Free Republic

Andrew Bailey said he has “run out of horsemen” when counting the shocks facing Britain, with runaway energy and food costs driven by global market forces beyond his control. Prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years, creating a “very big income shock” that is expected to intensify in coming months with a risk of double-digit inflation before the end of the year. Mr Bailey told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee that he is increasingly concerned about a further surge in food costs if Ukraine, a major crop grower, is unable to ship wheat and cooking oils...

Nearly 1,000 last-ditch Ukrainian fighters who had held out inside Mariupol’s pulverized steel plant have surrendered, Russian said Wednesday, as the battle ... drew toward a close....The Ukrainian fighters trooping out of the ruined Azovstal steelworks that became the last stronghold of resistance in the city face an uncertain fate. Some were taken by the Russians to a former penal colony in territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists....Russia’s main federal investigative body said it intends to interrogate the surrendering troops to “identify the nationalists” and determine whether they were involved in crimes against civilians.The Russian parliament was scheduled to consider a...

Explains the coming wheat crop failure as a result of the drought in the high plains.

A bright fireball was seen over the southwestern United Kingdom at 20:46 UTC on May 16, 2022. The event comes just five days after a very bright fireball was seen over the same region. Interestingly, both events had very similar trajectories. The American Meteor Society (AMS) and International Meteor Organization (IMO) together with UKMON (UK), Werkgroep Meteoren (NL), and Vigie-Ciel (FR) received more than 800 reports, mainly from England and Wales.2 The ground trajectory computed from the witness reports shows that the meteor was traveling from SW to NE and ended its visible flight over southern England.

Down in South Texas, you may be seeing the future of the Democrat Party, i.e. the energetic Left vs whoever centrist is left in the ranks. My friend George Rodriguez, a South Texas political analyst, feels that Cuellar will pull it out somehow. The final first round result was 48.66% for Cuellar and 46.62% for Cisneros. The Cisneros campaign is attacking Cuellar all over on radio to TV. Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose but can the Democrat Party recover? This is from Texas Tribune: “The stakes are very high,” said Jose Borjon, a Washington-based...

Thomas Lane, one of the former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd's killing, has pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, according to the Minnesota attorney general. State Attorney General Keith Ellison said the plea agreement reached with Lane represents an "important step toward healing the wounds of the Floyd family, our community, and the nation." Lane, 38, had been scheduled to go to trial next month in state court along with his former Minneapolis police colleagues J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao. All three defendants were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd's civil...

Former congressman, Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, is challenging Wayne Lapierre for his job as Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association. A group of former & current NRA board members has called on West to “rescue” the NRA from what they see as poor management. And Allen West answered their call. The NRA has been under fire from people like New York State Attorney General Letitia James. Some claim that New York is just targeting the NRA because they are the most prominent gun-rights group in the country, while others think that internal corruption led the NRA to the...

Last Saturday’s mass shooting was both foreseeable and preventable, but not in the manner you might think. First, let’s start with what we know about Saturday’s events: 1. An 18-year-old shot and killed black people that he targeted 2. The individual (we won’t use his name so as not to empower him) was the subject of a mental-health investigation last year while in high school 3. We don’t know what radicalized him, but we do know he was very active on social media 4. We can also reasonably assume that this individual’s perception of reality was guided by confusing and...

The bad times for super-feminists continues.A Los Angeles judge has just ruled that the California law requiring women on corporate boards is unconstitutional.Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis said the law that would have required boards have up to three female directors by this year violated the right to equal treatment. The ruling was dated Friday.The conservative legal group Judicial Watch had challenged the law, claiming it was illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution by mandating a gender-based quota.The 2018 law required publicly traded corporations based in California...

GENEVA, May 17 (Reuters) - A senior World Health Organization official said on Tuesday that high levels of transmission of the coronavirus among unvaccinated people, such as in North Korea, creates a higher risk of new variants. The isolated country, a WHO member, is grappling with its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak, fuelling concerns over a major crisis due to a lack of vaccines and medical infrastructure.

Ben Bernanke, who served as Federal Reserve Chairman under Presidents Bush and Obama, warns that the U.S. economy is headed for a repeat of 1970s “stagflation.” Economists refer to a period of low economic growth, high inflation, and rising unemployment as “stagflation.” “Even under the benign scenario,” the U.S. is likely to go through “a period in the next year or two where growth is low, unemployment is at least up a little bit, and inflation is still high,” Bernanke told the New York Times. “So you could call that stagflation.” That “benign scenario” is if current Fed chair Jerome...

