Free Republic

While the Ukrainians are fighting a conventional war on their own territory, Russia and the West are engaged in an unconventional one fought by economic pressure, political subterfuge and dirty tricks. The apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines seems just the latest example. Both of these lines linking Russia to Germany have sprung devastating leaks. The cause, according to seismological readings, was a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm, too directed (and powerful enough to breach 4cm of steel and a thick concrete mantle) and too synchronised to be any kind of an accident. There...

HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. (Gray News) – Three men in Florida have been charged after attempting to steal traffic lights using a saw, officials said. According to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, a detective was driving home around 1 a.m. Tuesday when he noticed a suspicious van stopped at an intersection with its headlights turned off. The detective then noticed sparks coming from the area where traffic lights were in the process of being installed. Additional deputies arrived at the scene, where they said they found three men using a saw to cut the traffic lights off the poles. By the...

In the St. Louis County Justice Center, a former substitute teacher from the St. Louis region who had been accused of rape passed away. On September 26, Brandon Holbrook was discovered dead in his cell. When he was discovered unresponsive, he was by himself in the quarantined cell. There will be an autopsy.

Republican Pennsylvania Senate nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz says his "diagnosis" to the rising crime plaguing his state places blame squarely on his "radical" Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, for creating the conditions for criminal activity to prosper. In an interview this week with Fox News Digital, Oz asserted that instances of violent crime, as well as events like the ransacking of a Wawa gas station by a mob of people over the weekend, were now "normalized," and described such occurrences as a "cancer" to society. "We've normalized thoughtless, destructive criminal acts. The question you ask in the morning is...

Democrat Beto O’Rourke is trailing incumbent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) by 6 points among likely Texas voters as November’s midterm elections approach, new polling shows. A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found 53 percent of likely voters in the state say they plan to cast their ballot for Abbott, while 46 percent said the same of O’Rourke.

Senate candidate John Fetterman, D-Pa., has removed mentions of Black Lives Matter from his campaign website in the last month, a review of archived webpages showed. The "issues" page on Fetterman's website currently includes sections on inflation ,criminal justice reform, legalizing cannabis, renewable energy, immigration and several other topics, but doesn't include any section devoted to Black Lives Matter. Archived copies of the page, though, show that as recently as Aug. 22, the same page highlighted Fetterman's commitment to Black Lives Matter. "John served as mayor of a city that’s more than 80% Black, and has championed the idea that...

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration announced $1.1 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine on Wednesday, bringing the U.S. commitment to more than $16.2 billion since Russia’s invasion in late February. The announcement of the upcoming aid package, the 22nd such installment, follows referendums held in four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine that are backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The votes, widely viewed as rigged and illegitimate, are to determine if Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson should become part of Russia. They’ve been criticized as a scheme by Putin to pave the way for Moscow to announce it has annexed...

The sabotage of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipelines in the Baltic Sea has ominously propelled 'Disaster Capitalism' to a whole new, toxic level. This episode of Hybrid Industrial/Commercial War, in the form of a terror attack against energy infrastructure in international waters signals the absolute collapse of international law, drowned by a “our way or the highway”, “rules-based”, order. The attack on both pipelines consisted of multiple explosive charges detonated in separate branches close to the Danish island of Bornholm, but in international waters. That was a sophisticated operation, carried out in stealth in the...

Left: mosaic of the incidence-angle-corrected SAR swaths within the ROI. Right: geomorphological map of the ROI. Credit: The Planetary Science Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac8428 When NASA's 990-pound Dragonfly rotorcraft reaches the Selk crater region—the mission's target touchdown spot—on Saturn's moon Titan in 2034, Cornell's Léa Bonnefoy will have helped to make it a smooth landing. Bonnefoy and her colleagues assisted the future arrival by characterizing the equatorial, hummocky, knoll-like landscape by combining and analyzing all of the radar images of the area acquired by the Cassini spacecraft during its historic 13 year exploration of the Saturn system. They used radar...

Norway is beefing up security on its offshore North Sea oil rigs after mysterious drones came within 50m of its platforms. The country's Petroleum Safety Authority said the unmanned aerial vehicles could carry out 'deliberate attacks' on the infrastructure or smash into helicopters transporting offshore workers to and from the rigs. The warnings come amid claims that Russia was behind the enormous gas leak in the Baltic Sea following three huge undersea explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines on Monday. Norway is now Europe's biggest gas supplier after the Kremlin turned off its taps, wreaking energy havoc across the continent.

