Free Republic

Chinese-American tech billionaire Lin Bin purchased a small stake in the Miami Dolphins at a valuation of $12.5 billion, ​a record for a publicly known minority transaction, ‌Sportico reported Tuesday. Bin is acquiring a 1% stake in the holding company that owns the Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium, Formula 1's Miami ​Grand Prix and part of the Miami Open ​tennis tournament. The previous top valuation for a minority ⁠transaction was $10 billion, set in October when the Koch ​family bought 10% of the New York Giants.

6 precision strikes in 24 hours target Bandar Abbas, sinking 11 Iranian warships and setting the 'Makran' base ship ablaze. U.S. forces cripple Iran’s economic lifeline and intercept critical missile fuel components from China. (snip) The timing of this massive assault appears linked to critical intelligence regarding supply routes. Reports reveal that two Iranian cargo ships, the Shabdis and the Barzin, were en route from a Chinese port to Bandar Abbas carrying sodium perchlorate, a key component for solid rocket fuel.For Tehran, the need for these components has shifted from "urgent" to "existential" following heavy damage sustained by its missile...

The United States began a large military exercise with South Korea involving thousands of troops on Monday (Mar 9) while also waging an escalating war in the Middle East. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff has said about 18,000 Korean troops will take part in Freedom Shield, which runs through Mar 19. US Forces Korea hasn’t confirmed the number of American troops participating in the training in South Korea. The allies’ combined exercise comes amid South Korean media speculation that Washington is relocating some assets from South Korea to support fighting against Iran.

New documents show the crew on board the United States' newest aircraft carrier are growing increasingly frustrated by design flaws that lead to regular failures in the ship's toilet system. The USS Gerald R. Ford has been deployed for seven months since it left Norfolk in June. On board the carrier, the crew is battling a toilet system that the General Accountability Office reported in 2020 was undersized and poorly designed. The system continues to fail during deployment, forcing the crew of 4,600 sailors to live with a system that randomly breaks down during their months at sea. NPR has...

Professor Jiang Xueqin made three big predictions back in 2024. The first was that Donald Trump would win the election and become President of the United States again. The second was that Donald Trump would start a war with Iran. Both of those predictions came true which makes the third prediction concerning for the United States. And that is because the professor predicted that it would lose the war to Iran. Jiang made an appearance on “Breaking Points” this week to lay out how he fears it all could play out. “Given my analysis of how the war is progressing,...

Republican support for the war may not be as solid as it appears – and that could have implications for a U.S. intervention in Taiwan.In the days following the Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran, both chambers of the U.S. Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – voted on a War Powers Resolution aimed at halting U.S. President Donald Trump’s military action, which was not given congressional authorization. Although the measure failed in both chambers – with nearly all Republicans voting against it and publicly supporting the administration – a closer look suggests that Republican support for the...

It’s easy to forget that ten years ago, candidate Donald Trump was the only national politician who took China’s growing geopolitical power seriously. He talked about China so frequently and pronounced those two syllables so deliberately — Chi-na — that comedians and voters alike enjoyed doing imitations of the MAGA-man taking America’s geopolitical adversary to task. On the stump, Trump called both Republicans and Democrats “stupid” for how they had permitted the Chinese Communist Party to devour American assets. He would list beautiful American buildings and historic American real estate that the Chinese had acquired since President Bill Clinton and...

This isn’t one war, but two. There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood. But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked...

https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2029527351663476820 Wall Street Apes@WallStreetApes·11hMichigan election company was transferring American Poll Worker data to ChinaHe was given the contract by Los Angeles California DemocratsHe transferred data on 2 MILLION United States Poll Workers to China and the CCP allegedly had a “back door” to the dataHoly ****

https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2029621652427096264 KanekoaTheGreat@KanekoaTheGreat·5h🚨NEW: Venezuela’s acting president just thanked Donald Trump — the same president whose administration removed Nicolás Maduro two months ago — and offered cooperation on energy, mining, and critical minerals.Delcy Rodríguez said it standing next to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum during a joint press conference in Caracas.Two months ago: Maduro captured.Today: the interim government thanking the architect of that removal and opening the door to U.S. access on gold, rare earths, and oil.While the world focuses on Iranian missiles and U.S. airstrikes, the Trump administration is quietly rewriting resource maps across the Global South.Venezuela holds the largest proven...

