Free Republic

Vatican Now in Crisis Management Mode with German BishopsNEWS ANALYSIS: Sources say that two senior cardinals wanted to bring the president of the German bishops’ conference to Rome for correction regarding his recent controversial comments, but were overruled by Pope Francis.VATICAN CITY — In January, two Vatican cardinals wanted to summon the president of the German bishops’ conference to Rome and correct him about a media interview in which he expressed his dissent from Church teaching in a number of areas. Such a meeting, which some believe should have been used to give the Vatican’s formal opposition to the...

CAIRO - A giant container ship remained wedged sideways in the Suez Canal on Friday as signs of its potentially huge global economic toll emerged with shipping rates rising and cargo ships being rerouted away from the vital waterway. The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged vessel whose length is nearly the height of the Empire State Building, has been stuck in the canal since Tuesday, creating a massive traffic jam on both sides of the waterway that connects Asia to Europe. On Friday morning, the canal’s service provider, Leth Agencies, said in a tweet that the Ever Given “remains grounded in...

Minnesota state representative Jeremy Munson (R-Crystal Lake) introduced a bill, HF2243, Thursday that would allow Minnesota counties to secede from the state and join South Dakota. The legislation would start the process to allow Minnesota counties to join a neighboring state. Under the bill, a Minnesota county would be able to apply to U.S. Congress to amend the state’s boundaries. “State lines have been relocated many times in American history because it just takes an interstate compact between two state legislatures and the approval of Congress,” Munson said on his website.

“...A bug known as a whitefly received a gene from a plant, and that DNA influx... changed it... The bug has been causing massive damage to tomato, potato, and tobacco crops, as the new gene allowed it to evade protections that plants develop against these pests.... ...As far as we know, ours is the first example of horizontal transfer of a functional gene from plant to animal,”... ...horizontal gene transfer occurs when a species gets genetic code from another species and... incorporates those genes in its DNA. Genes are typically transmitted vertically, from parents to offspring, and don’t involve inter-species...

CHRISTIAN LIFE PRINCIPLES FROM PROVERBS God’s Word is written for our instruction. As one must dive deep for pearls and dig deep for precious stones, so must we dive deep into God’s Word if we are going to uncover its powerful principles.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro MayorkasHomeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has fired almost all members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) -- the latest sign by the agency of its intention to move away from the practices of the prior administration.Mayorkas, in a letter sent Friday and obtained by Politico, told the committee that he is ending the terms of the 32 current members, and intends to "reconstitute" the council once a "new model" has been developed.

On a February morning, in a courtroom armored with Plexiglas shields meant to stem the spread of virus, Philadelphia prosecutors offered updates on hundreds of cases that lawyers said challenge basic ideas about how justice is served. On the one hand, the victims — small business owners and big corporate chains alike — had sustained millions of dollars in damage during last year’s uprisings against police brutality. On the other, the accused perpetrators were so impoverished virtually all qualified for public defenders, meaning they’d likely never be able to pay restitution.

An upscale Detroit restaurant has sparked an outrage among stoners and social justice warriors for posting their dress code on Facebook — which includes not stinking of marijuana. The Caucus Club Detroit also reminded people that hoodies and jerseys are not acceptable attire and that people should, at minimum, be wearing business casual attire if they come in to eat. “Seriously people, hoodies and jerseys are not business attire. Neither are ball caps 🧢 and sneakers 👟. Most importantly, if you smell like marijuana don’t even think of stepping inside the Caucus Club,” the post read. They also used the...

Days after the Ever Given became lodged in the canal, its rudder has been freed and dredging is complete. Some salvagers hope it could be freed this weekend, but the wait for shipping to resume continues. Egyptian authorities Wednesday were engaged in a complicated effort to dislodge a giant container ship stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking all traffic on one of the world’s busiest shipping arteries. The huge vessel got stuck in the canal sideways, with its bow wedged in one bank and its stern nearly touching the other, on Tuesday during a dust storm when wind speeds reached...

Watching and listening to Joe Biden struggle through a press conference, and the complicit media trying to change the subject from “kids in cages,” I keep thinking back to Max Weber’s famous line about how modern bureaucratic government would end up forging new “iron cages” that we had thought to have got rid of with the arrival of liberal democracy in the Enlightenment. Biden looks to be somewhere between trapped in a cage of his own making, and a padded cell of some kind.

"In a Class of Her Own" is the Chinese version of the Korean "Sungkyunkwan Scandal." A poor girl disguises herself as a boy and becomes a student of an historical academy. Both of her roommates fall in love with her. This song shows off the one-sided love of the young rebel roommate.

ercenaries in helicopters plucked survivors from body-strewn beaches and streets in northern Mozambique yesterday after a convoy of foreign contractors was attacked as it tried to flee Islamist militants. Dozens of expatriates were killed or left missing in an ambush outside their hotel compound in the strategic hub of Palma, close to Africa’s biggest gas project. Last night relatives of those unaccounted for were struggling to discover their fate. There was anger about the lack of an effective evacuation plan amid repeated warnings that Palma was a target for insurgents in Cabo Delgado province who have become increasingly well-equipped and...

A review of data from 87 regions worldwide found that in about 98 percent of the comparisons, there was no evidence that lockdowns reduced the number of COVID-19 deaths. The locking down of healthy people in their homes in order to prevent the spread of disease is an unprecedented public health move that has had devastating effects on the economy and has set a dangerous precedent for freedom and human rights. If the lockdowns saved millions of lives, most people would feel they could be justified. But if these lockdowns have been ineffective, they’re easily—as Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya,...

Funny video of Biden getting knocked over by the windBiden Wizard of Oz

One official in West Chester Township, Ohio, took a unique step in combating anti-Asian sentiment, stripping off his shirt during a town hall meeting to show scars from war. The official made his daring gambit as anti-Asian violence continues to rise in the United States, including a mass shooting in Atlanta that took eight lives, six of whom were Asian women. Investigators are still looking into whether the suspect in that case will be charged with a hate crime.

United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has hired as its first “chief of diversity and inclusion” a person who posted anti-Trump memes on his Facebook page, including one that compared the former president to Adolf Hitler.

A 23-year-old man has been arrested and charged with murder for stabbing a 66-year-old grandmother and her dog to death in a random attack in a Los Angeles park. Ricardo Saldivar is behind bars after Jeanne Edgar was found lying in Lone Hill Park in San Dimas with multiple stab wounds alongside her beloved fluffy white dog, Sashi, on Thursday afternoon. Saldivar was taken to hospital after Joe Page saw the attack and knocked him out by throwing a rock at his head in a desperate effort to stop him.

(President Trump's Operation Warp Speed Update) Total Vaccine Doses Delivered: 180,644,125 (4,946,300 J&J) Administered: 140,180,735 (2,982,453 J&J) People Vaccinated, At Least One Dose: 91,707,729 Fully Vaccinated: 50,141,769

The deadly events of July 30, 2020, marked the end of a “chain of failure” that began seven months before, when an AAV platoon belonging to 3rd Amphibian Assault Battalion at Camp Pendleton, Calif., received inoperable amphibious vehicles just a few months before they’d join the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit to train for an overseas deployment, according to the senior investigator.The battalion “did not properly train or equip this AAV Platoon for a very difficult MEU training cycle and deployment,” the investigator wrote. “They formed the platoon late, the platoon was not properly trained and evaluated to join the 15th...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Friday it will issue a proposed rule to preserve and fortify a program for people who are living illegally in the United States after entering as children, nicknamed “Dreamers.”