Free Republic

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE - Pope Francis said Tuesday that the latest round of financial scandal at the Vatican is actually a success story, because the situation was revealed thanks to an internal Vatican probe, which he said demonstrates that new controls are working. The pontiff also called both owning and deploying nuclear weapons “immoral,” saying that point should be added to the Catholic catechism, and suggested that it might be time to re-think the veto power wielded by a handful of countries in the United Nations Security Council. His comments came during an airborne news conference on the return...

Joe Biden has become the 46th president of the United States. He will face many challenges on the global stage. The Middle East, for one, can be counted on to provide multiple crises and opportunities for America. Below, we examine the most significant of them. In the past six months four Arab-Muslim majority states normalized relations with the Jewish state. They proceeded to establish diplomatic and commercial relations with Israel; they include Bahrain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sudan, and Morocco. The question now is whether the Biden administration will continue this trend, and extend peace between Israel and additional...

Iran said Saturday it plans to enrich uranium up to 20% at its underground Fordo nuclear facility “as soon as possible,” pushing its program a technical step away from weapons-grade levels as it increases pressure on the West over the tattered atomic deal.

June 2005 They come from different backgrounds with the same story. But the countries they are in — Canada and Australia — refuse to believe them or publicly acknowledge what they are saying. Why? Because both administrations have huge and influential money ties with China which has never been closer. The latest diplomatic crises involving Chinese spies overseas is playing out in Australia after a Chinese First Secretary Chen Yonglin applied for asylum in Sydney. Chen has alleged there are 1,000 Chinese spies in Australia and that abductions sponsored by the Chinese Government take place Down Under. He said he...

During a 45-minute speech, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner claimed that in 2010 a former Obama administration official asked Argentina to “provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel” under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to Kirchner, Gary Samone, who was the White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction at the time, visited Argentina in the hopes of convincing them to provide reactor fuel. When the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs asked for the request in writing, they never heard from Samone again.

Nuclear watchdog: Tehran 3.5 months away from weapon The United States has evidence that Iran is stockpiling enriched uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, in direct violation of international restrictions on Tehran’s use of the fissile material. Nuclear experts predict that Iran is now just 3.5 months away from the "breakout time," a measurement of how close the country is to having the technology and materials to construct a nuclear weapon. It also now has the fuel to potentially construct two separate bombs. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed on Friday that Iran has nearly doubled its...

The leaders of the coup that ousted Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita spent most of the year training in Russia before returning to boot out the democratically-elected leader at gunpoint, according to sources in the Malian military. The rebels took control of Mali's largest military base in Kati, just outside the capital, Bamako, on Tuesday before storming Keita's official residence, seizing the president and forcing him to resign as leader of the West African nation. Numerous media outlets, including the BBC, immediately reported that the coup was led by Malick Diaw and Sadio Camara, two army colonels who hold top...

Congressional Democrats have asked the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to provide information about China’s alleged role in building a uranium processing facility in Saudi Arabia. US officials have told journalists and nuclear experts they suspect a mill for producing yellowcake – refined uranium ore – is being built by Chinese technicians in the desert near Al-Ula in the north-west of the kingdom. The alleged construction of a yellowcake facility was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but experts have yet to confirm its existence through satellite imagery. If confirmed, it would strengthen suspicions that the Saudi monarchy...

Russians secretly mocked Obama for so easily giving them American uranium, nuclear fuel contracts and technology, FBI informant reveals in excerpts from the new book "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties." The failed Russian reset .. repeatedly gave Russia's nuclear monopoly, Rosatom, assets like uranium under U.S. soil and billions of dollars in nuclear fuel contracts that made American electricity customers reliant on Moscow for years to come. And then Vladimir Putin pulled the rug out from under the Obama administration in 2014, invading the Crimea region of U.S. ally...

Navajo Nation residents have long been exposed to uranium, arsenic and other heavy metals in drinking water and soil. Now the “Thinking Zinc” clinical trial led by University of New Mexico researchers is studying whether dietary zinc supplements can help repair metals-induced damage in Navajo participants. “We know from molecular and cellular and animal studies that both arsenic and uranium can displace zinc in proteins that function in immune responses, as well as DNA repair processes,” said Dr. Debra MacKenzie, deputy director of UNM’s Community Environmental Health Program. “And these are two areas that we’ve seen where metals can cause...

