Free Republic

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called out “incompetent communists” who are in charge of the Cuban government, as the United States is eyeing possible intervention regarding the island nation just off the coast of Florida. The country is facing nearly all-day electricity blackouts, as CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba earlier this month to meet with officials. There are also concerns about Cuba possibly wanting to act against the U.S. with military drones, according to Axios. “Cuba’s in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately for them, it’s run by a bunch of incompetent communists,” Rubio said. “Being a communist...

Israel has killed two top Hamas military chiefs in 11 days, demonstrating near-total surveillance, air supremacy, and intelligence capabilities across Gaza and the Middle East.What is so shocking about Israel's achievement of assassinating two Hamas military chiefs, Izz-al-Din al-Hadad, and his successor, Mohammed Ouda, within 11 days of each other, is that no one is even shocked anymore. Depending on the country or area, from drones to fighter jets, to the navy, to satellites, to Mossad, Shin Bet, and IDF Unit 504 agents, Israel has its enemies' leaders covered and in its crosshairs practically on demand, including: Iran, the Yemen...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will meet with his Cabinet on Wednesday at a precarious moment for talks aimed at ending the war with Iran, just days after insisting that his administration and Tehran had “largely negotiated” a settlement but with the negotiations still in a state of flux. As he prepares to huddle with his top aides, Trump is projecting confidence that he's closing in on a deal that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide him a credible argument that Iran’s nuclear capability has been diminished enough to declare victory, winding down a conflict that's been...

To reach the church, we walked single file. The path was narrow. On either side of us were landmines. The Burma military had bombed the church in 2023. The roof was mostly gone. The walls were cracked and scorched. But the building was still standing, and so the people of this village in Karenni State still used the church. Not because it was safe but because it was theirs, and because there was nowhere else to go. On this day, myself and the Karenni demining team were going there to meet some survivors of landmines - the Karenni leadership had...

Ghana has welcomed Pope Leo XIV's apology for the Catholic Church's historic role in slavery, describing it as an "act of moral courage" that was important in the global pursuit of "truth, human dignity and justice". The Pope issued the clearest apology yet for the Church's involvement in legitimising slavery and its delay in condemning it for centuries. The apology was published on Monday in the Pope's first major teaching document of his papacy, which also focused on the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI). Ghana was a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade when millions of people were captured...

An Australian drone show descended into chaos when technical failures caused nearly 90 drones to plummet into the waters of Darling Harbour in Sydney on Monday night. According to news reports citing drone operator SkyMagic, 89 drones landed in the water due to an “unforeseen change in the radio frequency.” “This anomaly caused a number of drones in the fleet to enact failsafe landing procedures in response to compromised positional accuracy,” SkyMagic said in a statement. The failsafe involved some of the drones forming a cluster before descending. “No vehicle escaped the safety boundary of the show parameters, and the...

With less than 100 days until Iceland votes on whether to restart EU membership talks, the island remains deeply divided, with both camps only now beginning to mobilise their campaigns ahead of the summer ballot. The national referendum on joining the EU takes place on 29 August and the two intractable opposing political sides have yet to fully make their case. On the “yes” side: a government coalition that sees a geopolitical imperative for EU membership and on the other side, the “no” campaign sees a loss of sovereignty, and worse, loss of control over Iceland’s agriculture and fishing industries....

For decades, American power in the Middle East rested on a Gulf architecture built around Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. That arrangement reflected the strategic assumptions of another era. It assumed that energy security required permanent deference to Gulf monarchies and that American freedom of action could be preserved through transactional understandings with regimes whose priorities were often temporary and narrow...That order is weakening. Gulf states increasingly hedge between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow... The proposal is not simply to maintain radar crews or missile-defence officers, but to leave a significant standing US force in Israel and potentially shift assets...

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has likely eliminated another of the prime butchers behind the Oct. 7 atrocities. And IDF also continues to eliminate Hezbollah targets on its other front.Hezbollah kills Israelis on a weekly basis and continues to devastate Israeli towns, some of which lost or suffered damage to most of their buildings in missile strikes since Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas jihadis also continue to conduct terrorist activities both in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (what they deceptively call the “West Bank”). And of course, many Oct. 7 terrorists came home to Gaza to receive a hero’s welcome and huge...

