Free Republic

India is a massive market that has great potential. If letting go of Sri Lanka allows China to improve its relationship with India, it will.In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that China appears to have shifted its strategic focus toward Southeast Asia and Africa. China is no longer attentive to South Asian countries in financial trouble as before, he added. Sri Lanka couldn’t secure a $1.5 billion credit line from Beijing, Rajapaksa said. Besides, China has not got back to him on a request to President Xi Jinping for a $1 billion...

Some landlords in Germany are rationing hot water and will turn down the heating as Europe's largest economy battles soaring energy costs due to reduced supplies of Russian natural gas. German real estate company, Vonovia, said it would lower tenants' heating during the night to cut costs. In a statement sent to Insider, the company said the move was designed to "save as much gas as possible," adding that reducing temperatures between 11pm and 6am would reduce heating costs by about 8%. Some tenants in Dippoldiswalde, Saxony, will only be able to take a hot shower between 4am and 8am,...

A major new research consortium has been launched with a year-long, £1.5 million funding package to develop new strategies to tackle future bird flu outbreaks. With the UK experiencing its largest and longest bird flu outbreak this year, with more than 100 farm cases, the 8-strong consortium, headed by a team at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), will look to find new ways to contain avian influenza outbreaks. FluMap Dubbed ‘FluMap’, the project will look closely at how the H5N1 influenza is evolving and how it is finding its way into poultry farms, often via wild birds. More...

Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding 'mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the chains of ‘group-think’), but,...

Former President Donald Trump told attendees at a Friday event in Las Vegas, Nevada, that a "deadly wave of lawlessness" is hitting the United States and fueled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.While speaking at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, Trump pointed out that violent crime has skyrocketed in "every city the radical left defunded the police," proceeding to list crime statistics in some of the country's largest."In Washington, D.C., there was a 35% rise from 2019-2021, and that's low compared to many other cities. In New York, it was up 52%. In Chicago, it was so bad it's a war...

After California Governor Gavin Newsom targeted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with a massive ad buy in Florida, claiming freedom was under attack in the state, DeSantis was asked by a reporter about Newsom’s campaign ad.DeSantis pointed out that the population decline in California is due to “terrible governance,” referring to Newsom’s leadership. For the first time, California saw a population decrease in 2020, and it saw another decrease in 2021. He added:“When families are uprooting from the Pacific Coast to go almost 3,000 miles in search of a better life, that’s telling you something.”DeSantis also hit back at Newsom’s claim...

Explanation: Soaring high in skies around planet Earth, bright planet Saturn was a star of June's morning planet parade. But very briefly on June 24 it posed with a bright object in low Earth orbit, the International Space Station. On that date from a school parking lot in Temecula, California the ringed-planet and International Space Station were both caught in this single high-speed video frame. Though Saturn was shining at +0.5 stellar magnitude the space station was an even brighter -3 on the magnitude scale. That difference in brightness is faithfully represented in the video capture frame. In the challenging...

It’s so predictable, maybe we should start calling it “Gun Control Day.” Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” it happens again and again after a mass shooting, like the one at a July 4th parade near Chicago that killed seven people and wounded two dozen. The professional anti-gun mob – i.e., liberal Democrats and the major media outlets – immediately spring into action and exploit the tragedy as much as they can. As they did this week, they automatically blame guns, renew their calls for stricter gun reforms or dream about completely outlawing the private ownership of guns. It doesn’t matter...

Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time Matthew 10:24–33 Friends, Jesus instructs his disciples in today’s Gospel, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” What is the greatest fear we have? Undoubtedly, the fear of losing our own lives; we fear the death of the body. But Jesus is telling us not to worry about those paper tigers that can only affect the body and its goods. When I am in love with God, when I am “fearing” him...

Warren Farrell, author of the book “The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It,” has found that being “dad deprived” is a leading factor in males’ increased mental illness, addiction, and suicide. He links the mass shootings in 53 developed countries to boys and men who lacked a father figure, and he specifically mentioned six mass shootings that have occurred in the United States in the 21st century. “All six of those mass school shootings that have killed more than 10 people have been done by boys, and all six of them have...