Trump administration officials on Thursday recommended granting U.S. energy regulators the ability to block imports of nuclear fuel from Russia and China and detailed plans for setting up a government stockpile of uranium sourced from domestic miners. The recommendations are meant to address growing concern in Washington that the United States has ceded its global leadership in nuclear technology in recent decades, and to boost domestic nuclear power producers and uranium miners suffering from a lack of investment. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told reporters on a call that the report from the Nuclear Fuel Working Group was a “road map...

CRC's Matthew Vadum talked about Hugo Chavez and his many American friends and admirers on "The G. Gordon Liddy Show" March 6. Liddy and Vadum discussed the saber-rattling Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his many friends on the American left. Specifically, they discussed: Ted Kennedy’s nephew, Joe Kennedy of nonprofit Citizens Energy Corporation, and the fact that Joe, a former congressman, is a shill for Chavez, who controls Venezuela’s big oil company, CITGO; American actor-director Danny Glover who accepted $20 million from the Venezuelan government to make movies; and Chavez’s complicity with Colombian terrorist group FARC which wants to buy uranium,...

On a late January afternoon, as press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House media briefing room, a tall, thin, bespectacled man poked his head in the doorway for a moment before turning around and heading back into the West Wing. Later that week, at another briefing, the man stayed longer, standing in the corner behind the podium, out of view of the array of television cameras. The reporters peppering Spicer with questions were unlikely to know it, but the wallflower watching over the proceedings happened to be the leading conservative intellectual to argue for the election of Donald...

SANTA FE – A prominent member of Temple Beth Shalom says former CIA operative Valerie Plame, contrary to what she recently told an Israeli journalist, is not a member of the Jewish congregation in Santa Fe. Plame, now a New Mexico congressional candidate, continues to draw criticism for retweeting an anti-Semitic article headlined “Jews are Driving America’s Wars” in 2017. But she said in the recent interview that she’s drawn to her own Jewish heritage and that she has joined Temple Beth Shalom. One of her opponents in the race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House seat in...

Our sources are telling us that President Trump is nearing a decision on how to revive the all-but-dormant American uranium industry. This proposed plan would create a reserve of domestically mined uranium stored in a "Federal Uranium Security Stockpile." One option on the table is for the Department of Defense to purchase uranium through the 1950 Defense Production Act. The president concluded in July that: "The United States requires domestically produced uranium to satisfy DOD requirements for maintaining effective military capabilities," including the Navy's nuclear fleet. Uranium is used for America's nuclear arsenal as well as domestic nuclear power plants....

Harrods owner Mohammed Fayed is preparing a bid for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers. He is assembling a team of senior newspaper executives to work on an offer. Fayed is believed to have contacted Lazards, the investment bank hired by Hollinger International - the Telegraphs' parent company - which is carrying out a strategic review that is likely to lead to a sale. Fayed has also met Richard Desmond, owner of Express Newspapers and one of the favourites to buy the Telegraphs should they be put up for sale. Desmond and Hollinger each own half of the West Ferry...

A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life. "I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life." Wilkerson is one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown." The program,...

VIDEO It is the name that dares not speak its name around Valerie Plame. Although Plame falsely (according to a Washington Post fact check) accused Scooter Libby of leaking her name, the true culprit was Deep State insider Richard Armitage of the State Department. Just the sound of his name makes Valerie Plame very very uncomfortable.

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations. The administration's discussion of Wilson's link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial. *snip* He mentioned in...

Mark Lambert, 54, of Mount Airy, Maryland, was charged in an 11-count indictment with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and to commit wire fraud, seven counts of violating the FCPA, two counts of wire fraud and one count of international promotion money laundering. The charges stem from an alleged scheme to bribe Vadim Mikerin, a Russian official at JSC Techsnabexport (TENEX), a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation and the sole supplier and exporter of Russian Federation uranium and uranium enrichment services to nuclear power companies worldwide, in order to secure contracts...