Free Republic

The launches include Starlink of Vandenberg, including the 700th Falcon 9 overall on the 31st, plus a couple of Electrons from Mahia and a run of Chinese vehicles. Galactic Energy put the first pathfinder for a low-inclination remote-sensing constellation up on a Ceres-1S from an offshore barge, while CAS Space flew the second Kinetica-2 (the liquid RP-1/LOX tri-core version) with another batch of Qianfan satellites. ISRO’s GSLV got NVS-03 into geosynchronous transfer orbit after the previous one’s failure, and Rocket Lab’s 99th Electron carried an iQPS SAR bird. On the bigger picture side, NASA laid out the Artemis Acceleration plan...

The defeated presidential candidate faces criminal investigations in his home country, which had canceled his passports SÃO PAULO—Just days after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in Miami Wednesday after fleeing his home country, where he faces mounting legal pressure from a Supreme Court that has already sent his father to prison.The 45-year-old senator, son of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, crossed into Argentina late Tuesday before boarding a private jet that took his family to the U.S. via Ecuador, defying a Supreme Court order barring him from leaving Brazil.Bolsonaro faces criminal investigations into alleged financial crimes, which he...

US District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee in the Southern District of New York, passed away at 92. Hellerstein was appointed to the bench in 1998. ""U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a longtime federal judge in Manhattan who was overseeing the prosecution of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, died Wednesday morning, according to a court spokesperon," Politico reported. Earlier this year, Maduro was indicted on four counts by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York. Read the indictment here. The grand jury indicted Maduro, his wife, Cilia Flores, and four others on four counts:...

WASHINGTON – Former FBI official Nikki Floris broke down in tears outside a federal courtroom Tuesday during a preliminary hearing on charges that she and another ex-bureau official lied to Congress about burying the Hunter Biden laptop story. Floris was seen weeping in a courthouse hallway during a break in the probable cause hearing in the district court for Washington, DC. She and fellow former FBI official, Bradley Benavides, self-surrendered last week and face up to five years in prison if convicted of lying to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about their involvement in discrediting stories about the troubled...

A former Mexican state attorney general could face trial for treason over accusations that he illegally launched a joint operation with the CIA without telling the federal government. The operation to dismantle a drug lab in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico in April drew attention after two CIA agents and two state officials died in a car accident on their way back. That raised questions about the Trump administration’s actions on Mexican soil, and outraged President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has made a strong defense of national sovereignty a centerpiece of her administration. The state district attorney, César Jáuregui,...

It's always a tossup. There's always a 50/50 chance that the terrorist is white dude who loves Karl Marx, or a practitioner of the Religion of Peace™. In this case, it was the former! Local newspaper Le Populaire du Centre says 34-year-old Hodei Docampo Ciarra is accused of smashing the windows of the Limoges town hall before sneaking into the cellar. He reportedly had accomplices, though they have not been named. Ciarra is a known criminal who is on a French terror watchlist. Unfortunately, the police couldn't watch him that closely. They were too busy letting the country burn down....

The FBI has arrested and charged a 17-year-old boy from McKinney for planning to assassinate U.S. Representative Keith Self at an event last Saturday. Federal investigators said the juvenile was also planning to carry out a terrorist attack in North Texas on behalf of ISIS. The suspect was arrested on October 5 after acquiring a firearm, according to federal law enforcement sources. Sources tell WFAA that the 17-year-old had been radicalized recently and was being monitored by federal agents. The suspect remains in federal custody, and his name has not been publicly released. “Protecting our Constitutional Republic from radical Islam...

Update! We're about to "Maduro" Castro. I didn't know I was voting for this, but it is in fact what I voted for. Florida's top prosecutor announced an arrest warrant Monday for former Cuban president Raul Castro under state murder charges that echo a federal indictment unveiled earlier this year. Raul Castro, 95, is wanted on murder charges connected to the February 24, 1996, shooting down of two civilian aircraft from 'Brothers to the Rescue,' an organization assisting Cubans fleeing to Florida by sea. 'Raul Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop...

KIM Jong-un is in a coma after suffering a brain haemorrhage, according to wild internet claims. Social media users claim the North Korean tyrant was rushed to a Chinese hospital for urgent treatment following the severe bleed. It is said he was taken out of the country due to the poor medical facilities in Pyongyang. According to online speculation, Kim was taken to the Peking Union Medical College in Beijing where he underwent emergency treatment. He was last seen touring a defence museum at an undisclosed location in Pyongyang on October 11. North Korea analyst Benedict Rogers said he expected...

A “serious incident” at a military base in Alberta on Saturday caused a major fire and left people dead and injured, Canadian officials said. “I’m saddened to share that there have been both fatalities and injuries as a result of an incident on the base,” Defense Minister David McGuinty said at a news conference. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said in an earlier statement that a “serious incident creating a major fire” had occurred. In a post on social media, Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, described it as a “significant and tragic fire” that was “affecting many of...

