Free Republic

The American flag has become a symbol of resistance against China in the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, prominently waved throughout the city this past weekend as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowds.Millions of Hong Kong residents have participated in rallies since early June against a bill proposed in the city’s legislature that would have allowed China to extradite anyone present in Hong Kong by accusing him or her of breaking Chinese law. Under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy China agreed to when the U.K. handed Hong Kong over in 1997, Hong Kong must...

An African migrant has been arrested on murder charges in Germany after allegedly pushing a mother and her 8-year-old from a station platform in front of a moving train, killing the child in the process, according to reports.The incident took place around 10 am on Monday morning at Frankfurt’s central railway station.Horrified witnesses allegedly saw the African randomly target the woman and her son, pushing them off platform 7 in front of an InterCity Express train, according to German tabloid Bild.

WEST MIFFLIN, Pa. — A woman who allegedly urinated on potatoes at a Pittsburgh-area Walmart store turned herself in and will face charges, police said Tuesday. Grace Brown will be charged with criminal mischief, open lewdness, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness, West Mifflin police said.

Apostle of the Indies, Bartolome' de Las Casas, died JULY 17, 1566. In 1502, he left Spain for the Caribbean, which was called the West Indies, where he became a hacendado of an encomienda (plantation) and a slave owner of native Americans. He participated in slave raids and military expeditions against the native populations of Hispaniola and Cuba. But in 1511, six years before Martin Luther started the Reformation, the life of Bartolome' de Las Casas took a dramatic turn. He heard a church leader, Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos, speak: "I am a voice crying in the wilderness ......

A Seattle-based transgender former Amazon engineer has been arrested for allegedly hacking Capital One bank's systems to steal data it was storing on Amazon's Web Services cloud. Paige Thompson, 33, was arrested for breaking into the bank's systems to steal the addresses, phone numbers and names of 100million people in the United States. A portion of that figure - 140,000 - also had their social security numbers and 80,000 had their credit card details accessed. Thompson allegedly pulled it off between March and July of this year by breaking into the bank's servers through a misconfiguration in its firewall. The...

Assembly Democrats see greater public value in improving passenger rail from Burbank to Anaheim, relieving congestion on the busy Interstate 5 corridor before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and putting additional money into San Francisco commuter rail. The proposal has been taken more seriously in recent weeks, and supporters think it will meet the tricky legal requirements of the high-speed rail project. “I like the concept,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood). “Any project that doesn’t have a significant amount of service to the largest areas in the state doesn’t make much sense.”

Even the satirists at the Babylon Bee have a limit to jokes — and the attempts by Snopes to “fact check” their humor doesn’t qualify. In a message to subscribers yesterday, the Bee declared that Snopes was attempting to exploit its position as a Facebook partner to “deplatform” the conservative satire site. In response, the Babylon Bee has decided to sic their very real and non-humorous attorneys against the urban-legend site to put an end to their harassment: As you know, fake news—which is distinguished from satire by its intent to mislead—was widely considered a serious issue in the...

A 79-year-old self-described "cat lover" has been given a dose of paw and order by local authorities, who sentenced her to spend more than a week behind bars for continually doling out munchies to the neighborhood mousers. In Garfield Heights, Ohio, it's considered a minor misdemeanor to offer food to stray cats and dogs, according to Cleveland.com. Nancy Segula, a resident of the city who has received multiple citations for feeding stray felines, was ordered by a judge last week to spend 10 days in jail, Fox 8 reports.

California is rolling out a new “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum,” and “It’s as bad as you imagine,” writes Williamson M. Evers in his latest Wall Street Journal opinion column. Evers, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explains that: The document is filled with fashionable academic jargon like “positionalities,” “hybridities,” “nepantlas” and “misogynoir.” It includes faddish social-science lingo like “cis-heteropatriarchy” that may make sense to radical university professors and activists but doesn’t mean much to the regular folks who send their children to California’s public schools. It is difficult to comprehend the depth and breadth of the ideological bias...

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses .... Erratic (Paige A. Thompson) also posted frequently to Slack about her struggles with gender identity, lack of employment, and persistent suicidal thoughts.

