Free Republic

According to TRM Labs, which tracks the industry, digital assets worth more than $6.3bn (£4.7bn) have been taken from Binance by North Korean hackers. This would be the largest cryptocurrency hack to date - and one of the biggest in financial history. Cryptocurrency worth more than $6.3bn (£4.7bn) has been stolen from a major exchange - with one industry insider telling Sky News it is "the largest bank heist in human history". The security exploit targeted Binance, one of the world's biggest platforms for trading digital assets, which said it was establishing the facts with urgency. Deposits and withdrawals were...

Britain Must Not Sacrifice Trident To Please Obama By Nile Gardiner July 10th, 2009 Currying favour with Obama could leave Britain vulnerable As the Telegraph has reported, President Obama has called for a 30-nation summit in Washington next March to discuss nuclear non-proliferation. This follows a reckless preliminary agreement between Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to cut America’s nuclear stockpile and delivery systems by up to a third, a deal which is stunningly good for the Russians but hugely damaging for America’s interests. In the wake of the Moscow summit, Gordon Brown has hinted he may include...

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...

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, known collectively as CRINK, are seeking to undermine U.S. leadership by weakening the rules-based international order. Human rights violations and trafficking at the Alabuga complex in the Russian town of Yelabuga illustrate the increasingly complex ties among the CRINK regimes. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 created a demand for drones that Moscow could not initially meet. Its answer was an arrangement to manufacture the Iranian-designed Shahed on Russian soil. This report contends that the burgeoning labor force that powers the Alabuga drone factory has become a site of gross human rights...

In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador - who prefers to be known as AMLO for short - issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats.AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums.One, Obrador says the U.S. must now send $20 billion in de facto bribery payments to Latin American nations, many of them corrupt and dysfunctional. Apparently, he thinks it is America’s fault that millions of Latin Americans are fleeing...

[FULL TITLE] Journalist Describes How Fusion GPS Smeared Him as a 'Pedophile,' 'Extortionist' and 'Drug Trafficker' The shady, liberal opposition research firm behind the discredited anti-Trump dossier uses smear tactics and intimidation to discredit people who go against its clients, a London-based Venezuelan journalist told Fox News Thursday. In congressional testimony as well, Alek Boyd said Fusion GPS labeled him a “pedophile,” “extortionist” and “drug trafficker” after he criticized Derwick Associates, one of its clients. “I believe that Fusion GPS’s business is to do basically whatever the paymasters tell them to do,” Boyd said in his first American TV interview....

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...

(Islamabad/Moscow, October 25) There is now a nuclear dimension to the Afghan war. A second retired Pakistani atomic scientist was picked up by Islamabad on Tuesday night on the suspicion that he was developing a nuclear device for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The arrests followed tip-offs by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Pakistani authorities. Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Abdul Majeed, both scientists who had retired from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), were picked up after the FBI provided evidence of their links to jehadi outfits. The Pakistan Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haidar, said on ...

In 1995, former Iranian president Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani made a little-noticed trip to the neighboring country of Georgia. He spent several hours in Tbilisi, the capital, and then instead of returning to Iran, he made a secret side trip to the breakaway region of Adjara to visit President Aslan Abashidze. The purpose of the detour was not to visit the balmy, palm-treed tourist sea port resort of Batumi on the Black Sea. His purpose was more sinister. The Iranian president was looking for black market sources of chemicals to enrich uranium for building a nuclear bomb. He found a willing...

Every August, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia is accompanied by familiar reflections about missed warning signs, intelligence failures, and a supposedly unexpected turning point in European security. The language has become so standardized that it obscures a far more uncomfortable reality. Georgia did not reveal a new Russia. It exposed a Russia that had been behaving consistently for nearly two decades while much of the West continued searching for evidence that Moscow had fundamentally changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Describing the failure to recognize this trajectory as a collection of mistakes understates what actually occurred....

"Intelligence trafficker to the world" sets up shop in the nation's capital. “It [the Cuban embassy opening] is going to be a celebration on our part,” gushed Gustavo Machin, deputy director for U.S. affairs at Cuba’s Foreign Ministry. “Many Americans who have supported the Cuban Revolution will be among the 500 celebrants at the new Embassy.” Despite the innocuous professional title the mainstream media insists on using for Gustavo Machin, he’s actually a KGB-trained Cuban spy who was burnt and booted from the U.S. back in 2003 shortly before the invasion of Iraq. He was among 14 other Cuban spies...

