Free Republic

During a meeting in Washington between Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a first-of-its-kind global parliamentary initiative was launched: an international effort to recommend former and current U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise also participated in the meeting. At its conclusion, Ohana and Johnson signed an official letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee calling for Trump to be selected as the 2026 laureate. The initiative follows a plan announced by Ohana during Trump’s recent visit to Israel and a speech Johnson delivered in Congress the...

The Burtele Foot with its elements in the anatomical position. (Photo by Yohannes Haile-Selassie/ASU) In A Nutshell * Scientists matched a mysterious 3.4-million-year-old fossil foot discovered in Ethiopia to Australopithecus deyiremeda, a human ancestor that lived alongside Lucy’s species but retained tree-climbing abilities. * The discovery shows human evolution wasn’t a straight path from trees to ground. While Lucy’s species evolved rigid feet for walking, A. deyiremeda kept feet that could both walk and climb, plus ate different foods from forest environments. * A juvenile jaw with distinctive teeth from the same site as the foot provided the missing link....

The Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia, located about 500 miles from the capital city of Addis Ababa, erupted on Sunday for the first time in about 12,000 years. The eruption was not too devastating as such events go, but it did release an enormous plume of ash, which rode the subtropical jet stream and quickly expanded to cover parts of Yemen, Oman, India, and Pakistan. Air India announced it canceled at least 11 flights on Tuesday due to concerns over the cloud. “The affected altitude is between 8.5 kilometers (5.2 miles) and 15 kilometers above the sea level,” said Mrutyunjay...

A volcano in Ethiopia erupted for the first time in at least 12,000 years on Sunday, sending a cloud of ash and smoke northeast across the Red Sea. Hayli Gubbi, a volcano in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, erupted at around 8:30 a.m. UTC (3:30 a.m. EST) on Nov. 23. By 8 p.m. UTC (3 p.m. EST), the explosive phase of the eruption had stopped, according to the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) in France. This is the first time Hayli Gubbi is known to have erupted in the Holocene — the present geological epoch that began at...

A major explosive volcanic eruption unexpectedly began this morning at Ethiopia's Hayli Gubbi volcano, leading to the generation of an ash cloud the size of Portugal. Lengthy pyroclastic flows were generated, and heavy ashfall has occurred. Today's video discusses the ongoing eruption via the knowledge and analysis of a geologist. A Major Explosive Volcanic Eruption Just Occurred in Africa; Geologist Analysis | 4:51 GeologyHub | 382K subscribers | 242,738 views | November 23, 2025 0:00 Major Explosive Eruption 0:12 Hayli Gubbi Erupts 0:56 Volcanic Ash Advisory 2:34 Eruption Size 3:31 Erta Ale Link

A major explosive volcanic eruption unexpectedly began this morning at Ethiopia's Hayli Gubbi volcano, leading to the generation of an ash cloud the size of Portugal. Lengthy pyroclastic flows were generated, and heavy ashfall has occurred. Today's video discusses the ongoing eruption via the knowledge and analysis of a geologist.

DJIBOUTI, Sep 30, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Several dozen American soldiers raise a big green tent and shuffle it across the sand, making room for yet more equipment at a new U.S. military base that is growing larger by the day in this small but strategically located country in the Horn of Africa. While their colleagues rearrange their living quarters, other soldiers in sunglasses and floppy hats keep watch at the entrance to Camp Le Monier from a machine gun-mounted Humvee. The five-month-old U.S. base in this former French colony just miles across the Red Sea from...

From 7/7 to Manchester 2025 – the story they refuse to tellAfter the Manchester synagogue attack, I began tracing two decades of Islamic terrorism in Britain – uncovering a disturbing pattern hidden in plain sight. This is not prejudice. It’s record-keeping – and a warning about policies putting us all at risk.ManchesterI didn’t learn about the Manchester synagogue terrorist attack until I opened my phone after Yom Kippur had ended. I had also missed messages from my cousin, who had witnessed the event and been evacuated from her home by the police.By 7:30 the following morning, I had already traced...

It is no longer the 19th century, and so British recognition of a Palestinian state, let alone that of Canada and Australia, means absolutely nothing. Contrary to arguments that Israel “occupies” Gaza, the would-be state has never been a stand-alone entity. Control over disputed territories passed from the Ottomans to the British to the Jordanians and Egyptians. It is telling that neither Jordan nor Egypt recognized the West Bank and Gaza as a Palestinian state. Most Palestinians came from outside the region, as early 20th-century censuses show. If Canberra, Ottawa, and London — the Axis of Pandering — wish to...

Less than three months after his arrest, former UVSC student Kidus Chane Yohannes has been declared mentally competent to stand criminal trial. A 4th District Judge made the decision on Thursday, Sept. 6. A preliminary hearing has been set for Sept. 20. "Yohannes is charged with two felony counts of providing false information for a gun background check and a third felony of possessing a credit card stolen from one of his roommates," said Joe Pyrah, a Daily Herald writer. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, prosecutors requested the competency examination of Yohannes because, as is stated in court documents,...

