Free Republic

Heavily armed gangs attacked Haiti’s central region over the weekend, killing men, women and children as they set fire to homes and forced survivors to flee into the darkness. Police made emergency calls for backup, asserting that 50% of the Artibonite region had fallen under gang control after the large-scale attacks targeting towns including Bercy and Pont-Sondé. “The population cannot live, cannot work, cannot move,” one of Haiti’s police unions, SPNH-17, said Sunday on X. “Losing the country’s 2 largest departments — West and Artibonite — is the greatest security failure in modern Haitian history.” The bulk of Haiti’s police...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Southeast Asia is being pummeled by unusually severe floods this year, as late-arriving storms and relentless rains wreak havoc that has caught many places off guard. Malaysia is still reeling from one its worst floods, which killed three and displaced thousands. Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines have faced a year of punishing storms and floods that have left hundreds dead. What feels unprecedented is exactly what climate scientists expect: A new normal of punishing storms, floods and devastation. Atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the most on record in 2024. That “turbocharged” the climate,...

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge Tuesday night ordered the Trump administration to cease its campaign of arresting immigrants in Washington, D.C. without a warrant or probable cause of a flight risk, warning that the White House’s mistreatment of immigrants could put Americans overseas at risk. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that, while federal agents may have the authority to make warrantless immigration arrests, the way that authority has been used on the immigrant community in Washington was likely unlawful. “Defendants are preliminarily enjoined from enforcing their policy of conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause to believe...

Adding thousands of metal "hairs" to a tank helps to protect the tank from first-person-view drones The Russians first fielded these hairy "hedgehog" tanks this fall Now the Ukrainians are building their own hedgehogs, hoping to reduce the impact of Russian FPVs In their never-ending effort to protect armored vehicles from the tiny first-person-view drones that are everywhere all the time all along the 1,100-km front line of Russia's wider war on Ukraine, Russian forces have introduced a number of bizarre innovations. The resulting "cope cages" and "turtle," "porcupine" and "hedgehog" tanks are ungainly and, frankly, ugly. But they work....

The authors of a study that examined climate change’s potential effect on the global economy said Wednesday that data errors led them to slightly overstate an expected drop in income over the next 25 years. The researchers at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, writing in the journal Nature in 2024, had forecast a 19% drop in global income by 2050. Their revised analysis puts the figure at 17%. The authors also said in their original work that there was a 99% chance that, by midcentury, it would cost more to fix damage from climate change than it would...

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The U.S. Department of Justice, under President Donald Trump, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs of violating federal law by refusing to hand over the state’s full voter registration database, including protected personal information, as part of a federal election-compliance review. According to the complaint, federal attorneys say Hobbs unlawfully rejected a September request for an unredacted electronic copy of Washington’s statewide voter registration list — including names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers — along with voter registration application records...

"What we have tried to do, and I think have made some progress, is figure out what can the Ukrainians live with that gives them security guarantees for the future," US Secretary of State saidNEW YORK, December 3. /TASS/. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the key subject of dispute in the negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is the remaining 20% of the territory of the DPR under Kiev's control. "What they're literally fighting over now is about 30 to 50 kilometer space and the 20% of the Donetsk region that remains [under Ukrainian...

In a major geopolitical realignment that could have far-reaching consequences and further strain the already troubled US-Canada relationship, Ottawa has joined the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative. Canada will be the first non-EU country to join the ambitious security plan, part of the EU’s broader “ReArm Europe” or “Readiness 2030” initiative. Meanwhile, despite frantic negotiations stretching over weeks, the UK failed to join the initiative. Talks on the UK joining the SAFE fund ended without agreement last week. The move will give Canada access to a €150 billion (US$170 billion – CAD 244 billion) low-interest loan scheme...

The family of a Colombian fisherman who died in a U.S. military boat strike in September has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging the U.S. government illegally killed him. Alejandro Carranza was killed in a strike in the Caribbean on Sept. 15, according to the petition, filed on Tuesday. "From numerous news reports, we know that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza and the murder of all those on such boats," according to the petition. In the petition, Carranza's lawyer Dan...

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate's aviation subcommittee, is demanding the Transportation Department expand its $10,000 bonus to all air traffic controllers and FAA technicians who worked without pay during the government shutdown. The department said it would give the bonuses only to those who did not miss a day of work during the 44-day shutdown. "Excluding 96 percent of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Air Traffic Controller and Technician workforce from this bonus is unfair, divisive and disrespectful to the over 20,000 dedicated Federal employees who worked under extremely stressful conditions to ensure...

