Free Republic

Matt Driscoll, a 43-year-old columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune (TNT), died unexpectedly at his Tacoma home this Sunday. Driscoll’s death was announced by his news network. “We’ve lost a friend and beloved colleague, but Tacoma and Pierce County have lost someone who never stopped caring,” said fellow TNT writer Sean Robinson. Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) also paid tribute to Driscoll on social media. “Tacoma still has the Rainiers and the Narrows Bridge, but our City of Destiny has a hole in our hearts at the loss of Matt Driscoll. What a big heart and an insightful...

This is the moment Vladimir Putin's forces were left humiliated when one of his biggest recent assaults of his war on Ukraine ended in substantial losses. The Russian leader had ordered his troops to capture more territory in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, but the push near Kurakhove resulted in mass death and destruction. The failed assault led to the reported deaths of 40 invaders, and left 37 more injured. Russia is carrying out intense attacks in multiple sections of the eastern front, but in a Ukraine victory, troops managed to fend off 29 attacks in Kurakhove alone, the General...

Harrowing footage captured an armed man being shot dead in Indianapolis as he yelled at a driver in a suspected road-rage incident. The footage shared on social media allegedly shows the moment Gavin Dasaur, 29, quickly approaches a white Chevy pickup truck on Tuesday evening and attempts to punch the driver while holding what appears to be a handgun. The driver tries to smack the punch away, with Dasaur shifting the weapon to his left hand as he appears to berate the driver while pointing at them repeatedly with his right hand. The driver then points their own gun at...

The update by the Ministry of Defence added that the heavy losses would likely continue as Russia looked to make gains across the front lines in Ukraine. “The average daily Russian casualties (killed and wounded) in Ukraine, throughout May and June 2024, increased to conflict highs of 1,262 and 1,163 respectively,” the MoD wrote.

The Iranian Students' News Agency, citing "Defense Press" reports that the Iranian Navy's Sahand frigate was involved in an accident t in the area of ​​Bandar Abbas, a port city in the south of the country. Several reports say the warship capsized...

Anton Andreev says only 12 out of 100 soldiers remained alive after unit came under Ukrainian fire and drones in Vovchansk. Anton Andreev, a Russian soldier from the fifth company of the 1009th regiment, painted a bleak picture of Russia’s offensive in the Ukrainian northern region of Kharkiv. His unit had been decimated, he said, with only 12 out of 100 soldiers still alive as they came under constant Ukrainian fire and drones in Vovchansk, a prime target of Russia’s advances. “They just chop us up. We are sent under machine guns, under drones in daylight, like meat. And commanders...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Grand Rapids Police closed a 45-year-old cold case Monday. It was all thanks to one woman. Tommie Lee Hill was convicted of a string of sex crimes in Michigan and Indiana, and detectives spoke with other victims in Pennsylvania. Officials said his crimes include raping his young stepdaughters, assault with intent to murder, burglary, firearms and counterfeiting. He was on the run for 37 years. Joe Garrett, a Grand Rapids Police officer and U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force member, first began investigating Hill's case in 2017. The FBI had handled it previously. In the 1960s,...

Russian anti-submarine ship Admiral Levchenko is burning in the Barents Sea after an engine malfunctioned and caught fire, Dmytro Pletenchuk, press chief for the Southern Defense Forces of Ukraine's Armed Forces, said on June 10.

According to the mathematician [Immanuel Niven], the "Putin system" is beginning to collapse, exactly what he predicted mathematically already in March: "The announced drastic tax increases in Russia (the highest tax increases in the history of modern Russia) as well as Putin's recently published slogans (according to which "everyone must work as if they were at the front") are dramatic signs that the toxicity of the Russian war economy is reaching a critical level." In a post on X some days ago, he explained what this 'toxicity' means: "If the cost of replacing material losses (in such a way that...

