Free Republic

President Joe Biden is signing a proclamation to establish two new national monuments in California, in part to honor two tribes, a person familiar with the decision said Monday. The proclamation will create the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California, said the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans that were to be announced Tuesday in California. The declaration bars drilling and mining and other development on the 600,000-acre (2,400-square-kilometer) area in Southern California and roughly 200,000 acres (800...

LARES, Puerto Rico – Ismael Rodriguez looked out on a nearly empty plaza from the clothing store he opened in 1960, now hemmed in by padlocked businesses in this mountain town in northwestern Puerto Rico... experiencing the deepest malaise of just about any community on this island in the depths of an economic crisis. "I have seen the destruction of a town," Rodriguez, 67, said as he gestured toward the plaza. "Look at all the shuttered stores." Lares has become emblematic of the economic stagnation that is overwhelming Puerto Rico, and those who live here believe it is a warning...

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- When the Organization of American States asked its press freedom expert, Santiago Canton, to report on the state of the independent press in Venezuela, they must have known it was a sensitive mission. President Hugo Chavez's radical populist government does not take kindly to criticism nor does it appreciate outside scrutiny of its internal affairs. It's doubtful, though, that anyone at the OAS expected Canton to fall victim himself to the kind of tactics the Venezuelan press faces every day. Just moments after beginning the final press conference of his four-day visit to ...