WASHINGTON — Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas got a lawyer for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to admit Tuesday it mounted a “fishing expedition” against a pro-life organization without receiving specific complaints about the group. Thomas drilled down on the investigation of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers during oral arguments in a case challenging a subpoena the organization received from AG Matthew Platkin’s office. “You had no basis to think that they were deceiving any of their contributors?” Thomas asked Chief Counsel Sundeep Iyer. “We certainly had complaints about crisis pregnancy centers,” Iyer deflected before admitting none specifically...

With Tuesday’s White House Cabinet meeting chugging past the two-hour mark, President Donald Trump ‘s eyes fluttered and closed. His budget director busied himself doodling a fluffy cloud. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was lucky enough to speak early, but the title on his nameplate was misspelled. The sleepy, and occasionally slipshod, gathering nonetheless ended with a flurry of news. Trump declared that he didn’t want Somalis in the U.S. and Hegseth cited the “ fog of war ” in defending a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-carrying boat in the Caribbean Sea in September. The president started things off by...

Dec 2 (Reuters) - Officials in Minneapolis on Tuesday said they were not aware of imminent federal immigration raids targeting the area’s Somali community, which has come under blistering attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump in recent days. Anti-immigration rhetoric was a major part of Trump's campaign and since taking office in January he has overseen an aggressive campaign by masked federal agents across the country that has instilled fear in immigrant communities and prompted protests and backlashes in the cities targeted. During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump ratcheted up his inflammatory rhetoric about Somalis, saying they had contributed...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Tuesday for his role in the controversy surrounding the strike on a suspected Venezuelan narcoterrorist cartel boat on Sept. 2. “Secretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this, and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn’t happen. And then the next day, from the podium at the White House are saying it did happen,” Paul said while speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. “So, either he was lying to us … or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened.” Paul also...

A federal judge late Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from making widespread immigration arrests in the nation’s capital without warrants or probable cause that the person is an imminent flight risk. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil liberties and immigrants rights groups in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Officers making civil immigration arrests generally have to have an administrative warrant. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, they may make arrests without a warrant only if they have probable cause to believe the person is in the U.S. illegally...

Somali migrants should go home to fix up their own country, President Donald Trump told his cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “They come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch” about Americans and America, he said, adding: “We don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.” Trump’s comments will likely prompt Democrats to defend Somali migrants amid the growing evidence of widespread theft, embezzlement, migration fraud, and welfare cheating by many of the almost 100,000 government-imported Somali migrants in the state. There is so much evidence of organized...

A Russian military victory in Ukraine would cost Europe twice as much as a Ukrainian victory, according to a new study by Corisk and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs published on Nov. 25. Under the first scenario proposed by the researchers, Moscow's forces would continue their incremental advance and push westward toward the Dnipro River. As a result of their military victories, the Kremlin would force Ukraine to accept a negotiated settlement on terms beneficial to Moscow. According to the report, such an outcome would amount to a Russian partial victory, giving the Kremlin influence over Ukraine's political and...

In a development that has rattled European capitals and raised alarms across NATO, the Pentagon has abruptly halted its working-level communications with Germany’s Defense Ministry, effectively severing one of the alliance’s most important military coordination channels. The revelation, reported by The Atlantic, comes from German Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, who described the sudden silence from Washington as both unprecedented and deeply worrying. According to Freuding, communications that once flowed freely “day and night” between U.S. and German military officials have now been cut off entirely. Messages go unanswered. Routine coordination has stopped. And Germany — a central pillar of Europe’s...

In the ninth annual joint Pew Research Center and Körber-Stiftung surveys of the United States and German publics, we find profound changes in perceptions of the bilateral relationship. These are the first surveys in this series conducted since Donald Trump began his second term as U.S. president and Friedrich Merz became chancellor of Germany.Key findings:

United States House of Representatives District 7 Favorite Race: United States House of Representatives District 7 Final Unofficial Results Final Unofficial Results 14 of 14 Counties Completed Final Unofficial Results Matt Van Epps (R)✔ 96,988 Aftyn Behn (D) 81,044 Jon Thorp (I) 932 Teresa "Terri" Christie (I) 610 Bobby Dodge (I) 196 Robert James Sutherby (I) 129