Free Republic

Russia has made sweeping advances in recent days that threaten to outweigh the gains made by Ukraine in its cross-border attack into the Kursk region. Russian forces are just a few kilometres from the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a crucial logistics hub used by the Ukrainian military. Home to a key railway station and major roads, Pokrovsk is an essential supply and reinforcement point for Ukraine’s troops on the eastern front line. Critics in Kyiv fear that the country's military has made a serious miscalculation.

Four key pillars of the global climate are melting in the heat trapped by rising fossil fuel emissions, a new study has found. The relatively stable climate that nurtured human civilization depends in large part on these structures: the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic currents that warm Europe. Under current policies, the world faces a scenario in which those pillars have roughly even odds of either surviving or collapsing during the next three centuries, according to results published Thursday in Nature Communications. The scientists warned that if the pillars are fatally undermined...

Germany is not the well-functioning, environmentally super-conscious, high-tech nation it used to be. You go to a train station, half the trains are cancelled, the other half is delayed, the escalators are broken, the announcements are barely audible, and in the unlikely event that you can connect to the wifi it’s so slow that by the time the news is streaming it’s become a historical documentary. Or maybe it’s quantum wifi, collapses the moment you touch it

Martin Armstrong sees striking similarities between the multitude of crises that plague the modern world and the conditions just before the fall of the Roman empire. Martin argues that endless debt issuance, wars for profit, unchecked migration, and rampant political corruption are setting the stage for a future where many Western countries cease to exist as we know them.

In the wake of two high-profile building collapses last year, the City Council will pass a bill Thursday that overhauls the Department of Buildings’ inspection system by requiring the agency to investigate properties proactively.

According to the mathematician [Immanuel Niven], the "Putin system" is beginning to collapse, exactly what he predicted mathematically already in March: "The announced drastic tax increases in Russia (the highest tax increases in the history of modern Russia) as well as Putin's recently published slogans (according to which "everyone must work as if they were at the front") are dramatic signs that the toxicity of the Russian war economy is reaching a critical level." In a post on X some days ago, he explained what this 'toxicity' means: "If the cost of replacing material losses (in such a way that...

School systems complain about the rising costs of handling illegal immigrants. Here’s a spotlight on two cities, one in Massachusetts, the other Colorado.In Stoughton, Mass., students arrive with traumatic pasts and little English. The same is happening in Denver.The Wall Street Journal comments on The Massive Immigration Wave Hitting America’s ClassroomsMillions of migrants, most seeking asylum, have crossed the border in recent years and have been allowed to settle in the U.S. until a federal immigration judge decides their fate, a process that can take years. Among the record numbers, federal data suggest, are as many as one million children...

Nine people were killed and a presidential candidate was briefly taken to hospital after a stage collapsed under heavy winds at a campaign rally in Mexico on Wednesday. Candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez said he was not injured in the incident, which happened during his campaign event in the northeastern city of San Pedro Garza García. The governor of Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state said at least 54 people were injured and rescue operations were ongoing to save some of the people trapped under the collapsed stage. Among the dead is one minor, Governor Samuel García Sepúlveda said in a post on...

What Is Happening? Another Barge Hit Another Bridge Causing a Partial Collapse in Galveston VIDEO AT LINK.................

U.S. regulators have seized Republic First Bancorp and agreed to sell it to Fulton Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said on Friday, underscoring the challenges facing regional banks a year after the collapse of three peers. The Philadelphia-based bank, which had abandoned funding talks with a group of investors, was seized by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities. The FDIC, appointed as a receiver, said Fulton Bank, a unit of Fulton Financial Corp, will assume substantially all deposits and purchase all the assets of Republic Bank to "protect depositors". Republic Bank had about $6 billion in total assets...

US regulators have seized Republic First Bancorp and agreed to sell it to Fulton Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Friday, underscoring the challenges facing regional banks a year after the collapse of three peers. The Philadelphia-based bank, which had abandoned funding talks with a group of investors, was seized by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities. The FDIC, appointed as a receiver, said Fulton Bank, a unit of Fulton Financial, will assume substantially all deposits and purchase all the assets of Republic Bank to “protect depositors.” Republic Bank had about $6 billion in total assets and $4...

