Free Republic

I’m starting to lose track of how many people we’ve interviewed who have been arrested. The latest one is Cantopop singer and Hong Kong activist Denise Ho. She was arrested in Hong Kong today on charges of sedition, related to formerly being on the board of directors of Stand News, a pro-democracy HK media outlet. Stand News has now suspended operations after several former directors, editors, and staff were arrested and their office was raided. Very similar to what happened to the pro-democracy Apple Daily months ago. We met Denise in May 2019 at the Oslo Freedom Forum, where she...

Federal prosecutors dropped their case against the two prison guards accused of falsifying records and sleeping on the job as Jeffrey Epstein “committed suicide” in his jail cell. The feds dropped the case on December 13 during the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, however the news was made public on Thursday. In November 2019, two federal prison guards were arrested for ‘failing to check on’ pedophile Jeffrey Epstein the night he died in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The two prison guards, who were working overtime, broke protocols and failed to check on Epstein every 30 minutes even though...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Sky News that the US and NATO are expanding onto Russia's borders - and not the other way around. At his traditional end of year news conference, Mr Putin answered questions from the world's media. And he told Sky News' Russia Correspondent Diana Magnay that his country wasn't threatening anybody and that he didn't want conflict in Ukraine. But he said the ball "is in the West's court". Watch their exchange here in full. (Click link for video)

A friend of mine who’s a commercial pilot just sent me this pic of a passenger on his plane. https://twitter.com/RealPhillyP/status/1475898088606814210?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The seizure comes as the cash-strapped country tries to resolve an ongoing diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia last April announced an indefinite ban on Lebanese agricultural products after officials said they had thwarted an attempt to smuggle 5.3 million Captagon pills hidden in a shipment of pomegranates at Jeddah port. Captagon is manufactured in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and is often exported to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. The Saudi authorities have since announced the seizure of several shipments containing millions of Captagon pills from Lebanon and Syria.

The omicron-fueled surge that is sending COVID-19 cases rocketing in the U.S. is putting children in the hospital in record numbers, and experts lament that most of the youngsters are not vaccinated. “It’s just so heartbreaking,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious-disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It was hard enough last year, but now you know that you have a way to prevent all this.”

Dear Cardinal Cupich: At least obey the rubrics of the Novus Ordo Mass Dear Cardinal Cupich:I write to you as a Catholic priest on the feast of St. Thomas Becket, who is commemorated in the Octave of Christmas. St. Thomas Becket was certainly a complex man, but in the end—and the end is ultimately important to us all-- how he died so violently in the Cathedral at Canterbury at the hands of assassins driven to that terrible deed by King Henry II, made him a saint, not by a proclamation from Rome, but rather because of the “common” Catholics...

http://JesusisSavior.com

President Joe Biden declared on Wednesday that despite record inflation and a record trade deficit, he has the “strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years.” “We’re ending 2021 with what one analyst described as the strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years,” the president tweeted, adding, “Let’s keep the progress going”:

IMPORTANT STUDY—“From Traditionis Custodes to the Responsa ad Dubia: On the Hermeneutics of Our Holy Father Francis’s Legislation” The following article by Padre Federico, first published on December 21 by InfoCatholica, represents a unique approach to the crisis unleashed by the motu proprio and the CDW responses: namely, the author advocates consistently employing, for their interpretation and application, the principles repeatedly enunciated by Pope Francis himself. We express our thanks to Gerhard Eger for the translation.INTRODUCTIONOn 18 December 2021, His Holiness Pope Francis approved Responsa ad dubia (RAD) to his motu proprio Traditionis custodes (TC).Some consider the Responsa a...

In an exclusive leak given to Big League Politics by a current nursing student who chose to remain anonymous for fear of blowback, we were able to confirm that students who attend Florida’s Keiser University and practice at the Cleveland Clinic are being forced to take Covid-19 inoculations. What’s more, Florida’s Cleveland Clinic, which hosts various medical students, has explicitly stated that they refuse to grant any type of exemption – including ones for religious and even medical reasons.

