this commission to evangelize the people of the world extends to all baptized Christians. To evangelize is to proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. When this kerygma, this Paschal Mystery, is not at the heart of the project, Christian evangelization effectively disappears, devolving into a summons to bland religiosity or generic spirituality. When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that...

Hundreds took part in the march today Saturday 23 April 2022 from Thurland Street to Old Market Square.

The two marsquakes differ in some important ways. S0976a is characterized by only low frequency energy, like many of the quakes identified so far on the planet, while S1000a has a very broad frequency spectrum. "[S1000a] is a clear outlier in our catalog and will be key to our further understanding of Martian seismology," Horleston said. S0976a is likely to have a much deeper origin than S1000a, she noted. "The latter event has a frequency spectrum much more like a family of events that we observe that have been modeled as shallow, crustal quakes, so this event may have occurred...

No one can hope to read all the Covid-19 publishing that is going on around the world. But some information came my way about Canadian Covid-19 statistics available here.By Guy HatchardProponents of vaccination will be deeply gratified to note that at first glance the unvaccinated appear to be taking a beating. Graphs show the unvaccinated outnumber the vaccinated, for cases, hospitalisation, and death. But reading a little further you are informed that the graphs above cover all cases recorded since December 2020—the total cases since 2020.In December 2020 virtually no one was vaccinated, so at the start of this data...