Free Republic

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned Kremlin will intensify attacks on Western weapons stored in Ukraine. “We will increase the intensity of attacks on logistics centers and storage bases for Western weapons,” Shoigu said on Tuesday, according to Russian state-owned outlet RIA Novosti. The warning from Shoigu came just as the House passed the $95 billion foreign aid package over the weekend and cleared the Senate Tuesday night. It is now on its way to President Biden’s desk to be signed. Foreign aid for embattled U.S. allies includes $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid in Gaza, $8 billion for...

The job of commanding a nuclear submarine should go to smart and well-qualified officers. Or at least that's the case in Western navies. Not so in the Chinese navy. Except for engineers, Chinese submarine officers tend to come from military academies with the lowest college-entrance-exam scores, a US military analyst said. This suggests that People's Liberation Army Navy sub commanders are not the "best and the brightest" officers who may be most equipped to cope with the stresses and challenges endemic to submarine warfare. Based on China's college-entrance exam — called the gaokoa — the People's Liberation Army Navy engineering...

Red Lobster is reportedly considering filing for bankruptcy to relieve financial pressures that have weighed on the company. According to a report by Bloomberg citing people familiar with the discussions, Red Lobster is weighing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to renegotiate burdensome leases and address other long-term contracts as well as rising labor costs. The outlet reported that the seafood restaurant chain is being advised by law firm King & Spalding on the subject, and that while discussions about restructuring are ongoing and that no final decisions have been made about a bankruptcy filing. By filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy,...

(Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department next week will meet with lawyers for families of victims of two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019, as the government decides whether to move ahead with a criminal case, according to correspondence Reuters reviewed. The meeting, set for Tuesday afternoon, comes ahead of an April 24 gathering scheduled for the victims' families themselves to confer with Justice Department officials. "As we have ... done previously, we think it would be productive to hold a lawyers-only meeting approximately two weeks before the conferral," said Glenn Leon, the...

Wausau voters ousted Mayor Katie Rosenberg, electing conservative challenger Doug Diny with 52 percent of the vote. Wausau spent millions modifying a new water treatment facility after testing in 2022 found all city wells contained elevated PFAS levels. The city instituted new filtration systems in early 2023, but facility costs led to skyrocketing water bills that became an issue in the local race. Diny, who was elected to Wausau City Council in 2020, won 5,222 votes to Rosenberg’s 4,798. Like many local races, the nominally nonpartisan race was characterized by ideological spending on both sides. According to WisPolitics, the state...

⚡️Campaign Finance🧵: Adam Kinzinger Have you ever wondered what becomes of socially awkward politicians with no marketable skills, aside from crying on cue, when they are gerrymandered out of public office? Better yet, do you ever wonder what happens to all the leftover campaign $$ they bilked out of pussy-hat wearing cat ladies in the name of saving our Democracy™? If the answer is yes, this one’s for you! Prior to finding fame in the J6 fallout, the most remarkable thing about Mr. Kinzinger was just how unremarkable his congressional career had been. Despite representing the reddest district in IL...

Washington — An active duty Army soldier and intelligence analyst spent over a year selling sensitive military documents related to the U.S. defense of Taiwan, weapons systems, and missile defense systems to China, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment unsealed Thursday and obtained by CBS News.

Former President Donald Trump professed to be honored to have the support of Black Lives Matter on Truth Social Wednesday after a co-founder of the organization’s Rhode Island chapter endorsed him on Fox & Friends on Tuesday. In his post, Trump praised Mark Fisher as a “great guy” and suggested that he had done more for Black people “than any other President” with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. “Spoke with Mark Fisher yesterday, a great guy, very honored to have his and BLM’s support,” declared Trump. “I have done more for Black people than any other President (Lincoln?), including...

The death toll from the Hamas terror group’s war on Israel rises to more than 150, Hebrew-language media cite medical officials as saying. The Health Ministry says 1,104 people have been wounded in the attacks, which included Hamas terrorists infiltrating into Israel and gunning down soldiers and civilians. Others were wounded in rocket attacks. The death toll is expected to rise higher.

In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign. In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him both a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Cohen disputed that he handed over a bag of...

