Free Republic

The new nightly fees could really add up. Gather all the pixie dust you can, because Walt Disney World hotels will soon begin charging guests for overnight parking. Pricing, which varies based on Walt Disney World Resort’s three hotel categories, will begin with reservations starting March 21, 2018. Overnight self-parking at value resorts, including Disney’s Art of Animation, Disney’s Pop Century, and All-Star resort hotels will cost $13. Moderate hotels like Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort and Disney’s Port Orleans will charge $19 each night, and both Disney Deluxe and Deluxe Villas, which includes Disney’s Contemporary, Grand Floridian, and Polynesian Resorts...

Nearly 5,000 JetBlue flight attendants will start voting Monday in an effort to join the Transport Workers Union. Ballots will be cast electronically or by phone in an election that will run until April 17. The National Mediation Board is overseeing the election. According to the TWU, an “overwhelming majority” of flight attendants last year signed cards declaring they wanted to unionize. […] JetBlue was not receptive to the TWU’s efforts to unionize its flight attendants. Inviting a “third-party” union was a bad idea, the airline wrote in flyers and emails to staffers in September. “TWU is an opportunistic and...

Just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day — two construction workers in Holland have discovered a real-life “pot o’ gold.” The workers from water company Oasen made the stunning find when they were laying pipes in the new town of Hoef and Haag, in the province of Utrecht, LiveScience reports. During the construction work, they dug up a medieval cooking pot that contained 12 gold and 462 silver coins. The coins have been dated to the 15th century. It's unclear at this point who will keep the coins. After finding the pot, "it literally and figuratively rained coins," the company...

Incredible footage has revealed the moment that the world's biggest jet engine took to the skies for the first time, ahead of its planned maiden commercial flight in 2020. The huge GE9X powerplant, which is as wide and tall as the fuselage of a Boeing 737, is being built for the latest version of the firm's long-haul 777, the 777X 'megaplane'. General Electric has now begun flight trials of the prototype, after delays caused by technical problems stopped tests originally planned for late last year.

As winter's cold grip loosens on Hanoi, the city has been named one of the ideal travel destinations for March by American-based Business Insider. (please see the link, for the full article)

Tesla employees say the company is manufacturing a high ratio of flawed parts and vehicles that need rework and repairs. The electrical vehicle maker has had to ship some flawed parts to remanufacturing facilities to avoid scrapping them, rather than fixing them in-line, according to sources; Tesla denies this. CEO Elon Musk is under pressure to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan, Tesla's first mass-market electric vehicle. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Luxury automaker Tesla is manufacturing a surprisingly high ratio of flawed parts and vehicles, according to several current and former employees, leading to more rework and repairs than can be...

It seems that the Black Panther movie has done such a good job of immersing audiences in its world that many people think it's real. Two hotel booking sites have revealed that site searches for the word 'Wakanda' – the name of the fictional African country the movie is set in – have risen dramatically. Hotelscan.com reported that the number of people landing on its Wisconsin Wakanda Water Park page is up by 620 per cent and Hotels.com reported that searches for neighbouring Wakanda Park are up by 55 per cent year on year. A spokesperson for hotelscan.com commented: 'The...

United Airlines is investigating after mistakenly flying a Kansas family’s dog to Japan. KCTV reports that Kara Swindle and her two children flew from Oregon to Kansas City, Missouri, on Tuesday on a United flight. They went to a cargo facility to pick up 10-year-old Irgo, a German shepherd, but were instead given a great Dane. Swindle, of Wichita, Kansas, learned Irgo had been put on a flight to Japan, where the great Dane was supposed to go. The news of Irgo’s unplanned odyssey comes as United admits another dog died after a flight attendant forced it to travel in...

A majority of college students report using their student loans to help pay for spring break vacations, with more than half of students also asking their parents for help to fund the trips. This data come from LendEDU, a “marketplace for private student loans, student loan refinancing, credit cards, and personal loans,” according to the organization’s website.

They have an unwarranted image as brutish and uncaring, but new research has revealed just how knowledgeable and effective Neanderthal healthcare was. The study, by the University of York, reveals that Neanderthal healthcare was uncalculated and highly effective -- challenging our notions that they were brutish compared to modern humans. The researchers argue that the care provided was widespread and should be seen as a "compassionate and knowledgeable response to injury and illness." It is well known that Neanderthals sometimes provided care for the injured, but new analysis by the team at York suggest they were genuinely caring of their...

