Free Republic

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday ​the United States was getting along ‌very well with Iran and that recent meetings in Qatar went well. "The denuclearization of ​Iran is moving along well," Trump ​told reporters. "They've had very good meetings, and ⁠we'll see." The U.S. and Iran ​held technical talks in the Qatari capital of ​Doha on Wednesday as they seek to agree on the flow of shipping through the Strait ​of Hormuz and secure a lasting ​ceasefire, a source with direct knowledge of the talks ‌and ⁠an Iranian official said. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff met...

Tehran is using force to gain control over traffic through the Strait. The best selling point for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran was that at least it opened the Strait of Hormuz. Well, now the regime is trying to nullify those terms by using force against commercial vessels, Gulf states and U.S. bases. All of this violates the deal... On Thursday Iran struck a container ship transiting the Strait with a drone. The U.S. responded on Friday with strikes on Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radars. It announced the strike after markets closed as if...

Iran doubled down on its control of the Strait of Hormuz Sunday — declaring on state-run TV that all ships must get permission from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps before sailing through the critical choke point. The announcement followed Iranian attacks on two ships that were transiting the strait in recent days — prompting strikes by the US, and tit-for-tat retaliation by the Islamic republic.The violence threatened to unravel the delicate peace deal less than a week after the two sides met in Switzerland for talks on a permanent agreement. President Trump accused Iran of violating the cease-fire and warned...

U.S. forces struck Iranian targets again on Sunday local time, U.S. Central Command said. The new strikes follow Bahrain's claim that Iranian drones struck the Gulf state Saturday, which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed targeted a "U.S. terrorist army," after U.S. retaliatory strikes on Iran and an earlier attack on a cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump on Friday called Iran's attack a "foolish violation" of the ceasefire, as Tehran and Washington appear to remain at odds on even basic points in their memorandum of understanding, including control of the strait and how Iran will spend...

Denver airport’s air traffic control was reportedly struck by a staggering six-minute outage earlier this week after several radio transmitters suddenly went dark. The frequency outage meant that as many as 20 pilots were unable to reach air traffic controllers as they descended into Denver International Airport on Monday afternoon, ABC7 reported, citing sources. A controller eventually made contact with one aircraft on a “guard line,” which is typically only used when a pilot is in distress. That pilot was then able to contact other nearby planes and tell them to switch radio frequencies, the sources said. At the time...

The good news is that Boeing was able to update the automated flight software on its troubled Starliner space capsule, allowing NASA to return it unmanned to Earth no sooner than Friday. The bad news — or at least the serious question — is whether Starliner will ever fly again. NASA decided last week not to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home on board the same ship they flew to ISS on due to safety concerns about the service module's malfunctioning thrusters. While an astronaut is sometimes scheduled in advance to return to Earth on board a different...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is alleged to be directly communicating with certain commanders of Ukraine’s Armed Forces (UAF), and intentionally bypassing the Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny, Ukrainska Pravda (UP) reported on Monday citing anonymous sources. According to the sources quoted in an article entitled "The War against Politics. What is really going on between Zelensky and Zaluzhny", this behavior is undermining and impeding Zaluzhny's ability to effectively lead the UAF. “Sometimes there is an impression that Zelensky has two types of Armed Forces of Ukraine: the ‘good ones’ commanded by Syrsky and other favorites, and the ‘bad ones’ who obey Zaluzhny,"...

A Colorado mother filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday after police shot and killed her son upon mistaking him for an active shooter. On the day he was shot in June 2021, Kathleen Boleyn's son, John Hurley, pulled out his gun and went after suspect Ronald Troyke after Troyke was accused of ambushing and fatally shooting Officer Gordon Beesley, court documents obtained by Fox Television Stations have reported. Troyke, the documents noted, had "a virulent hatred for the police."

The New Jersey governor’s race is still up in the air thanks to vote-counting debacles plaguing several counties — including in a key area where dozens of machines were shut down before ballots were counted. A mistake by a poll worker led machines in 56 voting districts in Essex County, the state’s second-most populated region, to be turned off before their ballots were tallied, local election officials said. The flub has helped throw a wrench into calling the stunningly tight race between Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and GOP foe Jack Ciattarelli. “Those machines have to be brought back to the...

