Free Republic

China's home prices continued to rise in December 2015, adding to signs of improving in the housing market, although the recovery remains uneven across the country. Average new home prices in 70 major cities rose 7.7 percent in December from a year earlier, quickening from November's 6.5 percent rise, the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) said on Monday. Even a mild recovery in the housing market would ease concerns of an acute slowdown in China's economy, which is expected to show its weakest growth in 25 years in 2015. The NBS data showed on-month price rises were seen in 39 of...

Air raids by a Saudi-led military coalition killed at least 15 policemen and wounded more than 20 people when they hit police buildings in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, overnight, medical and police sources said on Monday. The strikes hit a local police building and the headquarters of the traffic police, according to medics and residents, who said some people remained trapped under the rubble. Two police sources said the number of deaths in the strike against the police building has risen to 25, most of whom were policemen. They could not provide a breakdown of the number of policemen and civilians...

If Silver Spring Township officials and a local real estate developer didn't know that an old stone house on Route 11 is the reputed birthplace of the U.S. Bill of Rights before they started demolition there last week, they definitely know now. On Jan. 6, workers began demolishing a two-story stone house at 7086 Carlisle Pike in Silver Spring Township that most recently was the site of Stone House Auto Sales. This just isn't any stone house, however. Built in 1780 as the James Bell Tavern, the structure hosted the Stony Ridge Convention on July 3, 1788, a meeting of...

Russian Kamov Ka-52 (NATO reporting name “Hokum-B”) helicopters would be about to deploy to Syria according to a source who talked to ITAR-TASS.

On 16 January 1991, seven Boeing B-52Gs fully loaded with AGM-86C conventional air-launched cruise missiles took flight from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on a top-secret mission to destroy targets inside Iraq. Those 35h missions were the first combat sorties of Operation Desert Storm. Lesser known is that the mission, dubbed Secret Squirrel, also marked the combat debut of the AGM-86C, with 35 weapons fired and 85-95% of targets successfully destroyed, according to the US air force. A derivative of the nuclear-tipped AGM-86B, the B-52G would not have been deployed if only armed with nuclear cruise missiles and unguided bombs. Now,...

This is an animation of dragonflies being eaten by bullfrogs and they get their revenge by a clever well planed attack. The dragonflies know they can't eat the bullfrog but they have knowledge of the Hawk (Red Tailed Chicken Hawk), eating frogs. They used what they had, there wings, to get revenge. Thanks for watching. :)

Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, Yale fellow, "Distinguished Professor of the Year", and Harvard Phd, states that president Obama's intention is to "correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel." Moreover, Dr. Rubenstein states that president Obama is extremely pro Muslim due to his family past to the point of "wanting to see the destruction of Israel."

Donald Trump, speaking to a religious crowd at Virginia's Liberty University on Monday, turned to scripture. "We're going to protect Christianity. I can say that. I don't have to be politically correct," he said. "Two Corinthians, 3:17, that's the whole ballgame ... is that the one you like?"

I am trying as hard as possible to get aboard the Ted Cruz bandwagon, but there is somethin' about Ted. Listening to Rush' radio program this morning, I heard an ad by the Cruz campaign, and it hit me... Ted sounded exactly like Al Gore. Not his positions, mind you, but the manner of his delivery, his style, his slick way with words and delivery. At one point, he raised his voice in excitement, almost yelling and then "growled" in the manner Gore displayed when the campaign got tough. I encourage someone to get videos of the two and sound...

Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, parents of two of the Benghazi dead, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods, would disagree with the notion that history is a lie agreed upon. They do not agree with and do not consent to Hillary Clinton’s attempted rewriting of history and the attempted hiding of what is arguably her criminal negligence in what she calls the “fog of war.”

The Prime Minister’s Office dismissed as “unacceptable and wrong” uncharacteristically sharp public criticism of Israel’s legal standards leveled Monday by US envoy Dan Shapiro, who said at times there seemed to be one standard of law in the West Bank for Israelis, and another for Palestinians. “As Israel's devoted friend, and its most stalwart partner, we believe that Israel must develop stronger and more credible responses to questions about the rule of law in the West Bank,” Shapiro said during an address at the annual Institute for Strategic Studies (INSS) Conference in Tel Aviv. Noting that the recent indictments in...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says he bought a gun on Christmas Eve to protect his family from Islamic State militants. “I have a right to protect my family,” Rubio said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I have a right to protect my family if someone were to come after us. In fact, if ISIS were to visit us or our communities at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability I have to protect my family from them or from a criminal or anyone else who seeks to...

Donald Trump has lined up three New York hedge funds, including money from billionaire George Soros, to invest $160 million in his Chicago skyscraper, a key piece in perhaps the largest construction financing in the city's history, according to real estate sources and public documents. Despite reports about the project's record-breaking sales, most of them from Trump himself, many Chicago real estate developers and lenders have expressed doubts about whether the 90-story tower would ever be built."It is such a huge project, and the prices he said he was getting were so outside the norm," said Robert Glickman, president and...

Tesla made a raft of promises when it accepted a hefty tax-incentive package to build its Gigafactory battery plant just outside Reno, Nevada. While the building itself is coming together ahead of schedule, one Reno newspaper discovered that other parts of the deal have yet to live up to the government's expectations. The Reno Gazette-Journal crunched some numbers, and it discovered that several projections are missing the mark. The Gigafactory, built in partnership with Panasonic, was supposed to produce 700 permanent jobs by the end of 2015, for example. In reality, fewer than 100 have been hired. The company's payroll...

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) said Monday that the birthplace of Sen. Ted Cruz is "fair game," adding to a growing chorus questioning whether the Texas Republican's Canadian birth could affect his ability to secure the GOP presidential nomination. "When you run for president of the United States, any question is fair game. So let the people decide," Branstad told reporters Monday. Cruz, speaking to reporters in Baton Rouge, La., noted that Branstad's son has thrown his support elsewhere, hosting fundraisers for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump began his Monday-morning speech on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by touting his "record" crowd size there. Trump was speaking in Lynchburg, Virginia, at Liberty University's convocation. The Republican presidential front-runner noted that he also drew a big audience in 2012 when he addressed the Christian university.

On Tuesday, Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law Senate Bill 13, which eliminates the option on election ballots to vote a straight party ticket with a single action. Michigan voters who want to vote a straight-party ticket can still do so, but will have to mark their votes for each candidate one at a time. Some evidence suggests that Democratic voters use the straight-party voting option more than Republican voters do. Republicans in Michigan have tended to support eliminating it, while Democrats have been united behind keeping it in place. This marks the third time the Michigan Legislature has voted...

Hilarious comparison between ballsy Putin and Wimpy Obama.

Not a Fan by Theodore Dalrymple January 16, 2016 One should not speak ill of the dead, of course, especially of the recently dead, but it does not follow that one should speak well of them, or speak of them at all. Personally I was astonished at the amount of coverage given to the death of David Bowie. One might have thought he was really a figure of world historical importance such as David Beckham or Leonard DiCaprio. On the day after his death, the supposedly serious newspaper that I take most often when I am in Britain, The Guardian,...