A new study led by the University of Southampton and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology shows that paintings in three caves in Spain were created more than 64,000 years ago - 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe. This means that the Palaeolithic (Ice Age) cave art - including pictures of animals, dots and geometric signs - must have been made by Neanderthals, a 'sister' species to Homo sapiens, and Europe's sole human inhabitants at the time. It also indicates that they thought symbolically, like modern humans. Published today in the journal Science, the study reveals how...

FULL TITLE: Ten-month-old French Bulldog puppy dies on a United Flight after air crew 'order its owner to put it in overhead compartment' A ten-month-old French Bulldog puppy has died after a United Airlines flight attendant allegedly told the dog's owner to put it in the overhead compartment. The owner boarded United Flight 1284, from Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport to New York's LaGuardia, on Monday, with her puppy in its carrier. But fellow passenger, June Lara, who sat behind the owner on the flight, told Chron.com that a member of the flight crew said the animal should go in...

The scene was one of 'controlled chaos': hundreds of students openly smoking drugs, shot-gunning beer and performing lewd dance moves as the first weekend of Spring Break got underway on Fort Lauderdale's Las Olas Beach. Others could be seen swigging from bottles of vodka and whiskey or guzzling tequila hidden in water pistols while some had to be helped off the sand after becoming too drunk to stand. All of that in defiance of a 'zero tolerance policy' towards drugs and alcohol on the beach and a heavy police presence that included K-9 and mounted units. One local cop told...

While Cancun is known for its spectacular white sand beaches and turquoise waters, the tourist hotspot is in the grips of a brutal and growing crime wave that threatens to leave it a ghost town. Located in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, things are so bad in Cancun that the murder rate has doubled in the past year — with 169 killings in the first half of 2017.

The faces of disaster through the ages are legion, and the dusty places of archaeological digs in Israel have been no exception, as archaeologists at the Tel Gezer excavation site in central Israel will tell you after they encountered 3,200-year-old skeletal remains of three individuals. As they were conducting excavations during the summer of 2017, traces of human bones emerged as they dug within a stratum that evidenced a fiery destruction. They were articulated skeletons. The archaeologists could see that one of them, an adult, whose remains were badly decomposed and burned, was lying with hands over the head. The...

Roman boxing gloves have been discovered near Hadrian's Wall, thought to be the only known surviving examples, even though the sport was well- documented on Roman wall paintings, mosaics and sculptures. With a protective guard designed to fit snugly over the knuckles, the gloves were packed with natural material which acted as shock absorbers. They date from around AD120 and were certainly made to last: they still fit comfortably on a modern hand. One of them even retains the impression of the knuckles of its ancient wearer. They are among the latest discoveries at a pre-Hadrianic Roman cavalry barrack, which...

The Car Dyke is an eighty mile artificial water channel, thought to have been constructed by the Romans from the first century AD... The Dyke runs along the western edge of the fens from the River Cam near Cambridge all the way to the River Witham, just south of Lincoln. Many stretches are protected as a scheduled ancient monument... William Stukeley... came up with the idea that Car Dyke was a canal... to supply the Roman Armies of the north with grain and food from Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire with drainage as a secondary function, a view which still perpetuates until...

Washington was ordered by Transatlantic Steamship Company and laid down on 20 January 1931 in Shipway O at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey. By the time the vessel was launched on 20 August 1932, Transatlantic Steamship's assets had been acquired by International Mercantile Marine, and the Washington went into service for the United States Lines following delivery on 2 May 1933. At the time of their construction, Washington and her sister ship SS Manhattan, also built by New York Shipbuilding, were the largest liners ever built in the United States, a status they held until the 1939 launch...

Citing a security threat, the State Department has closed its consular office in a popular Mexican resort city and warned Americans to “consider this information” before traveling to the area. The State Department on Wednesday night issued a security alert for Playa del Carmen, a tourist draw on the Caribbean coast, saying the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City had received “credible information” about a threat to the city.

I’ve been known to say that I am feeling noodle-y. After passing a “noodle house” recently, I had to slam on the brakes and just have some. Although just about every culture has a noodle, I’m usually hankering for some kind of Asian variety when this feeling arises, because the balance of flavors in Asian cooking is deeply satisfying. Also, the therapeutic effect of garlic and ginger, ever-present in these dishes, makes for good caretaking. There are oodles of noodles to be had. They can be made from wheat, rice, buckwheat — which is not a type of wheat, actually...