Free Republic

Kamala Harris questioned Donald Trump's mental state Tuesday after the 78-year-old Republican's latest televised town hall veered into a surreal, impromptu music session. "Hope he's okay," the Democratic candidate posted on X. Harris's campaign, which has begun to aggressively challenge Trump on his health and mental stability, said that during the late Monday event he appeared "lost, confused, and frozen on stage." Former president Trump defended the event in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, saying it was "so different". "It was amazing! The Q and A was almost finished when people began fainting from the excitement and heat," Trump...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called out the US government for neglecting to even ask questions after an American journalist was tortured to death in a Ukrainian jail earlier this year.Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday in St Petersburg, Putin was asked whether Russian officials would help facilitate an investigation of a French journalist who was reportedly killed last month in a missile strike west of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine). He offered to help enable the probe, but he also contrasted the response to the Frenchman’s death to how the administration of US President Joe Biden reacted...

Nikki Haley, who once served as U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina governor, received a major endorsement from one of the biggest conservative activist groups in the country, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), on Tuesday. The endorsement adds another layer of complexity to the current Republican presidential primary. Haley, who has been picking up some momentum in the polling, is seen as one of the three top contenders in the primary. She is vying with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for second place behind former president Donald Trump, who still has a commanding lead on both of them.AFP's endorsement is a wrinkle in...

An Australian Federal Police (AFP) Officer has been charged with trafficking methamphetamines, high level corruption, theft and money laundering. The magistrate who has released him on bail did so in part because he has “no criminal history.” The officer deserves the presumption of innocence but the range of criminal charges in a country where wrong doing police officers are rarely held to account seems to make a compelling case for protecting the public from what he might do when set free. Who agrees?

Ukrainian forces have for months been holding at bay a gruelling Russian offensive in battered towns and heavily shelled trenches spanning the eastern front line.But now, with the Kremlin's forces running out of steam after making only incremental gains over the winter onslaught, Ukraine is preparing to hit back."If our senior military staff say we have enough troops, enough shells -- enough everything -- to attack, then we're ready," a Ukrainian serviceman, who identified himself as Mark, told AFP in the Donetsk region this week.Russia was beaten back in embarrassing defeats near the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson last year...

French state-backed media say American conservatives, not LGBT activists, are to blame for the “culture war” over drag queen events aimed at small children. France 24, a government-owned news organisation which produces English, French, Spanish, and Arabic content aimed at foreign audiences, was one of many outlets which published a pro-drag article acquired from Agence France-Presse (AFP), a news agency founded as a state enterprise and still deeply entangled with the French state. As output from a notionally impartial wire service, the article has been published by a huge number of media outlets, sometimes automatically — but it is far...

Electric car batteries could be used to boost power storage in the future, injecting electricity into the grid during times of scarcity or storing electricity during periods of excess, a new study found Tuesday. Renewable energy is essential for the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, but the need to scale up quickly and the intermittency of wind and solar have raised concerns about meeting electricity demand. One way to help solve this problem is boosting the storage capacity of electricity grids, so that even when there is no sun or wind energy...

**SNIP** "Bobby Crimo aka 'Awake The Rapper' the Highland Park shooter was an Antifa Far Left extremist," says a July 4, 2022 tweet with hundreds of likes and shares. The post includes two photos. One appears to depict 21-year-old Robert Crimo wearing a hat sporting the letter "A," while the other purportedly shows his Instagram profile featuring an anti-fascist logo. Screenshot of a tweet taken July 6, 2022 "Antifa" is short for anti-fascist, a term that describes a broad, loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing activists. AFP has previously reported on how the movement has been falsely blamed for everything from...

The co-chief of Germany's far-right AfD Joerg Meuthen said on Monday that he would not seek to continue as head of the eurosceptic and islamophobic party. After six and a half "incredibly challenging" but also "enriching" years, Meuthen said in a statement that he would "no longer bear the role of federal spokesman" for the party. Formed in 2013, the AfD first won seats in the German parliament in 2017 but lost ground in elections at the end of September this year. Despite topping the poll in two former east German states, the party received around 10 percent of the...

After America's longest war, Taliban commander Mullah Hasnain contemplates all that is left of what was part of the last CIA base -- demolished buildings, destroyed vehicles and piles of ammunition. ..."We let them go peacefully, and look what they've left behind," Hasnain said, a leader of the Taliban's elite Badri 313 unit... "Before going, they destroyed everything," he told journalists being shown the site, flanked by Taliban guards cradling American M-16 rifles... ...One building was left intact, a large games room with billiards, table football, darts and soft velvet armchairs. Its sign still dangled outside -- "The Snooker Club"....