The media has largely bought into Huawei’s “strong” half-year results today, but there’s a major catch in the report: the company’s quarter-by-quarter smartphone growth was zero.The telecom equipment and smartphone giant announced on Tuesday that its revenue grew 23.2% to reach 401.3 billion yuan ($58.31 million) in the first half of 2019 despite all the trade restrictions the U.S. slapped on it. Huawei’s smartphone shipments recorded 118 million units in H1, up 24% year-over-year.What about quarterly growth? Huawei didn’t say, but some quick math can uncover what it’s hiding. The company clocked a strong 39% in revenue growth in...

Senate Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday to undo the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. A group of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and progressive activists rallied outside the Supreme Court to unveil the amendment, which faces an unlikely path to being ratified. "Few decisions in the 200 and some odd years of this republic have threatened our democracy like Citizens United. People say they want to get rid of the swamp. Citizens United is the embodiment of the swamp," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at the rally. Schumer added that "overturning Citizens United...

President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that African Americans are so delighted with his attacks on the city of Baltimore and US congressman Elijah Cummings, an African American, that they are calling him at the White House in large numbers to thank him. He also claimed that African Americans are generally happy with his performance as president. "What I've done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done. Now, I'll say this: they are so happy, because I get the calls," he told reporters as he left for a speech in Virginia that was boycotted by black state lawmakers....

Construction of the $500 million Obama Presidential Center will have an “adverse impact” on historic Jackson Park that must be mitigated, a federal review has concluded. In a report triggered by Jackson Park’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the Federal Highway Administration homed in on the negative impact the four-building complex would have on the majestic Midway Plaisance and the Jackson Park Historic Landscape District. The project would diminish the “the historic property’s overall integrity by altering historic, internal spatial divisions that were designed as a single entity” by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the FHA...

President Trump issued a sharp message Tuesday to House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.: the real oversight is needed in the congressman’s home district. Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, Trump was asked about the ongoing feud between him and Cummings since Trump made derogatory remarks about Baltimore, which Cummings represents. “Take your Oversight Committee and go to Baltimore, you’ll learn a lot,” Trump said. This was after the president doubled down on his past criticism by calling Baltimore “the most unsafe city” in the U.S., despite receiving $15 billion in federal funding. The district received...

U.S.—With the Democratic primary debates in full swing, many fact-checking websites are preparing to review candidates’ statements for accuracy. Thankfully, Snopes, the most unbiased fact-checking website ever, has found a way to expedite their evaluation process. Since their original founding in 1957 by the KGB, Snopes has gained a reputation for objectively reporting what someone’s secret motivations probably were, and what they probably really meant when they said something. More recently, they have perfected the art of determining whether a satirical article is hilarious, left-leaning comedy or divisive, conservative-leaning fake news. As part of their ongoing goal of being able...

In colonial America, Bibles had to be imported from Britain as the British government strictly regulated the printing of religious materials. It was illegal to print Bibles in the English language without a license from the King. In 1663, Missionary John Elliot printed the first Bible in America at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but it was in the Indian language of Algonquin. Queen Elizabeth I, in 1589, had granted Christopher Barker the title of Royal Printer. He had the exclusive "perpetual royal privilege" to print Bibles in England. His son, Robert Barker, assumed the position of the King's Printer...

It’s been clear for a long time that CNN is part of the anti-Trump resistance. From morning to night, the various journalists, hosts and panelists on the network make that obvious. Still, it’s nice when someone comes out and admits it. And that was precisely the gift that Karen Finney bestowed this morning on CNN. Finney, who was a senior Hillary 2016 spokesperson, was part of a New Day panel pre-gaming the Dem debates. At one point, she said that although she'd like the Dems to discuss substantive issues like the economy, it's also important to call out President Trump's...

A Nebraska teacher visiting Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas found a 2.2-carat brown diamond, the largest diamond found at the park so far this year. Photo courtesy of Arkansas State Parks ========================================================== July 30 (UPI) -- A Nebraska man visiting Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park found a 2.2-carat brown diamond, the largest found at the park so far this year. Josh Lanik, 36, a schoolteacher from Hebron, told Arkansas State Parks officials he was visiting the park with his family July 24 when he spotted something shiny on the surface of the ground. "We took the kids...

The city council of Saonara, a town with 10,000 inhabitants just outside Padua, has introduced a new law making it illegal “to blaspheme against any faith or religion” and utter foul language in public.