Free Republic

When a recently-freed political prisoner who was foreign and black (and a former communist terrorist by his own admission) visited the U.S. in 1990 to request economic and diplomatic sanctions against the segregationist government that jailed him the U.S. media and political establishment went absolutely bonkers with acclaim and adulation. “The hero of oppressed people everywhere!" (hailed ABC.) "A larger than life figure!" (gushed CNN) "A virtual symbol of freedom!" ( heralded CBS). "His name has a mystical quality--a worldwide hero!" (rhapsodized Dan Rather.) “A Hero in America!” (headlined Time magazine.) Other reports compared Nelson Mandela to the Pope, Jesus...

Former president Donald Trump flew a newly-freed Nelson Mandela from South Africa to the United States in 1990 when there were no other options, according to a recently resurfaced report from the Los Angeles Times. The story reappeared on X (formerly Twitter) in the context of repeated claims by Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, and by the left-leaning media, that Trump is a racist who should not be returned to office. The story, “Trump Takes Mandela Under His Wing,” appeared in the Times on June 25, 1990: One of the last details to be arranged in Nelson Mandela’s hastily orchestrated...

University of North Carolina student Brook Cheuvront found dead after going missing on hike in South Africa: ‘We are devastated’ A North Carolina student has been found dead a day after she went missing while hiking a mountain in South Africa, authorities and her “devastated” family said Monday. Brook Cheuvront, 20, was reported missing Saturday from Table Mountain in Cape Town — where she was studying — after she stopped responding to friends and couldn’t be located on a tracking app, a rep for SANPark, which manages the mountain, told CBS News. Rangers and trail runners searched until late Saturday,...

Spirited defense of Israel in Gaza.

Ash was discovered in a South African cave, and this indicates that humans were cooking with fire one million years ago. This is the earliest use of fire but experts say that more proof is needed to conclude that humans were cooking with fire regularly. Francesco Berna, an archaeologist, at Boston University in Massachusetts, and his team found ash that was composed of burnt grass, leaves, brush, and bone fragments in sediments 30 meters deep inside Wonderwerk Cave, in Northern Cape, South Africa. This cave is one of the oldest known sites of human habitation and shows traces of having...

A South African woman celebrated her '118th birthday' today as one of the oldest people in the world with a small party at her care home. Margaret Maritz joined other residents, carers and two of her daughters for celebrations at the home in Touws River, 110 miles northeast of Cape Town. She was born on September 27, 1906, according to a copy of her identity card. The document has not been independently verified but if confirmed would make Maritz the world's oldest living person. The current record-holder is Japanese national Tomiko Itooka who was born on May 23, 1908. Alongside...

A North Carolina student has been found dead a day after she went missing while hiking a mountain in South Africa, authorities and her “devastated” family said Monday. Brook Cheuvront, 20, was reported missing Saturday from Table Mountain in Cape Town — where she was studying — after she stopped responding to friends and couldn’t be located on a tracking app, a rep for SANPark, which manages the mountain, told CBS News.

There is a reason that incoming Northern Corps and Multi-Domain Joint Maneuver Array Maj.-Gen. Dan Goldfus is considered one of the rising stars of the IDF. *** One of the reasons that South African-Israeli Goldfus – promoted from brigadier general to major general in May – is joining the high command (others to hold his next post have gone on to become IDF chief, IDF deputy chief, and IDF intelligence chief) is that he is both the hero of Hamas’s defeat in Khan Yunis and the general who broke up the terrorist group’s network of tunnels....his breakthrough in overcoming Hamas’s...

Teresa Heinz Kerry: A Potential First Lady With Maltese Family Ties- Vincent Camilleri Friday, September 12, 2003 ‘Of all the potential First Ladies in recent history, she is certainly the most accomplished.’ This is how Vogue Magazine described Teresa Heinz Kerry in its March 2003 edition. I had the honour to meet and have a very pleasant conversation with Ms Heinz Kerry in 1987. It happened in Vienna, where I was posted as head of the Maltese delegation to the CSCE Follow-Up meeting, during a diplomatic reception hosted by ambassador Warren Zimmermann, head of the US delegation to the conference....

