Free Republic

Kramatorsk (Ukraine) (AFP) – The daily strikes on residential areas in eastern Ukraine have raised sensitive questions about military personnel deploying in civilian areas, as well as the activities of local informants. AFP has visited many villages and towns in the Donetsk region, which Russian troops are trying to capture, where civilian areas with no apparent military significance are regularly being attacked. In Pokrovsk, 85 kilometres (53 miles) to the south of Kramatorsk, the main city in the Ukrainian-held part of the region, a strike destroyed or damaged a dozen homes on a single street last week. There have been...

“And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing!’ He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’” (Matthew 8:25–26). Sometimes God has to bring us to a point of desperate need before He can get us to turn to Him. That’s what happened to the disciples when the storm was about to swamp their boat. They had no other human solutions for their emergency and had to come to Jesus with their need. If He could cleanse lepers and heal every other sort of disease, maybe He could control...

... Japan became a financial hub for the church, which taught Japanese believers they needed to atone for their country's wartime occupation of Korea. "They allocate different roles to each country intentionally," said Hotaka Tsukada, an associate professor of the sociology of religion at Joetsu University of Education. "They have (sales) manuals to exploit believers," he told AFP. The church offered "spiritual sales" of exorbitantly priced goods including a 43-million-yen ($350,000) statuette, which Japanese believers were told would absolve them or their ancestors. Huge outlays by members led to a backlash. Japan's National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales says...

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A recent University of Chicago Institute of Politics poll showed that a majority of Americans think our government is corrupt and rigged against them. And almost a third of respondents also feel it may eventually be necessary to take up arms against the evil empire currently running the show. Subtract from that poll the bleeding-heart libs who think feelings matter more than facts, and the numbers are scarier still. Big Government, including their toadies in the mainstream media, has clearly blown its cover. And it appears, based on this poll, that the American people are mad as hell and not...

A deluge of outside PAC money is saturating two of Washington’s top congressional primaries, aimed at helping Republican Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse survive their votes to impeach then-President Donald Trump last year. More than $3.4 million — fueled in part by hidden donors — has been spent in the past few weeks backing the incumbents and targeting their Trump-endorsed challengers, Joe Kent and Loren Culp, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The cash influx comes at a high-stakes moment for Republicans, and the country, as voters choose whether to oust two representatives who broke with most of...

Khereson

Russia's Defense Ministry on Friday claimed that at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed after U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) were used by Ukrainian armed forces to strike occupied territory in the Donbas, and hit a Russian detention center. A Ukrainian defense official denied the claims and told Fox News Digital it was likely a "brutal execution of POWs." The official said they have "99 percent certainty that this was a Russian strike." Ukraine’s defense ministry is still collecting information on the incident and the official was unable to verify the number of captive Ukrainian soldiers...

The Babylon Bee: Fake News You Can Trust. -The Babylon Bee’s Self-Description The satirical site, the Babylon Bee (the Bee) has been fact-checked, criticized and and/or censored by Facebook, Twitter, Mailchimp, Snopes, Politifact, the New York Times and Slate on numerous occasions. This is literally incomprehensible since the Bee explicitly represents itself as a satirical “fake news” site. One cannot “fact-check” a joke. Why then do so many “liberal” sites insist on fact-checking explicit non-factual satire? One might think the answer is simple: Liberals, like everyone else, just don’t like to be made the butt of humor. However, this cannot...

NEW YORK – China’s exports to the largest economies of the Global South have nearly doubled from pre-Covid levels to a seasonally-adjusted US$70 billion in June 2022 from $38 billion in June 2019. Several factors have impelled the surge in Chinese exports, but the most important impulse comes from China’s strategic investment in digital and physical infrastructure, ranging from broadband networks in Indonesia and Brazil to power plants in Turkey and railways in Southeast Asia. As Western nations question the benefits of globalization, China has become the world’s leading globalizer. What I called “China’s plan to Sino-form the world” in...

My colleague Michael Bender wrote this week about the deepening rivalry between Donald Trump and Mike Pence, onetime partners and political allies. The two men became estranged after Pence declined to support Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021. That same day, the mild-mannered Indianan hid from a mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as it stormed the Capitol after being egged on by the president. This week, they made dueling appearances in Washington and things did not go well for Pence. He drew a small, polite crowd at a gathering of the Young America’s Foundation...

It's pretty sad when Garland is the most qualified cabinet member. That “President” Biden’s administration is the most inept, counterproductive, outright laughable in post-World War II American history is beyond question. One hardly needs to list out all the failures, missed goals and broken promises that we’ve suffered through in the last two years. From generationally high inflation to skyrocketing energy prices to product shortages to rampant illegal immigration, Biden’s pathetic collection of Keystone Kops advisors and operatives could not have done a better job of destroying American culture, ruining the economy, gutting our defenses, and robbing us of international...

For much of the last two years, the Missouri Senate has been mired in Republican infighting. On one side is GOP leadership, who have struggled to advance a legislative agenda despite controlling 24 of the chamber's 34 seats. On the other is the conservative caucus, which spent most of the 2022 legislative session throwing up procedural roadblocks and grinding the chamber to a halt. Whether this dynamic will continue into the future could be decided Tuesday, when voters head to the polls to cast ballots in the primary election. While there are Democrats filed in seven of the 10 contests,...

The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again. In fact, they made this clear in 2020, in a series of public statements. Simply for quoting their words in an essay for The American Mind, I was mercilessly mocked and attacked. But they were quite clear. Trump won’t be president at noon, Jan. 20, 2021, even if we have to use the military to drag him out of there.But If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine...

(CNN)It was the middle of the night in Saudi Arabia when word emerged from Washington that President Joe Biden's long-stalled domestic agenda was dead. Again. The culprit was familiar. Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginia Democrat, was balking at what effect the massive climate, tax and social safety net plan might have on inflation. In Jeddah, where Biden was convening fraught meetings with Saudi leaders, the news was met with frustration and anger but not surprise. Thirteen days, two Covid infections and a few bitter arguments later, fortunes have shifted. Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer shocked most...

Florida man confessed to using the United States Postal Service to plot and pay $10,000 for the murder of his former girlfriend’s new love interest. Ryan Aziz Ferris Hadeed pleaded guilty Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale federal court to a charge of using the mail to commit murder-for-hire, court records show... Hadeed left the country on a one-way ticket to the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago the same day the supposed hit man received the cash and pictures, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. During a secondary customs inspection of Hadeed when he returned to the U.S. from his international trip,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department on Thursday offered a reward of up to $10 million for information about Russian interference in American elections, including a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a troll farm that officials say fueled a divisive social media campaign in 2016. The reward, offered by the department’s Rewards for Justice program, seeks information about the Internet Research Agency, Yevgeniy Prigozhin - a wealthy businessman whose ties to Putin earned him the nickname “Putin Chef” - and other entities involved in interfering in the 2016 U.S. election won by Republican Donald Trump. Prigozhin and...

The Mega Millions jackpot has increased $80 million since Wednesday, when it was $1.02 billion.

"Now he has a busy schedule with international contacts: the SCO Ministerial Council in Tashkent, bilateral meetings," said spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “Foreign Minister Lavrov is in the midst of travel so I don’t have any update to provide in terms of when they may be able to connect,” said State Department spokesperson Ned Price. Price on Thursday suggested that Moscow has not meaningfully engaged on the (prisoner swap) proposal. "The fact that, now several weeks later, we are where we are, I think you can read into that as being a reflection of the fact that this has not moved...

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