Of the 90 zero-days GTIG tracked in 2025, 43 hitZero-day exploitation targeting enterprise tech products reached an all-time high last year, with China-linked cyber-espionage groups remaining the most prolific state-backed users, according to Google. Google Threat Intelligence Group tracked 43 zero-days in enterprise software and appliances in 2025, representing 48 percent of all attacks against these previously undisclosed bugs. That's up from 36 (46 percent) in 2024. In total, the Chocolate Factory documented 90 zero-day vulnerabilities actively exploited last year, which is more than 2024's number (78), but still not as many as 2023's record high of 100. And...

Falling birth rates have governments worldwide in a state of panic. From Brussels to Tokyo to Beijing, policymakers are scrambling to reverse fertility decline, yet expensive pro-natal programs in countries such as South Korea and Hungary have delivered little results. To be clear, serious analysts do not claim that population decline mechanically produces economic collapse. But demographic aging does create real fiscal, labor-market, and growth headwinds. The more productive question is not whether demography matters, but which policy frameworks allow societies to adapt successfully to it. China and Singapore suggest that institutional design shapes how demographic pressures play out. Despite...

Carney and Modi announced Monday what they're calling a "new partnership," a series of multimillion-dollar deals and a commitment to sign a free trade agreement by year's end .. Carney said Canada is going all-in on diversifying trade. The two countries have set a goal to more than double two-way trade to some $70 billion a year by 2030, he said ...Carney framed this new course as not just a return to how things were but rather an ambitious revisioning of what the two Commonwealth countries can do together in an uncertain era marked by instability. At the centre of...

One thing unites the three great powers: all stand in increasingly strained relations with Brussels and the leading capitals of the European Union. The European Union is steering purposefully toward the introduction of Eurobonds. At the preparatory EU summit at Alden Biesen Castle in Belgium, numerous signs suggest that the multi-billion-euro Draghi plan could soon be set in motion. At the same time, geopolitically, a possible Russian comeback is emerging as fresh trouble for Brussels. The ability to analyze mistakes and rationally weigh realistic courses of action belongs, in evolutionary terms, to our conditio humana. Experience teaches us: those who...

The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion. Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because...

EU Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné on Wednesday presented a strategy shutting Beijing out of EU public funding by introducing a European preference in strategic sectors. Countries which limit access to their own markets through local content rules would also be cut off. The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled its long-awaited industrial plan, rolling out a “European Preference” that shuts China out of European public funding and tightens the screws on Beijing’s future investments in the European Union. The move comes after 200,000 European jobs were wiped out in energy-intensive industries and the automotive sector since 2024, with 600,000 losses projected this...

On Sunday afternoon, protesters in Islamabad pressed shoulder to shoulder, most of them dressed in black, and chanted slogans that rippled through the crowd. “Death to America, death to Israel,” they shouted in unison. Among them was also Kazim Hussain, who clutched a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei. The student, also an activist affiliated with Shia group Imamia Students Organisation (ISO), believes that the crisis unfolding in Iran was not a distant geopolitical conflict playing out beyond Pakistan’s western border. For him, it is deeply personal and emotionally moving.“This is not just an attack on Iran. It concerns all Shia Muslims,”...

A small cadre of activist judges and environmentalist litigators wields outsized power, crippling industries, mismanaging forests, and undermining America’s interests. With the world anxiously watching the conflict in Iran, it was no surprise that the first segment in the March 1 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured an interview with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah. The second segment, however, returned to a staple theme of the CBS news team. It presented a perspective on a current issue calculated to discredit the Trump administration and its supporters. In this case it was threats leveled against activist judges...

In today’s world, there are 193 countries in the UN. The large majority of those countries will vote consistently against the United States on measures that come before the General Assembly. Then again, the international system that counts is not the UN, but rather the U.S.-led commercial and legal order of alliances and trade. Almost all of the 193 UN member countries participate willingly in that system, to their great benefit. They may oppose the U.S. on many issues, and they may have disputes with their immediate neighbors, but they don’t make themselves constant troublemakers threatening to disrupt world peace...

A submarine attack on an Iranian ship off the coast of Sri Lanka has left at least 101 people missing, one dead and 78 injured, sources in Sri Lanka's navy and defence ministry told Reuters on Wednesday. It was unclear who attacked the ship, which the sources said has now sunk.