Free Republic

LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Workers went on strike at Amazon warehouses in Germany on Black Friday aiming to disrupt operations on a key sales day as they push for a collective bargaining agreement, with separate protests also planned outside Zara stores in Spain. Services union Verdi said around 3,000 workers were expected to participate at Amazon warehouses in Bad Hersfeld, Dortmund, Frankenthal, Graben, Koblenz, Moenchengladbach, Rheinberg, Werne, and Winsen. Amazon said the strike would have no impact on customer orders and said it paid fair wages. A spokesperson said it has around 40,000 workers at logistics centres in Germany,...

India’s economy grew 8.2% in the July–September quarter, accelerating from 5.6% a year earlier, boosted by robust performance in manufacturing and services, government data showed on Friday.

The number of new international college students in the United States has plunged by double digits, a new report by the Institute of International Education reveals — even as domestic student numbers continue to rise. Enrollment has fallen by 17 percent this fall after a shift that could cost the US an estimated $1.1 billion and eliminate 23,000 jobs nationwide, according to the analysis. The sharp decline in foreign students follows a series of Trump administration moves to tighten immigration rules, including reduced access to student visas. Schools were urged to limit the number of foreign students they admit, while...

Wisconsin officials recently announced the discovery of a trove of ancient canoes in an underwater "parking lot" of sorts — including one that predates the Pyramids of Giza. The Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) announced this month that its experts have identified 14 canoes in Madison's Lake Mendota so far, six of which were found this spring. The WHS worked with the First Nations of Wisconsin during the research process, a release noted.

WASHINGTON (WJLA-TV) — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi will urge prosecutors to seek the death penalty against 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Lakanwal, an Afghan national, was identified by federal officials as the gunman who opened fire on West Virginia National Guard members Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, on Nov. 26, 2025. Beckstrom died a day after the shooting, and Wolfe was left fighting for his life. "I will tell you right now, I will tell you early, we will do everything in our power to seek the death penalty against that monster who should not have been in our...

Daily Readings from the USCCB“Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Luke 21:32–33As we approach the final days of this liturgical year, we continue to read about the end of the world. Today we read that both Heaven and earth, as they currently are, will pass away. This is worth pondering. We know that life is full of change. It has been said that the one thing that never changes is change itself. Everything else changes....

You have probably heard that something extraordinary is happening in the Catholic Church in France. The French bishops’ conference announced in April that more than 10,000 adults were due to be baptised in 2025 – a 45 per cent increase on the year before. It’s not just adult baptisms that are booming. A record 19,000 people, many young, attended this year’s Paris to Chartres pilgrimage. An unprecedented 13,500 high school students took part in the 2025 Lourdes FRAT pilgrimage, a major annual youth event. The country is also seeing what French media call a 'boom biblique': a rapid rise in...

Unique among major religions, Islam offers even the worst of its sinners, fallen “bad Muslims,” an instant pathway to redemption, in order to enter paradise as a hero. No matter if a Mohammedan has been drinking, gambling, whoring and hanging out with non-Muslims for years, he can have all the Islamic sins of his past forgiven if he dies in the act of killing infidels. I think we saw one example of this yesterday in Washington DC. Time will tell. The intentional suicide crash of Egypt Air Flight 990 in 1999 is another infamous example. For reasons of national pride,...

Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream. Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade. Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of...

Texas Baptists elected an ordained female clergywoman as convention president this week for the first time ever. Debbie Potter, children’s pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, was chosen as president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in a race with Kevin Burrow, pastor of First Baptist Church of Eastland, Texas. The vote was 430 to 320. The BGCT is the largest and oldest of the two state Baptist conventions in Texas that relate to the Southern Baptist Convention. The other, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, was formed in 1998 by conservatives who thought the BGCT was not...

Game Over DOGE: US Starts Fiscal 2025 With Record Budget Deficit, Shocking Interest Expense It was back in February, when we explained to Elon Musk why his strategy to shock the US government into spending "efficiency" through DOGE, while noble, is ultimately doomed to wit: "What Musk is doing in trying to streamline the govt is admirable but ultimately it will be Congress that decides the endgame. And there things are as status quo as always." Status quo it was indeed, and it took the world's richest man several months to realize it, and while there has been a heated...

In an interview with The Atlantic, Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's chief of staff, who helped negotiate the updated proposal, reiterated that position: 'Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory. 'As long as Zelensky is president, no one should count on us giving up territory. He will not sign away territory. The constitution prohibits this. Nobody can do that unless they want to go against the Ukrainian constitution and the Ukrainian people.' Donald Trump is said to be preparing to recognise Russian control over Crimea and other occupied Ukrainian territories in a bid to...

President Donald Trump continued to poke fun at former President Joe Biden’s golf game during a Thanksgiving call with military members. One of the petty officers on the call with Trump at the White House asked the 47th president what his "true golf handicap" was, while also asking this: "Are you and President Biden going to play that golf match?" the petty officer said. Trump’s response to the petty officer was one of confidence, as he quickly said he would "love" to face off against Biden on the links. "I mean, I’ve invited him, but he doesn’t want to show...

British Surgeon Suspended for Vile Antisemitic Rants, Holocaust Denial, and Hamas Praise... Al-Adwan ...

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would suspend migration from what he called "third world countries," a day after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington, killing one. Trump said earlier that Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old West Virginia National Guard member deployed in Washington as part of his crackdown on crime, had died from her wounds. The FBI has launched an international terror investigation as new details emerged about the alleged gunman, a 29-year-old Afghan national who was a member of the "Zero Units" – a CIA-backed counterterrorism group, according to multiple US media reports....

Wednesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) said he’s not planning to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation into the video he made with other Democratic lawmakers.

A screen displaying an image of US President Donald Trump is seen inside the White House in Washington, D.C., on November 25, 2025. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP. Yesterday afternoon, two members of the National Guard were shot in the head near Farragut West metro station in Washington, D.C, just a few blocks away from the White House. Both soldiers were left critically injured—they were initially reported as having died—and the attacker was subsequently shot by responding troops and law enforcement. The suspect has been named as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. He arrived in the U.S. in 2021...

Excess weight or obesity boosts risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91%—significantly more than previously believed—while the mortality risk of being slightly underweight has likely been overestimated, according to new CU Boulder research. The findings, published Feb. 9 in the journal Population Studies, counter prevailing wisdom that excess weight boosts mortality risk only in extreme cases. The statistical analysis of nearly 18,000 people also shines a light on the pitfalls of using body mass index (BMI) to study health outcomes, providing evidence that the go-to metric can potentially bias findings. After accounting for those biases, it estimates that...

Trading gradually resumed after coming to a standstill on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday, as a cooling issue at one of its data centers impacted traders across the globe.

Adolf Hitler Uunona, a Namibian politician who shares his name with the infamous Nazi dictator, won re-election for his local seat for the fifth time in a row, according to Euro News. The 59-year-old cruised to re-election despite his unfortunate name and has no plan to change it. The local pol said he usually goes by Adolf Uunona in daily life and argued it’s too late to formally change his name. “It’s in all official documents. It’s too late for that,” he told German newspaper Bild in 2020. Uunona, a member of the ruling SWAPO party, kept his seat as...