Free Republic

They opened the box on a Sunday in late March, getting their first look at Asfan Mohammed since he departed India for Russia four months earlier. He was better dressed than when he’d left – a black suit, white shirt, tie and shoes replacing the casual attire he’d worn when family and friends saw him off. But he had to be buried in line with his Muslim beliefs, so his body would need to be prepared; the neat clothes removed. ...videos on YouTube about job opportunities in Russia gave Asfan new hope, and he contacted an employment agency, his brother...

Currently in the Liturgies of daily Mass we have been reading the Book of Revelation. It is commonly read at the end of the liturgical year, for it bespeaks the end of, and passing qualities of all things of this world. It is also a book of glory, depicting the ultimate victory of our Lord Jesus Christ, after a great period of conflict between the doomed kingdom of this world, and the victorious Kingdom of Christ. In this context the Book of Revelation is not a mere tour guide to the last days, but is a book of glory reminding...

An Iranian athlete who posted criticism online of Iran’s April 14 attack on Israel has reportedly been arrested, and her whereabouts have been unknown since Wednesday, according to media reports. Iranian national volleyball team player Mobina Rostami posted on her Instagram account: “As an Iranian, I am truly ashamed of the authorities’ attack on Israel, but you need to know that the people in Iran love Israel and hate the Islamic Republic.” She was reportedly arrested shortly afterwards. One of the comments on her post came from an account associated with Iranian security forces, stating: “We will shove you in...

Grocery stores that stock Bud Light are planning to shrink the shelf space allotted to the nation’s formerly top-selling beer — by nearly 20% in some parts of the country — after sales tanked following a boycott over its advertising partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The Anheuser-Busch brand — which was knocked off its perch this year by Modello after more than two decades at the top — will be squeezed out as store managers rearrange the alcoholic beverages section to give more precious real estate to better-selling beers, according to Bloomberg News. “Anheuser-Busch’s beers will lose a range...

...Our findings indicate that in the three months following the controversy, Bud Light sales and purchase incidence were about 28% lower than the same time period in prior years. Notably, this initial decline was more pronounced in predominantly Republican counties (as measured by the 2020 presidential vote) than predominantly Democratic counties. Both sales and purchase incidence decreased by about 32% in more Republican counties versus 22% in more Democratic counties. However, unlike with other consumer boycotts, Bud Light has not bounced back quickly. The sales decline persisted for close to eight months, with sales and purchase incidence down by 32%...

Italian opposition parties have said women’s rights in Italy have been dealt a “heavy” blow after parliament passed a measure by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion consultation clinics. The measure forms part of a package of initiatives approved by Meloni’s cabinet that will be funded by the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, of which Italy is the biggest beneficiary, and was put to the lower house in a confidence vote on Tuesday. The package of measures is expected to comfortably pass in the senate, too. ...Abortion was legalised in traditionally Catholic Italy in 1978 under legislation...

Amid a wave of pro-Palestinian rallies across the world, hardliners in Iran are admitting that the general public there have little appetite for the Palestinian cause. Iran has seen no grassroot, popular expression of solidarity with Palestinians, except by groups supported by and loyal to the regime, since Israel began its onslaught on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ attack of October 7. This is despite the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the main supporter of Hamas –or perhaps because of it. Nasser Imani, a conservative journalist and a staunch supporter of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, acknowledged in...

A server and her co-workers have been left shaking their heads after a series of interactions with a woman who was convinced the world was ending on April 8, 2024 — and who is now hoppin' mad and behaving in a most un-Christian fashion. Unlike most eclipses, the one on April 8 was special for Americans because the U.S. was in the "path of totality," a roughly 100-mile-wide swath from Texas to Maine in which the Moon completely obscures the Sun and ushers in a brief period of nighttime in the middle of the day. "A woman came to our...

After Huey Lewis learned that a syndrome of the inner ear called Ménière’s disease had caused him significant hearing loss and left him unable to play or hear music, he faced the difficult task of having to tell his friends and peers..... Lewis had already halted his performing career before he went public with his diagnosis in 2020. But while his relationship to his art has fundamentally changed, he has continued to work on a new Broadway musical, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” which is built around many of the songs he made famous with Huey Lewis and the...

There can be no definitive answer to the question, ‘what was England’s population in [such and such a period]?’. Even with the sophisticated data gathering and processing techniques used in compiling the modern Census, not every individual is counted, and a few assumptions have to be made. When the question is applied to earlier centuries, a degree of intelligent guesswork is called for. Although England is famously blessed with a generous source of historical records, the information is not sufficient to provide a complete picture. However, a profile or ‘shape’ to England’s population history is certainly possible, one that may...

