Free Republic

Ukrainian drones attacked Russia's third largest oil refinery on Tuesday about 1,300 km (800 miles) from the front lines, hitting a core unit which processes about 155,000 barrels of crude refining per day. -snip- Pictures from the scene indicated the drone hit the primary refining unit, CDU-7, at the Taneco refinery. The unit accounts for around a half of the plant's total annual production capacity. "A drone attack was carried out on one of the enterprises in Nizhnekamsk," Ramil Mullin, the mayor of Nizhnekamsk, said. -snip- The attack was one of several in Tatarstan, a highly industrialised region south-east of...

Three photo agencies have retracted a picture of the Princess of Wales over concerns it has been "manipulated". The image, taken by Prince William and issued by Kensington Palace for Mother's Day, showed Catherine with their three children. But, Associated Press was the first to pull the image as it "did not meet" the agency's photo standards noting an "inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte's left hand". Kensington Palace are yet to comment. The photo shows the princess sitting down, surrounded by Princess Charlotte, Prince Louis and Prince George, the latter wrapping his arms around her. It was the...

HUNTINGTON BEACH, California, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Bisecting a wide sandy beach, the Huntington Beach pier beckons tourists and surfers alike, creating a break in the waves that helps gives the city its nickname: Surf City, USA. It is a scene as laidback as the name would suggest - and a stark contrast to the political hostility spilling out of City Hall just a short drive inland.

A Palestinian-American teenager, Tawfic Abde Jabbar, was killed in the West Bank on January 19, allegedly after an altercation with armed Israelis. More on his death, and how it was differently reported in its English and Arabic language versions, can be found here: “A Tale of Two Narratives: English-Language & Arabic-Language Reports Differ on Palestinian-American Teen’s Death,” by Chaim Lax, HonestReporting, January 25, 2024:On Friday January 19, 2024, a Palestinian-American teenager, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, was killed in the West Bank, allegedly following an altercation with armed Israelis.The Israeli inquiry into this matter is still ongoing.However, an investigation by the Jewish...

A politician bidding to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia's upcoming presidential election described the decision to go to war in Ukraine as a "big mistake" in comments to the wives of soldiers on Thursday. Boris Nadezhdin, representing a centre-right party called Civic Initiative that has no seats in parliament, is seeking to gather the necessary 100,000 signatures from people across Russia to enable him to stand against Putin. -snip- Nadezhdin has promised to present a plan for ending the conflict. Last week he also aimed sharp criticism at the authorities over heating outages that have struck parts of Russia...

HonestReporting.com, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog, published a report Monday showing two photojournalists, one working for Reuters and one working for the Associated Press, urging Palestinians to join Hamas terrorists October 7 in infiltrating Israel. HonestReporting reported: A Gaza photojournalist working for international media called on residents of the coastal enclave to cross the border into Israel on October 7, after Hamas terrorists had breached it, an HonestReporting investigation has found. Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, a freelancer who has been working for Reuters, made the comments while excitedly displaying footage of Hamas atrocities on an Instagram Live hosted in Gaza by...

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan asked his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken in a call on Sunday for Washington to use its influence over Israel to halt Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank, a Turkish diplomatic source said. Turkey, which supports a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, has harshly criticised Israel, calling for a full ceasefire and for Israeli leaders to be tried in international courts for war crimes, and slammed Western support for Israel. Washington, Israel's closest ally, has repeatedly said it supports Israel's right to defend itself after the cross-border rampage by Hamas militants on Oct....

Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that “unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech. There’s no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost. News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means...

Mainstream news outlets are scrambling to distance themselves from Gaza-based photographers who were revealed to have embedded with Hamas terrorists as they committed atrocities against Israeli citizens on October 7. The Associated Press, Reuters, and CNN all insisted late Wednesday night that they had no advance knowledge of the Hamas terrorist attack, while indicating that they could not make the same guarantees for the photographers they work with. A report from media watchdog Honest Reporting showed that photographers were with Hamas as it breached the border out of Gaza, and had a front row view of its attacks — raising...

President Joe Biden’s popularity among Americans plummeted to the lowest rating since April, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found Tuesday, renewing Democrat fears about his chances of winning reelection in 2024. Only 39 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s job performance in November, dropping below previous marks: October: 40 percent September: 42 percent April: 39 percent “Biden’s public approval rating has held below 50% since August 2021, and this month’s rating was close to the lowest levels of his presidency – 36% – seen in mid-2022,” according to Reuters’ polling.

