Free Republic

NATO moved Friday to enhance its naval presence in the Baltic Sea as Estonia’s navy began patrolling an undersea cable supplying energy from Finland. The move follows the excision of a different cable from the power grid on Christmas Day in what Finnish authorities allege is a case of deliberate, targeted sabotage by Russia, as Breitbart News reported. A ship named as Eagle S is suspected of damaging the Estlink 2 cable and Finnish coast guard crew have boarded the oil tanker and steered it into Finnish waters. The E.U. said the Eagle S was part of “Russia’s shadow fleet”...

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologizes to Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, for what the Kremlin said was a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan on December 25. Putin tells Aliyev that Russian air defense was active when an Azerbaijani Airlines plane tried to land in Grozny before it crashed in a phone call, the Kremlin says. “During this time, Grozny, (the town of) Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian combat drones and Russian air defense was repelling these attacks,” the Kremlin says Putin told Aliyev, without explicitly acknowledging that...

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck targets across Yemen on Thursday during the speech of Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, striking the port city of Hodeida and the international airport in the capital city of Sana’a in the interior. The wave of attacks marks the fourth since July, and came after Houthi rebels launched several ballistic missile attacks and drone attacks at Israel over the past several days, including on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day.

The FBI thwarted an apparent plot to harm employees at a Florida office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to court documents filed Monday. Law enforcement arrested Forrest Kendall Pemberton after he allegedly traveled to Plantation, Fla., in search of AIPAC’s office with several firearms, including an AR-15 rifle. Pemberton told police he went to the site, a former AIPAC office, to “scout” out the location before returning with the firearms, according to an affidavit signed by FBI special agent Taylor Nicklin. He was intercepted in a ride-share vehicle carrying the guns on Dec. 25, the first...