Free Republic

Flávio Bolsonaro defied the polls by finishing ahead of Lula, forcing an October 25 runoff as conservative candidates captured major victories across Brazil and strengthened their position in the nation’s Senate. ================================================================== WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Flávio Bolsonaro led Lula 47.24% to 44.91% with 99% of reporting completed Sunday night. The presidential contest will proceed to an October 25 runoff after Flávio fell below the 50% needed for an outright victory. Conservative candidates scored major victories across São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina. Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat, while the Liberal Party...

Iran’s oil minister, Mohsen Paknejad, has resigned and been replaced by the country’s top oil executive, the president’s office says in a statement, amid a blockade on Tehran’s oil exports by the United States. “Following the acceptance of Mohsen Paknejad’s resignation, Hamid Bovard,” the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company, “has been appointed as acting Minister of Oil by a decree from the president,” says the statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB. In a news bulletin on the minister’s resignation, state television runs an interview with an official from the Iranian presidential office who says Paknejad initially offered his...

Dear Tucker, As men with public platforms, our responsibility is to tell the truth — whether one may or may not receive payment from middle eastern antisemitic propagandists. That standard applies to me. It applies to you too, Mr. Carlson. For months, you and others have used the word "genocide" to describe what's happened in Gaza — not as a legal conclusion reached through evidence and process, but as settled, obvious fact, repeated with total confidence to millions of listeners. This week, the Gaza Health Ministry itself — the same Hamas-run body that has supplied you the death toll numbers...

Bolsonaro: 47.18% Lula: 44.98% BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and Brazil’s incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face off in a runoff Oct. 25 for the top job of Latin America’s powerhouse economy after neither won a majority in Sunday’s vote.

When the first survivors’ accounts came out of Israel’s kibbutzim, I had the terrible sense that I had heard them before. And I had, in South Sudan. More than two decades earlier, I traveled to Sudan to witness Christian Solidarity International freed 2,952 black Africans from slavery. My American Anti-Slavery Group had helped raise funds to buy back their freedom. The freed slaves told us that the raiders came at dawn, screaming “Allahu akbar!” and murdered at will. They gang-raped the women and girls, then dragged them off as captives to use as concubines, domestics, or to sell. On October...

The White House is monitoring a plague outbreak in Russia after a lab technician died and hundreds of people she came into contact with were placed in quarantine. An official with the Trump administration told Axios on Sunday that the administration is 'aware, monitoring the outbreak, and assessing options.' Darya Shipilova, 28, was reportedly working at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia when she was exposed to pneumonic plague

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro took an early lead as Brazil began reporting results Sunday afternoon in the first round of a tight presidential election, after a campaign dominated by corruption scandals, economic anxiety, and accusations of U.S. meddling. The field of 13 candidates has been led by two clear frontrunners — leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 80, who is seeking a fourth term, and Flavio, the 45-year-old son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who hopes to return his father's right-wing movement to power. With about 11% of votes reported, Flavio led Lula with 51.09% to the president's 40.67%. The...

New details from the interrogation of Hamam al-Hammami, the Flydubai co-pilot who attempted to hijack a flight from Dubai to Israel, indicate that the terrorist intended to crash the plane into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, causing mass casualties, Israeli officials said on Sunday. According to the officials, for this reason, al-Hamami only began his hijacking attempt over Jordan. The plan was to continue flying toward Israel to make it appear as a routine flight to Ben Gurion. The terrorist is suspected of having planned to approach landing as usual, and only in the final seconds, once it was impossible to...

There’s generally a strategy to the madness; you just have to wait until it starts to become visible. The anniversary of October 7, 2023, massacre is right around the corner.Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and involved mass shootings, hostage‑taking, rapes and horrific assaults on civilian communities. As noted in the end of this article about the French protests, “student organizations are nevertheless calling for protests to continue, with the movement now looking towards Tuesday’s National Day of Action.”EUROPE – Around 400 of France’s 3,700 secondary schools were closed on Friday on the...

Whenever I watch a movie where people wear suits to enter a biohazard facility, my first thought is, "Are you CRAZY?!" The answer is obviously yes, yes, they are. While everybody is fretting about whether expensive computer programs are planning to kill us all, real people are messing around with dangerous bugs that really could kill quite a few of us. Ask Dr. Fauci about that. He'll trot out the Fifth Amendment, of course, but you get the idea. Just kidding. Sort of. Well, it appears to have happened again, this time in Russia, and I am just waiting to...

