Free Republic

The U.S. and Israel have reached out to officials of three East African governments to discuss using their territories as potential destinations for moving Palestinians uprooted from the Gaza Strip under President Donald Trump’s proposed postwar plan, American and Israeli officials told The Associated Press. The contacts with Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland reflect the determination by the U.S. and Israel to press ahead with a plan that has been widely condemned and raised serious legal and moral issues. Because all three places are poor, and in some cases wracked by violence, the proposal...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump upended three years of U.S. policy toward Ukraine on Wednesday, saying that he and Russian leader Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin negotiations on ending the war following a sudden prisoner swap.Trump said in a social media post that he and Putin held a lengthy phone call and committed to “work together, very closely” to bring the conflict to an end and would meet in person, including perhaps in each other’s countries.Trump subsequently announced that he'd also spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but only after his talk with Putin. After the calls, White...

The United States is expected to announce that it will send $1.25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Biden administration pushes to get as much aid to Kyiv as possible before leaving office on Jan. 20. The large package of aid includes a significant amount of munitions, including for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and the HAWK air defense system. It also will provide Stinger missiles and 155 mm- and 105 mm artillery rounds, officials said. ... Earlier this month, senior defense officials acknowledged that that the Defense Department may not be able...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday stepped up calls for Israel to comply with international law and spare civilians as it wages its war against Hamas in Gaza. On his third trip to the Middle East since the war began on Oct. 7, Blinken said the U.S. remains committed to supporting Israel’s right to self defense. But he also said it is imperative that Israel protect civilians if it starts major military operations in southern Gaza. His message aligns with the Biden administration’s shifting rhetoric on the war, which began as a full-throated embrace of Israel’s response to...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says there can be no cease-fire in the war in Ukraine unless it is part of a “just and lasting” peace deal that includes Russia’s military withdrawal. Blinken said Friday that “a ceasefire that simply freezes current lines in place” and enabled Russian President Vladimir Putin to “rest, rearm, and re-attack” would not be “a just and lasting peace.” In a speech during a visit to Finland, Blinken said that Russia must also pay for part of Ukraine’s reconstruction and be held accountable for its full-scale invasion of its neighbor...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week highlighted China’s aspirations for a greater role on the world stage. But they also revealed the perils of global diplomacy: Hours after Friday's announcement of the trip, an international arrest warrant was issued for Putin on war crimes charges, taking at least some wind out of the sails of China's big reveal. U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday he believes the decision by the International Criminal Court in The Hague to charge Putin was “justified.” Speaking to reporters as he left...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — In a private video call with American lawmakers over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a “desperate” plea to the United States to help Kyiv get more warplanes to fight Russia’s invasion and retain control of its airspace. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Washington has given a “green light” to the idea and is currently “very, very actively” looking at a proposal under which Ukraine’s neighbor Poland would supply Kyiv with Soviet-era fighters and in turn receive American F-16s to make up for their loss. However, the proposition is fraught with uncertainty

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — For decades, the tiny Marshall Islands has been a stalwart American ally. Its location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has made it a key strategic outpost for the U.S. military. But that loyalty is being tested amid a dispute with Washington over the terms of its “Compact of Free Association” agreement, which expires soon. The U.S. is refusing to engage the Marshallese on claims for environmental and health damage caused by dozens of nuclear tests it carried out in the 1940s and ’50s, including a huge thermonuclear blast on Bikini Atoll.... ... China...

PARIS (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Tuesday on the world’s most developed countries to take on and counter widening gaps between the rich and poor. He told the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris that the coronavirus and climate change have exacerbated inequality between and within nations and that action must be taken to reverse the trend. In addition to tackling those two threats, he told an OECD conference on climate and security that curbing corporate tax avoidance and ending discrimination against women and minorities are critical to improving global living conditions. Blinken said...

BERLIN - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Germany as the Biden administration presses ahead with a diplomatic charm offensive designed to woo back wary Western European allies after four years of turbulent relations under former President Donald Trump. That’s despite some lingering differences with key allies over energy and defense priorities. Biden is determined to assure Europe that Trump’s transactional approach to transatlantic ties is a thing of the past despite some significant lingering differences with core NATO allies. Those include a major dispute with Germany over the impending completion of a Russian gas pipeline and defense...

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden has formally recognized that the systematic killings and deportations of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century were “genocide” — using a term for the atrocities that his White House predecessors have avoided for decades over concerns of alienating Turkey.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel, making it the third Arab state to do so as part of U.S.-brokered deals in the run-up to Election Day. The deal, which would deepen Sudan’s engagement with the West, follows Trump's conditional agreement this week to remove the North African nation from the list of state sponsors of terrorism if it pays compensation to American victims of terror attacks. It also delivers a foreign policy achievement for Trump just days before the U.S. election and boosts his embattled ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Recently,...

WASHINGTON — Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO caught in the middle of a whistleblower complaint over the President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, resigned Friday from his post as special envoy to the Eastern European nation, according to a U.S. official. The official said Volker told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday of his decision to leave the job, following disclosures that he had connected Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family over allegedly corrupt business dealings. Giuliani has said he was in frequent contact...

The U.S. government’s international broadcasting agency says it will discipline employees responsible for a television report on philanthropist George Soros that violated its professional ethics and standards. […] The report on Soros aired in May on Spanish-language Radio Television Marti network, which broadcasts to Cuba. It described him as a “Jewish multi-millionaire” influencing nations through non-government groups. It referenced the conservative organization Judicial Watch as believing he was undermining democracies. …

A key witness in the beating case of Giants fan Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium died suddenly, apparently of an allergic food reaction. According to law enforcement sources familiar with the case, Matthew Lee died Sunday after eating a salad that apparently contained nuts, which caused the allergic reaction. The coroner has not determined a cause of death, however.

How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and Internet giant Google? If you're journalist Matthew Lee, all it takes are some critical articles and a scrappy little Web site. Lee is the editor-in-chief, Webmaster and pretty much the only reporter for Inner City Press, a pint-sized Internet news operation that's taken on Goliath-sized entities like Citigroup since 1987. Since 2005, he's been focusing almost entirely on stories that deal with internal corruption inside the U.N., posting several stores online almost daily. He's been especially interested in the inner workings of what could...