Free Republic

Sir Thomas More's head could be exhumed 500 years after it was parboiled and put on a spike on London Bridge. St Dunstan's, an Anglican church in Canterbury, Kent, where the remains of Henry VIII's lord chancellor lie, has launched a bid to have them unearthed and placed in a shrine. More was beheaded at Tower Hill in 1535 after he refused to acknowledge the monarch as head of the church following Henry's break from Rome.

A Syrian rebel leader may have been killed in a Russian airstrike on a terrorist hideout after his forces seized Aleppo in a shock offensive, local media has reported. Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the current commander-in-chief of the Hay'at Tahrir al-Shamgroup, is understood to have been inside the building at the time of the attack. Meanwhile, Israel is said to be preparing for a scenario where it would need to act if the situation deteriorates. Intelligence chiefs have reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would...

Volodymyr Zelensky has hinted he would agree a ceasefire deal to end the Ukraine war if Nato agrees to accept his country as a member. In an interview with Sky News, the Ukrainian president suggested he was prepared to end the 'hot phase' of the war in exchange for membership of the bloc. He said if the Ukrainian territory he controls was taken 'under the NATO umbrella', he could return the rest, which is currently under Russian occupation, in a 'diplomatic way'.

Ukraine has enough plutonium to construct hundreds of nuclear warheads for rudimentary bombs akin to the first atomic weapons dropped on Japan by the US in 1945, a new report has revealed. A briefing paper prepared for Ukraine's Defence Ministry said Kyiv could develop small dirty bombs within months if Donald Trump pulls US military aid. Despite giving up its nuclear arsenal in 1996, Kyiv is still in control of nine operational reactors and has significant expertise on how to build the weapons. Ukraine does not have the time or resources to run the facilities required to enrich uranium needed...

More than 100 Israeli soldiers have threatened to stop fighting in Gaza if the government does not seek a hostage release deal, an Israeli newspaper report has claimed. The group of 130 troops warned that Benjamin Netanyahu had 'crossed a red line' and that continuing the war will 'endanger lives', according to Haaretz. It comes as the Israeli Prime Minister vowed to keep fighting until his country secures a 'total victory' over Hamas and the return of all the captives. The troops are understood to have written in a letter to cabinet ministers and the IDF's chief of staff: 'Many...

Terrified dictator Alexander Lukashenko has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree a peace deal to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus. President Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said he fears Kyiv's troops are now planning an incursion into his nation after they launched a cross-border offensive in Russia. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through Russia's western border on August 6 in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. Now in an interview with Russia state television, Lukashenko has said that only 'high-ranking people of American origin' wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said,...