Free Republic

John Cleese has criticised Londoners for voting to remain in the European Union. The 79-year-old Fawlty Towers star - who revealed last year he was moving to the Caribbean because he is “disappointed’ with Britain - accused the capital city of not being English. Cleese tweeted: “Some years ago I opined that London was not really an English city any more. Since then, virtually all my friends from abroad have confirmed my observation So there must be some truth in it...

Trafalgar Square is being turned into #TrafalgarPrayer on 9 June as thousands of Christians from across London unite in prayer and worship. The event on Pentecost Sunday will mark the culmination of Thy Kingdom Come 2019, the annual prayer campaign launched by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, in which Christians are invited to pray for their friends and family to know Jesus Christ. Last year saw churches from over 65 denominations in 114 countries taking part in the 10 days of prayer, from Anglicans to Roman Catholics, and Orthodox to Methodists. This year even larger numbers are expected to...

For impatient travelers, the next wave of air transportation could be a game-changer. Aerospace company Hermeus Corporation recently announced that it has obtained funding to pursue development of a plane that could travel five times faster than the speed of sound, getting passengers from New York to London in just 90 minutes. But it won't be a cheap flight, and the idea isn't without some baggage. The venture, which was founded by former employees of private space travel companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, is seeking to craft a plane that can travel at Mach 5...

LONDON — There are few more unmistakable signs that summer has arrived in Britain than hearing the chimes of an ice cream truck from the street. But Londoners could soon find it harder to track down soft-serve on a hot day, because of fears that pollutants from the trucks’ diesel engines may be endangering lives. Councils in the city are threatening to clamp down on ice cream trucks that roam their streets if they do not become more environmentally friendly. “No one wants a side order of asthma with their ice cream,” Caroline Russell, a Green Party member of the...

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed the democratically elected leader of the United States, president Donald Trump, does not deserve a state visit to the United Kingdom. Khan, who last year disrespectfully approved a giant balloon of the president wearing a diaper to be flown over the British capital, told British radio station LBC that Trump was not "in the same class" as former President Barack Obama.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is finally getting a strong message from Queen Elizabeth II on his openly hostile views of President Trump. The Muslim mayor, who has been a vocal critic of the president, was noticeably left off of the invitation list for the banquet planned in honor of Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom next month. “The mayor has not been invited to the state banquet,” Khan’s spokesman, Jonathan Weisgard, told Newsweek. The Queen has apparently opted not to invite the London Mayor to Trump’s state banquet at Buckingham Palace as he makes a three-day state visit in...

Last Sunday’s London Marathon produced plenty of positive headlines. Eliud Kipchoge ran a new course record, Emily Sisson had an incredible marathon debut, runners set nearly 40 new Guinness World Records, and the event itself had more finishers than ever before (42,549) and passed the £1 billion mark in cumulative fundraising. But it was not all celebration for some runners, especially those who finished at the back of the pack. In the first year the race has offered an official 7:30 pacer—which should have made the race more inclusive—runners who finished toward the end reported experiencing some disturbing conditions. In...

A lawyer for the Maltese professor who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton says his client will testify in front of the Senate. BuzzFeed reports that Stephan Roh, attorney for Professor Joseph Mifsud, wrote in an email that Mifsud “is to testify in front of the US Senate — we are working towards his appearance.” Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee wrote in a September court filing for their Russia lawsuit that they believed Mifsud was “missing and may be deceased.” According to the Daily Caller, an attorney for Republicans on...

After Big Ben clocked himself at London’s finish, his day only got worse. Dressed as Big Ben, London marathoner Lukas Bates hoped to break a record for running as the famed clock. But he found time was not on his side at the finish. His costume was too large to fit under the scaffolding of the finis, and bending down to try to fit under didn’t really help, either. His 3:54:21 finish was not enough to beat the standing record for running dressed as a landmark—3:34:34—and videos of him trying to get his costume across the line went viral. And...

After the athletes cross the finish and excitement of any marathon has died down, what’s left is an aftermath of waste. Bottles and cups litter the course, raising questions about the environmental impact of the bottles and cups used for hydration and left tossed to the side. This year, London Marathon officials are implementing measures to cut down on this waste—something they hope to expand upon in the future. They have a goal of zero waste by 2020, so a lot of changes will be made. And it will start with runners eating their water bottles. Yep, eating their water...

They have been brought disruption to London for days while campaigning for more to be done to protect the environment from climate change. But protesters from Extinction Rebellion appear to be less bothered about plastic waste after being spotted surrounded by bottles and coffee cups in central London. Plastic carrier bags and disposable coffee cups from chain shops are dotted around their bags and blankets in Oxford Circus as well as separate demonstrations in Marble Arch and outside Jeremy Corbyn's house in Islington. Single-use plastic has become a huge environmental concern with around 104million tonnes dumped in the natural world...

