Free Republic

"We are in the position to form a new government," said a senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party, after the vote's third and final phase took place on Sunday.Myanmar's dominant pro-military party has won junta-run elections, a party source told AFP on Monday (Jan 26), after a month-long vote that democracy watchdogs dismissed as a rebranding of army rule. While the military has said the election will return power to the people, popular democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi remains detained since the coup and her party has been dissolved, while critics say the ballot was stacked...

Yesterday, we were all sort of stunned to find that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping had summarily dismissed and had placed under investigation General Zhang Youxia, the now-former vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission; see New Round of Purges Wrack the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Defense Establishment – RedState. The removal of Zhang meant 37 of the 81 generals appointed since October 2022 were either under arrest or had simply disappeared. The initial reports said Zhang was removed because he “undermined Xi’s authority, abetted political and corruption problems that impaired the party’s leadership over the armed forces, and damaged...

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that a U.S. security guarantees document for Ukraine is “100% ready” after two days of talks involving representatives from Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia.Speaking to journalists in Vilnius during a visit to Lithuania, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is waiting for its partners to set a signing date, after which the document would go to the U.S. Congress and Ukrainian parliament for ratification.Zelenskyy also emphasized Ukraine’s push for European Union membership by 2027, calling it an “economic security guarantee.”The Ukrainian leader described the talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, as likely the...

Over the past 5,000 years, East Africa has dried out. Now, new research finds that this change may be making the continent pull apart faster. Faults in the East African Rift Zone have sped up since the levels of large lakes have dropped, according to research published in November in the journal Scientific Reports. The findings highlight the two-way relationship between the climate and plate tectonics, said study senior author Christopher Scholz, a geologist, physicist and professor emeritus at Columbia University.

The Pentagon on Friday night released a long-awaited strategy that prioritizes the U.S. homeland and Western Hemisphere — a stunning reversal from previous administrations that aligns with President Donald Trump’s military strikes in Venezuela and efforts to acquire Greenland. The National Defense Strategy — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration — no longer focuses primarily on countering China. Instead, it blames past administrations for ignoring American interests and jeopardizing the U.S. military’s access to the Panama Canal and Greenland. The strategy calls for attention to the “practical interests” of the U.S. public and an abandonment of “grandiose...

A second high-profile killing by a federal agent in Minneapolis has jeopardized the chances of Congress averting a partial government shutdown as Democrats come out en masse against the funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Lawmakers had been on the verge of completing their funding work for fiscal 2026 this week after the House last week passed its final four appropriations bills. However, the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, a nurse at the city’s Veterans Affairs hospital, by a Border Patrol agent has seemingly torpedoed the chances of those bills passing the Senate, with one key...

BOSTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's push to terminate the legal status of more than 8,400 family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders who moved to the United States from seven Latin American countries. Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction late on Saturday that prevents the Department of Homeland Security from ending the humanitarian parole granted to thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. They had been allowed to move to the United States under family reunification parole programs that were...

After speaking to friendly media at the World Economic Forum, the Democrat senator refuses to answer Rebel News' questions and walks away. The World Economic Forum in Davos attracts global elites eager to shape policy far from their voters — and U.S. politicians are no exception. While outside the conference in Davos, Rebel News journalist Avi Yemini saw Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware holding a media scrum where he was criticizing President Donald Trump and his foreign policy. When the interview ended, Avi approached the senator with a direct question. "Is it appropriate for a sitting U.S. senator to...

U.S. President Donald Trump says Canadian goods exported to the United States would be hit with 100 percent tariffs if Canada makes a deal with China.“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken. China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on the morning of Jan. 24.“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced just one day after the U.S. officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) that his state would become the first to join the organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, in a seeming rebuke of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from international collaborations. Newsom traveled this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he was scheduled to speak at an event but was canceled at the last moment. During his trip, he met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “As President Trump withdraws the United States from the World Health Organization,...

