Free Republic

Kobe Bryant’s widow was awarded $16 million as part of a $31 million jury verdict Wednesday against Los Angeles County for deputies and firefighters sharing grisly photos of the NBA star, his 13-year-old daughter and other victims killed in a 2020 helicopter crash.

A legal filing by a Black firefighter in western New York alleges he was pressured by a superior into going to a party that contained racist imagery... Jones, a 14-year department veteran, became uneasy when he arrived at the house and saw a cardboard cutout figure of former President Donald Trump... Jones said he then saw a display mocking the Juneteenth holiday... , with Juneteenth flags displayed over buckets of fried chicken.

One minute before midnight on Sunday, Class I rail operator Union Pacific (UP) slammed on the brakes and halted intermodal services from west coast ports to its Global IV terminal near Chicago. The embargo affects the ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland and Tacoma and will last up to seven days. {snip} The railway informed customers it was necessary to tackle the “significant congestion at our inland intermodal terminals, most notably in Chicago”. {snip} There have been reports of containers stuck in Chicago for six or seven weeks.{snip} The number of vessels at anchor was up, at 18 early...

A panel advising the State Board of Education on what seventh-graders should learn in their social studies courses has urged deleting the label "heroic" from a curriculum standard about the Alamo's defenders.---snip---The panel said "heroic" was a "value-charged word."---snip---Current seventh-grade social studies curriculum standards include the "siege of the Alamo and all of the heroic defenders who gave their lives there." The advisory committee recommended cutting the phrase "and all of the heroic defenders who gave their lives there."---snip---Debbie Ratcliffe, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, said the recommendation was made in response to complaints that curriculum standards are too...

Ibanez and his wife, Roselyn Estepa Ibanez, are the authors of “Filipinos in Carson and the South Bay,” a collection of about 250 family photos, U.S. Army registration cards, immigration records, school yearbook pictures, newspaper articles, and fliers for festivals, dances and music events produced by local Filipinos in the past 100 years.As they share their life stories and research at presentations around the country, the Ibanezes are pushing for a national holiday in October recognizing Filipino-Americans.Early immigrants were almost exclusively young men looking for work and, since interracial marriage was illegal, they had a difficult time dating in this...

People in dense cities are thinner and have healthier hearts than people in sprawling subdivisions.

(SNIP) In its escalating campaign against Hamas and other Gaza-based groups, the Israeli-developed and US-funded Iron Dome — with an estimated success rate of 90 percent — is demonstrating game-changing value against asymmetrical threats, Israeli officials say.(SNIP) “First and foremost, it saves lives and grants us expanded opportunities for managing the campaign against Hamas,” Ya’alon said. “And it sends a message to countries and organizations amassing huge quantities of rockets and missiles” for terrorist purposes.(SNIP) In a mid-May visit to Israel, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel noted that the US investment in Iron Dome was nearly $900 million.

(snip) Administrators have said the district’s roughly 2,000 eighth-grade students were assigned the essays in April as a critical thinking project. (snip) The complete archive of the essays was provided to the Los Angeles News Group in the form of 45 PDF files, some of which contain hundreds of pages of student assignments. An examination of the essays by newsroom staff found that at least 50 essays denied or doubted the Holocaust occurred. (snip) In addition to the Los Angeles News Group, the district released copies of the student essays to Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, the Museum of Tolerance...

'Marco Rubio threatens everything in his path'

-----SNIP------ For more than 60 years, the National Park Service has been trying to reach out to African Americans and Latinos. But its 395 parks, monuments, waterways, historic places and recreational areas remain largely the province of white Americans and tourists from around the world. In an interview, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis reiterated an old lament: Parks must attract a more diverse slice of the American public or eventually risk losing taxpayer support. Yet only about 1% of the nearly 4 million people who visit Yosemite each year are African Americans. So officials were elated earlier this month when...

Carla Kliman was happy when her daughters wanted to participate in a three-week walk or bike to school challenge at Crocker Riverside Elementary in Land Park. But when her children – ages 7 and 9 – expressed an interest in making the walk alone, Kliman said she hesitated.-snip-Those fears were calmed thanks to a 2-inch plastic card now attached to her kids' backpacks. The shoe-shaped card has a scannable bar code similar to membership cards used at grocery stores.

Friends of Scott Dekraai on Thursday were trying to understand how a man described as a lovable fisherman could be the same man accused of killing eight people in the worst massacre in Orange County history.-snip-A license plate placard on his truck indicated Dekraai’s political leanings. The Tea Party placard contained a simple phrase — “Help Save America.”