Free Republic

Trump, who is trying to make progress on finalizing an Iran war deal in the coming days, is expected to have a busy schedule of one-on-one meetings with foreign leaders on the sidelines of the summit in the French lakeside town of Evian-les-Bains, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House. The Republican president is expected to discuss with U.S. allies plans to remove mines from the Strait of Hormuz as confidence grows for a deal, one official said. Britain and France, both G7 members, have expressed...

One of my more memorable exchanges with a student came in a principles of economics class. Part of the assignment for that week was chapters from Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. Ridley compared the living standards of an average worker today with those of The Sun King, Louis XIV, in 1700. Some of my more ahistorical students were incredulous at Ridley’s description of the grinding poverty of the average person just a few centuries ago. The King had an opulent lifestyle compared to others. Louis had an astonishing 498 workers preparing each of his meals. Yet his standard of living...

New evidence unearthed in France's National Museum of Natural History shows beyond reasonable doubt that the Hope Diamond is the same steely-blue stone once sported by the Sun King, they said. Mineralogist Francois Farges, heading an investigation published in a peer-reviewed French journal, told AFP he was now "99 percent sure" that the Hope and the mythical Blue Diamond of the Crown were one and the same. "The evidence corroborates a scenario under which the diamond, after being stolen in Paris in 1792, was swiftly smuggled to London, where it was recut," he said. The Blue Diamond came from a...