Free Republic

Anti-Israel protesters vandalized the Columbus Memorial in Washington, DC, on Wednesday in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit. Netanyahu issued an address to Congress as protesters burned American flags and vandalized monuments like the Liberty Bell with painted graffiti: My heart is just broken. pic.twitter.com/z0jkiP8GNY — Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) July 24, 2024 U.S. Park Police said in a statement that a permit was revoked for gatherings in Columbus Circle, the area surrounding Union Station. Crowds were ordered to leave the area. “A crowd in Columbus Circle is engaged in criminal activity and confronting law enforcement on scene,” the agency...

Families of hostages held captive in Gaza condemned Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the United States Congress, as pressure grows on the Israeli prime minister to agree to a deal to secure their release. “The speech and applause won’t erase the one sad fact: The words ‘Deal Now!’ were absent from the prime minister’s address,” The Hostage and Missing Families Forum in Israel said in a statement.. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has become a potent political force in Israel since some 250 people were abducted by Hamas on October 7, and the square a regular site of protests demanding...

President Joe Biden tapped Kamala Harris to tackle the daunting issue of immigration in March 2021, but the vice president’s public-facing work on addressing the root causes of migration largely evaporated within months, according to an NBC News analysis of public documents, U.S. aid disbursements and Harris’ travel schedule. The Border Patrol union says Harris did not deliver on any of her immigration-related assignments. When Harris’ name is mentioned at the border, “it’s a lot of eye rolls,” said Jon Anfinsen, national executive vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol union. “I would ask what has...

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced that the U.S. military intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on Wednesday ahead of Joe Biden's speech.NORAD detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC H-6 military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on July 24, 2024. NORAD fighter jets from the United States and Canada conducted the intercept.The Russian and PRC aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace. This Russian and PRC activity in the Alaska ADIZ is not seen...

Taiwan hunkered down on Wednesday for the arrival of a strengthening Typhoon Gaemi, with financial markets shut, flights cancelled and one person killed, while the military went on standby amid torrential rain. Gaemi, expected to be the strongest storm to hit Taiwan in eight years, is set to make landfall on the northeast coast late on Wednesday evening, weather authorities said. They upgraded its status to a strong typhoon, packing gusts of up to 227 kph (141 mph) near its center. After crossing the Taiwan Strait, it is likely to hit the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian late on Thursday...

A defiant Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, dismissed as “utter nonsense” criticisms by the United Nations, human rights groups and the International Criminal Court that Israel’s government has committed war crimes in Gaza, and he derided pro-Palestinian protesters as “idiots” and tools of Iran. The Israeli prime minister told U.S. lawmakers that Israel will settle for “nothing less” than total victory over Hamas, and described a vision for postwar Gaza seemingly at odds with the terms of a peace deal advocated by the Biden administration. The fate of Israel and the United...

WASHINGTON (TND) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday chastised certain anti-Israel protesters during his address to a joint session of Congress. The address came as thousands of anti-Israel protesters took to the streets of Washington, D.C., to protest Netanyahu’s presence. Demonstrators pounded drums, lit flares and hoisted Palestinian flags. Capitol Police reported members of the crowd became violent, causing them to deploy pepper spray. Netanyahu called out Gays for Gaza, a slogan used by some anti-Israel protesters. Such a slogan, he argued, is oxymoronic. “Some of these protesters hold up signs proclaiming 'Gays for Gaza,’” he said. “They...

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Wednesday that the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) would be banned for propagating extremism and that its famous "Blue Mosque" was being searched by police. "It is very important to me to make a clear distinction here: we are not acting against a religion," Faeser said, but just against a group accused of undermining the German state as well as women's rights. The Imam Ali Mosque, known locally as the Blue Mosque, is one of Germany's oldest mosques and is operated by the IZH. Germany bans Hezbollah group, backed by Iran, in 2020 The...

Anti-Israel protesters gathered outside of Union Station in Washington, DC, on Wednesday and removed American flags from flag poles, replacing them with Palestinian flags. Video footage posted to X shows Palestinian flags at the top of flag poles outside of the station after the American flags had been removed. Anti-Israel protesters have taken down the American flags outside Union Station and replaced them with Palestinian flags. pic.twitter.com/Yli1tN6QSz — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) July 24, 2024 Video footage from ABC News shows “stun grenades” being used, and pro-Palestinian protesters were reported to be raising a Palestinian flag.

Greenland police said they apprehended veteran environmental activist and anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson on an international arrest warrant issued by Japan. Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian-American citizen, is a former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society whose direct action tactics, including high-seas confrontations with whaling vessels, have drawn support from A-list celebrities and featured in the reality television series “Whale Wars.” He was arrested Sunday when his ship docked in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, a police statement said. He later appeared before a district court to look into a request to detain him pending a decision on his possible extradition to...

