Free Republic

Iran announces a large oil tanker has hit a naval mine while exiting the Strait of Hormuz through the US-backed southern Omani corridor, with a massive explosion and fire in the engine room. It is the second such incident under 24 hours. A crude oil supertanker exploded and caught fire after it hit a mine while trying to leave the Strait of Hormuz using an "unauthorised and dangerous route", Iranian media Press TV has reported. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in a statement said the crude oil supertanker had switched off its navigation and global positioning systems while trying...

US forces leave country where 4,500 of them died in worst US war of 21st century BAGHDAD, Sept 29 (Reuters) - US forces are set to pull out from their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday, a departure celebrated as a victory by Iran and its allies ​who now have deep influence in the country where 4,500 Americans died during more than two decades of war. Iraqi security experts say the withdrawal — agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried ‌out by Donald Trump's administration even as it wages war against Iran — could give Tehran and its...

YARDLEY, Pa. (AP) — Mary Ryan may be a registered Republican but she has never voted for President Donald Trump, turned off by his crass style of politics and chaotic approach to governing. But the 60-year-old medical writer from the Philadelphia suburbs has consistently backed her party’s congressman, five-term Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. Until now. This year, Ryan is so fed up with Trump and his grip on Congress that she is planning to vote in November for Fitzpatrick’s Democratic opponent in the 1st Congressional District, Bob Harvie, a twice countywide elected commissioner who is a former social studies teacher.

The U.S. national debt now exceeds 100% of gross domestic product, crossing a once-unthinkable threshold, on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II. As of March 31, the country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while GDP over the preceding year was $31.216 trillion, according to data released Thursday. That puts the ratio at 100.2%, compared with 99.5% when the last fiscal year ended Sept. 30. That figure will likely climb for the foreseeable future because the federal government is running historically large annual deficits of nearly 6% of GDP, which add to...

My father has been a pilot for all of my life of 50 years. He seems to latch on to ideas such as the flat earth theory that betrays everything that he was trained in aerial course plotting. True north? Magnetic North? Distant mountains rising from the horizon during the flight etc. He finally believes that the international space station exists after I insisted that he join me on a clear night to watch it go over. He seems to be obsessed with the notion that doom and destruction are always nearing. He's been like chicken little about gun control...