A third temporary channel opened Saturday at the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Commercial vessels were able to use the Fort Carroll Temporary Alternate Channel, which has a controlling depth of 20 feet, a 300-foot horizontal clearance and a vertical clearance of 135 feet. Earlier in the month, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials said they expect to open a limited access channel to the Port of Baltimore by the end of April. The channel would support one-way traffic in and out of the port for barge container service and some vessels that move automobiles and farm...

The possibility of Ukraine's army collapsing cannot be ruled out, an unnamed US official told Bloomberg. The report said, citing talks with multiple officials, that Ukraine's position on the battlefield is at its most fragile moment since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Ukraine's war effort has been weakened in recent months by a severe shortage of ammunition, dipping morale among Ukrainian soldiers, and the impasse in Congress over US aid to Ukraine, Bloomberg reported. One major risk is a collapse of Ukraine's line of defense, which would allow Russia to make a major advance, Bloomberg said, citing an...

Zach presents a good summary of some unanswered questions and anomalies surrounding the Baltimore bridge collapse. The video runs just over 27 minutes long.

In a sobering assessment reported by Politico, senior Ukrainian military officials have voiced grave concerns over the potential for the country's frontlines to collapse in the ongoing conflict with Russia.These officers, who served under former Commander-in-Chief General Valerij Zaluzjnyj, paint a grim picture of the situation, highlighting Russia's superior manpower and the effective use of new glide bombs as likely to lead to significant breakthroughs and the crumbling of Ukrainian defenses.According to these officials, Ukraine is at a severe disadvantage, lacking both the technological solutions and the sheer volume of resources needed to counter the Russian military's might."There's nothing that...

Joe Biden is demanding, and pronto, more of our tax money to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. He wants more from us—naturally—but America needs, as its first priority, to investigate and determine if the bridge’s destruction was in fact unintended… or malicious. Much documented evidence is emerging as to the bridge “accident” being in fact, a political, and likely international, cyber-attack. Whether or not this is so, something is off-kilter about the serial infrastructure fails happening all around us. It is time for a much closer look. As to Biden’s call for more cash, where are the...

WASHINGTON — Small businesses in Fayette County affected by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore are eligible to apply for U.S. Small Business Administration low-interest loans. Fayette is one of eight Pennsylvania counties where small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives, small aquaculture businesses, and private nonprofit organizations now are eligible for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which carry interest rates of 4% (3.25% for private nonprofit organizations) and have terms of as long as 30 years. Businesses can borrow up to $2 million to pay operating expenses if their revenues dropped due to the disaster. Businesses in Maryland;...

On Sunday, Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement that Hamas in Gaza may be "collapsing from within."Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that senior Hamas operatives captured by troops in the Gaza Strip have told interrogators “the group is collapsing from within.”“In the last week or two, hundreds of terrorists have been captured and what they say about what happened to them tells the whole story. They say that Hamas is collapsing from within, the price they are paying is very heavy,” Gallant said following an assessment at the 98th Division’s headquarters.“We’re going to eliminate everyone who...

Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that claiming the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was due to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies was “foolishness.” Host Dana Bash said, “Some Republicans are trying to blame the bridge collapse on policies that encourage workplace diversity. A Utah state representative who is running for governor tweeted, quote, ‘This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being and security of citizens.’ Another Republican running for Congress in Florida posted ‘DEI did this.’ What’s your response?”

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore came as quite a shock. After a massive container ship struck one of the bridge’s pillars, the entire span quickly fell apart, costing several lives. It’s hard to overstate the bridge’s importance, particularly for the automobile industry. In addition to handling 11 million vehicles per year, it provided a vital way for trucks to access the Port of Baltimore while avoiding the dense city core. The impact on the region will be felt for months, if not years. The question is, what now? President Joe Biden has said that the...