A European model has sparked outrage after revealing she wears a “fat suit” so that she can appear in plus-sized ads. The woman — identified by The Daily Dot as Karoline Bjørnelykke — took to TikTok late last month saying she was going to expose “a secret from the modeling industry.” At the beginning of the clip — which has been viewed more than 300,000 times — Bjørnelykke shares a mirror selfie showing off her slender physique. However, she goes on to state that she is often hired to appear in ads for sizes XL through 5XL.

Federal prosecutors dropped their case against the two prison guards accused of falsifying records and sleeping on the job as Jeffrey Epstein “committed suicide” in his jail cell. The feds dropped the case on December 13 during the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, however the news was made public on Thursday. In November 2019, two federal prison guards were arrested for ‘failing to check on’ pedophile Jeffrey Epstein the night he died in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The two prison guards, who were working overtime, broke protocols and failed to check on Epstein every 30 minutes even though...

A Nashville, Tennessee, woman who got tired of men ghosting her after dates created an innovative and unique strategy to find out what went wrong. Shanna, 30, shared a now-viral TikTok earlier this month where she revealed that she created an exit interview test for men to understand why they left her on “read.” In her video, she explained that she went on a Bumble date and soon after, tragedy struck: He stopped texting her. Shanna posted screenshots of her survey that had questions such as, “Why did you ghost Shanna?” and “What could Shanna do to stop getting ghosted?”

CNBC reported: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday advised people against going on cruises regardless of their vaccination status after a recent surge in positive Covid cases onboard ships as the highly contagious omicron variant sweeps the world. The CDC increased its travel warning for cruises to the highest level as the agency is investigating or observing dozens of ships that have had Covid outbreaks. The stocks of Royal Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Carnival fell on the news. The CDC warned that Covid transmits easily between people in close quarters on ships, and the...

I thought US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was going to retire, but now it looks like she wants to keep inside trading with information about regulation and government spending that investors don’t have. Today, her investments were released for the last two weeks of December. Largely, her investments were in call options for Disney, Saleforce, Roblox, Micron and Google (Alphabet). I would prefer that she retire and replace Cramer on CNBC’s Mad Money. So she could bang the gong instead of her gavel. Or call it CNBC Investing Club with Nancy Pelosi. Her defense that she should be allowed to...

Santander accidentally paid out $175 million to thousands of accounts on Christmas Day in a massive blunder. Approximately 75,000 Brits or their companies received a second wage or supplier payment from Santander account holders on December 25. SNIP Santander must now launch cross-company talks to get the funds back – as bosses fear the money has already been spent by some account holders. Banks are keen to avoid pulling the funds out of accounts directly for fear it would put some customers in their overdrafts.

Several small grass fires have sparked due to downed power lines and transformers blowing, according to the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities have also closed roads near the fires and thousands of people are reportedly out of power. The entire town of Superior and the City of Louisville have be3:10 p.m.: UCHealth Broomfield Hospital reports that it has received six patients who need fire-related medical treatment. 3 p.m.: The City of Arvada and many communities north of Denver are dealing with power outages caused by the wind and fires.en evacuated as have some nearby neighborhoods.

A once-obese beagle named Wolfgang got an early start on his New Year’s Eve resolution by getting healthy, making the necessary lifestyle changes and losing over 60 pounds. The doggo weighed 90 pounds in 2019 when he was first fostered by lawyer Erin McManis and her husband Chad Schatz. Now he weighs 29 pounds. The two shared on Wolgang’s Instagram a side-by-side transformation pic of his weight loss.

Exclusive-Historic conclave: Chinese bishops, priests brief Hong Kong clerics on Xi's view of religion HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese bishops and religious leaders briefed senior Hong Kong Catholic clergymen on President Xi Jinping's vision of religion with "Chinese characteristics" in an unprecedented meeting organised by the mainland's representative office in the city, according to four clerics.The clerics who attended or had knowledge of the Oct 31 meeting described it as Beijing's most assertive move yet in its attempts to influence Hong Kong’s diocese, which is answerable to the Vatican and includes some high-ranking leaders who have long been defenders of...