Free Republic

The writing has been on the wall for a long time: South Korea’s birth rate has dropped throughout much of the past decade, spelling trouble for the military as regional threats and global conflicts simmer. Now, a new report has found that the number of South Korean troops declined by 20% in the past six years, in large part because of the dwindling pool of young men – reflecting the shrinking workforce and swelling elderly population in one of the world’s most rapidly aging countries. The Defense Ministry report attributed the drop to “complex factors” including population decline and fewer...

An avowed white supremacist was sentenced on Friday to 19-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty months ago to a federal hate-crimes case stemming from a botched plot to bomb a historic Colorado synagogue in 2019. Richard Holzer, 28, appeared in a federal courtroom in Denver for a sentencing that capped an undercover FBI investigation of a plan to blow up Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, Colorado, the second-oldest synagogue in the state. Although the plot was thwarted, U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore said Holzer had sought “to terrorize the Jewish community” of Pueblo, a city of 112,000 residents about 100...

One of the nation's largest neo-Nazi groups appears to have an unlikely new leader: a black activist who has vowed to dismantle it. Court documents filed Thursday suggest James Hart Stern wants to use his new position as director and president of the National Socialist Movement to undermine the Detroit-based group's defense against a lawsuit. The NSM is one of several extremist groups sued over bloodshed at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Stern's filing asks a federal court in Virginia to issue a judgment against the group before one of the lawsuits goes to trial. Stern replaced...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- A Battlefield, Mo. man charged with making a terroristic threat at a south Springfield Walmart in August pleaded guilty to an amended charge. Dmitriy Andreychenko, 20, pleaded guilty in a Greene County courtroom Friday to an amended charge of making a false report... "I am glad that the courts worked with me, that they had grace on me, everything worked out great," Andreychenko said after Friday's hearing. "I would just like to apologize to the community. I would never hurt anyone, and I'm sorry." A judge sentenced him to a 180 day suspended jail sentence, two years...

Missouri police say a man was arrested Thursday after he allegedly showed up to a local Walmart with a loaded rifle and a bulletproof vest. Police in Springfield, Mo., said nobody was harmed and no shots were fired. The suspect, a white man in his 20s, was detained by an off-duty firefighter until officers arrived on the scene, authorities said. The man allegedly showed up with a “tactical rifle” and bulletproof vest, the Springfield News-Leader reported. Springfield Police Lt. Mike Lucas told the outlet that the man, wearing body armor and military-style clothing, was taking videos on his phone...

New information released in connection with the activities of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislane Maxwell with many high profile names in the mix..... "intelligent background checks" A phrase used by President Trump facing the media at the White House Friday with the President indicating talks are underway with the Republican and Democrat leaders in Congress on new Second Amendment legislation.... A 20-year old man in custody in Springfield, Missouri after he walked into a Walmart Thursday with guns, wearing body armor and dressed in a military style.... Friday night KYTV in Springfield, Missouri reporting that...

An explosion occurred at the Vector State Virology Research Center near Novosibirsk . This research center has one of the most comprehensive collections of dangerous viruses in the world. According to Rospotrebnadzor, on the fifth floor of a six-story laboratory building, a gas bottle exploded during repair work, after which a fire broke out on an area of 30 square meters. The fire is eliminated. One worker suffered. With burns of the second and third degree, he was taken to the hospital. In Rospotrebnadzor emphasized that in the room where the explosion occurred, there were no biohazardous substances. At the...

The accident in the makeshift mine occurred on Friday about 3pm local time (13:00 GMT) following heavy rains in the town of Kamituga in South Kivu province. The mine was not located on the Kamituga gold concession owned by the Canadian miner Banro Corporation, the company's chief executive said. Thousands of informal miners operate in and around mines in DRC, which produces more than half of the world's cobalt, a key component in electric car batteries. Mining accidents are common, with dozens of deaths every year in mines where often ill-equipped diggers burrow deep underground in search for ore. Last...

The Minnesota man being sought in connection with the Saturday morning assassination of a state lawmaker and the shooting of another runs a security company and has ties to the Middle East and Africa, online biographies showed. Vance Luther Boelter lists himself on LinkedIn as the CEO of the Red Lion Group, which is based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also worked with Minnesota Africans United, a statewide organization working with African immigrants in the state, according to a now deleted biography on the group’s web site. In 2022, Boelter participated as a keynote speaker in his capacity...

The eastern DR Congo province of South Kivu has recorded its first confirmed cases of Ebola in the country's year-old epidemic, one of which was a fatality, the provincial government said Friday. "Two cases which tested positive for Ebola were confirmed overnight in South Kivu, in Lwindi district in the Mwenga region," it said in a statement South Kivu Governor Theo Ngwabidje told reporters: "Teams from the national anti-Ebola coordination campaign arrived yesterday to provide support." The disease is spread by contact with infected bodily fluids and is fought with time-honored but laborious techniques of tracing contacts and quarantining them....

