Free Republic

Euro group talks in Brussels have run into difficulty after signals that eurosceptic populists in Finland’s ruling coalition will bring down the two-month-old government if Helsinki backs a third aid package for Greece. Irish sources have said it was “increasingly difficult to reach common ground” as talks progressed in Brussels. Finnish opposition would prevent the euro group, meeting in Brussels, reaching a unanimous decision to open negotiations for a third Greek programe. ... The Finns party joined a three-way centre-right coalition in May but its leader Timi Soini, now foreign minister, has maintained that bailouts in general, and particularly bailouts...

A document prepared by Germany’s finance ministry and seen by The Wall Street Journal floats a “timeout” for Greece from the eurozone for “at least the next five years” as one of two options for dealing with the debt-ridden country. ... In the document, dated July 10, Germany takes a tough line on spending cuts and policy overhauls Greece submitted to its international creditors, the other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund late Thursday. ... Under the first scenario, Greece and its creditors would start negotiating a third rescue package, but only once the government has made improved proposals,...

A weakness has been discovered in a French nuclear reactor of the type set to be built at Hinkley in the UK. France's nuclear safety regulator told the BBC the flaw in the steel housing the reactor core at the nuclear plant being built in Normandy is "serious". He added that unless he was satisfied with the plans to put it right, he could stop the project. The fault in the French reactor is thought to be a construction fault, not an inherent weakness in the design. The troubled European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) under construction in France is one of...

A few years ago, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology demonstrated that graphene could be used to cool silicon-based electronics. “But the methods that have been in place so far have presented the researchers with problems,” explained professor Johan Liu of Chalmers University of Tech. “It has become evident that those methods cannot be used to rid electronic devices off great amounts of heat [sic], because they have consisted only of a few layers of thermal conductive atoms.” According to Liu and colleagues, adding additional layers of graphene to the surface leads to less adhesion. The researchers have overcome this...

Day by day, new images appear showing an ever clearer view of a world we inexplicably love. Call it a dwarf planet. Call it a planet. It’s the unknown, and we can’t help but be drawn there. Pluto made history when it was discovered in 1930. In 2015, it’s doing it all over again. Check out the new geology peeping into view.I’m reminded of the early explorers who shoved off in wooden ships in search of land across the water. After a long and often perilous journey, the mists would finally clear and the dark outline of land take form...

Shaw died at age 17 in a 2008 shooting near his Arlington Heights home when gang member Pedro Espinoza mistook him for a rival gang member because of the victim’s red Spider-Man backpack. Espinoza, who was in the country illegally, was in 2012 sentenced to death for the murder. He had jumped out of a vehicle, shot Shaw in the stomach and then fired a second execution-style shot in his head. Shaw was a running back at Los Angeles High School and had been named the Southern League’s most valuable player. He reportedly drew interest from Stanford and Rutgers universities....

Police said they do not yet know the motive for the attacks, which took place around 10am local time when the 47-year-old gunman, named only as Bernd G. under German privacy laws, ​ allegedly ​ fired at his victims from a silver Mercedes convertible in Leutershausen in the Ansbach district in northern Bavaria. An eyewitness said the 82-year-old woman, who would have celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary this year, stood up from a bench and exchanged a few words with the driver. As she turned away to sit back down, the suspect allegedly shot her in the back before speeding...

Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen on Friday said she expects the Fed to raise interest rates at some point this year, but pointed strongly to her concerns that U.S. labor markets remain weak and that more workers could be encouraged back into the job market with stronger growth. She said she expects the economy should grow steadily for the remainder of the year, allowing the Fed to move ahead with its first rate hike in nearly a decade. "I expect it will be appropriate at some point later this year to take the first step to raise the federal funds...

The title will give the multiplayer-focused zombie battles a 1940s noir-inspired makeover, complete with femme fatales and dapper outfits. Playable characters will include a magician, a femme fatale, a cop and a boxer. If a trailer is any indication, look for period-specific burlesque clubs amid all the supernatural activity and semi-automatic gunfire. ... If your gaming room needs some more home appliances, a limited edition set of "Black Ops 3" will come complete with a working mini-fridge branded after the game's fictional power-boosting soda Juggernog. ... The core game will be set in 2065 after “Blacks Ops 2,” and take...

The commercial crew astronauts are: Air Force Col. Robert Behnken, until recently head of the astronaut office; Air Force Col. Eric Boe, part of shuttle Discovery's last crew; retired Marine Col. Douglas Hurley, pilot of the final shuttle crew; and Navy Capt. Sunita Williams, a two-time resident of the International Space Station. "These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail, a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars," Bolden said on his blog. SpaceX and Boeing are aiming for test flights to the space station by 2017. It...