MOSCOW, July 23 (Reuters) - Residents of Moscow who sign up to fight in Ukraine will receive a down payment of 1.9 million roubles ($21,777) from the city, taking their annual pay in their first service year to 5.2 million roubles ($59,600), the mayor's office said on Tuesday. Total pay will include the downpayment, wages from the defence ministry, as well as regional and federal handouts, the office of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement. The new payments will enter into force immediately, it said. The increase means that annual pay for Russian contract soldiers from Moscow will...

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) mounted a silent protest during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday, holding up signs that said “Guilty of Genocide” and “War Criminal” during his address. Netanyahu, who was received with a standing ovation, began his address by acknowledging the Israeli hostages and their families, and by honoring Israeli soldiers in the gallery, — including Ethiopian and Muslim soldiers, and soldiers who, though wounded, returned to the fight. He rebuked anti-Israel protesters, alluding to the thousands who had gathered outside the Capitol, noting that they stood with Hamas and with “evil,” and noting...

Law enforcement officers have uncovered a major embezzlement scheme involving Hr 138 million ($3.3 million) allocated from the state budget for the needs of Ukraine's Armed Forces, the Prosecutor General's Office announced on July 19. The investigation identified 30 suspected officials, including employees of housing and maintenance departments and representatives of commercial structures across Ukraine. According to prosecutors, 15 of these individuals were members of organized criminal groups. The charges include embezzlement and misappropriation of funds related to the procurement of fuel wood, electricity, natural gas, furniture, and construction work on military infrastructure at inflated prices. Some suspects are also...

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) announced he would boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “wildly inappropriate” joint address to Congress on Wednesday, insisting he would rather serve the Israeli leader an arrest warrant for war crimes on the House floor. In a press release published shortly before the long-awaited congressional address, Pocan declared he would not attend the event, citing Netanyahu’s “deadly and excessive response” to Hamas’s unprecedented, unprovoked, and brutal October 7, 2023, attack, the deadliest against Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaust.

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk revealed that he is a guest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and plans to attend his speech before Congress. Musk was spotted earlier on Wednesday at the United States Capitol ahead of Netanyahu’s 2:00 p.m. speech. Netanyahu was invited in June to speak before a joint meeting of members of the United States House and Senate. When Kelly Phares, a senior Capitol Hill producer with Fox News, asked if Musk was there for Netanyahu’s “address,” Musk said he was. “Do you plan to attend?” Phares asked Musk. “I do,” Musk added. ELON...

Economist Valentina Bondarenko is dead. She fell from her apartment window, the Russian news agency Tass reported. Newsweek called her "Russia's leading economist." She is yet another prominent figure in Russia to die this way since the invasion of Ukraine began. The tragedy was supposed to have happened on Monday evening, while Russian media reported the woman's death on Tuesday. 82-year-old Bondarenko was a leading researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow - explains the American "Newsweek". The Russian news agency Tass reported that the economist's fall "had no criminal background. - Valentina...

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Tuesday that most recent immigrants who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border are “garbage.” Speaking to Larry Kudlow on Fox Business’s “Kudlow,” Tuberville segued from criticism of Vice President Harris as a presidential candidate to his views on immigration. “I mean, how can you put somebody in charge of a situation where you let 15, possibly even 20 million people come into our country? Now some of these people are good, but most of them are garbage. They come from jails and prisons in other countries,” he said. Tuberville repeated a series of false or...

On her first foreign trip as Vice President in June 2021, Kamala Harris was tasked with delivering a blunt message in Guatemala City. "I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come," she said at a press conference, pausing for effect. "Do not come." Three years later, that sound bite may come to haunt Harris' nascent presidential campaign. Despite her warning, border crossings reached historic highs during the Biden Administration. Republican critics cast the episode as a symbol of Harris’s ineffective tenure as...

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is calling for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister is in Washington on Wednesday to address a joint session of Congress.“Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” the progressive Democrat claimed in a statement. “It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress. He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court.”Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress. He should be arrested...

While the Ukrainian situation in the battlefield keeps getting from bad to worse, and in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s resigning from the Presidential race, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team have to re-caliber their approach to the bilateral relations with the US, without which they can’t continue their disastrous war effort. But in doing so, Zelensky has to pay close attention to the public opinion in his country, so he is presently doing parallel PR movements: one towards the Trump world and other publicly repudiating it for domestic consumption. It is now reported that his team has long...