It is interesting but depressing to me that the more eminent a college or university is perceived to be, the more outrageous are efforts by administrators to stifle individual expression and enforce a numbing conformity of ideas reminiscent of universities in the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. The most prestigious group of schools in America is no doubt the Ivy League, eight elitist and highly selective institutions in seven Northeastern states. In the last decade, Yale attacked and hounded from campus two scholars who dared to defend the right of students to wear Halloween costumes similar to what grade-schoolers...

MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she hoped people in Florida who hate the federal government will remember that the federal government was there for them in a time of disaster. Discussing Hurricane Ian, McCaskill said, “Yeah, and when we are in devastating tornadoes in southwest Missouri, a very Republican area, you saw those party lines fall away. Now the one thing I do hope, Joe, to put a little politics in this. We all are praying for the people of Florida. We hope the devastation is not deadly. We are glad for the cooperation,...

The Colorado race for U.S. Senate comes down to six points in the final stretch of the race, with Democrat incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet under 50 percent in the latest Trafalgar Group poll. The poll, conducted from September 20 to 24, showed that Bennet has under 50 percent of the vote with only 48.6 percent. Joe O’Dea, the Republican nominee, running against Bennet, garnered 42.6 percent of the vote.

Ramsey County election officials have sent more than 1,000 St. Paul voters absentee ballots with a deceased candidate’s name on them. The country attributed the mistake to a “clerical error” in a press release Tuesday. As of Monday night, the county said 1,077 ballots listing Beverly Peterson as the Republican candidate for House District 67A were sent to voters. According to a Supreme Court filing, Peterson died at the beginning of August and was replaced by Scott Hesselgrave as the GOP nominee. Officials said the Ramsey County Elections Office was notified by the Minnesota secretary of state on Aug. 29...

President Joe Biden warned American oil companies on Wednesday not to raise prices on gasoline, in anticipation of Hurricane Ian hitting Florida. “Do not. Let me repeat. Do not. Do not use this as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people,” Biden said sternly during an event in Washington, DC. Biden said the price of oil “remained relatively low” and there was no reason for prices to go up, even though oil companies have evacuated offshore oil and natural gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico in anticipation of the storm. The storm is expected to...

Joy Behar told her co-hosts Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) might be lacking in “emotional intelligence” for his stance on climate change. Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “This is a moment I think for DeSantis to show he’s a leader of all Floridians. that it’s not about politics. I would encourage him don’t even call your political team for the next week. Focus on helping the people of Florida, the Democrats, the counties who will never vote for you. He’s smarter than Trump. I think we all recognize this. I actually expect to see competent...

White House officials are weighing the possible departure of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen after the November elections as part of a Cabinet shake-up, according to a report. The decision is not final and is expected to hinge on the outcome of the midterm elections, sources familiar with the matter told Axios. Yellen’s successor will need to be confirmed by the Senate, posing a challenge if the Republican Party takes control of the upper chamber. Officials are also considering whether Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, could leave in the new year, according to the outlet. Deese, speaking...

CHICAGO (AP) — The gun-maker Smith & Wesson illegally targeted young men at risk of violence with ads for firearms — including the 22-year-old gunman accused of opening fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago and killing seven people, according to several lawsuits filed Wednesday in Illinois. The lawsuits filed by people wounded while attending the Highland Park parade and the estates of several victims are the latest bid by victims of mass shootings to hold gun manufacturers accountable, despite broad protections for the industry in federal law. Liz Turnipseed is among those filing lawsuits in Lake County...

Video released by the ATLAS project shows the explosive impact 7 million miles from Earth. a gray, craggly asteroid against the dark of space Our first up-close look at Dimorphos, captured by the DART probe's DRACO camera. NASA/JHUAPL When NASA deliberately crashed its DART spacecraft into an asteroid Monday, the daring but doomed probe was sending back incredible images. But on impact, the screen faded to black. We couldn't see just how big of a dent that DART made. Fortunately, many telescopes around the world were tracking the asteroid pair known as Didymos and Dimorphos. The ATLAS project, which takes...

Hurricane Ian satellite photo Image: NOAA An intensifying Hurricane Ian is on the cusp of becoming a Category 5 storm as it nears landfall along Florida's west coast with "catastrophic" winds and storm surge flooding Wednesday afternoon, per the National Hurricane Center. State of play: The Category 4 hurricane is packing maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, the NHC said. That's just 2 mph shy of Category 5 intensity. Just four hurricanes have made landfall in the U.S. with maximum sustained winds greater than 155 mph, according to Philip Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University. As of 1pm Wednesday,...