Plans to float De Beers are overshadowed by waning demand for natural diamonds and their increasingly popular lab-grown counterparts.A De Beers spokesperson said that the company was currently studying a potential stock market listing and selling the diamond business. “Both options are very much on the table,” he told the Mail on Sunday. Most Read on Euro Weekly News Santander sells minority stake in Polish subsidiary De Beers diamonds at a crossroads The Spectator's new owner knows the public wants to read City insider Raj Ray, quoted in the UK media, said this was a challenging time for natural diamonds....

This I began writing two weeks ago as an overnight guest in a cosy cabin on a farm beside an endless dirt road in the most remote part of the north-western Cape Province in the country of my birth, South Africa. To many eyes this might seem a landscape of utter desolation: hot, dry and windswept scrubland plateau, flat as far as the eye can see but cut by deep, rocky canyons tight with the most intense and diverse profusion of succulents on the planet: flowering aloes, spiky aloes, furry aloes, ground-creeping aloes and the strange giant palm-like aloe, the...

China, Tanzania and Zambia signed an initial agreement to rehabilitate a decades-old railway aimed at improving the rail-sea transportation in resource-rich East Africa, Chinese state media said on Wednesday. President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of the memorandum of understanding on refurbishing the 1,860 kms (1,156 mile) Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railway with the Tanzanian and Zambian presidents, who were in Beijing attending the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation... The single-track TAZARA railway was built between 1970 and 1975 through an interest-free loan from China, offering a cargo transport route from Zambia's copper and cobalt mines to the sea on Tanzania's...

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — When it comes to the niche business of moving elephants, Dr. Amir Khalil and his team might be the best. The Egyptian veterinarian’s résumé includes possibly the most famous elephant relocation on the planet. In 2020, Khalil’s team saved Kaavan, an Asian elephant, from years of loneliness at a Pakistan zoo... Kaavan was dubbed the “world’s loneliest elephant” at the time, and the project was a great success. But he was not the only one that needed help.... Charley, an aging four-ton African elephant, had outlived his fellow elephants at a zoo in the...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, which the United States accuses of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia, the mine's owner told Reuters. Rossing Uranium Limited, which is majority owned by Anglo-Australian firm Rio Tinto, sells its uranium to nuclear power plants in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. Graham Davidson, the general manager for operations at Rossing, said in a letter to Reuters that the company's board of directors only permits the sale of uranium for use in generating electricity. "The government of Iran has...

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has never done anything like this before. The agency is poised to declare a “public health emergency of continental security” as early as next week. Since the beginning of last year, mpox cases have been surging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with children making up the majority of the 14,000 reported cases and 511 deaths so far in 2024. Those numbers roughly match the number of cases reported in all of last year in the country. Why Africa is so worried In the last couple weeks, there’s been a new and...

A huge asteroid may have hit the Earth 12,800 years ago causing global climate change and extinction, according to new evidence found in South Africa. Scientists analysed ancient soil at a site called Wonderkrater and found high levels of platinum - which they say supports the The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis that a disintegrating meteor hit Earth and caused a mini ice age. The resulting ice age is believed by many scientists to have wiped out dozens of mammals species including the Mammoth and giant wildebeest and decimated the human population. Scientists believe 'platinum spikes' found in ancient soil samples...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

Scientists in South Africa have been stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, meaning they are the oldest known active termite hills. Some of the mounds near the Buffels River in Namaqualand were estimated by radiocarbon dating to be 34,000 years old, according to the researchers from Stellenbosch University. “We knew they were old, but not that old,” said Michele Francis, senior lecturer in the university’s department of soil science who led the study. Her paper was published in May. Francis said the mounds...

South Africa’s new government is a “Government of National Unity” (GNU) between the formerly dominant African National Congress (ANC), the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), and the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The new government is the result of a coalition agreement that was announced Friday, shortly before a deadline to cast votes in Parliament for the country’s president. Current President Cyril Ramaphosa will be returning to office. The ANC fell from 57% in 2019 to just over 40% in the 2024 elections last month. The DA, with nearly 22% of the vote, was the second-largest party. The radical Economic Freedom...

The US Central Command reporting destruction of seven aerial drone and two drone boats launched from Yemen... In South Africa a decision by the African National Congress to seek a broad-based national unity government... Two explosions near a merchant vessel in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen... French trainers (instructors) will go to Ukraine to train a Ukrainian brigade of 4,500 soldiers... Macron also announcing transfer of five French Mirage 2000 warplanes to Ukraine... Russian authorities arresting a French citizen accusing him of spying... US politics an Emerson poll showing Trump at 46 percent to Biden's... The UN...