Free Republic

Senior US officials say that a ceasefire-hostage deal in Gaza is unlikely.... The Sheriff of Letcher County, Kentucky arrested after he allegedly shot and killed a judge... "outrageous lies" "high-tech lynching" US politics a CNN report with a list of allegations against the Republican candidate for Governor of North Carolina... In Portugal 14 arrests of arson suspects in the wave of wildfires... The Israeli military striking dozens of targets in southern Lebanon... One person killed in a stabbing attack at the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam... US politics three national polls today the NY Times Sienna Poll puts Donald Trump and...

Teresa Heinz Kerry: A Potential First Lady With Maltese Family Ties- Vincent Camilleri Friday, September 12, 2003 ‘Of all the potential First Ladies in recent history, she is certainly the most accomplished.’ This is how Vogue Magazine described Teresa Heinz Kerry in its March 2003 edition. I had the honour to meet and have a very pleasant conversation with Ms Heinz Kerry in 1987. It happened in Vienna, where I was posted as head of the Maltese delegation to the CSCE Follow-Up meeting, during a diplomatic reception hosted by ambassador Warren Zimmermann, head of the US delegation to the conference....

Five hundred years ago, no one suspected the 16th-century vessel the Nao Victoria would become the stuff of legend. In 1519, a Portuguese consul called the Spanish carrack “very old and patched up” and unfit to even “sail … to the Canaries.” Nevertheless, the Nao Victoria was chosen for a five-ship expedition, crewed by 270 men, that would come to be known as one of the most significant journeys in the history of human exploration. The captain of this unprecedented adventure was Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães, anglicized Ferdinand Magellan. On September 20, 1519, he set sail aboard the flagship...

New Zealand codifies forced injections in martial law ‘Pandemic Plan’.. Under the skin is the final authoritarian frontier; as many have noted before, if you don’t have control over what is injected into your body, you don’t have freedom in any meaningful sense of the word. If the Kiwis aren’t rioting in the streets of Auckland at this very moment, if this isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back — either because the information space in New Zealand is so tightly controlled that they don’t know what their government is doing to them or because they are too psychologically/spiritually...

SCIENTISTS have been left confused by a series of incidents in which killer whales have hit sailing boats along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. In some cases, boats have been damaged and at least one crew member suffered bruising from the impact of the ramming.Two boats also lost parts of their rudders due to the impact of the attacks, according to reports. Incidents have been reported in several locations, including one just off A Coruña, on the northern coast of Spain, on Friday afternoon. Pete Green, managing director of Halcyon Yachts, told The Guardian a boat was being taken to...

Orcas relentlessly battered a yacht in a “terrifying” two-hour attack that didn’t end until the $128,680 vessel sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. ... they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat, and they knew how to sink it... “Their sole intention was to sink the boat ... The five orcas circled the 39-foot sailing boat and took turns smashing it to bits .. in a coordinated assault Powell compared to the carnage of wolves. ... The pod of five first focused on the rudder,...

At first, the crew "heard a strange noise and rushed to the top of the ship" thinking they may have hit a container The yearlong aggression of orca pods against boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal continues unabated. By October of last year, there were 33 bizarre "revenge" attacks by killer whales off the coast of Spain and Portugal and it seems they’re not done yet. A video taken by fishermen in the Straights of Gibralter on April 3 shows the men valiantly fighting off a pod of the angry sea mammals as they attack the boat and...

The discovery of a ship, missing for five centuries, in a southwest African desert, filled with gold coins, is one of the most thrilling archaeological finds in recent times. The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation. When it sank in a fierce storm, it was on its way to India laden with treasures like gold and copper ingots. Two...

One pilot was killed and another injured after two small planes collided midair during an air show performance in southern Portugal today. The accident occurred above an air base in Beja, located about 180 km south of Lisbon, on Sunday as six aircraft belonging to an aerobatic group called the 'Yak Stars' were performing. One plane collided into another and then exploded into flames, killing its Spanish pilot, the Portuguese Air Force (PAF) said. The second involved in the accident managed to land on the airport tarmac, with no victims among the spectators, the air force said. After the accident,...