The biggest of the quakes registered magnitude 2.7, and the vast majority were less than magnitude 2.0, so it's unclear whether people felt them. According to a USGS map, the intensity of the 2.7 quake was limited to a fairly small area in rural Ventura County. That quake hit three miles east of Fillmore and six miles west of Santa Paula. On whether these small quakes signal a bigger quake, seismologist Lucy Jones said on Twitter all earthquakes “make another more likely, so probably have more.” But she said there is no way to know if one will be bigger

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to compromise on an emergency financing deal that could keep Greece in the eurozone. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president was encouraged by assurances from both leaders in separate phone calls that “it’s in their collective and mutual interest for Greece to remain part of the eurozone.” But Mr. Obama stressed in the calls that “the only way that we’ll succeed in achieving that goal is for all of the parties to agree to a package of reforms and financing that...

In 2014, we reported on an exciting new discovery of two new exoplanets orbiting Kapteyn’s Star. The current number of exoplanet discoveries as of July 2015 sits at 1,932 and counting. An M-class red dwarf, Kapteyn’s Star is relatively nearby at only 13 light years distant. The planetary discovery consisted of a world five times the mass of the Earth in a 48 day orbit (Kapteyn b), and a world seven times the mass of the Earth in a 122 day orbit (Kapteyn c). The discovery was hailed as an example of an ancient—possibly over 11 billion years old—system with...

No casting was announced, although social media speculation immediately centered on Chris Pratt, the ascendant star of “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Jurassic World.” ... Other fans were more ambivalent. “I really don’t know how I feel about this. No one can be Han Solo except Harrison Ford,” said Casey Calvert on Twitter. Disney said the movie’s story will explore how young Han Solo became the smuggler and thief whom Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi first encountered in the cantina at Mos Eisley. “This is the first film we’ve worked on that seems like a good idea to begin with,”...

The two planes that collided Tuesday morning were an F-16 fighter and a Cessna 150, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which said it is investigating the collision. The accident occurred about 11 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. A spokesman for Berkeley County said the two planes collided over Lewisfield Plantation in Moncks Corner, a town about 45 minutes north of Charleston. The county government said it is setting up a command center in that town, which is near Lake Moultrie. Debris has been seen on land as well as in the water, officials said...

He grabs her arm. She attempts to hit him. He punches her in the face. Although the surveillance video was released Monday, the incident took place June 24, inside Yianni’s nightclub in Tallahassee, Florida. On June 25, the head football coach at FSU, Jimbo Fisher, announced Johnson’s indefinite suspension for a violation of athletic department policy. Fisher later said that Johnson had been dismissed from the team, effective immediately. The former freshman quarterback is also being charged with battery. The woman in the video suffered bruising under her left eye, swelling to the left cheek and upper lip, and a...

Scientists working on the CleanSpace One Project have revealed their clean-up satellite will capture a defunct small SwissCube satellite in a conical net, before destroying it in the Earth’s atmosphere. They have been designing a clean-up satellite for three years that will be sent into orbit to recuperate SwissCube, and have now revealed the latest design. The ‘Pac-Man’ will trap the small satellite ‘ghost’ and the two will combust together in the atmosphere. But while this sounds like a simple, if somewhat expensive, solution, it is fraught with complications. ‘SwissCube is not only a 4-inch by 4-inch (10cm by 10cm)...

[W]ith the “no” vote in Sunday’s Greek referendum on bailout terms posing the biggest challenge yet to decades of European integration, risks to the European project resulting from Germany’s rise as the Continent’s most powerful country are becoming clear. On Friday, Spanish antiausterity leader Pablo Iglesias urged his countrymen: “We don’t want to be a German colony.” On Sunday, after Greece’s result became clear, Italian populist Beppe Grillo said, “Now Merkel and bankers will have food for thought.” On Monday, Ms. Merkel flew to Paris for crisis talks amid signs the French government was resisting Berlin’s hard line on Greece....

It’s now just exactly one week before the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a fast flyby encounter of the ever intriguing binary planet, And the great news could not come soon enough given the proximity of the flyby. “The spacecraft is in excellent health and back in operation. New Horizons is barreling towards the Pluto system,” stated Jim Green, director of Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington, at the start of the today’s news media briefing. The mission remains on track to conduct the complex close flyby science sequence in its entirety, as planned over the next week, including the July 14 flyby...

Work is already underway on the hi-tech 130-metre-long Atlant, which is to be created by merging technology from planes, hovercraft and airships. Capable of taking off and landing without a runway it will be able to carry 200 military personnel at speeds of up to 105mph. The futuristic craft is equipped with sophisticated high-precision computer technology, with Russian officials claiming that the $15million (£9.5million) aircraft will be used by the Defence Ministry. The company behind the 21st century model, Augur RosAeroSystems, say Putin's new toy will be ready for use by the army as early as 2018, according to The...