Free Republic

A vital witness regarding the Biden clan's ties to CEFC, the CCP-connected energy company, is missing. Last February, Dr. Gal Luft, a retired Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, was arrested as an alleged gun runner. At the time, he claimed the arrest was to stop him from revealing what he knows about the Biden crime family and FBI corruption. Now, Dr. Luft has disappeared entirely. In the early 2000s, Luft formed a think tank called the Institute for Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) that focused on energy innovations and policy. Accordingly, from...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly planning to announce the end to all COVID-19 restrictions in the country on Monday. Johnson will unveil his “Living With COVID” plan when Parliament returns from a break this week, The Sun reported.

HELSINKI (AP) – Norway says it is lifting almost all remaining COVID restrictions as it doesn´t see a major health threat to citizens any more, even though the omicron variant is still spreading in the Nordic nation. “This is the day we have been waiting for,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere during a news conference in Oslo on Saturday. “We are removing almost all coronavirus measures.”

SAN FRANCISCO — With the Omicron coronavirus surge rapidly receding, California will lift its universal mask mandate for indoor public places next week, state officials announced Monday. The lifting of the indoor mask mandate statewide will apply to counties without local mask orders of their own, such as San Diego, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, as well as swaths of the San Joaquin Valley. Other counties with local mask orders will remain in place, such as in Los Angeles County and much of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Center for Vaccine Development director Dr. Peter Hotez said Monday on “At This Hour” that it made “no sense” to lift mask mandates for schools right now. Bolduan asked, “What do you think about lifting school mask mandates right now?”

Nineteen House Democrats wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday calling on the Biden administration to remove all sanctions against Venezuela, arguing that the "maximum pressure" campaign against the authoritarian regime of Nicolas Maduro hasn't worked. Members of Congress who signed the letter include Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García of Illinois, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair fo the House Progressive Caucus. "By any measure, the current 'maximum pressure' policy towards Venezuela has been a total failure," read the letter.The lawmakers...

Three episodes in, Megyn Kelly's Sunday Night is suffering from no shortage of attention. The former Fox News personality's transition to NBC host got especially bumpy this past week with the show's heavily-dissected decision to interview controversial radio host and Infowars entrepreneur Alex Jones. The episode finally aired Sunday, averaging 3.5 million viewers, a 0.5 rating among adults 18-49 and a 0.7 rating among adults 25-54. By all measures, that's virtually the same showing Kelly got with final adjustments during week two — again trailing a 60 Minutes repeat. Audio of the interview leaked prior to the telecast when Jones...

The discovery of a woman's corpse in an elevator in the Chinese city of Xi'an has led to the detention of an elevator maintenance crew who improperly cut off power to the elevator a month ago without checking if anyone was inside

First, the spin, compliments of the Obama administration: The Office of Foreign Assets Control plans to withdraw the Taliban Sanctions Regulations issued under former President Bill Clinton, which banned all financial transactions with members of Taliban and placed an embargo on trade with areas of Afghanistan they controlled.... The agency says it is withdrawing the regulations because they were made redundant by the fall of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and subsequent executive orders which more narrowly targeted individual members of the Taliban... Nice, benign spin, but here's the real deal: The 2012 Presidential campaign has already started, which...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Tuesday the government will lift a moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico "very soon" — likely this week. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government is close to having the plans in place to lift the ban that was imposed after the massive Gulf oil spill. When asked if he was saying the ban will be lifted this week, Gibbs said: "I do."

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu assumed the role of Santa Claus on Tuesday, giving a free trip to Canada on his airplane at the end of the month to a lone soldier he met while watching an army maneuver in the North. At the end of the live-fire training exercise, which simulated fighting in a Hizbullah village in southern Lebanon, two soldiers with camouflage paint on their faces and fishnet on their helmets who were cast in the role of Hizbullah fighters, emerged from the boulders and were taken to meet the prime minister.

In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections. “We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday. And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year. The leadership is betting that it’s better for the party to...

