Free Republic

The U.S. is pulling support for Israeli underground natural gas pipeline that would run from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe. Many predict this will cause more problems in the region. Moreover, this decision from Biden administration undercuts Israel, one of America’s most steadfast allies. The proposed pipeline would give Europe an alternative to heavy dependence on Russian gas. It would have conveyed about 10 billion cubic yards of Israeli and Cypriot natural gas to Europe via Greece and Italy each year. Recently, Europe has been suffering from an energy crisis, which has led to soaring natural gas and electricity prices....

Levchyk the cat went from living on the streets of a western Ukrainian city to winning a spot in the mayor’s office — and rose to internet fame in the process. The city of Lviv welcomed its so-called “cat mayor” in fall 2020 after the stray was rescued from a tree near City Hall. It wasn’t long before Mayor Andriy Sadovyi’s office created a social media presence for the new official. The brown tabby cat, whose name is the diminutive form of “lion” in Ukrainian, now posts TikTok videos that get hundreds of thousands of views. The “cat mayor” enjoys...

People are turning off CNN in droves. The network’s ratings plummeted last week, hitting a historic low for the proclaimed “most trusted name in news.” CNN “averaged only 444,000 viewers” from Feb. 7 – 13, marking its lowest ratings in since November 2015 Fox News, reports. Even during CNN’s primetime broadcasts, the network averaged 491,000 viewers. Fox News trounces CNN’s ratings by 385 percent, with Tucker Carlson garnering an average of 3.5 million viewers in Fox’s primetime slot. The left-wing network has lost 90 percent of its viewers in the past year amid the network’s constant stream of deceptive news...

Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed talk radio and politics in his decades behind the microphone, helping shape the modern-day Republican Party, died Wednesday morning at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer, his family announced. Limbaugh's wife, Kathryn, made the announcement on his radio show. "Losing a loved one is terribly difficult, even more so when that loved one is larger than life," she said. "Rush will forever be the greatest of all time."

DARPA has managed to fly ‘smart’ black hawk helicopter without any pilot on board. The ALIAS technology has thus far cost $160 million.During an experimental project led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Lockheed Martin, the renowned Black Hawk helicopter flew totally unmanned for the very first moment.The initiative is known as ALIAS, which stands for “Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System,” and it was victorious after a UH-60 Alpha-model Black Hawk chopper made its maiden flight without a human operator on board a few days earlier.Image via Lockheed Martin: Sikorsky UH-60A Blackhawk Optionally Piloted Aircraft leaves the...

[H/T Ymani Cricket]According to a retired professor of computer science at Oregon State University today’s large neural network artificial intelligence are already slightly conscious.In a recent Twitter post, the co-founder of a San Francisco-based Artificial Intelligence research lab stated that “today’s largest neural networks” may already be “slightly conscious.”OpenAI’s Ilya Sutskever did not specify which system or systems he was talking about, nor did he define “slightly conscious” in any way.It’s likely that he was talking about OpenAI’s GPT-3, an advanced language processing system designed for translation, question answering, and word replacement.Sutskever’s cryptic tweet soon sparked a debate among specialists...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked anger on Wednesday when he accused a Jewish MP of 'standing with people who wave swastikas' after she criticized his handling of the Freedom Convoy truckers' anti-vaccine protests. Melissa Lantsman, a 37-year-old Conservative MP for the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, confronted the prime minister in Parliament about the draconian Emergency Act, which he invoked on Monday for the first time in 50 years in a bid to end 19 days of chaos. Trudeau responded with scorn to her complaints, saying: 'Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas, they can stand with...

“A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and shall have part of the inheritance among the brethren. The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts” (Proverbs 17:2-3).

The Pentagon claimed earlier this month that the Kremlin may stage an elaborate false flag operation. The Russian state-sponsored news agency Sputnik has accused Ukraine of violating a ceasefire by firing mortar shells early Thursday morning. "The Ukrainian military fired mortar shells and grenades at four localities in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic at 2:30 a.m. GMT," Sputnik claimed, citing the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination. The agency stressed that Moscow has denied "accusations" of the "alleged military buildup" and instead warned of the "possibility of provocations by Kiev." The Pentagon claimed earlier this month that the Kremlin may...

The Cincinnati Bengals lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI, but their pre-printed championship gear finds a second life elsewhere. Sporting good stores in Southern California and everywhere in the United States have merchandise adorned with “Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl Champions” ready to sell moments after the Super Bowl. On the other hand, merchandise with the words “Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl Champions” will not see its day in the U.S. The fate of Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl championship gearThe NFL pre-manufactures Super Bowl gear for good reason, to take advantage of fan emotions when their team...