Like most people with any shred of decency, I was quite pleased (though also quite surprised) by the recent SCOTUS leak that suggests that the highest court may well overturn Roe v. Wade. If this ends up taking place (and so far, the conservative justices have indicated that the attempted bullying by the Left isn’t working), it’s exciting for a number of reasons. Obviously, the fact that defederalising abortion and placing it back into the purview of the states - where it belongs - will result in many, many little babies’ lives being saved. But what I’d like to discuss...

Senate Democrats recently voted in favor of a bill that would legalize abortion – nationwide -- for all nine months of pregnancy. That’s right, up to the very moment of birth, if necessary. The “Women’s Health Protection Act” received support from 49 of the 50 non-Republicans in the Senate, though it ultimately failed to succeed. The bill would have given health care providers the "right" to provide abortion services with very few requirements or limitations. In fact, according to the WHPA's text, health care providers would have been given the green light to perform abortions without "a prohibition on abortion...

Cobalt mining is still fraught with danger and unethical practices, and our dependency is only growing. Cobalt is a problem material and it's one that lithium-ion batteries can use a lot of. As EV factory production ramps up for nearly all automakers, EVs have become the main driver of demand for cobalt, surpassing smartphones, which also rely on the metal. Mobile devices have driven demand for cobalt until now because lots of little batteries still need a cathode and anode in each one. A phone battery doesn't need anywhere near as many materials as an electric or hybrid car battery,...

Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Kathy Barnette told the Todd Starnes Radio Show Monday that Fox News host Sean Hannity is leading the charge against her. Hannity has used his primetime show to criticize Barnette while supporting the Trump-endorsed candidate in the race, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Barnette challenged Hannity to use his show for a live debate between her and Oz, but she said Hannity said no. “And yet every single night, he’s the ringleader of this pile-on of Kathy Barnette,” she told host Todd Starnes. “I said, ‘Sean, I’m clearing my calendar. 9pm I will come see you. Sit in...

In New York City, the nation’s largest school district has lost some 50,000 students over the past two years. In Michigan, enrollment remains more than 50,000 below prepandemic levels from big cities to the rural Upper Peninsula. In the suburbs of Orange County, Calif., where families have moved for generations to be part of the public school system, enrollment slid for the second consecutive year; statewide, more than a quarter-million public school students have dropped from California’s rolls since 2019. And since school funding is tied to enrollment, cities that have lost many students — including Denver, Albuquerque and Oakland...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul looked past his fall opponent Tuesday to slam national Democrats, while his Democratic challenger doubled down on his progressive message and vowed to take the fight to the incumbent in a matchup featuring contrasting agendas. The libertarian-leaning Paul coasted to victory over five little-known Republican challengers in his primary. Democrat Charles Booker, a Black former state lawmaker, defeated three primary opponents to become the latest nominee to try to snap the long losing streak of Kentucky Democrats in U.S. Senate races. The Bluegrass State hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate...

The Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary has yet to be decided, and the final result may come down to tens of thousands of outstanding mail-in ballots that won’t be counted until Wednesday. Currently, businessman Dave McCormick leads Trump-endorsed TV doctor Mehmet Oz by about 1,700 votes, well within the margin for a mandatory recount. Upstart candidate Kathy Barnette, who appeared to be gaining ground on her competitors early in the night, is currently at 24.7% Just before midnight local time, McCormick told supporters, “We had a pretty good day today. I want to thank you all so much for your support...

On Saturday, a couple with a beautiful home in Rancho Peñasquitos, located in San Diego, California, decided to go out for lunch. Normally, they’d spend their Saturday afternoon lounging in their backyard oasis, swimming in their pool, but on that particular day they decided to go out instead — a choice that ended up making all the difference. That’s because at about 1:00 p.m. that same day, a blue BMW went off the road, crashed through a fence and landed upside-down in their once-perfect, sparkling pool. Good Samaritan Rescues Driver After Car Drives Through Fence, Lands Into Pool in Rancho...

It turns out that Elon Musk had a good reason to put the Twitter deal on hold: It’s possible that Twitter management may have misrepresented the number of actual accounts it has versus fake/spam accounts. And in another blow to the now-beleaguered social media company, Project Veritas put out another undercover video on Tuesday, this one of an ad executive mocking Musk for supporting free speech and having Asperger’s, along with freely admitting that Twitter doesn’t make any money. Between the one and the other, it’s entirely possible that Twitter will soon collapse from its own weight. It was a...