The economy is experiencing a golden moment thanks to exports and tourism after cleaning up its accounts. But the country has paid a price in migration of qualified workers and reduction of public services. Ten years after the departure of the “men in black” — the international managers of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank who cleaned up Portugal’s accounts with a machete, the country has emerged as the most diligent student in southern Europe. In 2023, for the first time, public debt fell below 100% of GDP (it stood at 98.7%) and there was a...

The British Empire and other major European powers did not significantly enrich themselves through slavery and colonialism but rather may have taken a net loss as a result, a report has asserted. Contrary to narratives pushed by ‘anti-colonialism’ academics and promoted by leftist talking heads, Western capitalism was not built off the backs of colonialism and slavery, fresh research from Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs claims. The head of Political Economy at the IEA argues that while some select elite families within Britain and other colonial powers profited immensely during the time, such gains were not felt...

Europe is continuing its shift to the right, as voters in Portugal on Sunday rejected socialist governance and cemented the populist-nationalist Chega party as a major political force in the country and potentially a coalition partner in the next government. Following a corruption scandal hitting the highest levels of the socialist government of António Costa, whose own chief of staff and other government ministers were arrested on suspicion of corruption, forcing the PM to announce his resignation and call for an early election, the party has tumbled in the weekend’s election.

Portugal’s Socialists conceded defeat in a parliamentary election on Sunday which saw the far-right emerge as the biggest winner. With nearly 99% of votes counted, the center-right AD coalition had secured 77 seats against 75 seats for the Socialists. “Everything indicates that the result won’t enable the Socialist Party to be the most voted party," Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos said. He congratulated the AD for their election victory. Far-right party Chega recorded the biggest jump in support compared with the 2022 election - it has already won 46 seats, almost quadrupling its current tally. This means the AD would...

Portugal's centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) was poised to win the most votes in Sunday's parliamentary election...

Portugal has gone to the polls, in a vote that will either keep the centre-left in power or shift the country to the right.

[2-1/4 hour documentary] Today, the Songhai Empire is all but forgotten by history. But this medieval kingdom was once the most powerful force in Africa. Find out how this civilization grew up on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, among some of the most extreme conditions that nature can throw at us. Discover how it grew and flourished, passing through a process known as the imperial cycle, and learn about what ultimately caused its sudden and dramatic collapse.

LISBON, Portugal (AP) – Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa said Tuesday he is resigning after being involved in a widespread corruption probe. Costa said in a nationally televised address that “in these circumstances, obviously, I have presented my resignation to the president of the republic.” Costa’s shocking announcement came hours after Portuguese police arrested his chief of staff while raiding several public buildings and other properties as part of a widespread corruption probe.

A spokesman for Meta confirmed to AFP that it would not take part in this year's event, with Google telling the Irish Independent that it too would not be making the trip to Lisbon. We're now on WhatsApp. Click to join. Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of the Web Summit, wrote on social media platform X last week that he was "shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments." "War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are," Cosgrave wrote on October 13. Hamas militants...

&midddot;The ruins of a sugar mill and estate found in Africa are the earliest plantation&midddot;The site was operating in the 1530s - about 100 years before slavery in the USArchaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of plantation slavery - the ruins of a 16th-century sugar mill and estate on a tiny West African island.The island, named São Tomé, was the largest sugar producer globally in the 1530s, creating the blueprint for plantation economies across the Atlantic Ocean.The ruins of the mill and estate were uncovered by researchers from the University of Cologne, who said the structure's scale reflects the large...

UniSC's Professor Patrick Nunn and Roselyn Kumar didn't set out to rewrite history.They were simply trying to research how India's coastline had changed over the centuries...At some point in the 16th century, the depictions and illustrations of Calicut stopped matching up with the old ones.The river was wrong. So were the boats. Where was the promised great maritime city and the trees heaving with fruit?...It was like Calicut had somehow teleported to a completely different location...The trouble started in 1498 with a man who was no stranger to trouble—Vasco da Gama. Da Gama had been sent by the King of...