The New Jersey governor’s race is still up in the air thanks to vote-counting debacles plaguing several counties — including in a key area where dozens of machines were shut down before ballots were counted. A mistake by a poll worker led machines in 56 voting districts in Essex County, the state’s second-most populated region, to be turned off before their ballots were tallied, local election officials said. The flub has helped throw a wrench into calling the stunningly tight race between Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and GOP foe Jack Ciattarelli.

<p>It’s a good thing that New York is the city that never sleeps — since it takes all day to get anywhere.</p> <p>A perfect storm of subway repairs, highway construction, commuter rail woes and worsening gridlock is creating a commuter doomsday the likes of which the city has never seen before.</p>

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is set to appear before the House Intelligence Committee later this month after his previously scheduled appearance was scrapped due to what Justice Department officials called a last-minute "scheduling error." Committee chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told reporters that he was "extremely troubled" by the postponement of McCabe's testimony and called the Justice Department's "scheduling error" excuse "not really believable." Insight from Robert Driscoll, former Justice Department official who served as deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush. Video Special counsel needed to probe DOJ-Fusion GPS? "We have a commitment, again, that McCabe is...

In the most shocking mix-up in Oscars history, Moonlight won best picture at the Academy Awards — but only after presenter Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner, setting off mass confusion inside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. “I want to tell you what happened,” co-presenter Warren Beatty explained after the mix-up was revealed. “I opened the envelope, and it said ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny.” “Well, I don’t know what happened. I blame myself for this,” Kimmel...

[H]undreds of Ohio emergency responders were exposed to a potentially fatal toxin while training at a FEMA facility in Alabama. The federal agency released a statement Wednesday saying that they have received no reports of illness as a result of the ricin exposure. Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans that kills cells by preventing them from creating protein. Exposure to the toxin can lead to death.

In the latest gaffe for German authorities, one which could further impact Merkel adversely if confirmed - something the Euro confirmed when it just tumbled to fresh 13 years lows - moments ago Die Welt reported that according to German police, the man from Pakistan who was arrested as a suspect in the attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people on Monday was not the actual perpetrator. "We have the wrong man," said a senior police chief. "And therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage," the paper...

NORFOLK, Va. – The U.S. Navy's newest ship had to be towed to a base in Virginia after breaking down during its journey to its home port in California. The USS Milwaukee, a littoral combat ship that was commissioned in November, was towed more than 40 nautical miles to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek after suffering an engineering casualty on Friday, The Navy Times reported (http://bit.ly/1UfolwL ). The ship was on its way from Halifax, Canada to Mayport, Florida, where it was planning to stop before continuing on its trek to its port in San Diego.

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck has taken to his blog to clarify comments about 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz he made on Monday’s show. The comments came amid a discussion about who Beck thought would be the right fit for the White House in 2016. This led to the surprising quote where Beck said of Sen. Cruz, “I’m not sure he could govern.” Of course, Beck has long been a supporter of Cruz, so he wrote a clarification Tuesday morning entitled “Shocker: Media takes Glenn’s comments about Ted Cruz completely out of context.” Here’s a quick excerpt: As we were...

Some $500,000 in U.S. taxpayer money was wasted on a police training facility in Afghanistan that "melted" within four months of being built, a watchdog commission reported. The report released by the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says findings show that a police training center’s dry fire range (DFR), which was commissioned by the U.S. government, began to disintegrate after its completion in 2012.

It would seem that if one place in the country could get a working health-care insurance exchange up and running it would be progressive Oregon. As the old tourist campaign used to say, “Things look different here.” No, that’s not a Portlandia episode. That’s a real slogan. Gov. John Kitzhaber is a former doctor who had pushed the implementation of the Oregon Health Plan during his first term. This was going to be the signature achievement this time around. The state, which received a $300 million grant from the Obama Administration to implement the plan, possessed all the ingredients to...

Many folks who signed up for coverage through the state and federal exchanges are running into roadblocks now that they are trying to use their new benefits. And though exchange officials and insurers have urged consumers to call their insurers if they encounter problems, many say they either wait endlessly on hold or get the runaround. Patterson's journey started New Year's Day, when she landed in the emergency room for a stomach ailment. The Independence policy number she received didn't work and the hospital required her to sign a form saying she would pay for care herself, though it agreed...