An ABC News joint investigation with its owned television stations sheds new light on the likely flow of the coronavirus from global hotspots into the U.S. and provides a glimpse the toll the virus has taken on some of the first Americans to interact with international travelers: airport workers. From December 2019 through March 2020, as severe outbreaks cropped up in China and then Italy and Spain, among others, thousands of flights from the hard-hit nations poured into U.S. cities, according to an ABC News analysis of more than 20 million flight records obtained from the tracking service Flightradar-24. While...

On a Saturday morning in August 2019, a 21-year-old White man with ear protectors, safety glasses and an AK-47-style rifle walked into a crowded Walmart in El Paso, Tex., his pockets bulging with ammunition. He had to driven hundreds of miles across the state, prosecutors say, because he wanted to kill Latinos.Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security secretary, was at a Coast Guard picnic in Virginia that day, and soon the urgent messages began arriving. A sinking feeling of horror set in as the magnitude of the attack became clear. “It was devastating,” he said.Twenty-three people were murdered in the...

Following the disappearance of a Canadian child last month, a 40-year-old Portland-area man and radio host on the left-wing station, KBOO, has been arrested for child trafficking and child rape. Following the disappearance of a Canadian child last month, a 40-year-old Portland-area man and radio host on the left-wing station, KBOO, has been arrested for child trafficking and child rape. Noah Whitefield Madrano, of Gladstone, Ore., allegedly kidnapped a 13-year-old girl from Edmonton, Alberta. She was reported missing by her family on June 24 after never showing up for school and was finally discovered in an Oregon City hotel room...

On May 28, 2021, I ran for my life through the streets of downtown Portland, Ore. Antifa had discovered me working undercover after one of their members, John Hacker, exposed me to the mob. I screamed for help as I fled, but drivers and pedestrians looked away. The businesses were all shuttered, remnants of the ongoing destruction from the 2020 BLM-Antifa riots. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. They caught me. Antifa tackled me to the ground, tearing my knee tendon in the process as I slid across the pavement. They punched me over and over and tried...

George Zinn is arrested shortly after Charlie Kirk was shot during Turning Point’s visit to Utah Valley University in Orem on Wednesday. Zinn, 71, of Salt Lake City, was booked into Utah County Jail on Monday for investigation of obstruction of justice. (Tess Crowley, Deseret News) ==================================================================================== KEY TAKEAWAYS George Hodgson Zinn, 71, was arrested for investigation of obstruction of justice in the Charlie Kirk murder investigation. Police say Zinn claimed to shoot Kirk to divert attention from the actual shooter. Zinn was also arrested for investigation of sexual exploitation of a minor in a separate investigation. ==================================================================================== OREM —...

n the wake of Sunday’s mass shooting that killed at least three people at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California, anti-gun activist David Hogg has ignited a war of words on Twitter over the need for more gun control, and many Americans are ferociously firing back. “I’m tired,” Hogg tweeted early Monday morning. “I’m tired of tweeting out # [insert city name here] strong every week. I’m tired of moments of silence, thoughts and prayers as people continue to die every day. I’m tired of having a government so divided they can’t come together to save lives or our future.”...

Jonathan Chait who recently came aboard The Atlantic magazine from his previous abode at New York magazine has made an important discovery: The recent DNC forum, in which they chose their new leadership team, was so extreme it sounded like fuel for GOP attack ads.In fact the DNC seemed so far gone that their forum, complete with a singing DNC Chair candidate, appeared to have channeled the much mocked Democratic Socialists convention back in 2019.Chait came to his sad conclusion about the state of DNC sanity after watching the unintentionally hilarious meeting which he chronicled on Sunday in "The Democrats...

RUSH: Saturday in Atlanta there was a convention. It was the National Convention of the Democratic Socialists of America. Now, this is truly a fringe group. This is a fringe Democrat group that’s actually mainstream. This is a group that embodies quite a few young and middle-aged disaffected and completely abnormal people who cannot find a way to fit in. And I think, by the way, that accurately describes quite a large segment of the Democrat base, if you want to get right down to it. I think it’s a lot of people that just can’t find a way to...

The transfer was allegedly completed between April and July 2019, after the company supposedly ended its business in Venezeula. Federal prosecutors have accused Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate of bribing the top Venezuelan election official with a luxury residence in Caracas in exchange for political favors. Piñate, who was charged with multiple counts of money laundering and bribery related to contracts in the Philippines, according to the Miami Herald, has been accused of transferring the home to election chief Tibisay Lucena Ramírez in order to secure her help in resolving a commercial dispute with the Venezuelan government. The alleged dispute comes...

"If Cuban troops and Militia do not immediately CEASE military and other operations for the purpose of causing death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela, a full and complete embargo, together with highest level sanctions, will be place on the island of Cuba. Hopefully, all Cuban soldiers will promptly and peacefully return to their island!" President Donald J. Trump Tweets Shortly After 5 PM Eastern April 30th, 2019 While there are hopes for change and a massive mobilization called for today in Venezuela, the regime of Nicolas Maduro hopes with its Cuban backed and supported security structure to win...