Free Republic

Cursive has been on the upswing for years now. More than two dozen states now require cursive instruction in schools after the 2010 Common Core standards omitted the skill. Kenerson, a multilingual teacher at Holmes, started the middle school cursive club when students couldn't read her writing on the board. They just stared at her blankly, she said. "I realized they didn't know how to write or read in cursive," Kenerson said. For an educator who firmly believes that quotes deserve to be written in cursive, and has a new one on her board each month, Kenerson wanted to give...

Influencer faces legal action for alleged lewd act in central LondonBonnie Blue charged with outraging public decency in Westminster. Screengrab from YouTube video 'BONNIE BLUE IS PREGNANT'/Bonnie Blue Adult content creator Bonnie Blue has been charged with outraging public decency following an alleged incident in Westminster in December 2025. The 26-year-old influencer, whose legal name is Tia Billinger, is accused of performing a lewd act in a public space in central London. The Metropolitan Police confirmed that Billinger was charged via postal requisition on 16 March 2026 and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 22 April....

A candidate for the US Senate has been convicted of throwing a tarantula down the stairs of her basement in a Home Alone-inspired bid to scare an alleged squatter. Marisa Simonetti, 32, who is running as an independent in the upcoming Senate election in Minnesota, was convicted on Friday of misdemeanor counts of domestic assault, harassment and disorderly conduct. The charges stemmed from the tarantula incident, which occurred in 2024. At the time, Simonetti told NBC News that she got the idea from the 1990 movie Home Alone, starring then-child actor Macaulay Culkin. In the film, Culkin's character, Kevin McCallister,...

The White House has registered the domain 'aliens.gov,' sparking fresh speculation that President Donald Trump's long-awaited UFO disclosure may be imminent. The domain, linked to the Executive Office of the President, was flagged on Wednesday by an automated tracker of federal websites. However, it is also listed in the government's official .gov registry maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Registry records show it was recently added under the White House Office alongside other official government sites, confirming it as a legitimate federal web address, though its purpose has not been publicly disclosed. In February, Trump directed federal agencies,...

In January, Doug Fulop was riding home from a night out in San Francisco when a man crossed the street in front of his car, doubled back and began screaming at him. The man punched the car’s windows and tried lifting up the vehicle. He then yelled that he wanted to kill Mr. Fulop and the other two passengers for giving money to a robot. A taxi driver would have simply driven away. But Mr. Fulop’s vehicle had no driver — it was a self-driving Waymo. “We felt helpless,” said Mr. Fulop, 37, who works in the tech industry. Self-driving...

A 14-year-old boy called Havoc has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder after prosecutors say he shot his mother in the back of the head during a heated argument inside their rural Wyoming home. Havoc Leone is accused of retrieving a handgun he had secretly taken from his mother's car days earlier His mother, massage therapist Theresa McIntosh, was airlifted to a hospital in Colorado, where she later died from her injuries. According to a sworn affidavit written by Laramie County Sheriff's Office Deputy Miles DePrimo, the teenager initially told investigators that McIntosh had killed herself. But during...

According to a representative for Ohdoki, a Norway-headquartered “sex tech company,” container seals were broken and several shipments stolen “somewhere between the product’s departure from L.A. and arrival in Dallas.” The shipment in question contained Ohdoki’s “The Handy” product. You can read into the product for yourself; its name should give you a clue as to what it does. ... Ohdoki’s formal cargo loss complaint indicating that there were 289 “The Handy Massage 2 PRO” units and 330 “The Handy Massage 2 REG” products confirmed lost in transit.

President Catherine Connolly has described the situation in the Middle East as a “deliberate assault on international law”. President Connolly’s comments come after the US and Israel’s conflict with Iran entered its second week. She said that “violations of the UN Charter cannot be ignored” and described what is being witnessed as “shocking and numbing”. In a statement marking International Women’s Day, President Connolly said: “What we have witnessed in recent days in the Middle East, and beyond, are not political disputes. They are deliberate assaults on international law, the international laws that have underpinned global peace for 80 years....

Official Video for "Independence Day” by Martina McBride

Their plan: have someone hide in the ceiling to catch the assailant in the act.When staff at the Logan Correctional Center learned a prison counselor may have been repeatedly sexually assaulting a female inmate, they did the sane and humane thing and immediately removed her from his reach while opening an investigation into the alleged assailant. Just kidding. What they really did was decide to use the inmate as rape "bait." The idea was that when the counselor tried again, a prison investigator would jump down from a hiding space in the ceiling to stop the attack. You are reading...

