Free Republic

Grain export shipments from Ukraine resumed on Wednesday as Russia said it was rejoining a deal brokered by the UN and Türkiye to establish a safe Black Sea corridor. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told parliament that “shipments will continue from 12pm today as planned”, after a call between the Russian and Turkish defence ministers.

According to information from the German Press Agency, there are informal agreements among the NATO states to refrain from delivering certain weapon systems to Ukraine. As the dpa was confirmed in alliance circles in Brussels on Wednesday, the risk of a direct military confrontation between NATO states and Russia should be kept as low as possible. There are fears, for example, that Russia could officially see the delivery of Western battle tanks and combat aircraft as entering the war and then take military retaliatory measures. Weapon systems of this type have not yet been delivered to Ukraine. According to information...

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has agreed to pull back decrees announced last Thursday granting himself sweeping new powers. The Islamist leader originally told a panel of Egypt's top judges that he would not change his stance on the edicts, insisting that he was acting within his rights. But according to a report by a television network allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, an agreement worked out with top judicial authorities was reached late Monday. The decrees had barred the judiciary from disbanding the Constitutional Assembly or the Upper House of the Parliament, placing the presidency and the committee writing the new...

The cleanup of a plaza in lower Manhattan where protesters have been camped out for a month was postponed early Friday, sending cheers up from a crowd that had feared the effort was merely a pretext to evict them. Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, had put off the cleaning, scheduled for 7 a.m. More than hour beforehand, supporters of the protesters had started streaming into the park, creating a crowd of several hundred chanting people. A confrontation between police and protesters, who had vowed to stay put through civil disobedience, had...

After yesterday’s news of the deal between Senators Pat Leahy and Charles Grassley to get documents and testimony from ATF chief Kenneth Melson on Operation Fast and Furious, it seemed as though Democrats might finally take the scandal of the gunrunning fiasco seriously. Alas, Elijah Cummings and House Democrats appear uninterested in abuses of government power, incompetence, and potential cover-ups at AFT and the Department of Justice. In fact, they want to turn the probe into an argument for expanding government control of firearms: The top Democrat on a House investigative committee is broadening an inquiry into a botched gun-tracing...

South Korean media reported Sunday that Seoul and Washington have called off plans to hold a major joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea this month. Yonhap news agency quoted government sources as saying the exercise involving a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been postponed to avoid tensions on the Korean peninsula during the upcoming G20 summit in Seoul. There was no official confirmation of the reports. The Chinese government has fiercely opposed the deployment of the U.S. aircraft carrier George Washington in the regional waters.

WASHINGTON -- A memo from a top House Democrat says party leaders must not yield to White House pressure on Iraq and should cast President Bush as increasingly detached from public opinion. Bush has said he will not negotiate with Democrats on legislation that would finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September if it sets an end date for the Iraq war. Holding only a narrow majority in Congress, Democrats do not have enough votes to override the president's veto. In a memo to party leaders, Rep. Rahm Emanuel says that so long as Democrats continue to ratchet...