Free Republic

When Andrew Rivard spotted a Crime Stoppers ad offering a $2,000 reward for tips in the winter of 2025, he decided to report what he knew about illegal cigarette sales in his neighbourhood. Rivard’s original tip shows he disclosed his full name. He says he trusted the organization’s long-standing promise to protect the identities of all tipsters. "I was told nothing would come of it; no one would come to me with, you know, I guess, resentment," Rivard said. "I just was hoping it would be that exactly — anonymous." But the Manitoba man's report — along with information from...

HANOI, Vietnam — Police in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, arrested 12 men suspected of operating a citywide ring that stole and resold about 2,700 cats for meat, Vietnamese state media said. Police identified 39-year-old Luu Thanh Binh as the alleged leader of the network. He and 11 others are being investigated for theft. Investigators said Binh bought stolen cats, kept them at a facility in the city’s north and resold them for meat. He worked with suppliers who recruited others to ride motorcycles through residential neighborhoods between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., hunting for cats and trapping four to...

Social Security’s trust fund is now expected to run out of reserves earlier than projected last year, according to the latest report from the program’s board of trustees. The 2026 Board of Trustees Report projects the depletion date for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund to come in the fourth quarter of 2032, three months earlier than estimated in the 2025 report (1). Once those reserves are gone, ongoing revenue would cover just 78% of scheduled benefits. That accelerated depletion date is putting even more pressure on lawmakers to find a fix before benefits take a hit. But...

A 105-year-old former Nazi-era prison camp guard is being investigated over alleged complicity in the mass murder of Allied prisoners of war. German prosecutors have opened an investigation into the former Wehrmacht soldier over his alleged role at the notorious Stalag 326 VI K Senne camp in western Germany. Now, more than 81 years later, German prosecutors are still pursuing those suspected of involvement in Nazi crimes. The extraordinary investigation began after Germany's Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg referred the case to prosecutors in Dortmund in February. A second former Stalag 326 guard had...

"Trump Is Running Blue Beam Psyops Against Iranians Using Holograms And Lasers From Space Onto The Clouds— Freaking People Out, Right As Trump Is Publicly Threatening To ‘Annihilate’ The Iranian Regime!" “Why Wouldn’t The Iranians Be Shooting At These??” ALEX JONES Breaks Down This UFO With Cloaking Device Could Be Real Or Another Hologram. BOTTOM LINE, This Looks Like Something With Some Type Of Cloaking Device! The Pentagon Has Admitted They Can Control Time And Space And They Can Have Something Close To Our Dimension But Not Fully In Our Dimension.

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So many conversations just gated up like we are Cattle and just livestock. I saw that happen. The OP realized that there was already a thread to the same topic of interest. But still there were conversations and sentiments being also shared in this second post too and it is rude to just shut it off like that. Doesn't anyone know how to just "forward" any new comments to the older thread? It is not rocket science and only take minimal effort... I can teach you how... That way those conversations are not lost to the wind... Does anyone care...

The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of copying hundreds of thousands of articles without permission to train AI systems and asking a federal court to destroy models and training datasets that incorporate their journalism. The copyright infringement lawsuit, filed September 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, targets the use of the newspapers' work in products including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and AI features in Bing. The publishers say OpenAI and Microsoft scraped stories from their websites, including articles behind paywalls, and incorporated the material into their AI...

Grindr, the world's largest LGBTQ+ dating app, reportedly went down as the Republican National Convention's midterm event began on Wednesday. According to Downdetector, the app reported several outages just as the conservative event kicked off at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas ahead of the speech of Donald Trump The highest number of reported outages appeared to occur in and around the Dallas area. "Man, I should become a Republican," joked one person on X. "Well, they say it's a big tent," posted another person. It comes after Trump's furious 5-word outburst at his pilot before storming off was...