In July, 2024, a group of Chinese technologists and researchers met at an office in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, to discuss efforts to stop internet users bypassing the Great Firewall, China’s vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus. Even by Chinese standards, internet controls in Xinjiang are intense, a legacy of a years-long crackdown by the authorities targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Preventing people from dodging these controls – to access banned websites or download secure messaging apps – was a key government priority, part of a “long-term struggle and technical confrontation” vital to nationwide “anti-terrorism” efforts, according...

After ravaging countries in Africa, the Middle East, and India, swarms of locust have now made their way to Europe as the Italian region of Sardinia recently saw its worst attack in 70 years. Around 30 000 ha (74 000 acres) of crops have been affected in Nuoro City alone, according to the Italian Journalist Agency (AGI). "When the locusts arrived in mid-May, my cabbages were small, it wasn't harvesting time yet, they were all still in the field. Then the swarm came through, started to devour all the leaves, leaving only the stem," a Sardinian farmer named Giovanni said....

Hadush Kebatu, who is accused of sexual assaults in Epping, Essex, says he is "not a wild animal" while giving evidence in his trial "I can't do these kind of things," he tells Colchester Magistrates' Court, adding: "I am a Christian, it's not in my culture" Earlier, a woman told the same court she was "shocked" when Kebatu allegedly put his hand on her thigh - here's what else we heard from the witness Kebatu, from Ethiopia, denies all five charges against him, including sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl, harassment and inciting a child into sexual activity Allegations of...

The Red Sea is parting again, but this time Moses doesn’t have a hand in it. Satellite images show that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate are moving away from each other, stretching the Earth's crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea, scientists reported in this week's issue of journal Nature. Last September, a series of earthquakes started splitting the planet's surface along a 37-mile section of the East African Rift in Afar, Ethiopia. Using the images gathered by the European Space Agency's Envisat radar satellite, researchers looked at satellite data before and after these...

Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed -- at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn. Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed -- and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the...

A rift that opened in Africa after a massive earthquake last September could be the beginning of a new Ocean, scientists say. The crack in the ground appeared along a fault line in the Afar desert in Ethiopia. The crack is heading for the Red Sea. If it makes it that far, it would carve a new ocean that would separate Eritrea and part of Ethiopia (both of which lie on the Arabian plate) from the rest of the continent, creating a new island.Satellite data collected since the quake shows that the rift is widening at an unprecedented rate, according...

The Manda-Hararo rift in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Credit: DavidMPyle / CC BY-SA 4.0 =================================================================== A steady underground pulse has been discovered beneath East Africa, where researchers believe a new ocean is gradually forming. The rhythmic movement was detected in the Afar region of Ethiopia, a geological hotspot where three giant sections of the Earth’s crust—the Arabian, Nubian, and Somalian plates—are slowly pulling apart. The site, known as the Afar Triple Junction, is one of few places on Earth where the process of continental breakup can be observed on land. As the plates drift in different directions, the ground...

Losin, Yigal. (1983). Pillar of Fire: The Rebirth of Israel--a Visual History. Israel: Shikmona Publishing Company. *(Archived screenshot)Swastika on the walls of Jerusalem's Zion Gate. Arab feelings in 1936.1936 was not a good year for democracy. The Fascist countries were seen as successful by many people. Every step taken by Hitler or Mussolini met with hesitation and trepidation on the part of the leaders of the free world. Hitler armed Germany, contraven-ing the Treaty of Versailles. The Wehrmacht marched to the Rhineland; this was a blatant violation of the Locarno Pact, according to which Germany was to keep the area...

Haaretz reports that archaeologists uncovered rare and somewhat perplexing figurines from two 1,500-year-old Christian burials at the site of Tel Malhata in the Negev Desert. The discovery was made during salvage excavations on the grounds of the Nevatim airbase, where previous archaeological work has revealed a rich history of human occupation from the Bronze Age through the Byzantine period. During the latest excavations, teams located some 155 tombs, but two burials contained objects different from anything else found at the site -- bone and wooden figurines with facial features resembling Africans. Two of them were carved from ebony, a rare...

Madrid-based Prisoners Defenders, an NGO focused on Cuban human rights, reported that the Cuban and Russian governments signed an agreement in which Cuba would send soldiers to join the war in Ukraine. Such a development raises many important questions. The Wagner Group’s dramatic failed mutiny displayed something the Kremlin knew long ago: the group, including its leader, Yevgeny Prighozin, has become a problem for Russia, particularly on the Ukrainian front. The group had little military training and served as cannon fodder in the war. Thousands of its fighters fell in battle. Wagner was convenient to Russia, as many of its...