Free Republic

The American dream is slipping away. Most US citizens no longer enjoy “a minimal quality of life” due to skyrocketing costs, a depressing new study has uncovered. Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity conducted research into the economic well-being of the country’s residents, defining “minimal quality of life” as the ability to pay for a “basket of American dream essentials”: housing, food, transportation, clothing, medical costs and basic leisure expenses. The leisure expenses included access to cable TV and streaming services, as well as the ability to pay for six movie tickets and two baseball tickets per year. The Minimal...

Iran’s defence minister has said his country would target US military bases in the region if conflict breaks out with the United States, as President Donald Trump said he was losing confidence that a nuclear deal would be agreed. Washington and Tehran have held five rounds of talks since April as Trump seeks an agreement that would place constraints on Iran’s uranium enrichment. He has threatened to attack Iran if no deal can be agreed. Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said on Wednesday that Iran would target US military bases in the region if the US attacked it first. “Some officials...

The next major pandemic is coming. It’s already on the horizon, and could be far worse — killing millions more people — than the last one. We don’t yet know for certain what form it will take — just that its arrival, according to global health experts, is not just a possibility but a probability. To combat Disease X — as the World Health Organisation ominously calls it — we will once again need vaccines to be engineered and delivered in record time. But, as things stand, there is absolutely no guarantee that will happen. By contrast, we may well...