Free Republic

A fire has started following a drone strike at an industrial site in Russia's southern Novoshakhtinsk city, home to an oil refinery, authorities said on Thursday, as Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure. “A fire broke out at one of the industrial enterprises in Novoshakhtinsk. Preliminarily, no one was hurt. Emergency services are working at the scene,” said Yury Slyusar, the acting governor of the Rostov region, without specifying the target of the attack. Novoshakhtinsk refinery, which sells fuel mainly for export, has an annual capacity of 5 million metric tons of oil, or around 100,000 barrels per...

In October, Mr Musk pledged to cut "at least $2 trillion" from the federal government budget. He subsequently halved this target and on 10 April talked about making savings of $150bn from "cutting fraud and waste" by the end of the next financial year in 2026. ...Doge's largest listed individual saving is $2.9bn. It comes from cancelling a contract - which started in 2023 under President Biden - for a facility in Texas to house up to 3,000 unaccompanied migrant children. Doge appears to have taken the "total contract value" until 2028 - the end date listed - and subtracted...

Its early Friday morning in the UK results beginning to come in for the local government elections... Turkey (Türkiye) halting all trade with Israel... Eight Syrian soldiers wounded in an Israeli attack tonight in a Damascus suburb... A massive fire tonight in Moscow.. In the Uk 45 people arrested resisting efforts to detain illegal immigrants for transfer to Rwanda... Swedish authorities granting permission for a Quran burning rally on May 10th in Malmo... "If the Russians were to break through the front line, if there were a Ukrainian request--which is not the case today--we would legitimately have to ask ourselves...