BEIRUT (AP) — Israeli airstrikes around the Syrian city of Aleppo killed several people early on Monday, including an Iranian military adviser, the Syrian state media and Iranian news outlets reported. Israel did not immediately acknowledge the strikes. It was the first strike to kill an Iranian official since the April 1 attack on the Iranian Consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed seven people, including two Iranian generals and a member of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. The strike triggered a first-ever direct Iranian military assault on Israel, sparking fears of a regionwide war. Syria's state-run SANA news...

It really makes you wonder when you look back at Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s statement of April 23rd, less than a month ago, as he threatened Israel with annihilation. It was during a visit to Pakistan that Raisi referred to Israel as the “Zionist regime,” whose destruction he promised if they would dare to attack Iran. Because when thinking about the Biblical accounts of cause and effect, it’s only natural to make the comparison of someone who, after threatening the Jews, ended up hanging on his own gallows. But who was Ebrahim Raisi, and is it possible to connect his...

One of the jokes on the death of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi that garnered success stated "The pilot is a Mossad agent named Eli Kopter.” Following the reports that emerged on Sunday regarding the helicopter crash of President Ebrahim Raisi, social media users in Israel celebrated the death of the Iranian leader. One of the jokes that garnered success stated, "The pilot is a Mossad agent named Eli Kopter.” The joke spread quickly and reached social networks around the world. Many users, unaware that it was a joke, took it seriously, and many even shared it as a sign...

BREAKING:'No sign of life' detected at crash site of helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi, others, Iran state TV says

I haven't cross checked this but...

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has been involved in a helicopter crash hours after posing for pictures with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and rescuers are frantically trying to reach the site. The aircraft was traveling in Iran's East Azerbaijan province near Jolfa, around 375 miles northwest of Tehran, when it suffered a 'hard landing', according to Iranian state television. Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, but had been hampered by the poor weather conditions in the area. There had been heavy rain and fog reported with some wind. The helicopter was one of a convoy of three and foreign minister...

An Israeli-owned bulldozer kills 23-year-old American woman Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2003, as she protests a demolition campaign that destroyed over a thousand homes in the Gaza Strip. Following the death of their daughter, Corrie’s parents filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Israel, asserting she had been intentionally killed—or that the soldier driving the Israel Defense Forces bulldozer had shown criminal negligence. That lawsuit was rejected by a Haifa judge in 2012, who found that the driver had not seen Corrie as she stood in the bulldozer’s path at the village of Rafah. The ensuing internal Israeli...

A huge crowd of faculty members who teach at Columbia University in New York held a mass walk-out on Monday afternoon to protest the institution having called police to arrest students at a pro-Palestinian encampment protest last week. Hundreds of members of the teaching cohort at Columbia walked out in solidarity with the students who were arrested by the New York police department last week and also suspended by the university. The solidarity protest came as students put protest tents back up in the middle of campus on Monday after they were torn down last week when more than 100...

A UKRAINIAN missile struck Putin's oldest naval vessel in a massive blow to Russia's forces in Crimea. Footage showed flames and smoke billowing out from the 112-year-old warship in the occupied port of Sevastopol this morning. Explosions hit the area as Russians were forced to issue a missile warning and close Putin's prized Crimea bridge. Fire engines reportedly rushed to the port to put out the blaze on the 315-ft long vessel. A caption under the dramatic video, shared by Astra on Telegram, said: "The rocket hit the ship. See, it's burning." The vessel hit by Ukraine is Kommuna, the...

The pro-Palestinian staffers — who wore traditional Arab headscarves as they stormed and occupied the office of a top executive in California on Tuesday — were terminated late Wednesday after an internal investigation, Google vice president of global security Chris Rackow said in a companywide memo. “They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.” The fired staffers are affiliated with a group called No Tech For Apartheid, which has been critical of...

“Don’t trust the media, don’t trust our security agencies — FBI, CIA — don’t trust the justice department, don’t trust the executive office, and don’t trust our election procedures, our voting,” he said. “Isn’t this what Xi Jinping and Putin… all my life, this would be called communist propaganda. And now we’re doing it to ourself,” Simpson said. “I’m just saying,” he concluded. “Take care.”