Free Republic

The Chinese scientist who ran controversial experiments at the laboratory suspected of triggering Covid held a secret meeting with the US government to seek backing for a project that would go on to supercharge coronaviruses – shortly before the devastating outbreak started in her native Wuhan. The June 2017 meeting at America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) held by Shi Zhengli – known as 'Batwoman' because of her work on sampling and sequencing the animals' viruses – will bolster fears of Western collusion in a Chinese cover-up after Covid resulted from a reckless laboratory experiment. A new cache of documents,...

British -made anti-aircraft missiles are about to be deployed by Ukraine in the conflict for the first time, threatening to heap further humiliation on Vladimir Putin over his disastrous invasion. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told The Mail on Sunday that the Starstreak system – a shoulder-mounted missile that travels at more than three times the speed of sound to take down low-flying enemy jets – was ready to be used imminently. The news came as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Putin was scaling back the invasion because he was reeling from ‘powerful blows’ and had lost more than 16,000...

Vladimir Putin is suffering from a brain disorder caused by dementia, Parkinson’s disease or ‘roid rage’ resulting from steroid treatment for cancer, intelligence sources have claimed. Citing sources close to the Kremlin, senior figures in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States – believe there is a physiological explanation for the Russian president’s globally reviled decision to invade Ukraine. The intelligence community is sharing a growing number of reports about 69-year-old Putin’s ‘increasingly erratic behaviour’, combined with a bloated appearance in recent footage – and the absurd distance he...

Tony Blair has finally said sorry for the Iraq War – and admitted he could be partly to blame for the rise of Islamic State. The extraordinary confession by the former Prime Minister comes after 12 years in which he refused to apologise for the conflict. Blair makes his dramatic ‘mea culpa’ during a TV interview about the ‘hell’ caused by his and George Bush’s decision to oust Saddam Hussein. (snip)