Free Republic

Is our honeymoon with the electric vehicle finally over? A study found that one in five early adopters of EV cars and trucks are returning to gas-powered vehicles. As a result, used EV prices are freefalling. The Journal Nature published a study revealing that of the folks who were early adopters of EVs in California (between 2012 and 2018), 20% of PHEV drivers have returned to fully gas-powered vehicles and 18% of full EV drivers returned to gas-powered–with their subsequent vehicle purchase.

".....“The last 10 years I do a lot of things to protect the human rights and other people. But in this moment, I understood that my mission to help other people created a very high risk to my family,” Osechkin told CNN from France, where he’s lived since 2015 after he fled Russia and claimed asylum. He now has full-time police protection. He’s become the champion of a growing number of high-level Russian officials defecting to the West, emboldened and disgruntled by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. He says ex-generals and intelligence agents are among their number...."

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's winning coalition from 2008 has crumbled and his core backers are dispirited. It's now Republicans who stand to benefit from an electorate that's again craving change. Nearly two years after putting Obama in the White House, one-quarter of those who voted for the Democrat are defecting to the GOP or considering voting against the party in power this fall. Just half of them say they definitely will show up Nov. 2, according to an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks poll released two weeks before Obama's first midterm elections.

Kidnapped US marine Wassef Ali Hassoun has been taken to "a place of safety" after he pledged not to return to the US military, his captors told al-Jazeera television in a statement yesterday. The Islamic Response Movement, the same group that last week admitted to kidnapping Corporal Hassoun and threatening to behead him, would not say where he was being kept. It is the latest in a series of conflicting claims about the whereabouts, wellbeing and motivations of Cpl Hassoun, a 24-year-old Arabic translator who has been missing since he failed to report for duty at his base in Iraq....

<p>Morale is low in the Iraqi army and many soldiers are preparing white flags of surrender, we are told by someone in northern Iraq who recently interviewed two defectors from Saddam Hussein's army.</p> <p>One was a captain who defected from the 5th Mechanized Division of the 1st Corps, based near the northern city of Kirkuk. The captain told our informant that the heavy division was only 35 percent combat-effective. The captain said morale was so low that younger soldiers are speaking openly about surrendering — before the first shot has been fired.</p>