Free Republic

A former British soldier has been arrested for allegedly helping Russia assassinate Ukrainian politicians in exchange for money, intelligence officials said. Ross David Cutmore was detained by Ukraine’s state security service in October after he was accused of importing and doling out weapons that were used in the slayings of three prominent Ukrainians, the Kyiv Independent reported. Months after he arrived, he allegedly quit the job and started acting as a spy for the Kremlin. He later provided the weapons used to murder politician, Andriy Parubiy, as well as activists, Demian Hanul and Iryna Farion, officials alleged. Cutmore, who had...

The head of the U.S. military's Southern Command will retire later this year, a high-profile departure that comes as the Trump administration strikes alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean and puts pressure on the Venezuelan government. Adm. Alvin Holsey announced his retirement from the U.S. Navy in a statement posted to social media on Thursday. He said he is retiring after 37 years in the Navy in mid-December — just over a year after he was first promoted to lead Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM. "I am confident that you will forge ahead, focused on your mission that strengthens our nation...

We’ve grown accustomed to corporate media lying to us. It’s the lazy lies that are perhaps most galling. The Wall Street Journal’s recent overheated piece on the Trump administration’s public revocation of an “undercover” senior CIA officer is ridiculously lazy. The CIA spook in question is a very overt member of the intelligence community. Just Google the name Julia Gurganus. ‘Zero Concerns’ Wall Street Journal national security reporter Brett Forrest on Wednesday reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s naming of Gurganus on a list of 37 current and former officials stripped of their national security clearances has “alarmed...

WASHINGTON/TAIPEI, July 28 (Reuters) - Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te is set to delay a diplomatically sensitive trip his team had floated to the Trump administration for August that would have included stops in the United States, according to three people familiar with the matter. Such a trip was bound to infuriate Beijing at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to negotiate a deal on trade with China. China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a claim Taiwan rejects, and regularly denounces any shows of support for Taipei from Washington. The trip, which could have included...

TALLINN/ANTALYA, Turkey, May 15 (Reuters) - Estonia said on Thursday that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a "shadow fleet" defying Western sanctions on Moscow. Russia, which regards sanctions as a malign attempt to crush its economy, says all its ships have free passage in the Baltic and any attempt to stop them is dangerous. Estonia's navy said the unflagged Jaguar ship, which went onto a UK sanctions list last week, refused to cooperate when asked to stop...

BRICS member China has unveiled the world’s first Gold ATM that melts, tests, and converts gold into instant bank transfers. The ATM has already witnessed long queues of people trying to sell off their generational gold. Users need to book an appointment to use it, and according to early reports, appointment slots are full until as late as May. The Gold ATM is operated by China’s Kinghood Group and is installed at a mall in Shanghai. The machine weighs, checks the quality, and analyses the Gold before dispensing the money equivalent to the price that was put in. The ATM...

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday ruled out bringing back mandatory military service but said he wanted to mobilize society in the face of Russian aggression and would make an announcement in the coming weeks. Speaking to regional newspapers in comments recorded Friday and published Saturday, Macron said the return of compulsory military service was “not a realistic option.” He said France no longer had the “logistics” to reintroduce conscription, which ended in 2001. “We are going to look at ways to mobilize civilians,” Macron told the regional press, adding that he wanted to consolidate the “mobilization of society...

Terrible though it is, Ukraine’s forced withdrawal from Kursk makes peace negotiations with Russia more likely. Indeed had Putin not been able to drive the Ukrainian army out, he is unlikely to have even contemplated peace talks. He would have demanded that Kyiv pull out of his territory first. That would have been a huge political challenge for Zelensky, on top of all the others he faces: the idea of voluntarily withdrawing from conquered Russian land while at the same time ceding large areas of his own country to the enemy. Putin has the whip hand, and one of the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration shut down a highly trained, all-volunteer team of certified firefighters in early 2024—a move that rendered the California National Guard incapable of sending a complete firefighting force to Los Angeles until 10 days after the deadly fires broke out in the city, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. Launched in 2020, Team Blaze was an on-call strike force staffed entirely with certified firefighters of the California State Guard, a volunteer militia force that reports directly to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former State Guard commanding general Jay Coggan said its members attended regular trainings at their own...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down Sunday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the U.S military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of America targeting Yemen's Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one suffering minor injuries. But the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become, with ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite U.S. and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The U.S. military had conducted airstrikes targeting...

Few jobs require less physical exertion than rebounding for Caitlin Clark. On an early-November morning in downtown Indianapolis, Clark, the two-time college national player of the year for the University of Iowa, reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year from the Indiana Fever, and emergent American sports icon, sprints to different spots along the three-point line at the Fever practice gym, trying to bang as many shots as possible over a six-minute span. A Fever coach has tasked me with standing under the basket to retrieve her misses. But as Clark runs all over the court to launch long-range bombs, I...

