Free Republic

Societal order is beginning to collapse in the besieged Gaza Strip after thousands of desperate people raided UN warehouses in search of food, amid continuing bombardment by Israeli airstrikes and a widening ground offensive as the war enters its fourth week. Thomas White, the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said on Sunday that wheat, flour and hygiene supplies had been taken the day before from several UN-run centres across the blockaded 41km by 12km strip, home to more than 2 million trapped people. “This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down...

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. (WRKG) — A Pensacola woman is behind bars after allegedly pouring alcohol into her child’s baby bottle, according to the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. Cecil LaToya Bryant, 28, was charged with aggravated child abuse. On Nov. 1, deputies said they responded to a possible child abuse. Deputies said when they arrived, they talked with an investigator with the Department of Children and Family Services, who said the baby had a .142 blood alcohol level. Deputies then spoke with the reporting party who said on Oct. 31, 2022, she threw a Halloween party at her house. The reporting...

Would like to make this "chat" thread one where FREEPers post their observations on how your LOCAL tv stations and news radio and news papers are covering the SCOTUS story. Where are you, and what are they doing? Is it fair and balanced?

In this participatory session, you will learn how to tell when someone is lying. Really. As a former CIA Officer with more than 20 years of experience in interviewing, interrogation and polygraph examination, Susan has seen her share of truth avoiders. She has, in fact, developed behavioral screening programs that are used by the federal government. ...

I have received three emails this morning that started with "Happy Memorial Day."

This national day of remembrance, meant to honor men and women who died in military service, also morphed into a fiesta of shopping, barbecues and pool openings. There’s been no shortage of grumbling over the years about the stampede of “Memorial Day Sales”—ads brimming with bargains on a day intended for something else. ... [snip] ... The more we assign the soldiering to a select few volunteers—we don’t have an equalizing draft and there is no required national service—perhaps the easier it is to forget what it means to share a common citizenship or feel a sense of indebtedness or...

Remains of Illinois soldier, missing since 1969, coming home By Len Wells Evansville Courier & Press, Ind. (Tribune News Service) Published: January 9, 2016 ALBION, Ill. The remains of an airman listed as "missing in action" during the Vietnam War have been recovered. Officials with the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed the remains of Pfc. Kenneth Leroy Cunningham of Ellery, Illinois. He had been missing since Oct. 3, 1969. He was 21 at the time. Cunningham's remains will be flown back to the United States later this month, arriving at the airport in Louisville, Kentucky on Jan 19. His remains...

The Government has an archive of 17 billion pictures of vehicles discretely photographed at the roadside by hidden cameras every single day, it was revealed today. That works out as an average of 472 pictures for each of the 36 million cars, lorries and vans on Britain's roads. There are 8,000 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras hidden on streets across the country which are used in the battle against crime. It is thought that by 2018, between 50 million and 75 million pictures of vehicles will be taken every day. Julian Blazeby, from the Association of Chief Police Officers,...

The Ayn Rand Observation Obama’s Didn’t Believe "When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you - you know your nation is doomed." No, not that one, this one. “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” Obama’s sole claim to any sort of excellence is his ability to depend on his enabler’s ignorance without flinching.

Our man in America talks turkey about shopping stampede and greed Wan Lixin wanlixin@shanghaidaily.com Editor's note: Shanghai Daily writer Wan Lixin is on a three-month study tour in Virginia, United States. This is the third of his impressions about the country. THOUGH we did not partake in any turkey last Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, many of us felt very excited in anticipating of seeing how early-morning specials and door-busters would make Americans go crazy on Black Friday. We were told three weeks ago when we first arrived here that the Friday after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday, which marks the...

First Star Trek predicted the normalization of racial diversity. Then it was cell phones. Now it’s a “theory of everything.” Is there anything Star Trek can’t predict? In an episode called “Shore Leave,” first broadcast in 1966, Kirk and Spock visited a planet where any thought — even an idyll one — would cause its physical creation. So whenever somebody had a dangerous idea — of a hungry tiger, for instance — an advanced computer acted instantly to manifest the thought into a physical reality. Trouble was, the crew of the Enterprise were not aware that they needed to control...