Investigative reporter Julie Kelly from American Greatness joined author Lee Smith on EpochTV.com to discuss the ongoing persecution of the January 6 political prisoners and the Democrat Party’s ultimate plan to arrest President Donald Trump. During their one hour discussion Julie Kelly emphasized the need to expose the top Democrat Party operatives who are behind the physical and mental torture of Trump supporters who have been targeted in the January 6 witch hunt.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Kyiv's ambassador to Germany on Saturday as well as several other top foreign envoys, the presidential website said.

In order to photograph a comet with just your camera, one of the best lenses for astrophotography is a fast lens. A lens with an aperture of f/2.8 or lower is usually preferable. If you are photographing a comet as part of a scene or landscape then a wide-angle is usually best, but you can opt for a longer focal length for deep space shots - just be careful of your shutter speed with longer focal lengths. ...a remote shutter release will also be very helpful to avoid moving the camera with your finger. As it's likely that K2 won't...

President Biden travels to Israel and Saudi Arabia next week — his first trip to the Middle East since entering the White House. And while the president has been eager to criticize a range of his predecessor's policies, he is fully embracing one key pillar of Donald Trump's Middle East policy — the Abraham Accords. Those deals were brokered by the Trump White House in 2020 to normalize relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco. It was a huge rupture from recent history in which Arab nations had made it...

Former President Donald Trump called on drug dealers, human traffickers, and those who kill police to get the death penalty during a Save America rally held in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Friday night.Trump said:So this is a little controversial. And I will either get a standing ovation – and I don’t care about the ovation, I care about the country – or people are going to walk out of the room for what I’m about to say. But it’s time finally to say it. If you look at countries all throughout the world…The only ones that don’t have a drug...

“Did you know that the Chinese [CCP] owns 100 million acres of farmland?" CHARLIE KIRK VIDEO - SEE Charlie Kirk explains why Bill Gates is the largest single farmland owner in the United States and shares the legal approval Gates received to purchase 2,100 acres in North Dakota for $13.5 million. Bill Gates, wins legal approval to buy a huge swath of North Dakota farmland where $13.5 million Bill Gates is buying what is going on in North Dakota. Yeah, that's all the land owned by Bill Gates, by the way. Here’s a breakdown of the ownership land type and...

FBI releases 60 year old files on Nancy Pelosi's father. The files detail a two-month investigation into Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., a Maryland politician who served in a long career in Congress and as mayor of Baltimore, Just the News noted in a Feb. 19 report on the FBI files. An FBI agent wrote on page 14 of the files: "There have been allegations that D'Alesandro has associated with the Baltimore criminal element and [redacted] and the son, Franklin Roosevelt D'Alesandro, had been arrested for rape." The allegations may have been rumor, the agent noted. Agents had written that Franklin Roosevelt...

The state of the economy and inflation have reportedly forced a local law enforcement agency to issue an emergency action order. On Thursday, Ozark County Sheriff Cass Martin signed the order stating his office will not seek traffic violations, and only calls of violent misdemeanor and felony offenses will be answered. Sheriff Martin says the cost of gasoline and other goods and the decrease in revenue forced him to take action. Any crime that doesn’t fall within the guidelines will need to be taken care of over the phone or via a walk-in. The Ozark County Sheriff’s Office can be...

Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced that he will resign after protesters stormed his palace and set the prime minister's house on fire. BBC reported that prime minister and the president were not in the buildings. Thousands gathered at the capital for a giant protest during which the called on the president to resign following what they defined as "mismanagement of the economic crisis". According to the report, the president will step down on 13 July and the prime minister as well has agreed to resign. .....

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — More than 300 employees from five state agencies have resigned since Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Virginia’s new telework policy in early May, according to records obtained by 8News. This includes 183 Virginia Department of Transportation employees, 28 of whom cited “telework options” as the reason for leaving. Two VDOT workers who listed telework as the reason did move to another state agency, records obtained by 8News after filing a Freedom of Information Act request show.On May 5, Youngkin ordered all state workers to begin working in-person full-time by July 5, a change the governor said would...