Free Republic

Russia’s Baltic Fleet has reportedly launched live-fire exercises in the Kaliningrad Region with an estimated 1,000 servicemen and over 100 units of military hardware taking part. Russia’s Baltic Fleet has launched the alleged exercises following escalating tensions with Lithuania due to a blockade of Russian transit cargo. “About 1,000 servicemen and over 100 units of combat and special equipment of artillery and missile units will take part in the maneuvers in the Kaliningrad region,” stated the report according to Crimea news. The firing exercises will reportedly be carried out by artillerymen using “Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers,Hyacinth large-calibre guns,...

The recent dollar-denominated financial sanctions on Russia by the United States inadvertently highlight the growing significance of the yuan (RMB) as an alternative currency. Although today’s immediate concerns revolve around the potential for Moscow to avoid sanctions by transacting in RMB, the significance of the emerging US-China currency rivalry exhibits far broader implications. Many countries are reevaluating their commercial and strategic interests, including increasing their usage of the yuan. As a result, China’s effort to internationalize the yuan is seeing increasing success after six years of stagnation. If the US is to protect its position in the world financial order,...

An illustration of the Psyche asteroid. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) If you wanted to do a forensic study of the Solar System, you might head for the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. That's where you can find ancient rocks from the Solar System's early days. Out there in the cold vacuum of space, far from the Sun, asteroids are largely untouched by space weathering. Space scientists sometimes refer to asteroids – and their meteorite fragments that fall to Earth – as time capsules because of the evidence they hold. The asteroid Psyche is especially interesting, and NASA is sending a mission...

Texas Republicans want to hold a referendum next year to decide whether or not the state should secede from the U.S. The party charges the state has taken its right to self-govern and calls for secession. The demand was part of the party platform Republicans voted on at their state convention this weekend, where they also formally rejected President Joe Biden's election in 2020 as legitimate. Under a section titled 'State Sovereignty,' the platform states: 'Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that...

Russian officials have said Ukraine launched missile strikes against three gas rigs in the Black Sea south of Odesa, in an apparent escalation of Kyiv’s attempts to weaken Russia’s maritime dominance. Seven people were missing and three injured after the strikes, according to the head of occupied Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, who said a “rescue operation with the participation of patrol ships and aviation” was under way. The three offshore platforms, the Boyko towers, had previously been seized by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014. Kyiv believes they are used for military reconnaissance and to help assert control of a larger portion...

LONDON (Reuters) -Russia warned NATO member Lithuania on Monday that unless the transit of goods to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea was swiftly restored then Moscow would take undisclosed measures to defend its national interests. With east-west relations at a half-century low over Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Vilnius banned the transit of goods sanctioned by the European Union through Lithuanian territory to and from the exclave, citing EU sanction rules. Russia's foreign ministry summoned Lithuania's top envoy in Moscow to deliver a protest while the Kremlin said the situation was beyond serious. "The situation is more...

What in the world? During her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she would support a lowering of the federal voting age to 16. “Squad” Rep. Ayanna Pressley has also caused a lowering of the voting age to 16 and for the age to buy firearms to be raised to 21. Pressley, a progressive House Democrat, is only one of the many members who have been calling for the voting age to be lowered. When Fox News Digital asked why she believed 16-year-olds were equipped to vote but not mature enough to purchase a firearm...

While a warming climate could spell disaster for countless snow-loving species, an ice-free Arctic artery could also offer critical trade alternatives to the Russian-controlled Northern Sea Route, a new study has found. Climate models indicate that parts of the Arctic Ocean that were once blanketed in ice year-round are now warming so rapidly that they will likely be iceless for months on end in as soon as two decades, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

SALEM, Ore. — An independent group of scientists representing Oregon, Washington, and other western states has signed off on the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old. The Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup on Sunday completed its review of safety and efficacy data and the CDC advisers' recommendation that coronavirus vaccines should be opened to children in that age group. The vaccines now available to children in the youngest age group are the Moderna two-dose series and the Pfizer three-dose series. The Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup is made up of scientists...

VIDEO Democrat pollster Fernand Amandi used to maintain a thin veneer of sanity back when he was a radio host on South Florida radio station WIOD in 2016. At the time he smugly mocked any callers who dared to suggest that Donald Trump had even a slight chance of winning the presidential election that year. Well, we all know what happened and after the election it was Amandi himself who was subjected to a barrage of well-deserved mockery from the callers. After a few months of this, he pretty much went off the deep end into Full Mental Jacket territory...