1/ Russian soldiers are dealing with the stresses of trench warfare by hiring sex workers to entertain them in their dugouts. Meanwhile, Russian brothels are offering soldiers on leave the opportunity to fulfil their fantasy of "punishing bad Ukrainian [women]". 2/ A report by The Insider highlights how the war in Ukraine has changed the nature of sex work in Russia. The country's sex workers are facing many challenges, from the loss of established clients, to increased competition from soldiers' wives and girlfriends taking up sex work. 3/ The Insider reports on the various impacts of the war on Russia's...

The C.I.A.’s concerns were not unwarranted. In 2019, the Russians undertook an elaborate operation to find Mr. Poteyev, forcing a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help. The scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was an unlikely spy. He studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a source of pride for his family, with a history of charitable work and no criminal past. But the Russians used Mr. Fuentes’s partner as leverage. He had two wives: a Russian living in Germany and another in Mexico. In 2019,...

RIGA, Latvia — Russia’s Federal Security Service late Friday announced a criminal case against Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, accusing him of “incitement to armed rebellion” after he declared an open conflict with Russia’s military leadership and called on Russians to join 25,000 Wagner fighters against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top commanders. Prigozhin, whose private military company helped Russia seize the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Moscow’s only significant territorial gain this year, accused the Russian military on Friday of carrying out a strike on a Wagner camp, and appeared to threaten Shoigu, declaring “This scum will be stopped!”...

For a month the two men could not tell their psychologist what had happened to them, only that it was horrible beyond words. “If there’s hell somewhere, it’s worse than that,” said one. The Ukrainian soldiers, aged 25 and 28, had been in Russian captivity — one for one month, the other for three. After their return in a prisoner swap they had been referred to Anzhelika Yatsenko, 41, a psychologist in Poltava who deals with troubled young men. They were suicidal. The younger one had tried to kill himself. “I knew from previous cases they had probably been tortured,”...

Patrons at Miami eatery Versailles cheered when Donald Trump twice declared “Food for everyone!” during a surprise stop at the Little Havana hotspot. Then he left without buying food for anyone, according to a local report. Fresh off pleading not guilty to criminal charges in a Miami federal court, Trump was all smiles as he entered the crowded restaurant Tuesday. Well-wishers sang “Happy Birthday” to the former New Yorker on the eve of his 77th birthday. Trump supporters told NBC 6 South Florida they thought the 45th president was treated unfairly when he was indicted on more than three-dozen counts...

Some people are naturally tribal and don’t like immigration. So they’ll use whatever justifications they can come up with to argue against it. I’ve seen the topic of immigration make capitalists talk like trade unionists when thinking about wages, and people who’ve never shown any interest in climate policy start worrying about carbon emissions. There’s been a lot of controversy around whether immigrants litter too much, but I never see the people making this complaint talk about littering in any other context. It makes me suspect that it might not be their main concern. It’s kind of pointless to argue...

We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left's pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens. We stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let’s show this Marine... America’s got his back.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that he wanted to “burn” the National Institutes of Health “to the ground,” according to a new interview with the Democratic presidential candidate. In a May 9 conversation with actor Russell Brand, Kennedy said that DeSantis invited him to breakfast during the COVID pandemic, to discuss what Kennedy described as his “science-based response” to the crisis. “We talked about him possibly running for the presidency, and I said, how will you handle the NIH?” Kennedy told Brand, whose talk show has more than 1.1 million subscribers on the YouTube...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dined with Miriam Adelson — former President Trump's top financial backer in 2020 — and other major GOP donors in Jerusalem on Wednesday, according to two sources who attended the dinner. Why it matters: DeSantis, considered Trump's top rival for the GOP nomination, is expected to announce his presidential exploratory committee in the coming weeks. Politico reported in October 2022 that Adelson, widow to the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson, told several possible Republican candidates that she plans stay neutral in the 2024 primary. Representatives for Adelson did not respond to a request for comment. DeSantis' campaign...

The combination of losing the spies under diplomatic cover and the end of 29155 had led Russia to turn more to its long-term illegals, said Grozev. “They’ve had to activate their sleepers, and when you do that you risk much more disclosure,” he said. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell in The Americans, Others speculate that there could be something more at play. John Sipher, formerly deputy director of the CIA’s Russia operations, said he believed the recent detection of illegals was probably due to someone inside Russia passing information to the US or another western intelligence service. “It’s almost impossible...