Free Republic

Churches now are searching for ways to fill emptied sanctuaries. But many also are seeking ways to establish a permanent presence in cyber-space. Moving into the gap and offering to lead the way out of the desert into a new church of Meta: Mark Zuckerberg. The recent decline in regular viewers, the drastic decline in Meta stock value, and the demise of his Diem currency do not seem to have deterred Zuckerberg from his ambitious goal of incorporating the faithful into his metaverse. As Elizabeth Dias explained in a recent New York Times article, "Facebook is shaping the future of...

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The U.S. government has proposed the latter half of May as the timing for President Joe Biden's visit to Japan to attend the "Quad" summit that will also involve the leaders of Australia and India, according to a diplomatic source.

Join together with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Jen Psaki, whose job it is to reassure the press and the public that the main character in the White House has everything under control, has become a bit of a main character herself. She’s been showing up on podcasts and answering “How I Get It Done” questions in the Cut amid the fallout from her Dec. 6 comment dismissing the idea of mailing Americans free COVID rapid tests. It’s certainly a contrast to the early-days post-Trump heroism ascribed to her by fans who circulated clips of her fending off hostile questioners with hashtags like #PsakiBomb, celebrating how she “destroyed”...

Maryland is hoping a financial shot in the arm will entice state residents to get a COVID-19 booster. A $2 million lottery would be split between 12 randomly selected adults who had received an additional dose, Gov. Larry Hogan announced Tuesday. Half a million dollars would be awarded to a boosted adult on Feb. 15, followed by ten weekly $50,000 prizes, the Republican said. The one million dollar haul would then be handed out at the end of the promotion.

During a House Democrat briefing on Tuesday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) spoke about the RNC. Hakeem Sekou Jeffries is an American politician and attorney who has served as the U.S. representative for New York’s 8th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he represents a district that covers parts of eastern Brooklyn and southwestern Queens in New York City. Wikipedia Forbes Breaking News video

Visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull, one of the masterminds behind the visual effects on some of the most visually audacious science fiction films of all time, including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” died Monday from complications from mesothelioma. He was 79.

Japan has confirmed its first case of a new coronavirus from China, the health ministry said Thursday. A Chinese national who has traveled to Wuhan, eastern China, tested positive in Japan, the ministry said. The man in his 30s man lives in Kanagawa Prefecture. He returned from Wuhan on Jan. 6 and was hospitalized on Jan. 10. He has already recovered and was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, the ministry said. A ministry official said there are no other confirmed cases in Japan. The pneumonia-like virus has infected dozens of people in Wuhan, with preliminary evidence suggesting the outbreak...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — As the Bay Area continues to struggle under the weight of its homelessness crisis, officials and nonprofits are asking local residents to do more than hand out meals or donate spare change. They’re asking them to open up their homes. Nearly 30,000 people are unhoused in the five-county Bay Area, and there isn’t nearly enough room in the region’s existing affordable housing developments. To fill the gaps, service providers increasingly are recruiting private landlords to take in homeless tenants. Some property owners are renting out entire units in exchange for agreements that the government or a...

Rep. Jim Banks heavily criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her failure to hand over key documents related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, saying in a Monday interview that Republican lawmakers believe the severity of the riot was due to a “systemic breakdown and failure at the highest levels of the Capitol Police.” The Indiana Republican, who is on a panel of GOP lawmakers that is unofficially investigating the riot, spoke with The Daily Signal following an Axios report headlined “GOP’s shadow Jan. 6 committee targets Capitol Police ‘negligence.’” Banks criticized the article and strongly disputed any implication that...

We have, of course, over the years seen numerous such lone-wolf attacks, especially those consisting of Muslims randomly driving vehicles into people (Nice, France, 2016, with 86 people killed being only the most notorious) or going on stabbing sprees (the London Bridge incident, with two killed, being only the most notorious). But the aforementioned Rocket.Chat communiqués, which appeared in December 2021, had another message: Imagine with me, brothers, if Muslim refugees in Crusader Europe took hostages while the pigs [Christians] celebrate their polytheistic holidays and forced the European crusaders to order their angry dogs to release our sisters from the...

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars” (Proverbs 9:1 KJV).

All tow-truck companies on contract with the city have refused to haul away the big rigs that have gridlocked Ottawa's downtown for the second week in a row, the city's manager says. Steve Kanellakos said the consensus among many of the companies seems to be that they don't want to do the work because the heavy truck industry is such a large part of their livelihoods and they don't want to damage that part of their businesses. The city has contracts with 10 companies, which are typically used to tow vehicles during parking bans so city plows can remove snow....

The McCloskeys drew national headlines when they confronted a group of mostly Black protesters who had entered their gated community en route to demonstrate in front of the nearby home of a former St. Louis mayor in June 2020. The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday indefinitely suspended the law licenses of two St. Louis attorneys who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, but it stayed their suspensions and placed them on probation for a year. The orders came after Missouri’s chief disciplinary counsel last year asked the court to suspend the law licenses of Mark McCloskey and...

Elektra was first discovered in 1873, orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Oblong-shaped and 160 miles across on its longest side, it is a relatively large asteroid and completes an orbit of the sun every five years. In 2003, the first moon was discovered orbiting Elektra, and in 2014 a second. The discoveries were interesting, but not unusual — more than 150 asteroids are known to have one or two moons, in the same way planets can have moons that are gravitationally bound to them. “Multiple moons can be found around large asteroids,” said Bin Yang, an...

A little more than a year after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Americans remain deeply divided about the events of that day and the ongoing congressional investigation into what happened. Last year, in the immediate wake of Jan. 6, about half of U.S. adults (52%) said Donald Trump bore a lot of responsibility for the violence and destruction committed by some of his supporters that day. Today, 43% say this. The share of adults who say Trump bears some responsibility has changed little since then, but more Americans now say Trump bears no responsibility for the mayhem...

Adele took home three awards at the BRITs at the O2 Arena on Tuesday, including the first ever genderless Artist Of The Year gong after the male and female categories were scrapped. The Easy On Me singer, 33, who also won the award for Song Of The Year and the coveted Album Of The Year, hit back at the 'woke' ceremony as she insisted she 'loves being a female artist', after bosses bowed to calls to rid the awards of gendered categories. Adele also tearfully dedicated her Album Of The Year award for '30' to her son Angelo, nine, and...

A backbench lawmaker from Justin Trudeau’s own caucus is accusing the prime minister of dividing and stigmatizing Canadians by politicizing vaccine mandates and Covid-19 restrictions. Joël Lightbound delivered the stunning, scathing assessment Tuesday in Ottawa... “Both the tone and the policies of my government changed drastically on the eve and during the last election campaign,” said Lightbound, who convened a press conference to deliver his message. "A decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize. I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public's trust in our public health institutions.” Publicly breaking ranks with one's...

Now he wants to give them crack pipes?

Boys and men across all regions and ethnic groups have been failing, both absolutely and relatively, for years. This is catastrophic for our country. Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7 percent in 2020 alone, compared with 6.8 percent for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the...