A father accused of killing the man who allegedly raped and abducted his teenage daughter has won the Republican primary for county sheriff in Arkansas - despite him awaiting trial for murder. Aaron Spencer, 37, secured 53.5 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s Republican primary for Lonoke County sheriff, defeating longtime incumbent John Staley, who received 26.5 percent. The result puts Spencer in the unusual position of potentially becoming the top law enforcement officer in the same county that charged him with murder. Spencer has been accused of fatally shooting Michael Fosler, 67, in October 2024 after discovering the man...

A Portland council meeting was shocked into silence after a member asked the first Latino councilman to repeat what he said in English, despite him speaking the language perfectly. Councilor Juan Carlos González had responded to a question posed by fellow member Mary Nolan about an agenda item dealing with the city's Supportive Housing Services The Oregonian first reported. Nolan, who goes by they/them pronouns, had asked the bill's sponsors, which includes González, to define what they meant by regionalism in the policy. 'My concern and worry is that in the definition of regionalism, you're moving forward, or that you...

Mossad operatives hacked into Tehran's traffic camera network to spy on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his bodyguards and other top Iranian officials for years Israel gained access to almost all the city's cameras, and tracked the movements of key bodyguards. Images were said to be transmitted back to Tel Aviv and southern Israel, allowing Mossad to develop intimate knowledge on the guards' addresses, work schedules, and who they were assigned to protect. One camera angle proved especially helpful and allowed agents to track where bodyguards parked their personal cars when arriving at the Supreme Leader's compound on Pasteur Street in the...

A disgraced small-town mayor who was allegedly caught by her kids having sex with a drunken 16-year-old boy at a booze-fueled pool party ordered emergency contraception on DoorDash afterward. Misty Roberts, the 43-year-old former leader of tiny DeRidder, La., is now on trial for third-degree rape over the 2024 alleged tryst. After news spread of Roberts’ reputed romp with the teen in the town of 9,800, the mother of the victim — a friend of the defendant’s son — texted the then-mayor to ensure she was not pregnant, to which she replied she was on birth control, prosecutors told jurors...

The SWAT response and shelter-in-place order in Lake in the Hills Thursday morning was due to a search warrant on a 20-year-old man allegedly possessing 38 rounds of pistol and rifle ammunition without a FOID card. Joel Fernandez, 20, was arrested without incident at his residence in the 1400 block of Clayton Marsh Drive in Lake in the Hills and was charged with four counts of possessing ammunition without a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card, a Class A misdemeanor. At around 9:50 a.m. Thursday, the Lake in the Hills Police Department – assisted by the Carpentersville Police Department and...

The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland has expressed “deep concern” about the number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded here over a six-month period up to January this year. A community reporting mechanism established by the JRCI has reported 143 such incidents in that time period. The JRCI has called for the development of “a dedicated national plan to counter growing anti-Semitism”. The incidents were recorded through a JRCI online reporting form between July 2025 and January 2026. The report says some incidents were recorded by JRCI staff acting as intermediaries, based on information received through direct contact, email, or follow-up conversations....

SNIP The comedian added in the Friday footage, “Since the beginning of time, women have been ducking and diving and dodging pregnancy face-first or Pikachu-first. Frankly, they’re exhausted.” SNIP Handler also touched on different forms of female birth control, including the pill. “You think I want to be an adult woman with acne or have mood swings, or get a period that’s so heavy it feels like the Hoover Dam just broke? I don’t,” the talk show host continued. “Everybody already hates women enough. I don’t need my insides to join in on the fun.”

New genetic research is reshaping how scientists understand ancient relationships between early humans and Neanderthals. A study published in Science suggests that mating between Homo sapiens women and Neanderthal men occurred more often than the reverse, leaving a lasting mark on the human genome. The finding helps explain a long-standing mystery in genetics. Modern humans carry small amounts of Neanderthal DNA across most of their genome, but almost none on the X chromosome. These gaps, known as Neanderthal deserts, puzzled scientists for years. Modern humans and Neanderthals split from a shared ancestor about 600,000 years ago. Human ancestors evolved in...

A hyperwoke former Vogue editor proudly announced that she self-downgraded from first class on a flight to Milan to avoid a cabin filled with white men. Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, 34, made the declaration on her Threads profile Tuesday evening. The Brooklyn-based journalist wrote: 'I just downgraded myself from first class to business class on my flight to Milan. 'In a cabin of six, five of the passengers were white middle-aged men... then there was me, a 30-something black woman who travels in that cabin often, and a male flight attendant who thought I'd be okay with substandard service and persistent micro-aggression...

The son of director Rob Reiner, who is accused of killing his parents in their Los Angeles home last year, pleaded not guilty to two murder counts at an arraignment Monday. Nick Reiner, 32, was slumped over in a tan jumpsuit with his hair closely shaved during the hearing at a Los Angeles County Superior Court. He sat in a glass box and only spoke to the court to agree to waive his rights to a speedy trial. He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the Dec. 14 stabbing deaths of Rob Reiner, a beloved director, and...