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Belarus and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said over the weekend. "There are enough problems on both sides and in general the situation is now seriously stalemate: no one can do anything and substantively strengthen or advance their position," Lukashenko said. "They're there head-to-head, to the death, entrenched. People are dying." -snip- "We need to sit down at the negotiating table and come...

Drunk recruits. Insubordinate soldiers. Convicts. They're among hundreds of military and civilian offenders who've been pressed into Russian penal units known as "Storm-Z" squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year, according to 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in the units. Few live to tell their tale, the people said. (snip) "Storm fighters, they're just meat," said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in May and June. (snip) Russian state-controlled media has reported that Storm-Z squads exist, that...

Israel's parliament on Monday ratified the first bill of a judicial overhaul sought by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after last-gasp compromise efforts collapsed and failed to ease a constitutional crisis convulsing the country for months. The amendment limiting the Supreme Court's powers to void some government decisions if it deemed them "unreasonable" passed by 64-to-0 vote after opposition lawmakers abandoned the session in protest, some of them shouting: "For shame!" Demonstrations against the amendment began early in the day with police dragging away protesters who had chained themselves to posts and blocked the road outside parliament.

Israelophobia: While a global bigoted media Al Jazeera talks about so called "Zionist control", here are some of more of such Goliath Arab/Islamic Media control "Qatar-Run Outlet Warns Of Zionist-Controlled Media. The dire consequences of a foreign country setting the editorial and content agenda. [preoccupiedterritory.com/qatar-run-outlet-warns-of-zionist-controlled-media/)... ___ Now let's talk about media controlling Israelophobia. Before we go on into a list of rabid anti-Israel bigots like Patrick Kingsley of NYT or Jeremy Bowen of BBC, or Christiane Amanpour at CNN & PBS, three distorters, among many, or entire media outlets dedicated for anti-Israel when it comes to the M.E., like The...

The number of people taking a strong interest in the news has dropped by around a quarter in the last six years, a global study suggests. A report by Oxford University's Reuters Institute says 48% of people around the world are very or extremely interested in the news - down from 63% in 2017. In the UK, the proportion is lower than the global average at 43%. More than a third of people (36%) worldwide say they sometimes or often actively avoid the news.

Reuters has an interesting piece looking at how many experts are concerned that mass surveillance efforts by the federal government are making a mockery of the 4th Amendment. The focus of the article is on the scan of all Yahoo email that was revealed back in October, but it certainly touches on other programs as well. The concern is easily summarized by Orin Kerr: "A lot of it is unrecognizable from a Fourth Amendment perspective," said Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and Georgetown University Law School expert on surveillance. "It's not where the traditional Fourth Amendment law is." But,...

A violent suspect who was arrested trying to shut down a pro-Daniel Penny rally in Manhattan was out on bond for a leftist domestic terrorism case in Atlanta. Teresa Yue Shen, 31, of Brooklyn, was one of several far-left militants charged with domestic terrorism in January in Atlanta, following a deadly shooting incident at an Antifa-linked autonomous zone occupation at the heart of the “Stop Cop City” movement. Shen’s $20,000 bond was fronted by far-left activist Daniel Hanley. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a project of 501(c)(3) nonprofit Network For Strong Communities, has been raising cash for Antifa and domestic terrorism...

The Ukrainian military and Russia's Wagner private army both reported further Russian retreats on the outskirts of Bakhmut on Thursday, as Kyiv pressed on with its biggest advance for six months ahead of a planned counteroffensive. Ukrainian troops near the front line said Russia was bombarding access roads to slow the Ukrainian assault, which has shifted momentum after months of slow Russian gains in Europe's deadliest ground combat since World War Two. "Now, for the most part, as we have started to advance, they are shelling all the routes to front positions, so our armoured vehicles can't deliver more infantry,...

German defence minister Boris Pistorius has said that the NATO Nation won't send anymore military aid to Ukraine apart from the promised packages. ... [Video at link]

Neil Winton worked at Reuters for 32 years, including as their Science and Technology correspondent. Therefore when he claims that he was wrong about carbon dioxide being the cause of rising worldwide temperatures, he can't be easily discounted. Winton made this admission in Thursday's edition of The Daily Sceptic, "When I Covered Climate Change for Reuters I Thought CO2 Was Certainly to Blame for Rising Temperatures. I Was Wrong."