Free Republic

When President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in Beijing later this week, there will be a lot to discuss: war, peace, Iran, Taiwan, trade. Trump has vowed to bring up another issue too: the case of Ezra Jin. A Christian pastor and the leader of the Zion Church, Jin was arrested by Chinese police in October and his family hasn’t been able to speak with him since. Frannie Block has been following the case ever since Jin’s arrest, and has obtained exclusive access to never-before-seen footage of Chinese police arresting Christians, audio recordings of police interrogations, and...

It’s safe to say the WNBA is the most toxic and dysfunctional professional sports league in US history. And the league is incapable of learning from its mistakes. As Joe Hoft reported earlier this year, Caitlin Clark was injurted in the 2026 pre-season opener for the Indianapolis Fever. They had their golden goose, and they ran it over. To date, rather than provide officiating that was fair and protected Clark, the league allowed women in the league to pull, push, hit, poke, hammer, and totally abuse Clark. The beatings and abuse took their toll. No one could have put up...

Ireland has a unique relationship to climate change. The country has always relied on its pastoral landscapes for its national character, but the escalating climate crisis threatens this tradition because of rising temperatures and sea levels, and deforestation. Given Irish literature’s continued interest in nature, contemporary Irish poets are tackling these issues in their writing. Poetry plays a special role in times of mass environmental decline. As a literary genre that relies on flexible, open-ended and even conflicting language to address complicated issues, poetry is especially well-suited to address the complex entanglement of local and global concerns, human and nonhuman...

“Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well. On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state. The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives. It also cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment, which tossed aside any pretense of principle in a raw...

Massie is accused by an ex-girlfriend of making a hush money offer after she (the girlfriend) was dismissed from a job arranged by an associate of Massie, when the associate and Massie had a falling out.

State Rep. Juandalynn Givan (D-Birmingham) called U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Associate Justice Clarence Thomas an "Uncle Tom" and the "one who sold us out in Africa" after a recent redistricting ruling on Monday. SCOTUS struck down a 2023 federal court-ordered Alabama congressional map on Monday. The ruling paves the way for Republicans in Alabama to likely pick up at least one congressional seat in the 2026 midterms. Republicans currently have a narrow majority in Congress, and redistricting battles are happening in multiple states across the nation. A special master hired by a three-judge panel in Birmingham redrew the map for...

Gallrein (Trump-backed challenger 48%, Massie (small "l" libertarian incumbent) 43%

It is too early to foretell the future production from the Arckaringa Basin. There are numerous steps before oil production can start. For example, a 300-kilometre pipeline to Port Bonython, or a spur to link the Arckaringa Basin to the existing Moomba-Port Bonython pipeline, will need to be built before any oil could reach the market. Crude oil storage and export capacity at Port Bonython will also have to be increased significantly to accommodate extra crude.There is likely to be bipartisan support for shale oil production in South Australia. However the potential for carbon-intensive shale production in South Australia is...

More than 1,700 people are trapped aboard a cruise ship docked in France after a 90-year-old passenger died from suspected norovirus — just days after a separate virus killed three and sickened multiple others on a different cruise. Passengers and crew traveling on the Ambassador Cruise Line are being forced to remain on the vessel after arriving in Bordeaux on Tuesday, French authorities said. The quarantine comes after an elderly passenger died after roughly 50 people started showing symptoms of norovirus — a highly contagious stomach virus that causes diarrhea and vomiting. The ship, which is carrying mostly British and...

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Suppose that you are a large U.S. state with a dynamic modern economy. Here’s an idea for a strategy for powering your electrical grid: Intentionally disinvest in your functioning fossil fuel generation plants; fail to maintain them adequately, and let them age into obsolescence. Meanwhile, encourage and even subsidize the development of solar panels as a replacement. After all, solar power is cheaper! Those who follow the policy of New York State with respect to our electrical grid will recognize this description as covering the essential elements of our strategy. In our case, the strategy was mainly enacted into law...

The ex-hooker who allegedly hired a hitman to kill his Chelsea art-dealer hubby coolly sat in Manhattan federal court Tuesday as prosecutors showed jurors grisly photos of the victim’s bloodied corpse. Daniel Carrera Sikkema, wearing a gray blazer over a white shirt, showed no emotion during opening statements at the kick-off of his trial — even as prosecutors displayed images of the body of his much older estranged husband, Brent Sikkema, who was riddled with stab wounds from the January 2024 killing inside his home in Rio de Janeiro. Federal prosecutors alleged that Sikkema, in his mid-50s, hired Cuban national...

When a career CIA operative steps before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today, the moment carries more than procedural weight. This is not another bureaucratic exercise in finger-pointing. It is the latest—and potentially most damaging—crack in the edifice of official denial that has shielded the federal government’s role in the origins of COVID-19 for more than six years. Senator Rand Paul, the committee chairman, has made clear what is coming: confirmation from inside the intelligence community that the lab-leak reality was known early, suppressed aggressively, and that American taxpayer dollars helped make it possible. Paul told Fox...

Nine years since his first state visit to China, US President Donald Trump touches down in Beijing ahead of the highly anticipated China-US presidential summit. Trump said on social media on Monday that he was “very much looking forward” to his China visit and that “great things will happen for both countries”.

Eric Clapton cut short a concert in Madrid last week after someone in the audience threw an object that struck him in the chest, several news outlets report. Mr. Clapton had just finished performing “Cocaine” at the Movistar Arena last Thursday when someone hurled what appeared to be a vinyl record sleeve. The Clapton fan club Where’s Eric! said the incident occurred during the famed guitarist/songwriter’s first appearance in Madrid in 25 years. Mr. Clapton, 81, was not seriously injured and went on to perform in Barcelona on Sunday.

A very interesting video about the Carney Doctrine: Behind the Scenes in Toronto and President Trump's Doctrine.

In the late 90's Bill Clinton tried to broker a deal with Yassir Arafat and actually give the Palestinians a homeland but was frustrated by Arafat. Bill Clinton's main frustration with Yasser Arafat stemmed from the failed 2000 Camp David Summit. Clinton believed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a historic deal — a state on roughly 96-97% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem — but Arafat rejected it without making a counteroffer, especially over Jerusalem and refugee issues.Clinton viewed Arafat as unwilling or unable to make the leap from revolutionary...

“Golden Dome” could cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion over 20 years, according to a government report issued on Tuesday. ...Even if the system is built, the report concluded, an adversary like Russia or China that has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons could overwhelm it and some missiles would hit their targets. The budget office report found that the “space-based interceptors” the president envisions — satellites armed with missiles orbiting the planet — would consume about 60 percent of the cost.

Wholesale prices in April posted their highest annual increase in more than three years, signaling more nettlesome inflation as pipeline costs intensify.The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.

AI giant Anthropic rebuffed an attempt from a Chinese think tank to gain access to its newest AI model, Claude Mythos, during a private meeting in Singapore, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Anthropic unveiled Mythos in April, but has limited its release to around 40 American companies, which include Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, over concerns that it is so powerful it could threaten national security systems and potentially disable companies that use it. During the April meeting organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a representative from a Chinese think tank asked Anthropic officials to loosen their stance...