Art Pawlowski charged with interrupting the operation of essential infrastructure A Lethbridge judge has refused to release controversial Calgary preacher Artur Pawlowski, who is accused of inciting violence during the blockade at the Coutts, Alta, border crossing. Pawlowski is charged with mischief over $5,000 and interrupting the operation of essential infrastructure under Alberta's Critical Infrastructure Defense Act...

Dozens of students at the University of Nevada-Reno were spotted marching through campus demanding the reinstatement of the recently abandoned mask mandate in the state. "Reinstate, mask mandate!" dozens of students chanted repeatedly as they marched across campus in Reno, Nevada Monday in a video captured by KRNV reporter Ben Margiott. Margiott added that a petition to reimpose the COVID-19 mask mandate had gathered 1,500 signatures. "As an institution of higher learning, it is a responsibility within our educational mission to provide an environment where perspectives and experiences are shared safely, with respect and with a thorough understanding of points...

@RepThomasMassie I see a lot of people saying this is illegal (RE: AOC helping illegal immigrants get stimulus checks). If it were illegal, she wouldn’t be bragging about it. This is what I opposed, when no other Republican representative would stand up in 2020. Then I tried to show that these checks were going to non-citizens and people doubted me.

The memorial, which was set up on the sidewalk in front of the building where Lee was stabbed to death over the weekend, featured flowers, candles and signs decrying anti-Asian hate, some of which were found destroyed Wednesday morning. “This morning, the candles that we have all lit as a community for her during the vigil and we all left out here were smashed. The ‘Stop Asian Hate’ sign was torn. One sign was ripped up. I threw it away,” Brian Chin, the landlord of the Chrystie Street building where Lee was found butchered to death in her bathroom over...

The Biden administration has hired the first non-binary person to a federal government leadership position, according to Sam Brinton, who will now serve as deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition in the office of nuclear energy for the Department of Energy. Brinton, who uses the pronouns they/them, said in a post on LinkedIn that they believe they will be the 'first gender fluid person in federal government leadership.' 'In this role I’ll be doing what I always dreamed of doing, leading the effort to solve the nation’s nuclear waste challenges,' Brinton said. 'I’ll do all I can...

A top Chicago police official’s car was stopped on the West Side during a drug arrest earlier this month, a police spokesman confirmed Wednesday. A Lexus registered to Yolanda Talley, chief of internal affairs, was pulled over Feb. 1 in the 500 block of North St. Louis Avenue and officers arrested Kenneth Miles, 34, on drug charges, according to an arrest report and police sources. Talley wasn’t in the car. Her niece was driving the Lexus, said Don Terry, a spokesman for the police department. According to a police report, officers in a gang investigations squad were targeting drug sales...

Quebec stepped up its “deconfinement plan” this week and began lifting coronavirus restrictions, while Premier Francois Legault rejected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s effort to crush the Freedom Convoy protest movement by invoking emergency powers.“I think that I was very clear with the prime minister that the federal Emergencies Act should not, must not apply in Quebec,” Legault said on Monday. “We don’t have any problems in Quebec so far. The Sureté du Québec has everything under control.”There were Freedom Convoy demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec City over the past two weeks, but they were relatively restrained and mostly held...

Special Counsel John Durham provided a “discovery Update” to the court in the Michael Sussmann case. In this filing, available here, he disclosed that his team has obtained a tremendous amount of information ranging from a variety of sources – including Perkins Coie, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and former DNC/Clinton lawyer Mark Elias. (…) Now, to the evidence. Durham and his team have secured grand jury testimony from the following individuals: Former Perkins Coie partner, and DNC/Hillary Clinton lawyer Marc Elias. Former FBI General Counsel James Baker Current CIA employees Durham and his team have completed interviews of the following...

Four “Freedom Convoy” protesters with an arsenal of guns who were ready to “use force against the police” have been charged with conspiring to commit murder, Canadian authorities said. The group were among 11 arrested on Monday at the now-cleared border blockade in Coutts, Alberta, just north of Montana, who were protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said Tuesday in a statement. Chris Carbert, 44, Christopher Lysak, 48, Jerry Morin, 40, and Anthony Olienick, 39, are facing the charges over threats made against the RCMP, the department said. Carbert, Lysak, and Olienick yet to have a...

Since the beginning of the plandemic, the powers-that-be have told us to “follow the science.” But perhaps a better indicator of what’s really happening would be to follow the money. And if you really want to get an accurate view, the money to follow is in life insurance. They know about death better than anyone. It’s what they do. We reported in January about the insurance executive caught admitting there had been an inexplicable 40% increase in mortalities in 2022. They tried to walk that back, but the cat was out of the bag and it has been verified as...