Free Republic

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi's coalition government risked collapse on Thursday after the 5-Star Movement, one of its members, failed to support a parliamentary confidence vote including measures to offset the cost of living crisis.The confidence vote has become a focal point for tensions within Draghi's broad coalition as its parties prepare to fight each other in a national election due by early 2023.The risks of a collapse of a Draghi government rippled through financial markets where Italian bond yields rose sharply, indicating investors demanding a higher premium to hold its debt, and shares fell.

Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, is convening a meeting of her security council on Tuesday following a series of incidents in the breakaway Moldovan republic of Transnistria and a warning from Moscow that the Russian-backed region could be drawn into the war in Ukraine. Transnistria, which borders western Ukraine, is controlled by pro-Russia separatists and permanently hosts 1,500 Russian troops as well as a large arms depot. Last week, a senior Russian commander said the goal of Russia’s new offensive was to seize control of southern Ukraine and to gain access to Transnistria, creating worries that the small east European country...

Investment banker Russ Dallen at Caracas Capital Markets points out a painfully obvious truth about Venezuela: it's no longer a sovereign state.  It's actually a Russian puppet state. In a market note via email, he writes: While the usual Venezuela cast of rogue acolytes – Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua – came out in support of the Maduro Regime after the fraudulent Constituent Assembly vote, from a geopolitical and economic point-of-view, there were only going to be two nations whose support really mattered: Russia and China.  And even after the revelation by Venezuela's voting machine software and hardware provider Smartmatic that Venezuela had...

The agreement includes improving Ukraine’s defense industry and armed forces Officials from NATO and Ukraine agreed on a road map Wednesday for greater cooperation between the organization and the troubled country. Patrick Auroy, NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment, and Oleg Gladkovskyi, first deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, were present to sign off on the NATO-Ukraine Defense-Technical Co-operation.

“YANKEE go home!” the protesters’ signs read outside the military compound. Inside, about 200 US Marine reservists are confined to their quarters, unable even to visit the local shop. Nothing unusual, perhaps, by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, but this was the scene yesterday in the southern Ukrainian region of Crimea, more than 18 months after the Orange Revolution supposedly set Ukraine on the path towards Nato membership. The Crimean peninsula was once the site of a bloody war between imperial Russia and an alliance of Britain, France and Turkey, whose futility was epitomised by the Charge of...

Lebanon on Friday rejected US protests over the activities of Palestinian terrorist leaders that Washington labels as terrorists, saying the guerrillas will continue to conduct political and media work in the country as long as Arab lands are occupied by Israel. US Ambassador Vincent Battle reportedly complained to Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid on Wednesday "regarding the presence, activities and movements" of Palestinian terrorist leaders in Lebanon, a Lebanese official said. Battle did not take reporters' questions following the meeting and the US Embassy in Lebanon said Friday it had no comment on the subject. Obeid, according to the Lebanese...

May. 8, 2003 Croatia plans to build monument to honor its Nazis By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - ZAGREB, Croatia The Croatian government announced Thursday it plans to buy land in southern Austria to build a monument honoring thousands of Croat Nazi troops and civilians who were killed in the aftermath of World War II. The announcement came just a few days ahead of Sunday's anniversary of the 1945 killings of tens of thousands of Croat soldiers and civilians who fled to Austria in fear of reprisals from antifascists. They gathered in Bleiburg, a small town near the then-Yugoslav border, waiting...

Lebanese security forces acting on a court order raided the private MTV television station, the main voice of the anti-Syrian Christian opposition, and shut it down on Wednesday, its owner said. “Security forces broke into the broadcast room and forced technicians, cameramen and journalists to stop the programs," said Gabriel Murr, who became a member of parliament in June by defeating his niece, the sister of Interior Minister Elias Murr. Murr said "the army then ordered the personnel to evacuate the building, but we refused to do so because the judicial decision does not speak of evacuation." Murr said that...