The Vatican on Monday issued a new document approved by Pope Francis stating that the church believes that gender fluidity and transition surgery, as well as surrogacy, amount to affronts to human dignity. The sex a person is assigned at birth, the document argued, was an “irrevocable gift” from God and “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” People who desire “a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” risk succumbing “to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.” ....Cardinal Fernández made clear, drawing a distinction between the...

The Korean alphabet, hangul, is “the most scientific writing system.” One often hears that in South Korea, a society that has taken to heart Asia scholar Edwin O. Reischauer’s description of hangul as “perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any country.” But whatever their scientific credentials, all the other writing systems in use (and indeed out of use) have fascinating qualities of their own, a range of which are explained in the UsefulCharts video above on the writing systems of the world — not just the alphabets of the world, mind you, but also the...

The Industrial Revolution started more than 100 years earlier than previously thought, new research suggests, with Britons already shifting from agricultural work to manufacturing in the 1600s. Seventeenth century Britain can be understood as the start of the Industrial Revolution, laying down the foundations for a shift from an agricultural and crafts-based society to a manufacturing-dominated economy, in which networks of home-based artisans worked with merchants, functioning similarly to factories. The period saw a steep decline in agricultural peasantry and a surge in people who manufactured goods, such as local artisans like blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights, alongside a burgeoning network...

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged European nations to step up investment in their defense, saying the continent isn't ready for the current "prewar era." Tusk made the remarks during a recent interview with various European newspapers. "I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past," he said before referring to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "It’s real and it started over two years ago." On Friday, Italian news agency AGI reported that Italian fighter jets at a Polish military base in Malbork intercepted two Russian spy aircraft in the Baltic Sea. The Russian...

The Reconstruction of Nations consists of three novella-length histories tracing the divergent paths taken by the nations that comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1569-1795. The examines changing nationalist ideas among the diverse people who inhabited, idealized, or sought to annex the mostly Polish/Jewish city now known Vilnius, Lithuania. The second story begins in 16th century Galicia and Volhynia, tracing the fortunes of these lands as they experienced Polish, Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Nazi German, and Soviet control. While tracing the map's shifting borders, Snyder brings attention to the shifting conceptions of nationalism that accompanied political change. The third vignette examines Poland's...

“Crystal Clanton’s clerkship for OT ’24 was announced by Scalia Law today!”... The Thomases and Ms. Clanton, a 29-year-old conservative organizer turned lawyer, have built such a close relationship that the couple informally refer to her as their “nearly adopted daughter.” Ms. Clanton, who was previously accused of sending racist text messages, including one that read “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,” has lived in the Thomas home, assisted Ms. Thomas in her political consulting business and joined her in a “girls trip” to New York. In 2019, at the Thomases’ urging, Ms. Clanton enrolled at Antonin Scalia Law School at George...

Microsoft has chosen Pavan Davuluri, a company veteran and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, to lead its Windows operating system and Surface devices teams. Davuluri, who joined Microsoft in 2001, has been serving as the corporate vice president for almost three years. He is now taking on additional responsibilities after the departure of Panos Panay to Amazon last fall. Davuluri graduated from IIT Madras and then pursued a Master of Science degree at the University of Maryland in the United States in 1999. He has been a part of Microsoft since the start of his...

Islam Khalilov, 15, and Artyom Donskoy, 14, were working as cloakroom attendants when the attack began. Together with other employees, they reportedly directed people fleeing away from dead ends and towards the exits. On Monday, the boys were awarded medals for bravery in a ceremony by Russia's commissioner for children's rights. "They modestly say they did what they had to do," Maria Lvova-Belova said. ...Islam, whose family are immigrants to Russia from the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, had been working at Crocus City Hall for about a year. He told local reporters that when the attack began, he thought...

he two countries that handle homelessness the best are Finland and Japan. Therefore, we will look at how these two countries have approached homelessness to determine exactly which country handles homelessness best.Why Finland and Japan?Firstly, let's talk about the extent of the situation within each country. In our previous article on which country has the lowest rate of homelessness, Japan was determined as the country with the smallest percentage of people experiencing homelessness in the world, with a rate of 0.003%, which is approximately 1 in every 34,000 people.Finland was determined to have the 10th lowest rate of homelessness in...

Ten-year-old Palestinian child Yazan al-Kafarneh, who died from severe hunger amid famine due to Israel’s ongoing crippling siege on Gaza. (Rabie Abu Noqaira / Anadolu via Getty Images) Y al-Kafarneh, a ten-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza, had been dying of hunger for weeks as a result of Israel’s crippling blockade and deliberate starvation of Gaza. Images and videos of Yazan, who had cerebral palsy, showed the motionless boy lying on a hospital bed with a skeletal body, sunken cheeks, bare bones, and hollowed eyes. For days his parents sat helpless by his bed and watched him fade away. His father...