Sixty years after three men infamously dug their way out of the maximum security prison at Alcatraz Island off the coast of the San Francisco-Bay Area, United States Marshals on Monday released age-progressed images of the escaped convicts. Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris remain wanted fugitives for their June 11, 1962 escape from Alcatraz, where they were serving time for armed bank robberies. The three men spent more than a year preparing for the escape, digging around a metal air vent in their prison cells, until eventually they had cleared enough of a hole to pass through, shimmy...

Bill Nye the "Science Guy" caused a stir on social media when he posted about America’s founding and slavery. "The United States we know today was built with the labor of enslaved Black Americans," he said on Sunday, June 19, which is federally recognized as Juneteenth.

Former President Trump isn’t sure if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, but he says he’s confident that he would beat him if he does. “I don’t know if Ron is running, and I don’t ask him,” Trump told The New Yorker in an interview. “It’s his prerogative. I think I would win.”

For adults with sepsis who are receiving vasopressor therapy in the intensive care unit (ICU), intravenous vitamin C is associated with an increased risk for a composite of death or persistent organ dysfunction at 28 days, according to a study published online June 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with the annual Critical Care Reviews Meeting, held from June 15 to 17 in Belfast. François Lamontagne, M.D., from the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada, and colleagues conducted a trial in which 872 adults with sepsis who were receiving vasopressor therapy in the ICU were randomly assigned...

Almost exactly a decade ago, Mario Draghi, then the president of the European Central Bank, promised to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro from destruction. At the time, Greece was on the verge of stumbling – or being frogmarched – out of the euro zone; Italy, the region’s third-largest economy, was so mired in debt that it, too, seemed a candidate for departure. Today, Mr. Draghi is Prime Minister of highly indebted Italy, just as a fresh euro-zone crisis may be around the corner. Inflation in Italy and the rest of the euro zone has reached painful levels,...

Instead of drilling and processing oil here in the state, California, with enormous energy reserves, has emerged as the largest U.S. importer of energy and oil, much of it from Saudi Arabia and, before that, Russia. It’s not just oil workers being displaced, but other blue collar industries—manufacturing, construction, energy—that have traditionally employed ambitious, upwardly mobile working-class people of all races. Governor Newsom has expanded credits for entertainment, a key source of progressive support, but most industries have not been so lucky. Since 2008, California has created five times as many low-wage as high-wage jobs and has the nation’s highest...

Sen. Rand Paul refused to speak Thursday with a federal judge whose son was shot by a man who ambushed their New Jersey home almost two years. US District Judge Esther Salas, whose 20-year-old son, Daniel, was killed in the attack, carried out by a disgruntled attorney who had appeared before her in court, tried to stop the Kentucky Republican outside a hearing. She wanted to persuade him to stop blocking legislation that would prohibit the publication of the private information of federal judges, such as home addresses, vehicle information and other data that could put them at risk of...

U.S.—Americans are facing yet another basic necessity shortage under the Biden Administration. This time a tampon shortage has struck the nation and caused many women to wonder what they will do when they run out of their essential feminine product. "Hey, I have an idea to address the shortage," said one state official. "Why don't we just empty all those tampons from the men's room that no one's using?" The idea helped alleviate the crisis, but the state official was soon fired for discrimination against trans people. In their desperation to find tampons, some women have resorted to entering the...

President Joe Biden snapped at a reporter Monday after she asked about fears of an economic recession. The president spoke to reporters on the beach on Monday morning as he spent time with his family for the Juneteenth holiday. One reporter asked about a growing number of economists voicing concerns that a recession was more likely than ever. “Not the majority of them aren’t saying that, c’mon, don’t make things up, ok?” He snapped. “Now you sound like a Republican politician.” “I’m joking, that was a joke,” he added.

Tesla has laid off both the President of its LGBTQ+ community and a lead involved in diversity and inclusivity programs at the company. While they were let go as part of a broader wave of layoffs, it comes amid several comments Tesla CEO Elon Musk made, concerning what he describes as the “woke mind virus.” Earlier this month, we reported on Musk telling Tesla executives in an email that they need to cut 10% of the workforce and pause hiring due to having a “super bad feeling” about the economy. Later, the CEO has decided to clarify the Tesla layoffs...