Free Republic

Crooner Ed Sheeran called Israel’s actions in Gaza “unjustifiable” as he wept and broke his silence during his first concert since booting rapper Macklemore from his tour for tirades against the Jewish state. “I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet,” Sheeran told the Philly crowd of concertgoers Saturday night. Sheeran spoke multiple times about the controversy during Saturday night’s show at Lincoln Financial Field, growing progressively more upset as the night wore on...

This is the first time since Yemen's civil war resumed that strikes have threatened Riyadh.The United States warned on Saturday (Sep 19) that hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthis could "escalate rapidly" after a missile attack targeted Riyadh for the first time since the Yemen conflict resumed. US President Donald Trump cut short a weekend at Camp David, a secluded presidential complex in rural Maryland, to return unexpectedly to the White House on Saturday. The White House gave no explanation for the early return, which comes as a new threshold was crossed in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and...

The Houthi militia in Yemen said on Saturday that it had attacked Saudi Arabia’s capital and oil facilities with a barrage of missiles and drones, a significant escalation in the renewed war between the kingdom and the Iranian-backed group. The Saudis intercepted a Houthi missile launched toward Riyadh, the capital, according to Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen. He added in a statement that air defenses had fended off assaults on “civilians and civilian infrastructure” in several other cities in the kingdom, including coastal Yanbu, where the Houthis said they attacked oil facilities....

The Iran and Ukraine wars have exposed the world’s reliance on the Middle East and Russia for diesel Persian Gulf states and Russia have invested tens of billions of dollars in refineries over the past decade to grab a bigger share of the global diesel market. Now, war in both regions has sent exports plunging, squeezing supplies of a fuel that powers much of the global economy. Diesel prices are soaring—they eclipsed $6 a gallon in the U.S. for the first time last week and have kept climbing, hitting $6.45 on Friday. The surge has rattled governments and markets around...

Iran has conveyed seven conditions to Washington for the start of any negotiations, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Saturday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume major attacks on Iran.“The United States, if it wants to extricate itself from the predicament it has created, must accept Iran’s rights and conditions,” Rezaei wrote on X, saying the seven demands had been communicated to Washington.He did not spell out all seven in the post. Earlier Saturday, however, Rezaei told Al Jazeera that Tehran was demanding an end to the war “on all fronts,” the release of frozen Iranian...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday criticized the US decision to deny Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas a visa for the second year in a row, preventing him from attending next week's UN General Assembly in person. Guterres “deeply regrets" Washington's decision, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “The Secretary-General is concerned about the impact of this decision on the ability of the State of Palestine to participate fully in the work of the United Nations," Dujarric said in a statement. The State Department announced Wednesday that visa sanctions against Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members and PA officials would be...

This is a short operational update posted by U.S. Central Command. Hi, I’m Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander of U.S. Central Command, here with a message to all Americans and an operational update on missions in the Middle East. CENTCOM forces have supported more than one billion barrels of crude oil leaving the Gulf. That’s one billion barrels of crude oil out through the Strait of Hormuz in the last couple of months. We’ve reached this significant milestone while assisting over 2,000 commercial ship transits through the Strait by providing coordinated protection. Clearly, momentum is building. Primary transit lanes in the...

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran on Friday for a government-organized rally calling on civilians to join the military and prepare to “sacrifice their lives.” > It was the largest demonstration in the country since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February.

Cuba experienced a total power failure Friday, according to the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The embassy said the failure was due to the "collapse of Cuba’s electrical grid." According to Cuban regime media, the reason for the collapse is under investigation and the timeline to restore power is unknown." "All U.S. citizens in Cuba or planning to travel to Cuba should be aware and plan accordingly. There are reports of cellphone and internet outages," the embassy added, noting that Cuba’s electrical grid is "increasingly unstable," which has led to "multiple" nationwide power outages in the last few months.

Seventy-seven percent of Israelis, including 86% of Jewish Israelis, believe a large-scale terrorist attack modeled on the October 7 Hamas massacre could originate from Judea and Samaria, according to new polling data released by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA). The number has climbed steadily for over two years, and it now sits alongside a defense establishment warning that the threat is not theoretical. The JCFA survey, conducted September 2-4 among 703 Jewish and Arab Israelis by Dr. Menachem Lazar’s Lazar Research Institute, found that 75% of Jewish Israelis and 67% of all Israelis oppose establishing a...

