Free Republic

Japan has lost its spot as the world’s third-largest economy to Germany, as the Asian giant unexpectedly slipped into recession. Once the second-largest economy in the world, Japan reported two consecutive quarters of contraction on Thursday — falling 0.4% on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter after a revised 3.3% contraction in the third quarter. Fourth-quarter GDP sharply missed forecasts for 1.4% growth in a Reuters poll of economists. A recession is broadly defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, GDP slipped 0.1%, compared with a 0.3% rise expected in the Reuters poll. For the...

As many of you already know, a Washington, DC jury today found the Defendants (Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg) liable for defamatory speech and reckless disregard of provable facts. Putting aside the monetary damages, the real damage done by this case is to every American who still believes in the First Amendment. The precedent set today, and as alluded to by Justice Alito when the case was petitioned before the U.S. Supreme Court, means that disagreement and/or criticism of a matter of public policy — the founding principle of this country — is now in doubt. And should you choose...

[Tweets excerpted]: The judge is going over the verdict form question by question Simberg - defamatory? Lead Juror: Yes Provably false: Yes Simberg's statement false: Yes Simberg knew it was false: Yes Mann suffered injury: Yes Simberg Verdict Compensatory Damages: $1 Punitive Damages: $1000.00 Steyn's verdict Defamatory statements: Yes Provably False: Yes False Statements: Yes Published With Knowledge Of Falsity: Yes Entertaining serious doubts: Yes Reckless Disregard Mann Suffered Injury: Yes Compensatory Damages: $1 Punitive Damages: $1,000,000.00

After 12 years of wandering in the wilderness of the D.C. court system, Michael Mann’s defamation case against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg has finally gone to trial. Opening statements were delivered today. The trial is being live-streamed, and I got the court’s app to work just in time to hear Steyn’s opening. The case, as you likely recall, arises out of an internet post written by Simberg, which Steyn quoted and added a few comments to. The two posts drew a parallel between Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State football coach, and Mann, also a Penn State employee and,...

WASHINGTON DC (WSAU) – 55-year-old American journalist Gonzalo Lira has reportedly died in a Ukrainian prison after nearly eight months of imprisonment. According to the Post Millennial, Lira was arrested by Ukrainian security in May 2023 after he was reportedly critical of President Vladimir Zelensky’s handling of the war being fought against Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine. Lira’s comments included claims that Ukraine’s efforts to win the captured territory back have gone nowhere and their people are dying for a war that is already lost. Lira’s father, Gonzalo Lira Sr., provided a statement on his son’s death to The Grayzone,...

More than $1 billion worth of U.S. missiles, drones and other weapons and equipment sent to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by officials, according to a Pentagon report released Thursday. Of a total of $1.69 billion worth of items that require additional layers of tracking and monitoring thanks to their sensitive military technology, a little more than $1 billion — or nearly 60 percent — are not fully accounted for, the report found. The Defense Department’s inspector general did not say if any such weapons had been misused or diverted after being shipped to Ukraine because “it was beyond...

Former Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his deputy Maciej Wasik were detained by police and taken to prison on Tuesday after being convicted of abuse of power. [...] ANTI-CORRUPTION AGENCY Kaminski was first elected a member of parliament in 1997 and was re-elected in 2001 and 2005. He resigned in 2006 to become the head of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau. Political opponents said he and his associates pursued corruption with excessive zeal, using methods they said sometimes circumvented laws and hounding innocent people. PARDON In 2015, Kaminski and Wasik were found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison....

42 to 3 and we're still in the first half.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Donald Trump will not appear on the ballot in 2024 because he is an insurrectionist and the 14th Amendment does not permit insurrectionists to hold federal office. Some of you may recall our August 2023 post on this matter. Both J. Michael Luttig, a retired George W. Bush-appointed federal judge whose judicial philosophy has drawn comparisons to the late Antonin Scalia, and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe (who taught constitutional law to Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito), believe that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump. Section 3 of...

The British military—the leading U.S. military ally and Europe’s biggest defense spender—has only around 150 deployable tanks and perhaps a dozen serviceable long-range artillery pieces. So bare was the cupboard that last year the British military considered sourcing multiple rocket launchers from museums to upgrade and donate to Ukraine, an idea that was dropped. France, the next biggest spender, has fewer than 90 heavy artillery pieces, equivalent to what Russia loses roughly every month on the Ukraine battlefield. Denmark has no heavy artillery, submarines or air-defense systems. Germany’s army has enough ammunition for two days of battle.