They said Hof would be authorized to facilitate an expansion of U.S. relations with Syria, which deteriorated under President George Bush. In 2005, the United States withdrew its ambassador to Damascus in wake of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syria was blamed for the car bombing in Beirut in which Hariri and many of his bodyguards were killed. The sources said Obama sent emissaries to Syria in September 2008 and pledged that if elected he would reconcile with the regime of President Bashar Assad. After his election victory, they said, Obama sent another message that promised...

VEILED women will be forced to reveal their identities at UK airports under a government plan to tighten security, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Home Office insiders last night confirmed that immigration officials will be ordered to impose their legal right to lift the veils of passengers after it emerged a suspected police killer may have escaped the UK dressed as a Muslim woman. But the plan has been attacked by unions, which claim it would impose intolerable demands on their members, particularly female officers who would be the only ones allowed to look under veils. Ministers have been forced...

10/10/2006 - MANAS AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan (AFPN) -- Normally they move people, humanitarian supplies, troop rations and equipment, but Airmen with the 817th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron's Detachment 1 here were tasked Oct. 7 to move different equipment -- several 30-foot, 100,000 pound Canadian tanks. The C-17 Globemaster III "Spirit of McChord" and its crew made two trips to Kandahar AB, Afghanistan, in one day to transport the equipment for Canadian ground forces supporting the NATO mission. Col. Michael McLean, Canadian Defense Attaché, said the Leopard tanks will support Canadian troops by providing greater mobility on the ground and more flexible...

ATHENS, Greece - Greek military divers Friday successfully raised the wreckage of a German World War II Stuka bomber from the sea off the eastern island of Rhodes, the air force said. The Junkers-87 dive-bomber was shot down in 1943 and will be conserved and displayed at the air force museum at an airport near Athens, air force spokesman Col. Ioannis Papageorgiou said. Papageorgiou said there was no trace of the two airmen's bodies. "The plane was raised a couple of hours ago, and I don't know yet whether there are any remains inside," he told The Associated Press. He...

Soldiers from 3rd Platoon, C Company, 2nd battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team visited several Iraqi schools and an Iraqi orphanage on July 8. These Soldiers adopted one of the schools to help renovate and re-supply with educational goods. The Soldiers dropped off soccer balls and other goodies at the orphanage. Department of Defense photo by Spc. L.C. Campbell. Story by Spc. L.C. Campbell 138th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment MOSUL – Soldiers from 3rd Platoon, Company C, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team visited an orphanage in Mosul, Iraq July 10, bringing...

SACRAMENTO - One year after California joined the multistate Mega Millions lottery game, sales have fallen short of expectations and the new game has cannibalized some sales of the existing Super Lotto program. Combined sales of Super Lotto Plus and Mega Millions tickets are likely to reach about $1.2 billion this year, short of the $1.4 billion projected when California joined the 11-state game in June 2005, said California Lottery acting director Joan Borucki. "I think it's (because of) that initial start-up period that you have with a new product and getting your customers to feel comfortable with it and...

NAVAIR PATUXENT RIVER, Md., Jan. 9, 2006 – A new heavy lift helicopter is now officially in the pipeline for the Marine Corps following a Dec. 22, 2005 decision by the Honorable. Kenneth R. Krieg, under secretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to authorize the Heavy Lift Replacement program here to begin a $4.4 billion development program for the aircraft. A "Cost Plus Award Fee" contract for the System Development and Demonstration phase, estimated to be approximately $2.9 billion, is expected to be signed with Sikorsky in March 2006. An Initial System Development and Demonstration contract worth $8.8...

France to lift state of emergency At the height of the violence, 1,400 cars were torched in one night President Jacques Chirac says France will lift a state of emergency imposed in November during the worst unrest in the country in nearly 40 years. Emergency powers are expected to be lifted on Wednesday, more than six weeks earlier than originally planned. The laws allowed local authorities to impose curfews, conduct house-to-house searches and ban public gatherings. Almost 9,000 cars were torched and 3,000 people arrested in three weeks of violence. President Chirac took the decision following a meeting with Prime...