Pages, websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see "overall distribution reduced and be restricted' in other ways," says warning. Facebook is warning users against sharing a study that found dangerously high carbon-dioxide intake in masked schoolchildren, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics. "Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways," the warning says when users paste the link on Facebook, before confirming they want to share it. It's giving the same warning and threat of account restrictions to...

Biden's American Family Plan would dole out free college, free child care, free meals, and more. But does the math add up? Nope.President Biden released the provisions of his American Family Plan last week, and just like with his American Jobs Plan, the details are scant and the price tag is high.Even given the limited details, the plans ought to give everyone pause — and by “everyone” I don’t just mean conservatives who oppose massive welfare state expansions, but also those who agree with the objective of an increase in the social insurance system in America. There are some serious...

ARLINGTON, Va.—Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today issued the following statement from Dan Pearson, AFP Trade Policy Fellow, on the Biden administration’s decision to suspend tariffs previously imposed on billions of dollars of EU goods stemming from the Boeing-Airbus dispute. The move has prompted the EU to follow suit, setting the stage for settlement of the dispute and further opening trade markets. The suspension will last four months while the countries attempt to resolve the matter: “Again, we applaud the Biden administration for moving to reduce burdensome tariffs and put an end to the trade war that has harmed American businesses,...

ARLINGTON, Va.—Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today issued the following statement from Dan Pearson, AFP Trade Policy Fellow, on the Biden administration’s decision to suspend tariffs previously imposed on a number of UK products stemming from the Boeing-Airbus dispute. The suspension will last four months while the countries attempt to resolve the matter: “It is encouraging to see the Biden Administration provide relief from these tariffs. In addition to the benefits Americans will experience from this move, we are hopeful this will lead to a lasting settlement of the dispute between the US and the UK and EU. Freer trade increases...

Senator Mitch McConnell blocked an attempt by Democrats on Tuesday to hold an immediate vote on increasing stimulus checks to $2,000 from $600, leaving the fate of the measure unclear as President Trump continued to demand the larger payouts and more Republicans publicly endorsed the idea. Instead, Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, provided vague assurances that the Senate would “begin the process” of discussing $2,000 checks and two other issues that Mr. Trump has demanded lawmakers address: election security and removing legal protections for social media platforms. Mr. McConnell would not say whether he planned separate...

Back in August, when a Facebook “trusted fact-checker” incorrectly marked an article by Rachel Malone as false, I felt compelled to do something about it. The article in question laid out a strong case that Kamala Harris was the worst nightmare for gun owners. Freedom loving Americans shared the story across multiple Facebook groups run by Gun Owners of America. But Agence France-Presse (AFP) decided in their sole wisdom that the article was “false” and restricted the groups for sharing fake news. Facebook placed an overlay on Malone’s Houston Courant article with a link to the AFP fact-check. Not only...

'You can't do a damn thing!' Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei hits back at Donald Trump after the president threatened to make him pay a 'big price' for US embassy attack Khamenei strongly condemned US airstrikes on Iraq which killed 25 militants from Kataeb Hezbollah on Sunday night and refurted Trump's claim that Iran 'orchestrated' yesterday's embassy assault in BaghdadThousands - many of them members of the Iran-backed militia - rushed the heavily fortified Green ZoneToday photos emerged showing the scorched interior of the embassy's secure entrance after it was set alight One militant had said: 'God willing if this fire...

We witnessed an egregious case of irresponsibility by the media this week when the AFP, a global news agency with a Washington, D.C. bureau sent out a tweet and published an article containing a bombshell headline: “BREAKING More than 100,000 children in migration-related US detention: UN.” It was a damning article. “Nearly a third of the children being held in migration-related detention across the world are in the US, the UN said Monday,” it began. “More than 100,000 children are currently being held in migration-related detention in the United States, often in violation of international law, the UN said Monday.”...

So the United States has “the world’s highest rate of children in detention.” Is this worth reporting? Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, Agence France-Presse, or AFP, and Reuters did report it, attributing the information to a “United Nations study” on migrant children detained at the US-Mexico border. Then the two agencies retracted the story. Deleted, withdrew, demolished. If they could have used one of those Men in Black memory-zappers on us, they would have. Sheepishly, the two news organizations explained that, you see, the UN data was from 2015 — part of a border crackdown that had begun years earlier. We...

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu skillfully “played” US President Donald Trump by plying him with inaccurate information, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson said. Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political life after close elections, was “a bit Machiavellian” and would share “misinformation” with the United States, according to Trump’s former top diplomat. […] “They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys.’ We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played,’” Tillerson said, according to the newspaper. […] Tillerson said he...