Free Republic

KABUL — When Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers headed to the country’s first “international climate change conference” earlier this year in the eastern city of Jalalabad, few foreign guests turned up. Afghanistan remains a global pariah in large part because of the Taliban restrictions on female education, and that isolation has deprived the country of foreign funding for urgently needed measures to adapt to climate change. So, for now, the Afghan government is largely confronting the impacts of global warming on its own and putting the blame for floods and sluggish governmental aid on foreigners. Some former Taliban commanders view global carbon...

Only one week ahead of the midterms, President Trump is working hard to turn a few thousand migrants who are on their way to the United States into an “invasion.” More than 5,000 active U.S. service members have been ordered to the border, as the president is spreading unsubstantiated claims that “unknown Middle Easterners” are in the caravan. There is no evidence for a looming invasion or a terrorism risk. But Trump’s game of making up a migrant invading force isn’t surprising to anyone who has watched populists gain power in Europe in recent years. In the case of Trump,...

BERLIN — Denmark became the second European country to halt future arms exports to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, following a similar decision by neighboring Germany earlier this month. The Danish announcement comes the same week President Trump backed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA assessing that he ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Denmark’s ban includes goods that can be used both for military and civilian purposes but is still less expansive than the German measures, which also included sales that had already been approved. While the Nordic country is a tiny arms equipment exporter in...

Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president By Rick Noack April 15 at 9:30 AM German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cleared the way for the prosecution of German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose poem mocking Turkey's president has become the centerpiece of a clash between Germany's free-speech traditions and the government's efforts to safeguard its important relations with Turkey. In a news conference Friday, Merkel emphasized that it will now be up to German courts to decide whether Böhmermann is guilty of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But critics — including members of her own government —...