President Donald Trump on Friday announced an agreement with Greenland and Denmark that gives the U.S. what he described as “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in the Danish island territory.

A drone hit the cooling tower of Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant, near the border with Ukraine, but caused no fire, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday, calling for "maximum military restraint to prevent the risk of a nuclear accident". The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has been informed that the cooling tower of a reactor unit of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in the Russian Federation was hit by a drone early on Thursday". "It was reported that the unit was operating at the time, but its operating mode did not change and there was no fire," the...

China’s spy chief warned that runaway AI capabilities could threaten Communist Party control.President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to begin talks on artificial intelligence safety during Trump’s visit to Beijing in the spring. WASHINGTON — A growing sense of urgency over the risks posed by artificial intelligence is adding pressure on the Trump administration to secure a diplomatic breakthrough with China when Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to the White House for a state visit next week. Expectations for a deal that establishes guardrails on AI are low on both sides, which continue to drive a headlong race...

The Archbishop of Canterbury's office has withdrawn an interfaith award given to a Muslim cleric after past comments surfaced in which he praised Usama bin Laden. Maulana Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi received the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation at Lambeth Palace last Friday, during a ceremony that coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Lambeth Palace announced the reversal Thursday after previous comments by Ashrafi had "come to light," causing it to reconsider the award. "It is a longstanding principle of interfaith dialogue and co-operation that we must engage with one another...

In case you took the last week off from reading the news, watching TV or combing through social media, you’re aware that a lot of people have suddenly come to the conclusion that artificial intelligence will soon destroy humanity if it isn’t stopped. While I’m sure that most Israelis are also interested in the possibility that our computer/robot overlords will soon render us extinct, headlines in the Jewish state have largely focused on another controversy in which AI plays a subsidiary role. Bolstering the ‘genocide’ lie The 25-minute standing ovation given to a documentary film called “NAZA”—a reference to a...

Crowd erupts in cheers as pro-Israel demonstrators pull massive PLO flag from building overlooking Amsterdam’s Dam Square. ..... Video footage posted online shows demonstrators pulling down the flag from the H&M building near the square, as cheers can be heard from the crowd gathered below. .....

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would seek to keep his country out of any military conflict arising under NATO’s collective-defense clause, publicly questioning whether Slovakia should send thousands of troops to defend an ally. Speaking to students and hospital employees in the eastern city of Prešov, Fico criticized what he described as increasingly belligerent rhetoric among European leaders and asked whom Europe intended to fight. “For God’s sake, who do we want to fight? With whom?” Fico said during the event, as his Facebook page reposted. Fico did not identify Russia as a potential aggressor or source of...

The Trump administration will allow an Iranian delegation to attend the United Nations General Assembly next week, albeit with some restrictions, a State Department spokesperson said Thursday. The decision to grant Iranian top officials visas to travel to New York City for the annual meeting of global leaders comes seven months into the U.S. war with Iran. “Consistent with our host country obligations, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be able to attend U.N. General Assembly High Level Week,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The delegation will be under travel restrictions and will face prohibitions on the...

Footage verified by the BBC shows the wreckage of a Saudi F-15 fighter jet which the Iran-backed Houthi group says it shot down over Yemen. BBC Verify was able to pinpoint the crash site to an isolated location in the hills west of the Yemeni city of Marib. The long-running conflict between a Saudi-led military coalition and the Houthis has escalated in the last week after the armed group launched an offensive against pro-government forces. This led to the Houthis seizing key territory near the south-west coast, close to vital international shipping channels in the Bab al-Mandab strait. In one...

An Italian Air Force F-2000 Eurofighter was hit during overnight attacks on King Fahd Air Base at Taif, Saudi Arabia, where Italy has deployed a Task Force Air supporting regional air defence and surveillance. No Italian personnel were involved, but Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has ordered a further assessment of the situation and of the possible operational options. The incident is significant because Taif hosts a relatively small but capable Italian air component. The deployment includes four F-2000A Eurofighters and an E-550A CAEW, alongside C-130J/KC-130J transport capabilities. The Eurofighters provide the fighter component, while the CAEW contributes airborne early warning,...