Free Republic

A legal dispute in a tiny Texas town unexpectedly reveals how Chinese nationals can move money to the U.S. without drawing the attention of authorities in either country. Jerry Yu has the trappings of what the Chinese call second-generation rich. He boasts a Connecticut prep-school education. He lives in a Manhattan condominium bought for $8 million from Jeffrey R. Immelt, the former General Electric chief executive. And he is the majority owner of a Bitcoin mine in Texas, acquired last year for more than $6 million. Mr. Yu, a 23-year-old student at New York University, has also become — quite...

Trading firms are asking FCC to open shortwave frequencies to greater commercial use Ham radio operators are sounding the alarm over the latest threat to their beloved hobby—and this time, it is coming from Wall Street. A group of high-frequency trading firms is asking the Federal Communications Commission to open shortwave frequencies to greater commercial use, so they can use radio to zip financial data around the world in milliseconds. Prominent members of the amateur-radio community say interference from traders’ broadcasts could ruin their hobby, which often involves tuning in to weak radio signals so they can chat with fellow...

The judge in the Pensacola Naval Air Station terrorist shooting case has asked the Biden administration to declare whether victims of the 2019 attack should be barred from suing Saudi Arabia because of “serious and sensitive matters of foreign policy and military affairs.”@media(min-width:0px){#div-gpt-ad-floridabulldog_org-box-3-0-asloaded{max-width:728px!important;max-height:90px!important;}}U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers directed the court clerk to serve her order on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and others, and asked for a response within 30 days of her July 27 order.@media(min-width:0px){#div-gpt-ad-floridabulldog_org-medrectangle-3-0-asloaded{max-width:580px!important;max-height:400px!important;}}“Given the sensitive nature of the United States foreign relations that could be impacted by this case, the Court finds it necessary…to raise the...

Nearly 22 years after al Qaeda terrorists hijacked and crashed four U.S. passenger jets in the worst attacks on American soil since Pearl Harbor, the FBI has disclosed that it is actively investigating an apparent attempt to hijack a fifth plane on 9/11.@media(min-width:0px){#div-gpt-ad-floridabulldog_org-box-3-0-asloaded{max-width:728px!important;max-height:90px!important;}}The plane, a wide-bodied Boeing 767, was operated by United Airlines. At 9 o’clock that morning Flight 23 was scheduled to make a nonstop transcontinental trip from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Los Angeles. Aboard were about 160 passengers, eight or nine crew members and more than 50,000 gallons of jet fuel.@media(min-width:0px){#div-gpt-ad-floridabulldog_org-medrectangle-3-0-asloaded{max-width:580px!important;max-height:400px!important;}}That Flight 23 in...

A Northern California man who was left paralyzed after he was slammed to the ground during a traffic stop won a $20 million settlement, one of the largest in the state’s history, officials announced Tuesday. Gregory Gross, an Army veteran who lives in Yuba City, sued the police department in 2022 after police officers used “pain compliance” techniques and expressed disbelief when he repeatedly cried out, “I can’t feel my legs.” Police officers also dismissed Gross when he said, “I can’t breathe,” while being held facedown on the lawn outside a hospital, video released by Gross’s lawyers shows.Gross was accused...

The struggle to prove the majestic bird still exists has obsessed believers and exasperated doubters for a century. Now photographer Bobby Harrison is racing to document the species once and for all before the government declares it extinct The bird has many names, often divinely inspired: the Lord God Bird, the Lazarus Bird, the Ghost Bird, the Grail Bird. Bobby Harrison is a religious man, but he doesn’t like any of them. He prefers to call it what it is: an ivory-billed woodpecker. “Well,” he says with a shrug, “it is just a bird, after all.” That might seem like...

A man unearthed a huge hoard of Civil War-era gold and silver coins on his Kentucky farm A Kentucky man got the surprise of his life while digging in his field earlier this year: a cache of over 700 coins from the American Civil War era.The "Great Kentucky Hoard" includes hundreds of U.S. gold pieces dating to between 1840 and 1863, in addition to a handful of silver coins. In a short video, the man who discovered the hoard — whose identity and specific location have not been revealed to the public — says, "This is the most insane thing...

Asian sailors came to the west coast of America in 1587. Within a century they were settled in colonies from Mexico to Peru Cape Sebastian in Oregon perches above two forested declivities along a rocky patch of the state’s southern coast. Travel there today, and you are likely to miss a roadside marker that reads:Spanish navigators were the first to explore the North American Pacific Coast. Beginning fifty years after Columbus discovered the Western continents, Sebastian Vizciano [sic] saw this cape in 1603 and named it after the patron saint of the day of his discovery. Other navigators, Spanish, British,...

Arizona’s water is running worryingly low. Amid the worst drought in more than a millennium, which has left communities across the state with barren wells, the state is depleting what remains of its precious groundwater. Much of it goes to private companies nearly free, including Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company.Thanks to fresh scrutiny this year from state politicians, water activists and journalists, the Saudi agricultural giant Almarai has emerged as an unlikely antagonist in the water crisis. The company, through its subsidiary Fondomonte, has been buying and leasing land across western Arizona since 2014. This year The Arizona Republic published...