Millions of Brazilians will vote Sunday in an election dominated by two rivals: incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted in a failed coup attempt after he lost to Lula four years ago. Twelve candidates are on the presidential ballot, but only Lula and Bolsonaro are thought to have a real chance of becoming Brazil’s next head of state. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two advance to a runoff Oct. 25. Lula, who at 80 is one of the world’s...

Two weeks ago, students in the impoverished Seine-Saint-Denis area of northern Paris decided they were fed up with the conditions they had to endure to get an education in France. The buildings were dilapidated and infested with rats and roaches. The kids had to share textbooks because there weren't enough to go around. There weren't enough chairs for kids to sit. There also weren't enough teachers or support staff. The bathrooms were appalling. And school hours were excruciatingly long. Some readers on this site and others think it matters that the kids complaining are Muslim or immigrants. I don't know...

The ax required by regulators is intended for emergencies but puts a weapon in reach for attackersDUBAI—A central mystery of this week’s attempted downing of FlyDubai Flight 1073 has been how the co-pilot managed to smuggle a weapon into the plane to carry out his attack. It turns out he didn’t. The weapon he used is a cockpit fixture. United Arab Emirates authorities said Saturday the co-pilot attacked his captain with the plane’s crash ax—a tool that regulators around the world require airplanes to carry.Designed for use as an emergency tool to tear through metal in case of a fire...

The flydubai hijacker was previously banned from flying by Omani authorities over concerns regarding his radical ideological views, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Friday. The report cited several people familiar with the matter, who told the WSJ that the pilot, identified by the sources as Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, was hired by UAE-based carrier flydubai despite the concerns, though it is unclear whether the airline knew about the issue. It is further unclear exactly what sort of radicalism Omani authorities cited as their reason for grounding the pilot, who stabbed Capt. Smit Machchhar in a failed attempt...

Second and third-generation migrant rioters torch schools and assault people, turning education protests into proof that multiculturalism has failed and that Le Pen’s case is strengtheningSchool blockades in France escalated into arson and assaults on staff and emergency services starting on 1 October 2026. Interior Ministry figures recorded nearly 2,000 arrests in a single day following violence in cities including Nantes, Rouen, and Marseille. French intelligence officials reported during a crisis meeting that hard-left politicians helped initiate the school blockades that eventually turned into riots. Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement National are positioning these events as evidence of the...

The United States on Thursday told its European allies, particularly Germany and France, to "immediately" release their strategic reserves of diesel to help lower the soaring price of the refined fuel. It comes a day after President Donald Trump floated the possibility of banning US diesel exports to stem the rise in prices. At an emergency meeting of the European Union's energy task force on Friday, an EU spokesperson said the bloc "fully rejects" the ban threat, saying it would "undermine ... trust in the US." Average US diesel prices have surged over 70% to $6.39 per US gallon (€1.50...

Move was made to help bring down the soaring price of diesel and other fuels PARIS—The Group of Seven major economies agreed to release 100 million barrels of crude oil and fuel from their emergency stocks and not to restrict exports, aiming to bring down the soaring price of diesel and other fuels.On his Truth Social platform, President Trump said European nations agreed “to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately.” The G-7 statement said the reserve release would happen over four months.The announcement would seem to end the threat of a...

Nina Manes was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv with her family when she asked her mother Tali to take her to the toilet near the front of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. As they approached, Tali heard shouting and banging coming from behind the cockpit door and immediately realised something was wrong. She alerted a flight attendant before the cockpit door opened and revealed Captain Smit Machchhar covered in blood as he fought with his co-pilot. Tali began screaming for help, shouting: “He’s stabbing the pilot, he’s stabbing the pilot, come help!” Her husband Tzvika heard the screams, collected...

It was a stormy week politically in Ireland. It wasn’t over an attempted terrorist attack as we had here in Israel this week. It wasn’t over the rising cost of energy or immigration, like elsewhere in Europe. It was a soccer match against Israel. That was enough to dominate the country’s headlines. How did Ireland become so focused on Israel, and so hostile to the Jewish state? Alan Shatter, a leading Jewish figure in the country and former justice and defense minister, says a pro-Palestine ‘cult’ has taken over the country’s politics. The country has always had a checkered past...

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI began examining Ellaboudy after receiving information that he had purchased precursor chemicals, components and other materials associated with improvised explosive devices. Investigators also found purchases of parts used to construct drones and remotely operated aerial systems. The complaint alleges that Ellaboudy took sick leave in December 2024 after claiming exposure to highly concentrated nitric acid, a chemical that can be used in explosive materials. In September 2025, prosecutors say, he used an official passport issued during earlier employment with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to travel from Washington state to...