U.S. officials would allow increased logging on federal lands across the Pacific Northwest in the name of fighting wildfires and boosting rural economies under proposed changes to a sweeping forest management plan that's been in place for three decades. The U.S. Forest Service proposal, released Friday, would overhaul the Northwest Forest Plan that governs about 38,000 square miles (99,000 square kilometers) in Oregon, Washington and California. The plan was adopted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton amid pressure to curb destructive logging practices that resulted in widespread clearcuts and destroyed habitat used by spotted owls. Timber harvests dropped dramatically in...

Sir Keir Starmer said he had the whole shadow cabinet behind him as he set out his commitment to Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Kicking off the second full week of General Election campaigning with a focus on defence, the Labour leader said the deterrent was “the foundation of any plan to keep Britain safe”. Sir Keir went on to announce a “triple lock” for the nuclear deterrent, including a commitment to delivering four new ballistic submarines, maintaining the continuous-at-sea deterrent and providing all the necessary upgrades for the boats to continue their patrols.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — A Portland burn nurse returned home on Saturday after a 17-day mission treating patients in Southern Gaza. Monica Johnston said she first heard of the opportunity to provide medical help to civilians in Gaza last year through the organization Palestinian-American Medical Association. "I hear the word ‘help,’ and my ears perk up," she told KATU on Monday, adding that her experience in the burn unit of Legacy Emanuel Medical Center led to "an absolute need to be there." Johnston arrived in Gaza on May 1, planning to stay 13 days. She worked in the European General...

KIEV, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Zmiivska thermal power plant (TPP) in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region had been destroyed in a Russian missile attack, the Unian news agency said on Saturday, citing Ukrainian power generating company Centrenergo. The missile strike on March 22 destroyed all the plant's units and damaged auxiliary equipment, Centrenergo said in a report. Currently, workers are still clearing the rubble at the site and there is no access to most of the plant's equipment. On March 22, Russia fired 88 missiles and 63 Shahed combat drones at Ukraine, which Ukrainian authorities described as the largest strike...

Expelled former Rep. George Santos made a surprising return to Congress on Thursday night to witness President Biden’s State of the Union address. Santos, who was kicked out of the House late last year with bipartisan support, expressed that it was his first time back in the Capitol since his expulsion. Despite his removal from office, Santos still retains certain privileges, including entry to the House floor when in session, due to his former membership. Speaking to reporters, Santos mentioned that he came to watch the primetime address and described his interactions with colleagues as “very bipartisan.” He acknowledged that...

A U.S. Air Force employee has been charged with illegally sharing classified national security information about Russia's war in Ukraine on a foreign online dating site. David Franklin Slater, aged 63, was arrested on Saturday for allegedly conspiring to transmit and transmitting national defense information from around February 2022 until approximately April 2022. Slater had retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel in late 2020, then worked at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska under the Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) as a civilian employee. Slater attended USSTRATCOM briefings on Russia's war with Ukraine, then sent classified information to a...

Britain’s warships cannot attack Houthi targets on land because they lack the firepower, in a situation described by former defence chiefs as a “scandal”. None of the Royal Navy’s destroyers or frigates have the ability to fire missiles at targets on land, leaving the US to carry out the majority of strikes on Houthi targets with support from RAF planes based 1,500 miles away. A British defence source said HMS Diamond, the destroyer stationed in the Red Sea, had not joined retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets because it did not have “the capability to fire to land targets”. The Ministry...

Police in Poland have stormed the nation’s presidential palace, still occupied by conservative Andrzej Duda. Cops took two ministers from the former Law and Justice (PiS) government to prison this week, despite the fact they had been awarded presidential pardons. New globalist Prime Minister Donald Tusk, alongside the new Marshal (Speaker) of the Sejm (Legislature) Szymon Hołownia, have moved swiftly to persecute members of the former, right-wing government in moves similar to the Biden pursuit of Donald Trump.

Moderna Inc.’s stock was up by 1.2% after the drug maker said it sold $6.7 billion of products in 2023. Analyst expected the company to sell $6.35 billion in products in 2023. Moderna said its share of the U.S. COVID-19 drug market was 48% in 2023, up from 37% in 2022. It also continues to expect 2024 product sales of approximately $4 billion, compared to the analyst estimate of $4.4 billion. It continues to expect it will return to sales growth in 2025, and break even in 2026. Moderna is also working on nine late-stage drug programs with anticipated milestones...