Free Republic

Vladimir Putin has canceled a decree that recognized Moldova's sovereignty in resolving the dispute over the Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria. -snip- Also, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky said that Russia was planning to capture the airport in Chișinău to fly in Russian military reinforcements to open a new front in Ukraine from Transnistria. Moldova's Prime Minister Dorin Recean confirmed the rumor, but told local media that despite "several scenarios of destabilization....our institutions are prepared to face such challenges."

President Obama is pointing to problems in Japan and Europe as challenges for the U.S. economy, placing some blame on events abroad for a domestic recovery that is showing signs of slowing down. Photo by: Pete Souza Government data released Friday showed employers in May hired the fewest number of workers in eight months and U.S. unemployment rose to 9.1 percent, up from 9.0 percent in April. That bump is a political challenge for the president, whose re-election in 2012 may depend on his ability to convince voters that his economic policies have been successful. Part of his pitch will...

The State Department is maintaining a "counter-misinformation" page on an America.gov blog that attempts to "debunk a conspiracy theory" that President Obama was not born in the United States, as if the topic were equivalent to believing space aliens visit Earth in flying saucers. However, in the attempt to debunk the Obama birth-certificate controversy, the State Department author confirmed Obama was a dual citizen of the U.K. and the U.S. from 1961 to 1963 and a dual citizen of Kenya and the U.S. from 1963 to 1982, because his father was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born in 1961....