(Key stakeholders were intrigued by the possibility of a new FBS subdivision that could allow schools to pay players directly) LAS VEGAS -- If there is a college athletics revolution in the near future, the NCAA is now admitting it wants to be part of it. In a letter sent to membership Tuesday, NCAA president Charlie Baker proposed sweeping changes to his association's amateurism model that would essentially create pay for play between schools and athletes. Baker proposed a new subdivision consisting of schools "with the highest resources" that would likely separate itself from the rest of the Football Bowl...

JERUSALEM, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Israeli authorities are investigating claims by U.S. researchers that some investors may have known in advance of a Hamas plan to attack Israel on Oct. 7 and used that information to profit from Israeli securities. Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University found significant short-selling of shares leading up to the attacks, which triggered a war nearly two months old. "Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come," they wrote, citing short interest in the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (ETF)...

Amsterdam, 14 November 2023 – VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON, Euronext Amsterdam: VEON), a global digital operator that provides converged connectivity and online services, announces that former U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo will join the Board of Directors of VEON’s wholly-owned Ukrainian subsidiary Kyivstar as an independent non-executive director. Secretary Pompeo joins in his capacity as a Partner of Impact Investments, a newly established US-based strategic and financial advisory and investment firm which seeks to develop long-term partnerships with the world’s leading companies across a range of industries and geographies. In addition, VEON Group CEO Kaan Terzioglu has been...

1. History of Their Activities The Japanese Red Army (JRA) is an international terrorist organization that was established by a faction of an extremist group who committed felonious crimes, such as attacks on police stations, bank raids, and the like in Japan with the objective of revolutionizing the country based on Marxist-Leninist ideology, and to ultimately unify the world under communism. It was formed abroad after the members fled from Japan in search of a base for their revolutionary activities while advocating the "Plan to Construct International Bases." Through contact with the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine" ,...

CAIRO, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will host an extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh on Saturday, the Saudi foreign ministry said late on Friday. The kingdom was scheduled to host two extraordinary summits, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit and the Arab League summit, on Saturday. The joint summit will replace the two separate gatherings, the ministry said. The joint meeting "will be held in response to the exceptional circumstances taking place in the Palestinian Gaza Strip as countries feel the need to unify efforts and come out with a unified collective position," it said.

Illegal Chinese marijuana grows have taken over much of rural Maine. The government is either incapable — or unwilling — to do anything about it. The Maine Wire has identified more than 100 properties that are part of a sprawling network of Chinese-owned sites operating as unlicensed, illicit cannabis growing operations in rural Maine. According to an unclassified memo from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obtained by the Maine Wire, the illicit grows are operated by Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs). The properties cover Somerset County, Penobscot County, Kennebec County, Franklin County, Androscoggin County, and Oxford County. The...

Without warning, hundreds of noncommissioned officers were ordered via email to report to the recruiting school at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in less than a week, with hundreds more set to start at the school in December -- a sudden unexpected move by the Army as the service scrambles to boost its recruiting force by 800 by the end of the year. The orders came after a breakdown in how the Army tracks how many recruiters it has coming through the pipeline along with retention of existing ones, according to Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army's top personnel officer. The sudden...

The Houthis had been suspected of an attack earlier this month targeting Israel by sending missiles and drones over the crucial shipping lane of the Red Sea, an assault that saw the U.S. Navy shoot down the projectiles. This time on Tuesday, however, Israel said its own fighter jets and its new Arrow missile defense system shot down two salvos of incoming fire hours apart as it approached the country's key Red Sea shipping port of Eilat. The Houthis, who have held Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since 2014 as part of that country's ruinous war, claimed three attacks on Israel in...

The events of recent days are unprecedented. The last time units of Jewish and Palestinian fighters — military or paramilitary — went to battle on such a broad front in Israel-Palestine was in 1948. There have, of course, been various battles over the years in Gaza as well as West Bank cities like Jenin, and Israeli and Palestinian units fought one another in Lebanon in 1982. But there is no parallel to the scope of what has taken place here since Saturday morning, and not since 1948 have Palestinian fighters occupied Jewish communities on this scale.This fact is not just...

MPs adopted in the first reading draft Law No. 8371, which provides for a ban on the UOC. On October 19, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading government bill No. 8371, which provides for the ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. MP Artem Dmytruk shared this news with the UOJ. 267 MPs voted for the corresponding decision, another 15 voted against, 2 MPs abstained. Let us remind you that human rights activist Oleg Denisov said that the ban on the UOC cannot be implemented in practice. As the UOJ reported, according to the Ukrainian MP, Ukraine's allies...