Free Republic

The military base at Mihail Kogqlniceanu, Constanta, southeast Romania, on the Black Sea coast, will become the largest NATO military base in Europe and will surpass the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, in size. The new base will give Romania an increased role in NATO’s security architecture and a position of greater strength in the Black Sea, which is militarily dominated by Russia. It will be able to host 10,000 soldiers and civilians by 2030. NATO and the US will relocate some logistics and human resources from Ramstein to the Mihail Kogalniceanu base. Expansion works will cost 2.7 billion...

American higher education is struggling. Even before the coronavirus struck, schools all over the country were dealing with declining enrollment. In an effort to replace lost revenue they sought out international students, developed online degrees, and courted non-traditional students. That helped for a while. But now many schools are back in trouble. Even before COVID-19, international enrollments were headed down and non-traditional students, who rarely want to live in dorms or buy a meal plan, were not the cash cows that everyone hoped. Add to that concerns about student loan debt, reports that many graduates are unemployed or underemployed, and...

When staffers at the National Endowment for Democracy opened a letter asking about their programs in Venezuela last year, they never expected their response to trigger the persecution of democratic activists in that troubled country. Yet that's exactly what has happened, as Latin America's most ambitious strongman, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, has joined forces with American leftists to crack down on grassroots organizations that merely seek to promote free elections. The story begins with Jeremy Bigwood, a self-described journalist with a history of left-wing activism in Central America. He wanted to take a look at just about every scrap of...