Free Republic

This was supposed to be Jack Ma's finest hour: A year ago to the day, his Ant Group was meant to go public in a US$37 billion blaze of glory. Instead Beijing reined in his empire, abruptly clipping the wings of corporate China's biggest star. Now, to the cautious cheer of investors, the billionaire Alibaba e-commerce tycoon is taking his first tentative steps back on to the global stage with a low-key trip to Europe where he's cultivating hobbies like horticulture. It's a far cry from the height of Ma's statesman-like powers in 2017 when he travelled to New York...

HOLEB (ALEPPO) – In a large restoration project of 10 archaeological churches in Syria, Russian scientists and archeologists plan to renovate the St Helena Church in Holeb. Russian news agency TASS, reports that archaeologists from the Saint Petersburg-based Research Institute of Physical Culture have conducted a complete survey of the church of St Helena, which dates back to the fifth century and is one of the oldest churches in Holeb. The Russian scientists will rely on photographs, videos and a scientific description of the church to develop a 3D model that will help in the future with restorations. The institute’s...

Laurel-Rose Von Hoffmann-Curzi, of Orinda, knew something was wrong early Saturday morning when she heard large "thunk" noises coming from the kitchen of her North Lake Tahoe vacation home. It was about 5:30 a.m., and Hoffmann-Curzi roused herself from bed to investigate the noise, presuming it was her 29-year-old son being "rough" in the kitchen. Instead, she saw the back of a massive bear, illuminated by the light from the freezer, which it had ravaged. Within seconds, Hoffmann-Curzi saw a paw swipe at her. "The next thing I knew, I saw the big paw and nothing else. I was just...

Drew Hernandez and Robert Barnes join The Alex Jones Show to break down the details in the Kyle Rittenhouse case. Segment...

The Church should take a leading role in protecting the environment and addressing climate change, says Bishop LohmannThe Catholic Church should take a leading role in protecting the environment and addressing climate change, said the bishop who is the commissioner for environmental and climate issues at the German bishops' conference. "We take our responsibility for creation seriously. As the Catholic Church, we should not sit at the back of the train but rather be at the front as far as possible," Bishop Rolf Lohmann said during a presentation Oct. 25 in Bonn of the German Catholic Church's first report on...

PHOENIX (AP) — Skin tone impacts the everyday lives and the long-term success of Latinos in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center finding that comes as the issue of colorism has become more mainstream. The nonpartisan research center surveyed 3,375 Latinos who live in the U.S., finding that 62% say having darker skin hurts their chances of getting ahead while 59% say having light skin helps them. The study was released Thursday. It comes just months after colorism — discrimination based on skin tone, often from within someone’s own ethnic group — captured wide attention with the...

(RNS) — Texas voters on Tuesday (Nov. 2) overwhelmingly supported a measure barring governments from taking any kind of action that limits religious services, such as the public health orders that shut down houses of worship and businesses earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposition 3, which will add a clause to the Texas Constitution forbidding state or local authorities from prohibiting or limiting religious services, garnered 62.4% of votes, according to unofficial results from the Texas secretary of state. The measure had the support of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and some other — but not all — religious...

Cleo Smith’s alleged abductor is set to be transported to a Perth prison today. Terence Darrell Kelly appeared at Carnarvon Magistrates Court for a special late-afternoon hearing on Thursday, facing multiple charges over the disappearance of the four-year-old, who was allegedly locked up in his home for 18 days, It is understood the 36-year-old is currently being remanded at a padded police cell in Carnarvon, after injuring himself twice while in custody. It is not yet clear whether Mr Kelly will be transported to Perth via road or plane at this stage, however The West Australian understands he will be...

A newly-released intelligence bulletin, obtained by ABC News, reveals a plot involving the use of a drone to disrupt an electrical grid in Pennsylvania in July 2020.

An Atlanta Waffle House employee has been accused of pulling a gun on a customer in a dispute over his order. According to police reports, Candy Franklin, the alleged victim, said he complained to the employee, Angelic Patterson, because his food order was wrong on several occasions. WSB-TV, a local TV station reported on the incident, which it said occurred at the Marietta Street location in Atlanta, Georgia, early Wednesday morning. "It all happened over cheese eggs. At first, they didn't bring them to me. Then they brought me normal eggs and I said that I ordered eggs with cheese...