Harry Potter author JK Rowling was forced to cover the name of her superyacht while moored in Marina del Rey harbor, according to a new report. The beloved author has endured a storm of protests since expressing 'deep concerns' about transgender activism in an essay June 2020. She celebrated on the deck of a boat after a UK ruling that decided the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex in April 2025 She rose from homelessness to become one of the most celebrated children's writers of all-time. It was originally commissioned for LA businessman Eric Smidt, the...

Freddie Mercury’s closest friend Mary Austin discussed the moment she became certain the Queen star was gay – and it took place before the couple talked about it. They’d been living together for four years when Mercury told Austin he had something to say. But in a new interview with the Guardian, she revealed she’d known for some time. Explaining why she’d fallen for him in the first place, she said: “He was different from the others. He was more creative. He was just more interesting. “Like, he’d go to see the film Cabaret over and over again. I loved...

Recent remarks by US Vice-President JD Vance about the Antichrist and "the end times" are a "very common belief", one of his friends says. Vance recently mused on his religious views while responding to a question on a Christian podcast. He said he would "not [be] shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us" and speculated on whether the end of the world was nigh. Rod Dreher, a conservative writer, rejected any suggestion that the comments would harm the vice-president. He told the BBC's Today programme: "Most Americans who are inclined to vote Republican already believe this stuff." In his...

Kamala Harris suffered a humiliating moment on Jeopardy! as contestants were left stumped when asked for the name of her memoir. The contenders stared blankly and could not provide the title of the former vice president's tell-all book about losing the 2024 election. The question read: 'The title of this 2025 memoir by Kamala Harris refers to how long she had to launch and run her 2024 presidential campaign.' The answer – '107 Days' – eluded the panel of three contestants, leading to an awkward lull before the host stepped in. 'She had 107 days,' Ken Jennings chimed in with...

President Donald Trump has been praised after it was revealed woke American professors are being poached by Canadian universities, including an academic who teaches transgender philosophy. California State University philosophy professor, Talia Mae Bettcher, who is transgender, is among the many American-based educators who have packed their bags and headed north to Canada to become a part of the $541 million research funding project. 'I knew I had to leave,' Bettcher, who is a native Canadian but taught in Los Angeles, told The University of Waterloo, her new home. 'As a green card-holding trans-woman and outspoken academic in an area...

Apple is laying off 147 employees across its Silicon Valley offices – reportedly mostly software engineers working on augmented reality products – a fresh blow to the company's struggling virtual reality ambitions. The cuts come just weeks before Apple is expected to unveil its next generation of iPhones, including the highly anticipated iPhone 18 lineup and its first foldable iPhone. The Vision Pro goggles have struggled to attract mainstream consumers, thanks to its high price tag, hefty weight and limited selection of apps and experiences, all of which make it a difficult sell. The headset's launch in San Francisco in...

Official Music video for Zombie by The Cranberries.

Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's Devices and Services unit broke down to about $4.4 billion, while a patent license came in at around $1.9 billion, according to reporting by NBC News at the time. The deal included the transfer of about 32,000 Nokia employees to Microsoft, as well. Unfortunately, Microsoft's purchase didn't really pan out for the company. It wrote off $7.6 billion related to the acquisition in 2015, according to TechCrunch, admitting defeat within a year. Nokia, though, kept its name, its patents, and its network infrastructure business (the bit that keeps making money today), while it handed off the...

"Don't Bring Me Down" by Electric Light Orchestra extended remix version with beautiful girls dancing to the shuffle, all in HD.

For most Indians, paying by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become almost absurdly routine. Scan a QR code, tap a few buttons and the money moves instantly. There is no card machine, no cash, and - most importantly - for the user, no visible fee. That may be about to change. India has paved the way for banks and payment companies to charge merchants a fee on UPI transactions, potentially ending a decade-long experiment in free digital payments. The government has yet to decide the rate or exactly where it will apply, but proposals under discussion include a merchant discount...

P!nk's official live video for 'Try'