Free Republic

TOKYO -- China and India have increased Russian oil purchases as prices decline due to Western import bans, the latest data shows, creating a loophole that allows Moscow to secure export revenue. China imported 800,000 barrels of Russian petroleum daily by sea last month, according to data from Refinitiv, a figure that does not include oil delivered via pipelines. The volume has soared by more than 40% from January. The number indicates that China is deliberately going after cheap Russian crude. India's marine imports of Russia's oil also spiked from zero in January to nearly 700,000 barrels a day in...

The biggest reshuffle of oil trade flows since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s is underway—and things may never return to normal. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions on Russian oil exports are changing global oil trade routes. Over the past nearly five decades, oil flowed more or less freely from any supplier to any customer in the world, except for sanctions on Iran and Venezuela in recent years. This free energy trade is now over, after the Russian aggression and the Western sanctions that followed, plus Europe’s irreversible decision to cut off its dependence on Russian...

A political reporter who was on the road with Gore during campaign 2000 takes a highly critical look at the post-election-day efforts by Gore and his team to, in the author's view, "steal the election." He chronicles the events as they unfolded day by day, and provides much behind-the-scenes reporting on the Gore team. Word from the Publisher AT ANY COST is the inside story of exactly how Al Gore dragged a one-day presidential election into a five-week ordeal and nearly pulled off the largest act of political larceny ever in American politics. Award-winning reporter Bill Sammon spent months on...

Someone with better access to Florida's election data that I am can now settle a question leftover from the 2000 Election. As you'll recall, the tv networks called Florida for Gore before the polls had even closed in the Central Time Zone part of the state, depressing the amount of votes Bush likely would have received. Now that the 2004 Election is over, it's possible to extrapolate how much that early call may have cost Bush. 1. Take the Florida counties that are in the Central Time Zone. Count the total number of votes cast in the presidential elections in...