Free Republic

The French Education Ministry said classes were totally or partially suspended at 891 schools after widespread damage occurred to schools and mounting injuries among staff, students and police. French Education Ministry suspended classes at nearly 900 schools nationwide Tuesday amid an increase in rioting over the country's school system and a lack of air conditioning in classrooms. The demonstrations in Paris have devolved into confrontations with law enforcement, and video footage has shown rioters clashing with police, who have deployed tear gas. Protests in Strasbourg, Lyon and Rennes have also turned violent at times, with demonstrators lighting fires and hurling...

President Trump’s executive order allowing a more widespread use of tax-exempt red-dye diesel is meant to lower the cost burden on Americans – but it may not help prices at the pump much, according to experts. Long-haul drivers could save a substantial amount of money using the cheaper fuel, potentially passing those savings along to groceries – but there are several roadblocks standing in the way. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, estimated that few truckers – perhaps just one in 100 – will actually be able to take advantage of the tax-exempt fuel because it’s not...

If you have not been paying attention, there is a caravan heading our way. Yeah, that sounds politically correct. No, there is a planned invasion of the U.S. southern border by some 600 Honduran, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Ecuadorian, and Haitian individuals. The group called Fe y Esperanza (Faith and Hope) departed San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on 20 September. They are being allowed safe passage across several borders, including that of Mexico, as they transit. One has to ask: Why can’t they find “Faith and Hope” in another country? There can be no doubt that someone thought that, in this last month...

There’s generally a strategy to the madness; you just have to wait until it starts to become visible. The anniversary of October 7, 2023, massacre is right around the corner.Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and involved mass shootings, hostage‑taking, rapes and horrific assaults on civilian communities. As noted in the end of this article about the French protests, “student organizations are nevertheless calling for protests to continue, with the movement now looking towards Tuesday’s National Day of Action.”EUROPE – Around 400 of France’s 3,700 secondary schools were closed on Friday on the...

Ever since the start of the Iran war, the Democrats and their media allies have been rooting against America and President Trump. This was particularly true regarding the Strait of Hormuz, a major global economic shipping channel through which much of the world's oil (and other commerce) flows. Late last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out what the Strait, and its control, means for not just the United States, but the world, saying that allowing Iran — especially a nuclear Iran — to control the Strait would allow the Islamic nation to control energy for countless nations. But...

Discipline them physically by lightly hitting them to show them who is in charge... A London mosque with charitable status is under investigation for posting sermons that tell husbands to hit disobedient wives and setting out execution methods for gay men, including being thrown from tall buildings. The lectures were not smuggled out of a private meeting. They sit on the Hackney Islamic Community Centre’s own YouTube channel, delivered from the mosque also known as Masjid Daar Al-Hadeeth. The National Secular Society referred the material to the regulator. The Daily Mail published the tapes. Britain’s official response is a case...

Russia has warned NATO it would be ready to resort to nuclear ​weapons if the Western alliance attempted to cut off Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave that borders the Baltic Sea. In a document sent to NATO ‌and seen by Reuters, Moscow accused the alliance of a "dangerous and reckless course" that entailed "high risks of the outbreak of a direct armed conflict". The document said this included the possibility of "Russian strikes against decision-making centers in the alliance's member states right from the outset". "Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal,...

Flydubai Flight 1073 was carrying about 180 passengers to Tel Aviv from Dubai when it made the emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. JERUSALEM — A flight carrying about 180 passengers to Tel Aviv from Dubai made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after one of the pilots stabbed another and sought to hijack the plane before being subdued, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

This is not an easy undertaking. ... The SR-71 program was scrapped decades ago. There are few people alive who remember how the engines were designed and built. And yet, it seems NASA is getting the gang back together: ... Mike Relja, a retiree in his late 70s, received an unexpected job offer from NASA about a month ago. The assignment: Help put a former NASA-operated Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird back in the air after a nearly 27-year hiatus. Relja, an ex-U.S. Air Force and NASA test engineer for the SR-71A, could not believe his ears. David Ash, a former U.S....

Eight US Marines were injured in an Iranian attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz on September 14, NBC reported Sunday evening, citing three US sources. The Marines were not seriously injured by the Iranian cruise missile hit on the vessel, but they sustained smoke inhalation and showed symptoms of concussions, including headaches, according to the report. The Marines were not on a US Navy ship, but the officials did not share what type of ship it was. All eight service members returned to duty soon after the attack.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States reduces military pressure and ends its blockade of Iranian ports. The official said Tehran is seeking a formal indication from Washington that it intends to pursue a diplomatic solution, together with an agreed timetable for moving the process forward. The comments come after Iran's military central command said Sunday that it had received information indicating that the US was preparing to resume military operations with assistance from countries in the region. The Iranian military warned that such...