Word out of Iran has been scarce over the last few days. The regime has engaged in hideous repression of the uprising Iranian people, and the internet, and thus the flow of information out of the country has all but ceased. That's disconcerting, but in a bit of interesting news, there are now reports that the Supreme Leader himself, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that savage barbarian theocrat out of another century, has gone underground. Perhaps out of fear of American airstrikes?The 86-year-old supreme leader has moved to a fortified shelter in Tehran connected to a series of elaborate underground tunnels...

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has removed China’s most senior general and the chief of combat planning and operations amid allegations of corruption and “violation of party discipline.” An editorial in the People’s Liberation Army Daily accuses the men of having “undermined Xi’s authority, abetted political and corruption problems that impaired the party’s leadership over the armed forces, and damaged efforts to develop combat effectiveness.” General Zhang Youxia, the senior of the two vice chairmen overseeing China’s approximate equivalent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Military Commission, and a longtime Xi ally, was abruptly removed from his post...

In a scathing column at Unherd last month, Anglican priest Giles Fraser took aim at one of the most controversial men in England: Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. Robinson, after a recent stint in prison from November 2024 to May 2025 for contempt of court, now identifies as Christian. This was Robinson’s fifth stint in jail, mostly for activities related to his anti-Islam activism, which has defined his public life since founding the English Defence League in 2009 (he left the group in 2013, stating that it had become too extreme). Fraser’s missive was a scathing rebuke of...

President Trump appeared on Saturday to walk back comments he made earlier in the week, suggesting non-U.S. troops in NATO avoided the front lines in Afghanistan, following widespread anger from British political leaders and military families. “The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died, many were badly injured, and they were among the greatest of all warriors. It’s a bond too strong to ever be broken. The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!). We love you...

Trump boasted that the mysterious weapon “made [enemy] equipment not work” when US helicopters swooped into Caracas on Jan. 3 to arrest Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on federal drug and weapons charges — without losing a single American life. “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Trump said during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office.

Demand for sex workers in Davos skyrocketed during this year’s World Economic Forum — including one client who allegedly shelled out a whopping $114,000 for four days with five women. The apparent work hard, party harder attitude of the global elite was apparent in the voracious appetite for escorts in the Swiss town, where global leaders, big tech CEOs and moneyed magnates sent requests for sex workers surging, according to the Swiss dating and erotic services platform Titt4Tat. Requests for erotic services soared to 79 — or a staggering 4,000% — on Jan. 19, the opening day of the World...

Donald Trump was "wrong" to diminish the role of Nato and British troops in Afghanistan, Downing Street has said, after the US president claimed allies stayed away from the front line.

Ukraine is on the brink of "a humanitarian catastrophe" after months of Russian airstrikes on the energy system, and any future peace agreement must include a halt to attacks on energy infrastructure, Maksym Tymchenko, CEO of DTEK, the largest private energy company in Ukraine, has said. Tymchenko said Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion nearly four years ago, has conducted a campaign of "energy terror" since October 2025, striking power plants and overloading air defence systems. The authorities report that Kyiv and the surrounding regions have been hardest hit, and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has urged residents to temporarily leave...

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were in Israel on Saturday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mainly to discuss Gaza, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters. The US on Thursday announced plans for a “New Gaza” rebuilt from scratch, to include residential towers, data centers and seaside resorts, part of US President Donald Trump’s push to advance an Israel-Hamas ceasefire shaken by repeated violations. On Friday, Channel 12 news reported that Kushner and Witkoff would also discuss with Netanyahu the ongoing efforts to secure the return of Ran Gvili, the last remaining hostage in Gaza....

Donald Trump’s strangely artificial Board of Peace event in Davos on Thursday looked like a Hollywood rendering of an international summit. Everything was too slick, faintly uncanny. Like an AI-generated image, it was photo-real yet failed the most basic human glance test. Too perfect. No wabi-sabi. The first tell was visual: the set, complete with a crisp new institutional logo: a globe on a shield, flanked by olive branches. It carried the unmistakable whiff of Grok or ChatGPT, but the strangeness went deeper than design. The speeches themselves were weirdly messianic and utopian. The most peculiar part was the show-within-a-show:...