British Roman Catholic mother and journalist Caroline Farrow has faced horrific harassment from pro-transgender activists for her disagreement on transgender issues. Farrow spoke with PJ Media about this harassment and the local police response. "I’ve just got a team of people, they seem to attach so much importance and so much weight to what I say and they’re just determined to shut down my point of view," Farrow told PJ Media. "They feel that they can be as abusive as they like: they can target my family, target my children, and I deserve it because I’m full of 'hate' because...

A picture posted on social media showed a man wrapped in the St George's cross -- the national flag of England -- on a roof of the station, with police vehicles nearby. Services were suspended early Saturday, said Eurostar in a tweet. The company recommended that passengers not travel and offered free exchanges or cancellations. Later in the morning services had resumed, but Eurostar warned of "further disruption." Demonstrators blocked streets around the Houses of Parliament as lawmakers rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's EU withdrawal deal for a third time, on the day that the UK was originally meant to...

Freedom of Speech Dead in UK as London’s Muslim Mayor Defends Arrest of Christian Preacher Britain continues to race toward its own ruin. My latest in the Geller Report: How much has Britain deteriorated as a free society? This much: a Christian preacher from Nigeria, Oluwole Ilesanmi, recently discovered that preaching Christianity in public is illegal in London, because it offends Muslims. And London’s Muslim mayor has defended the arrest of Ilesanmi, saying that “there are limitations” on the freedom of speech. Ilesanmi was arrested on February 23 while he was preaching, after a Muslim complained to police. A London...

Researchers tested blood and semen found on a shawl near the body of the killer's fourth victim, a woman whose mutilated body was found in September 1888. The identity of Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer from the late 1800s in England, may finally be known. A DNA forensic investigation published this month by two British researchers in the Journal of Forensic Science identifies Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and prime suspect at the time, as the likely killer. The "semen stains match the sequences of one of the main police suspects, Aaron Kosminski," said the study authored...

Spiralling knife, drugs, and gang crime in London has been leading many concerned Somali parents to send their teenage offspring, who grew up in Britain, away to Africa for their own safety. With 50 to 70 per cent of members of the Somali community in Islington, north London, “directly affected” by knife violence and ‘county lines’ drugs crime, mothers who arrived from the troubled African country during the 1990s told the Observer they felt they had “no choice” but to send their children away from an increasingly dangerous UK. Sadia Ali, the treasurer of the Islington Somalia Forum and a...

Stunning video shows a man in London narrowly escape being crushed by falling bricks as a howling wind caused a café's roof to collapse Sunday. CCTV footage shows the passerby strolling past Stokey Vintage Café on Stoke Newington High Street just moments before a mass of bricks and rubble tumbled to the ground. “While the boys were fundraising this happened across the road,” the Hackney Wick FC soccer club shared on Twitter with the CCTV video. “A reminder that you can be taken at any time so be thankful for surviving another day.” Petulia Mattioli, who had walked past the...

A woman in London was convicted on Friday over the genital cutting of her daughter, becoming the first person to be successfully prosecuted under the country’s law banning the practice. The 37-year old woman was found guilty of committing female genital mutilation in August 2017, when her daughter was 3. The girl’s father, 43, was cleared of charges. Neither parent was identified because of reporting restrictions placed on the case. “Female genital mutilation has an appalling physical and emotional impact on victims that usually lasts their entire life,” said Lynette Woodrow, a deputy chief crown prosecutor, in a statement. “A...

THE establishment pays lip service to Christianity, parading on special occasions in cathedrals and producing ‘safe’ Christian programmes such as Songs of Praise. But when it runs into unabashed Christianity prepared to deny progressive pieties, the mask slips. There is growing alienation between Christians holding a biblical worldview and the establishment in our increasingly secular society. Video of the arrest of Oluwole Ilesanmi, a street preacher in Wood Green, north London, has gone viral. Arrests of street preachers for causing offence have become routine. This instance reveals the underlying prejudices of the establishment. Mr Ilesanmi was arrested by police under...

Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, London, has been defaced with anti-Communist graffiti, branding the dead thinker an “architect of genocide”. Marx intellectual is memorialised with a huge stone plinth in the cemetery, crowned by a huge bust of his head. An unidentified individual or individuals defaced the plinth with red spraypaint, reading “Memorial to Bolshevik Holocaust”, “66,000,000 DEAD”, “Architect of Genocide, terror + oppression, Mass Murder”, “Ideology of Starving”, and “Doctrine of HATE”. The German Jewish intellectual played no direct role in the notoriously bloodstained communist revolutions and one-party regimes of the 20th century, dying in England in 1883...