CARACAS (Reuters) – Washington-foe Venezuela plans to launch an observation satellite within five years to map its territory, President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday. Venezuela's first satellite, named after independence hero Simon Bolivar, is for broadcast and telecommunications purposes and is due to be launched from China in November, Chavez said. But major oil explorer Venezuela is seeking to build a second satellite to help map the vast South American country, Chavez said on his weekly television show. "Who has got great multicolored maps of Venezuela? The Yankees," he said. "Now we are going to have our own. We have...

An upgrade to the satellite system monitoring Earth's environment is urgently needed to continue accurately monitoring hurricanes, drought and the shifting of polar ice, according to a report released by a U.S. scientific advisory group. By 2010, the number of U.S. Earth-observing instruments on satellites will drop by 40 per cent, the National Research Council of the National Academies warned in a report unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday. There are 29 Earth observation missions run by NASA and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Some of these involve sensors...

Oct. 26, 2006: The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to life. A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash. Fearing a major eruption, local authorities began evacuating 40,000 people. UN officials, meanwhile, issued a call for help: Volcanologists should begin monitoring Talang at once. Little did they know, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one told it to. EO-1 (short for "Earth Observing 1") noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang...

London 23.02.05 | Shocked by the Carter Center's imprimatur of last August I managed to engage in an e-conversation with Jennifer McCoy vis-à-vis the sheer negligence that characterized their 'electoral observation mission' in Venezuela. As admitted by her, the Carter Center (CC) never had any control over the scrutiny processes that ensued the recall referendum but it did have the nerve to endorse the results of the election. Furthermore, the CC's validation of results was vox populi in international circles, as I was made aware of by BBC journalists prior to Jimmy Carter / Cesar Gaviria press conference in Caracas...

One thing I've always noticed about the far left is the constant assertion that they are always the underdog, and everything is against them. They always assert that the media is under conservative control (I feel that's hardly true), and that every conservative organization is extremely well funded by a rich oil baron, whereas they are scrapping by with dedicated activists (not so true). What other things have you noticed that far-left liberals assert?

Have you ever noticed (in Film) every one speaks with a British Accent? From Obi Wan to Ben Hur , to Vulcans every one in the bloody universe speaks the Queen's English! I am surprized that the holy lord of factoids-Andy Rooney-hasn't brought up this bit of trivia!

Picking up on a CyberAlert item and an article on Salon.com, on Tuesday night FNC’s Brit Hume informed viewers of his Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC how “we are just now finding out some things about this past weekend's anti-war protest in Washington that the mass media did not include its accounts.” Hume began his October 27 “Grapevine” segment: “We are just now finding out some things about this past weekend's anti-war protest in Washington that the mass media did not include its accounts. One speaker, a rap musician, chanted 'F--- Bush,' but he chose to use the...

British engineers are preparing to push the limits of aeroplane technology. Zephyr 3, a solar-powered propeller-driven vehicle, is set to fly to 132,000 feet (40 kilometres) in the next few months. Only experimental rocket planes and the space shuttle will have gone higher. It will rise into the stratosphere to take pictures of a giant helium balloon that will attempt to break the world altitude record for a manned envelope. But Zephyr - built by QinetiQ, a commercial offshoot of the UK's Ministry of Defence - is more than just a flying camera gantry. The prototype vehicle, and others like...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 August 19 Roque de los Muchachos Observatory Credit: Nik Szymanek (ING), IAC, ENO Explanation: Above the clouds, atop an island off the coast of Africa, a group of cutting-edge telescopes inspects the universe. Pictured above are telescopes at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, Spain. The site is one of the premier observing locations on Earth. The telescopes pictured are,...