On Columbus Day, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant of Representative Ilhan Omar’s home. For several months, there have been rumors that she was under investigation for immigration fraud. A few weeks ago, White House Border Czar Tom Homan acknowledged that the congresswoman was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro says her office is investigating Omar for potential financial crimes. The D.C. magistrate judge who authorized the search of Omar’s residence is a registered Democrat who donated to Hillary Clinton and received professional appointments from other Democrats. Despite the fact that Democrats...

On Wednesday, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian delivered the blockbuster ‘news’ story that FBI Director Kash Patel had just landed in Russia. This was according to reliable ‘sources.’ How reliable? Patel was actually in this hemisphere at a law enforcement event in Virginia. D’oh! Dilanian’s silly ‘sources’ had Ben Williamson with the FBI’s Public Relations office chuckling. (WATCH) I have had many strange experiences in life, but in tier 1 had to be seeing a clip of MS Now reporting breaking news that Kash Patel has “just landed in Russia” - right as I’m receiving pics of Kash Patel doing a...

The United Nations General Assembly rammed through another non-binding “political declaration” on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response on Tuesday by a lopsided 153–3 vote. The only countries that voted no were the United States, Israel, and Argentina. New Zealand and Paraguay abstained. According to UN News, the declaration calls for stronger international cooperation on pandemic preparedness and welcomes the World Health Organization’s controversial Pandemic Agreement, adopted in May 2025. The declaration is officially nonbinding, meaning it does not itself give the WHO legal authority to impose lockdowns, vaccine mandates, or other public health restrictions on Americans. But the overwhelming vote...

On the evening of Friday 2 October, Daria Shipilova, an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute, died in a district hospital in the Russian city of Shelekhov. Her place of work, and the rumoured circumstances of her death, have triggered a public health emergency in the region and a slew of questions: did the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, kill Shipilova? Could this metastasise into a plague epidemic in Russia? Should we – abroad – be worried? The Russian authorities have done their best to play down the link between the plague and Shipilova’s death. According to Russia’s public health watchdog,...

The airport in the Saudi capital was attacked again Saturday and was evacuated, two regional officials said, two days after three Saudi citizens including a pilot were killed there as the kingdom faces an extraordinary series of assaults in the new front in the Iran war. One official said air traffic to the Riyadh airport had stopped. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media. King Khalid International Airport has been targeted multiple times in the week since a Saudi-led coalition launched a major military offensive against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring...

A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake rattled Panama on Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The U.S. Tsunami Warning System has issued potential tsunami threats in the region, saying "hazardous tsunami waves" are possible in the next few hours along some coasts in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador. The earthquake struck southern Panama on the Pacific side of the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter was 12 km west-southwest of Pitaloza Arriba, Panama.

The State Department will impose “further sanctions” on the International Criminal Court in response to its attempts to charge American service members, according to a US official and an internal memo reviewed by The Post. The official said that diplomatic posts were receiving warnings Thursday that “further ICC action” was imminent, while the memo cited longstanding grievances with the US not being a signatory to the court’s founding treaty. “The ICC seeks to become the unaccountable global arbiter – positioning itself above and beyond the nation state as a supranational judicial arm of a globalist bureaucracy empowered to persecute American...

Venezuela’s Cardón refinery — the country’s second-largest plant — was fully halted on Tuesday after a gas-line fire and explosions at its diesel hydrotreater. The blaze was brought under control in under an hour with no reported injuries, but PDVSA has not issued a damage assessment or restart timeline. The outage hits an already fragile domestic fuel system far more than U.S. supply. Cardón (sometimes rendered Cardon; the query’s “Ardon” matches this plant, not neighboring Amuay) sits at Punto Fijo in Falcón state and is half of the Paraguaná Refining Center. A social-media video posted by OSINTtechnical showed a large...

August Hanning, the man who once led Germany's spy service, is now under investigation for passing on state secrets. Police have arrested the former head of Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency, August Hanning, on suspicion of espionage, the federal prosecutor's office announced Tuesday. Hanning served as the agency's chief from December 1998 to November 2005 before moving to the Federal Interior Ministry, where he worked as state secretary until November 2009. According to a statement from the prosecutor's office, the 80-year-old faces charges including espionage, disclosure of state secrets, attempted treason and working as a secret service agent. It did...

New details from the interrogation of Hamam al-Hammami, the Flydubai co-pilot who attempted to hijack a flight from Dubai to Israel, indicate that the terrorist intended to crash the plane into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, causing mass casualties, Israeli officials said on Sunday. According to the officials, for this reason, al-Hamami only began his hijacking attempt over Jordan. The plan was to continue flying toward Israel to make it appear as a routine flight to Ben Gurion. The terrorist is suspected of having planned to approach landing as usual, and only in the final seconds, once it was impossible to...