Free Republic

You get ten questions of current events. I got 8/10 right. See if you really are a 'News Junky'!.............

Mohammad Baghdadi Khan responded to criticism online by writing, "Who said councillors can’t drive cars like this?" A newly elected Green councillor in Bolton has posted video footage of himself driving a Lamborghini shortly after winning a seat in last week’s local elections. Mohammad Baghdadi Khan, also known as Baggy Khan, shared the video online following his victory in the Halliwell ward of Bolton, Greater Manchester, reports the Daily Mail. The footage shows Khan behind the wheel of a Lamborghini Huracan Spyder, a model that can cost up to £270,000. The clip also includes scenes from his election win. Reports...

BLUE MOUNDS, Wisc. – Ridglan Farms, a breeder of beagles for scientific experiments, has withstood attacks from the animal rights movement for years. Activists have broken into its buildings to document the conditions inside them, rescued some dogs, and pushed Wisconsin authorities to cite the company for animal abuse. On April 30, Ridglan finally buckled to the public pressure, handing the movement against animal testing one of its biggest triumphs. Big Dog Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy announced that the groups reached an agreement to purchase 1,500 beagles for an undisclosed amount of money. The dogs are...

Michigan Democrats quietly introduced legislation last month that would legalize assisted suicide in the state. While the country was distracted by other issues, Democrats in Lansing rolled out a package of bills designed to create what they call a “Death with Dignity Act.” The name sounds so gentle and compassionate, yet it is anything but. According to the Midland Daily News, House Bills 5825 through 5828 seek to create a legal process to allow terminally ill patients to obtain medication from doctors that would kill them. The text of House Bill 5825 says it would “regulate physician assistance for patient-requested...

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s White House counterterrorism director Sebastian Gorka told The Post that he believes China intentionally flooded the United States with fentanyl in a present-day “Opium War” designed to weaken America through the “targeted killing” of its citizens. Gorka unloaded the blistering assessment Monday in a “Pod Force One” interview with The Post’s Miranda Devine — before Trump departed Tuesday afternoon for a state visit to Beijing that is expected to focus on trade relations. “They see our city on a hill as the newest version of the British Empire, and it is now payback time for the...

The Supreme Court is continuing its agenda to allow states to impose race-neutral congressional district maps with a decision to allow Alabama to abandon a plan adopted by a lower court that demanded two black-majority districts, and the 6-3 majority left Sonia Sotomayor seething in rage. She claimed, as part of the minority, "The court today unceremoniously discards the district court's meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding and careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue. As with all vacaturs of this kind from this court, the district...

When President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in Beijing later this week, there will be a lot to discuss: war, peace, Iran, Taiwan, trade. Trump has vowed to bring up another issue too: the case of Ezra Jin. A Christian pastor and the leader of the Zion Church, Jin was arrested by Chinese police in October and his family hasn’t been able to speak with him since. Frannie Block has been following the case ever since Jin’s arrest, and has obtained exclusive access to never-before-seen footage of Chinese police arresting Christians, audio recordings of police interrogations, and...

It’s safe to say the WNBA is the most toxic and dysfunctional professional sports league in US history. And the league is incapable of learning from its mistakes. As Joe Hoft reported earlier this year, Caitlin Clark was injurted in the 2026 pre-season opener for the Indianapolis Fever. They had their golden goose, and they ran it over. To date, rather than provide officiating that was fair and protected Clark, the league allowed women in the league to pull, push, hit, poke, hammer, and totally abuse Clark. The beatings and abuse took their toll. No one could have put up...

Ireland has a unique relationship to climate change. The country has always relied on its pastoral landscapes for its national character, but the escalating climate crisis threatens this tradition because of rising temperatures and sea levels, and deforestation. Given Irish literature’s continued interest in nature, contemporary Irish poets are tackling these issues in their writing. Poetry plays a special role in times of mass environmental decline. As a literary genre that relies on flexible, open-ended and even conflicting language to address complicated issues, poetry is especially well-suited to address the complex entanglement of local and global concerns, human and nonhuman...

“Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well. On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state. The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives. It also cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment, which tossed aside any pretense of principle in a raw...

Massie is accused by an ex-girlfriend of making a hush money offer after she (the girlfriend) was dismissed from a job arranged by an associate of Massie, when the associate and Massie had a falling out.

State Rep. Juandalynn Givan (D-Birmingham) called U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Associate Justice Clarence Thomas an "Uncle Tom" and the "one who sold us out in Africa" after a recent redistricting ruling on Monday. SCOTUS struck down a 2023 federal court-ordered Alabama congressional map on Monday. The ruling paves the way for Republicans in Alabama to likely pick up at least one congressional seat in the 2026 midterms. Republicans currently have a narrow majority in Congress, and redistricting battles are happening in multiple states across the nation. A special master hired by a three-judge panel in Birmingham redrew the map for...

Gallrein (Trump-backed challenger 48%, Massie (small "l" libertarian incumbent) 43%

It is too early to foretell the future production from the Arckaringa Basin. There are numerous steps before oil production can start. For example, a 300-kilometre pipeline to Port Bonython, or a spur to link the Arckaringa Basin to the existing Moomba-Port Bonython pipeline, will need to be built before any oil could reach the market. Crude oil storage and export capacity at Port Bonython will also have to be increased significantly to accommodate extra crude.There is likely to be bipartisan support for shale oil production in South Australia. However the potential for carbon-intensive shale production in South Australia is...

More than 1,700 people are trapped aboard a cruise ship docked in France after a 90-year-old passenger died from suspected norovirus — just days after a separate virus killed three and sickened multiple others on a different cruise. Passengers and crew traveling on the Ambassador Cruise Line are being forced to remain on the vessel after arriving in Bordeaux on Tuesday, French authorities said. The quarantine comes after an elderly passenger died after roughly 50 people started showing symptoms of norovirus — a highly contagious stomach virus that causes diarrhea and vomiting. The ship, which is carrying mostly British and...

0:51 VIDEO AT LINK.................

Suppose that you are a large U.S. state with a dynamic modern economy. Here’s an idea for a strategy for powering your electrical grid: Intentionally disinvest in your functioning fossil fuel generation plants; fail to maintain them adequately, and let them age into obsolescence. Meanwhile, encourage and even subsidize the development of solar panels as a replacement. After all, solar power is cheaper! Those who follow the policy of New York State with respect to our electrical grid will recognize this description as covering the essential elements of our strategy. In our case, the strategy was mainly enacted into law...

The ex-hooker who allegedly hired a hitman to kill his Chelsea art-dealer hubby coolly sat in Manhattan federal court Tuesday as prosecutors showed jurors grisly photos of the victim’s bloodied corpse. Daniel Carrera Sikkema, wearing a gray blazer over a white shirt, showed no emotion during opening statements at the kick-off of his trial — even as prosecutors displayed images of the body of his much older estranged husband, Brent Sikkema, who was riddled with stab wounds from the January 2024 killing inside his home in Rio de Janeiro. Federal prosecutors alleged that Sikkema, in his mid-50s, hired Cuban national...

When a career CIA operative steps before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today, the moment carries more than procedural weight. This is not another bureaucratic exercise in finger-pointing. It is the latest—and potentially most damaging—crack in the edifice of official denial that has shielded the federal government’s role in the origins of COVID-19 for more than six years. Senator Rand Paul, the committee chairman, has made clear what is coming: confirmation from inside the intelligence community that the lab-leak reality was known early, suppressed aggressively, and that American taxpayer dollars helped make it possible. Paul told Fox...

Nine years since his first state visit to China, US President Donald Trump touches down in Beijing ahead of the highly anticipated China-US presidential summit. Trump said on social media on Monday that he was “very much looking forward” to his China visit and that “great things will happen for both countries”.