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal ruling that Baltimore City can’t reject a request on behalf of the Catholic conservative group Saint Michael’s Media to rent out the MECU Pavilion.The “church militant” group’s rally coincides with this month’s meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, planned next door in Harbor East.The rally will be emceed by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, whose rallies have led to violence in the past, and feature former Chief Strategist for President Trump, Steve Bannon, who was recently held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena in the probe into...

An archaeological site in northern Israel is now thought to possibly contain a lost Roman temple. The temple, which was housed within a larger ancient Roman complex, would have been built by King Herod, who presided over the province of Judea for 33 years, between 37 B.C.E. and 4 B.C.E. The structure is located within Omrit, an archeological site that is also home to the remains of other buildings with Roman influences. Though Omrit is not very accessible to the public today due to its remote locale, the site was once highly trafficked by international visitors and researchers throughout the...

Health officials have said Canada’s fourth wave of COVID-19 is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” According to data compiled by the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, when it comes to Canada as a whole, eight per cent of residents remain unvaccinated. A new poll from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute suggests unvaccinated Canadians’ top reasons for avoiding the vaccine are “personal freedom” and “health concerns.” Canada is the 14th most vaccinated country in the world, but a third of those polled said the main reason they haven’t received a vaccination is because COVID-19 is not...

A petition from advocacy groups is calling for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop claiming it does not have relationships with or accept financial support from drug manufacturers and other companies that might benefit from agency research. The CDC has accepted millions of dollars through the CDC Foundation, according to the groups behind the petition. During fiscal years 2014 through 2018, the CDC Foundation received $79.6 million from companies like Pfizer, Biogen, and Merck. Since it was created by Congress in 1995, the nonprofit organization has accepted $161 million from corporations. Public Citizen, Knowledge Ecology International,...

Dr. Anthony Fauci says that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not fund "gain-of-function" research in Wuhan and even if they did, the newly created superviruses are genetically too dissimilar to COVID to have caused the pandemic. The left-wing media allows this blather to accumulate without any critical analysis. First, no one, not myself or anyone I’m aware of, argues that a recombinant supervirus that has been published in scientific journals is COVID-19 or a close relative. If COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan lab, it would be a laboratory-created virus that the Wuhan scientists have not yet, and are...

Alec Baldwin was set to earn $150,000 as lead actor and $100,000 as producer, while $7,913 was earmarked for armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and $17,500 was set aside for the rental of weapons and $5,000 for rounds. The producers of the movie Rust earmarked $650,000 to pay themselves, $7,913 to pay their armorer and $350,000 as a contingency in case anything went wrong. That’s according to a draft of the production budget for the New Mexico-set Alec Baldwin Western obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, a fairly typical one for a film of its price, say experts who reviewed the document for...

Deliberately coughing at someone during the COVID-19 pandemic – even if nothing visible is emitted by the cougher – constitutes a criminal assault, an Alberta court has ruled in what lawyers say may be the world’s first such judicial pronouncement on the novel issue. It’s already sparking debate about how far Canada’s criminal law should reach. Judge Heather Lamoureux’s conclusion that “emitting a force consisting of lung-air molecules” qualifies as the use of force under the Criminal Code led her to convict a bar patron who removed his mask and coughed at a waitress. The incident occurred during a confrontation...

The CEO of McDonald’s is facing backlash after a text he sent to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot revealed he blamed parents for the recent fatal shootings of two kids in the city. "He doesn’t know what it is to be poor. People like him look at our community like garbage and at the same time want to sell us their products," Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, told The Chicago Tribune of McDonald’s Chris Kempczinski. "We give a lot of money to his corporation. He should put that money back into our community." A text Kempczinski sent...

@RandPaul I gave Fauci another chance today to come clean about the NIH's involvement in gain-of-function research and he chose to lie instead. His failures to do anything to help us get to the bottom of why the pandemic happened is why I believe he should resign.

The Biden administration has released the new rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ((OSHA) requiring 84 million private sector workers to get vaccinated for COVID-19.[snip]The OSHA rule requires employers with 100 or more employees to put vaccine requirements in place for all staff, or face fines of up to $14,000 per violation. The agency is allowed to put into place an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) when it determines workers are at “grave risk.”