Hezbollah has received $200 million from Iran to help Lebanese people displaced by this year’s war with Israel, say two people with direct knowledge of the transfer, the first significant aid from the group to supporters who bore the brunt of the conflict. Asked for comment, a Hezbollah official says an amount has been secured and a plan for distributing it will be announced in the coming days, without elaborating on the source of the funds. Iran has maintained financial support to Hezbollah through years of crippling US sanctions: it transferred $1 ​billion to the group in the first 10...

Russia has finalized preparations to provide a $1 billion loan to Iran, with the funds ready for transfer once Tehran provides bank account details, Iranian media reported Tuesday. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency said the payment process had been finalized but disagreements among Iranian government bodies over how the money should be spent have delayed the transfer. The loan was first reported in June and was described as the first installment of a planned $20 billion Russian loan to Iran, according to Fars.

Former President Donald Trump did not hold back his praises to some of the world's authoritarian leaders in a new media appearance. In his interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump shared his admiration for the leadership styles of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. "They're all top of the line," Trump said. The former president described Xi as a "brilliant man" and recalled meeting with him in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in 2017. "President Xi is a brilliant man... The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a...

Secretary Marco Rubio@SecRubioFor more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States.The State Department is exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country.The American people deserve to know.ransomnote: After reading the report Rubio linked, CUBA | THE CAPITAL OF 21st CENTURY COMMUNISM (PDF), I realized that the concluding paragraph (see last paragraph indented below), was likely written for people like me who did not realize just how weaponized CUBA has been. As a failed nation, I did not see its profound success in...

Senate confirms new director for spy agency, cyber command WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate confirmed on Tuesday President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency, Army Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone. Nakasone has an extensive background in cyber issues, having held positions including serving as chief of the U.S. Army’s cyber command since late 2016. Nakasone, 54, replaces Admiral Mike Rogers, who is retiring after nearly four years in the “dual-hat” position leading the NSA, the country’s largest spy agency, and the military’s cyber warfare division. During his confirmation hearing, Nakasone said he did...

In direct support of President Donald J. Trump's commitment to election integrity, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has signed a memorandum directing the Department of War to mobilize a comprehensive, whole-of-government defense of our election infrastructure from foreign adversaries. Under the Secretary's directive, U.S. Cyber Command and Combat Support Agencies will prioritize and deploy advanced intelligence and cyber capabilities to identify, disrupt, and neutralize foreign interference in U.S. democratic processes. "Free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell. "By working in lockstep with federal, state, and local partners, U.S. Cyber Command and...

In early March, as President Trump basked in the success of a military intervention in Venezuela, he joined Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the West Wing for a private celebration. A businessman also attended, and brought along a pile of gold. The president looked approvingly at the 10 Venezuelan gold bars stacked in the Roosevelt Room, across from the Oval Office, White House officials recalled. Aides took photos and joked about keeping the gold. Mr. Trump himself had once blacklisted Venezuelan gold, declaring that it destroyed the environment, poisoned people and financed gangsters and corrupt military officials. But after Mr....

Trump wants to preserve relations with Xi, but Iranian customs data show Chinese entities have made thousands of shipments of components used in drones and missiles This summer, when the U.S. and Iran signed a temporary truce, China touted its role in easing tensions in the Middle East. It said its foreign ministry made dozens of calls to nudge peace along, and that President Xi Jinping himself had intervened with suggestions to end the fighting.That same day, a plane from China landed in Tehran. It carried a shipment for Iran’s Ministry of Defense that included electronics components that can be...

A leftist economist connected to liberal billionaire George Soros claimed that the Wuhan COVID-19 virus actually originated in a U.S. lab, feeding Communist Chinese anti-American propaganda. Columbia University Center for Sustainable Development Director Jeffrey Sachs decried the U.S. government’s “very harsh line against China” during a talk at the Madrid-based GATE Center June 15. “I’m pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature — Just to mention after two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of [U.S.] biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover,” Sachs said. Sachs’s...