Free Republic

The Chinese Coast Guard said on Monday it is conducting “law enforcement” patrols east of Taiwan in response to Japan and the Philippines reaching an agreement on maritime boundaries. China denounced the Japanese-Filipino agreement as “completely illegal, null, and void” because it could disrupt China’s expansive territorial claims. “This is a necessary action taken in response to Japan and the Philippines unilaterally announcing the initiation of maritime boundary delimitation negotiations in the waters east of China’s Taiwan island,” the Chinese Coast Guard said. “We urge Japan and the Philippines to immediately cease all illegal actions that infringe upon ​China’s sovereign...

A now-deceased official with President Donald Trump’s National Security Council received a report suggesting that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting may not have been the work of a “lone gunman” with no discernible motive, but rather a terrorist attack perpetrated by at least two men with possible ties to ISIS and/or ANTIFA, according to National File. Testament to how cowed and pathetic American journalists are that no one got to the bottom of Las Vegas shooting— Darren J. Beattie (@DarrenJBeattie) January 3, 2021The “All Source Assessment,” entitled “Attack on the Route 91 Country Music Festival,” was prepared for Rich Higgins,...

....State-run Chinese newspaper People’s Daily on Friday posted on its Twitter account a video of a long-range bomber landing in an island in the disputed waters. Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said the video was taken at Woody Island, China’s largest base in the Paracel Islands that is also being claimed by Vietnam. “Chinese bombers including the H-6K conduct takeoff and landing training on an island reef at a southern sea area,”read the Twitter post by People’s Daily. With its deployment in the Paracels, AMTI said the bombers could now reach almost the entire South China Sea. “Nearly all...

On May 13, shots were heard in the Senate of the Philippines. At the heart of the drama was fugitive Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa. Wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on an arrest warrant that was unveiled on May 11, dela Rosa surfaced the same day for a crucial vote. After the melee on May 13, he again disappeared. This is the latest twist in a struggle between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his erstwhile allies, the Duterte family. In the days before the firefight, the Philippine legislature had been consumed with an ongoing campaign to impeach Vice...

During the days of colonialism, it was gratifying for the British, Portuguese, Germans, and French to look at the world map and bask in all the colonies of each country. But the pretty blotches of red or blue or black hid an unpleasant fact. Many of those colonies were a drain on the mother country; they would put into those colonies far more than they got out of them. This was particularly obvious in those colonies that were principally desert. Spain also had colonies. Cubans tried to become independent but failed due to the eternal ineptitude of Cubans, whose only...

Gunshots have been heard in the Philippine Senate building, Senate authorities said on Wednesday, where a senator wanted by the International Criminal Court has been holed up to resist arrest. [SNIP] Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos insisted the incident was not carried out by government personnel, but rather an apparent shootout between an unidentified armed group and Senate security personnel. Marcos said no government forces attempted to enter the Senate to arrest Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, a longtime ally of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who evaded arrest by local investigative unit officers earlier this week. Senator Dela Rosa was filmed...

MANILA – The Philippines said on May 3 that thousands of people have evacuated the area south of Manila after Mayon Volcano erupted, and the authorities advised the public to stay out of the 6km radius danger zone. The volcanology institute issued Alert Level 3 in its five-step scale as it reported “strombolian activity and short-lived lava fountaining” from one of the South-east Asian nation’s most active volcanoes. It warned of landslides and lava flows. Nearly 1,500 families are now staying in evacuation centres, according to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Heavy ashfall blanketed several towns in Albay...

Now that we can look at QAnon from a distance what did it turn out to be? I thought some of it's posts were legit just because I believed underhanded stunts were commonplace by the dims and the media. Especially after the lawfare against Trump and the pseudo press coverage of biden. Now it seems like QAnon was just trying to sow chaos among us conservatives. It's referred to like a joke or some manner of failed attempt to do whatever.

2007—Year of the Lapita? Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008 by Mark Rose Polynesian Breakthroughs A Polynesian chicken (Anita Gould) and a Chilean chicken bone (Courtesy Alice Storey) There was no doubt about including in our 2007 Top Ten the discovery that chicken bones from ancient Polynesian sites in Tonga and Samoa and El Arenal, a Chilean site occupied between A.D. 700 and 1390, had identical DNA. The chicken was domesticated in Southeast Asia, but how it arrived in the New World before Europeans arrived was a mystery. Now it seems that Polynesian seafarers brought them, adding to the evidence...

MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday urged Filipinos to learn from history and "never again allow any other tribe to compromise our sovereignty," as he marked the 500th anniversary of the landing of the Spanish expedition in the Philippines. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew landed in the Philippines on March 16, 1521, in the first circumnavigation of the world. He died on the shores of Mactan, Cebu, in a battle with chieftain Lapu-Lapu, which Duterte called "an exemplary display of firm leadership and extraordinary courage defeated and drove away the colonials."

In the summer of 1905, two men held a private conversation in Tokyo that the world wouldn't find out about for nearly two decades. No treaty was signed. No announcement was made. But in that room, the United States quietly handed an entire nation over to colonial rule — and set in motion a chain of events that would end at Pearl Harbor forty years later. This is the story of the Taft-Katsura Agreement, the secret deal that validated Japanese imperial ambition at the exact moment it needed validation most. We cover the Meiji Restoration and Japan's transformation from feudal...

Japan for the first time has deployed ground troops to the Balikatan exercise, a series of multidomain drills staged across the Philippine archipelago. Participation by about 1,000 Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) Soldiers augments the annual training that began decades ago as a Philippines-United States exercise and now involves about 20 nations. Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) personnel previously attended Balikatan as observers and in noncombat roles focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR). They participated in a maritime drill in 2025. A reciprocal access agreement between Manila and Tokyo, which took effect in September 2025, allows JSDF and Armed...

MANILA: The United States and the Philippines have announced plans for a 4,000-acre “Economic Security Zone” in Luzon (ESZ), a new industrial hub meant to strengthen supply chains for critical goods and deepen allied manufacturing ties, according to a US State Department fact sheet and a post by Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg. The project, about 1,618.7 hectares (16,187,000 square metres, about 16.187 square km) is being described as the first “AI-native investment acceleration hub” under "Pax Silica", a US-led initiative aimed at building secure supply chains among partner countries. Officials said the site is intended to help secure...

Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg today announced the United States’ and the Philippines’ plans to establish a 4,000-acre industrial hub to secure inputs vital to American and global supply chains. The site is located in the Luzon Economic Corridor of the Philippines. The site—the first of its kind—is being designated by the Philippines as an Economic Security Zone, a new model for AI-native investment acceleration hubs being developed under the Pax Silica Initiative. The Economic Security Zone is part of a broader strategy to surge production for inputs vital to U.S. supply chains. It is expected...

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. The...

A Clay County man's DNA was a match with a sailor named John Judson Campbell, a U.S. Navy sailor from World War II he had no idea existed until now. DNA matches newly identified WWII POW's remains to surprised Florida family | 3:34 First Coast News | 462K subscribers | 39,006 views | March 26, 2026

Waymo‘s Chief Safety Officer disclosed Wednesday that some of the remote operators who assist its self-driving vehicles in navigating difficult scenarios are based in the Philippines. Mauricio Peña, the company’s Chief Safety Officer, confirmed under questioning that the Alphabet subsidiary employs human operators abroad to provide guidance to its robotaxis when they encounter challenging driving situations. Ad ends in 5 Peña noted that the vehicles remain in control of all driving tasks at all times. “They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee. “The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic...

Venturing into the icy seas around Greenland can be unforgiving and unpredictable. Steffen Andersen, a seasoned skipper preparing his six-man trawler for a fishing trip along the craggy coast, was in the mood to complain. He had recently hired a 16-year-old local to work with him, but he grumbled that the towering Danish-owned factory ships docked along the nearby quayside more often hired immigrants. “Those who use Filipinos, they are the Danes,’’ he said. Greenland is increasingly reliant on migrant labour to keep seafood factories, restaurants and its fishing fleet running — critical for an economy overwhelmingly dependent on fisheries...

A senior counter-terrorism official has revealed Sajid and Naveed Akram underwent military-style training overseas just weeks before the pair allegedly opened fire at the Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach. The father and son travelled to the Philippines in November, a region that has been a hotspot for Islamist militants since the early 1990s, when terrorist training camps relocated from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to southern Mindanao. Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, arrived from Sydney on November 1 and left on November 28, a Bureau of Immigration spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday. Sajid travelled on an Indian passport while Naveed...

Could We Have Prevented the Attacks? by William Norman Grigg During the 1990s, the FBI uncovered clues indicating that bin Laden was planning to attack America with hijacked airliners. This information was never shared with local police. On April 19th, police arrested 30-year-old Leo V. Felton and 21-year-old Erica Chase after they had tried to pass counterfeit $20 bills at a Dunkin’ Donuts in East Boston. After the pair was booked and processed into the Nashua Street Jail, police turned the investigation over to the Secret Service. Seven days later, Felton was free on bail, despite the fact that federal ...