Defying Iran and heading through the Strait of Hormuz is a gamble. But like all the best gambles, it is a lucrative one, so crews are inclined to fancy their odds. To counter the high insurance costs for buyers, countries such as Iraq and Qatar have been offering crude oil at steep discounts. “People just assume one ship in 12 or one ship in 15 is going to get hit by an Iranian drone, but you make enough money on the rest of them,” said Rory Johnston, founder of the market research firm Commodity Context.

At least two people have been killed and six injured in a "massive" overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Moscow region, Governor Andrei Vorobyev has said. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 450 drones heading for the capital had been shot down in what he called an "unprecedented attack". The city's main oil refinery was damaged and several homes were set ablaze. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Kyiv had hit a "key" Russian oil facility and a logistics site in the region, representing "billions of dollars that sustain the war machine". The overnight attack is thought to be among the largest...

(VIDEO) Breakdown of the Houthi offensive on the Red Sea coast that led to the capture of the strategic town of Mocha {in Yemen} 0:00 Turning point in the Middle East 3:54 Background on Yemen’s civil war 7:13 Government offensive 11:48 Fall of Mocha 14:29 Houthi breakthrough explained 20:58 Strategic situation for Saudi Arabia 22:01 What happened after Fall of Mocha

The Houthi militia in Yemen said on Saturday that it had attacked Saudi Arabia’s capital and oil facilities with a barrage of missiles and drones, a significant escalation in the renewed war between the kingdom and the Iranian-backed group. The Saudis intercepted a Houthi missile launched toward Riyadh, the capital, according to Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen. He added in a statement that air defenses had fended off assaults on “civilians and civilian infrastructure” in several other cities in the kingdom, including coastal Yanbu, where the Houthis said they attacked oil facilities....

A drone hit the cooling tower of Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant, near the border with Ukraine, but caused no fire, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday, calling for "maximum military restraint to prevent the risk of a nuclear accident". The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has been informed that the cooling tower of a reactor unit of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in the Russian Federation was hit by a drone early on Thursday". "It was reported that the unit was operating at the time, but its operating mode did not change and there was no fire," the...

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would seek to keep his country out of any military conflict arising under NATO’s collective-defense clause, publicly questioning whether Slovakia should send thousands of troops to defend an ally. Speaking to students and hospital employees in the eastern city of Prešov, Fico criticized what he described as increasingly belligerent rhetoric among European leaders and asked whom Europe intended to fight. “For God’s sake, who do we want to fight? With whom?” Fico said during the event, as his Facebook page reposted. Fico did not identify Russia as a potential aggressor or source of...

Footage verified by the BBC shows the wreckage of a Saudi F-15 fighter jet which the Iran-backed Houthi group says it shot down over Yemen. BBC Verify was able to pinpoint the crash site to an isolated location in the hills west of the Yemeni city of Marib. The long-running conflict between a Saudi-led military coalition and the Houthis has escalated in the last week after the armed group launched an offensive against pro-government forces. This led to the Houthis seizing key territory near the south-west coast, close to vital international shipping channels in the Bab al-Mandab strait. In one...

An Italian Air Force F-2000 Eurofighter was hit during overnight attacks on King Fahd Air Base at Taif, Saudi Arabia, where Italy has deployed a Task Force Air supporting regional air defence and surveillance. No Italian personnel were involved, but Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has ordered a further assessment of the situation and of the possible operational options. The incident is significant because Taif hosts a relatively small but capable Italian air component. The deployment includes four F-2000A Eurofighters and an E-550A CAEW, alongside C-130J/KC-130J transport capabilities. The Eurofighters provide the fighter component, while the CAEW contributes airborne early warning,...

North Korea has been found to be dispatching workers to a drone factory in Russia to produce military drones for the country. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), comprising 11 countries including South Korea, the United States, and Japan, released a report today (September 16) titled "DPRK Sanctions Evasion and Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions: Overseas Labor." The MSMT was launched to fill the gap in monitoring sanctions against North Korea following the dissolution of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea Panel of Experts in 2024, and this marks its third report. According to the report,...