Brazilian Senator and presidential contender Flavio Bolsonaro met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the ​White House on Tuesday as he looks to move past a scandal ‌that has dented his popularity with voters ahead of Brazil's election later this year. The encounter took place in the Oval Office and was closed to the press, but the senator spoke to ​journalists at a press conference in Washington after the meeting. The senator, the ​eldest son of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro, said Trump asked him ⁠about his father, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his ​involvement in...

The European Union (EU) may be gearing up to hit Google with a massive multimillion-euro fine for antitrust violations. The tech giant could be facing a penalty in the high hundreds of millions of euros, according to sources speaking to the German newspaper Handelsblatt. The final decision will reportedly rest with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and is expected to be announced before the European Commission's summer recess. The Commission typically goes on break in late July through to August, operating with a skeleton staff during this period. Google's parent company, Alphabet, is accused of violating the Digital...

Fresh strikes on southern Iran were launched by U.S. military forces early Tuesday morning targeting Iranian missile sites and vessels attempting to lay anti-shipping mines in the contested Strait of Hormuz. The targeted strikes were done “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” but the military was “using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, the spokesman for the U.S. military’s Central Command, said in a statement as reported by AP. Following the strikes, the BBC reports U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a deal was still possible and pointed to talks on Tuesday between...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s five-nation tour from May 15 to 20 moved through the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Italy, but Rome gave the trip its clearest strategic message. The stop in Italy showed how New Delhi is trying to widen its options in a more fragmented world by combining trade, technology, defense, connectivity, and corridor politics into a single diplomatic approach. In Rome, India and Italy elevated their relationship to a Special Strategic Partnership and adopted a joint declaration that stretched across trade, investment, supply chains, critical minerals, clean technologies, semiconductors, ports, maritime security, defense...

The U.S. and Iran are reportedly in the process of working out a deal to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump assured people he wasn't going to make the mistakes of the Obama Iran deal, and has placed focus on getting the highly enriched uranium to deter the nuclear threat. In fact, he was even pursuing a broader peace across the region, asking other countries like Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Abraham Accords once the Iran deal is finalized. This also may have pushed Iran to try to clean up its language when...

President Donald Trump made an important post late Monday afternoon about the highly enriched uranium that has been the focus of the deal he's been trying to achieve with Iran. Trump said that the stockpile would either have to be handed over to the U.S. or be destroyed under supervision as part of the agreement. “The Enriched Uranium (Nuclear Dust!) will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or, at another acceptable location, with the Atomic Energy...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday compared Alberta’s vote on whether to move toward independence to Brexit, calling it a potential “dangerous bluff.” Danielle Smith, the premier of Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta, said last week a vote would be held Oct. 19 on whether Alberta should stay in Canada or take legal steps under the Constitution to hold a binding referendum on leaving. Carney drew on his experience with Brexit in his comments. Carney was the governor of the Bank of England in 2016 when Britain voted to leave the European Union, and he helped navigate the central...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said Monday that it carried out “self-defense” strikes in southern Iran, including on missile launch sites and boats placing mines. U.S. Central Command says the strikes were done “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces” but that it was “using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.” President Donald Trump said Monday that any agreement to end the Iran war should include a requirement for several additional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to join the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreements from Trump’s first term aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. Trump said...

Iran warned Monday that an agreement to end the war launched by the United States and Israel was not imminent, after President Donald Trump raised and then lowered expectations that a deal may be close.

Scroll through any social media platform long enough and you’ll notice something that doesn’t quite add up. The same talking points, phrasing, and sudden outrage cycles are appearing across completely different audiences at the same time. It feels coordinated. And that’s because it often is. Foreign adversaries have turned modern technology into a new kind of warfare, one the United States hasn’t fully named, hasn’t clearly assigned ownership of, and isn’t yet equipped to fight at the speed it’s being waged. This is something more insidious than traditional espionage: the deliberate, systematic manipulation of how millions of Americans perceive reality—their...

Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that Ukraine be granted full membership of the European Union. Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, had called for the country to be given a special half-in, half-out relationship, which would mean it could participate in European summits and ministerial meetings – but not cast a vote. Mr Zelensky criticised the “associate membership” concept, branding it an “unfair” move that would leave Ukraine “voiceless”. The Ukrainian president urged the EU to commit to his country’s full entry in a letter addressed to Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of...