Share your experience if you, a friend or a family member believes or once believed in a popular conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories have become an increasingly common problem in the United States. From the QAnon movement to misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, many Americans have accepted ideas that are not backed by science or fact. We’re interested in speaking to people who at one point believed in conspiracy theories and other kinds of disinformation but have since reconsidered their views, as well as with people who currently hold those views. If you, a friend or a family member believes or once...

The Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Amir Locke, a 22 year-old Black man, while executing a no-knock warrant in February won’t face criminal charges, prosecutors said.Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman said in a joint statement Wednesday there was insufficient admissible evidence to file charges against Officer Mark Hanneman. “The State would be unable to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt any of the elements of Minnesota’s use-of-deadly-force statute that authorizes the use of force by Officer Hanneman,” the statement said. “Nor would the State be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal...

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in favor of a Brooklyn man who said he had been falsely accused by police officers of resisting arrest, saying he could sue for malicious prosecution under a federal civil rights law.The vote was 6 to 3, with the majority deciding only the narrow question of what the man, Larry Thompson, had to show to meet a requirement that there was a favorable termination of the prosecution against him. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, said it was enough that prosecutors had dropped the charges, rejecting the view that Mr. Thompson had...

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah suggested that he'd favor cutting retirement benefits for younger Americans in a bid to stabilize safety net programs. "If we're ever going to get a handle on our debt, we're gonna have to find a way to either increase revenue, which I don't favor, or find a way to adjust our long-term benefits not for current retirees," he said at a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday, seemingly ruling out any tax hikes. "But for younger people coming along, we got to be able to find a way to balance these programs or we're gonna...

Across the country, corporate landlords are expanding manufactured housing portfolios and driving up rents, pushing longtime residents out. GOLDEN, Colo. — When Sarah Clement moved to the Golden Hills mobile home park two years ago, she felt like she had won the lottery. After years of squeezing into one-bedroom apartments with her, her 7-year-old son finally settled into his own bedroom, his toys splayed out in the yard and his school just at the edge of the park. Ms. Clement loved the friendliness of her neighbors and getting to watch the sun rise over the scrubby mesa to her east...

The database used by the New York Police Department violates state law and the Constitution, the Legal Aid Society contends in a lawsuit. Three years ago, Shakira Leslie was returning home from a cousin’s birthday party in the Bronx when officers pulled over her friend’s car for a traffic infraction. After she got out of the back seat, the police searched her and found nothing illegal. But when a gun was found in another passenger’s bag, everyone in the car was arrested, charged with weapon possession and taken to a precinct. There, Ms. Leslie waited for more than 12 hours...

Thousands of Russians and Ukrainians fleeing their countries are choosing an unusual route to escape sanctions and war: Traveling to Mexico and then crossing the U.S. border. The numbers of both nationalities entering Mexico have soared in recent months. While some are tourists, Mexican officials believe the majority plan on migrating to the U.S., arriving at Mexican destinations like Cancún and then flying to a northern border city like Tijuana, which is across the border from San Diego. In January and February, some 30,111 Russians entered Mexico, compared with an average of 12,380 during each of the past five years,...

The animals painted in ocher in Colombia may include giant ground sloths and other creatures that vanished from the Americas. But some researchers say the art has a more recent origin. At the end of the last ice age, South America was home to strange animals that have since vanished into extinction: giant ground sloths, elephant-like herbivores and an ancient lineage of horses. A new study suggests that we can see these lost creatures in enchanting ocher paintings made by ice age humans on a rocky outcrop in the Colombian Amazon. These dazzling rock art displays at Serranía de la...

A Michigan school superintendent debunked the rumor after a video from a December school board meeting resurfaced in which a speaker airs concerns about students who “identify as cats.” It started with a comment at a school board meeting, which was later amplified by a Michigan state Republican leader, and culminated with a school superintendent explaining that, no, there were no litter boxes on school grounds for students to use if they identified as furries. “It is unconscionable that this afternoon I am sending this communication,” the superintendent of Midland Public Schools, Michael Sharrow, wrote on Thursday in an email...

Health authorities in Beijing said they haven’t been able to trace the source of the Chinese capital’s first local Omicron infection but indicated it might have arrived by international mail.Beijing announced the Omicron case on Saturday after the patient developed a low-grade fever on Friday and took a voluntary test that came back positive for Covid-19. Authorities sealed off the patient’s residential compound and office building, and launched contact-tracing efforts. Tests for more than 16,500 people identified as potentially being exposed to the patient came back negative, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the city’s municipal Center for Disease Control and...

A small group of Alaskan middle-schoolers get a hands-on lesson in hunting and processing food from the land. NIKISKI, Alaska — Before the sun rose on Nov. 11, 10 students from Nikiski Middle & High School had gathered with their teacher, Jesse Bjorkman, at a gas-station parking lot here in this small community on the Kenai Peninsula — to gear up for a moose hunt.Dispersed among five vehicles, the group drove about 10 miles to the Nikiski Escape Route, a gravel road connecting Nikiski to the city of Kenai. Inching slowly down the snowy road, the students peered out each...