Free Republic

The Russian Federation is ready to continue negotiations with Ukraine to reach a peace agreement, said Speaker of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Valentina Matvienko. This was reported by the Russian agency Interfax on Tuesday, May 31. Matvienko accused the Ukrainian side of disrupting the negotiations, talking about the "civil" war in Ukraine. "We are open to negotiations. We need diplomatic, peaceful solutions, but this requires the will of the two countries. We are ready for negotiations, signing an agreement that would end the civil war in Ukraine and lead to peace, but we do not see such...

Coles supermarket has announced that team members undergoing gender affirmation will now be entitled to up to 10 days paid gender affirmation leave. The retail giant said the policy change was an important step in its commitment to champion inclusion in the workplace. “We know that we have at least 900 team members who identify as transgender or gender diverse,” Coles Chief Legal and Safety Officer and chair of the Coles Pride Steering Committee David Brewster said.

A Chinese-government-controlled company has put in an offer to buy Forbes, the major American news company that built its name on financial analysis. According to the Free Beacon, Magnum Opus, the CCP-controlled company in question, announced its intent to acquire the property last August. Now, that deal looks to be nearing completion, and it’s drawing outrage from Republicans who are pointing out what a major security risk the move represents.

The Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety's investigation into the massacre at Robb Elementary School and the state's review of the law enforcement response, multiple law enforcement sources tell ABC News. A spokesman for Texas DPS, which is running the state's investigations, declined to comment. The Uvalde police chief and a spokesperson for the Uvalde Independent School District did not immediately respond to requests for comment from ABC News. According to sources, the decision to stop cooperating occurred soon after the director of DPS,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Focused on relentlessly rising prices, President Joe Biden plotted inflation-fighting strategy Tuesday with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with the fate of the economy and his own political prospects increasingly dependent on the actions of the government’s central bank. Biden hoped to demonstrate to voters that he was attuned to their worries about higher gasoline, grocery and other prices whiles still insisting an independent Fed will act free from political pressure. Like Biden, the Fed wants to slow inflation without knocking the U.S. economy into recession, a highly sensitive mission that is to include increasing benchmark...

A Bronx daycare worker has been arrested on child pornography charges after he was allegedly found with images of a child he was supposed to be looking after. Police said Silfredo Castillo Martinez worked at Lina's Garden Day Care for more than a decade and was arrested for possessing multiple images depicting child pornography. Computer crime investigators suspect Castillo Martinez has been dealing in child porn since July 2011, when he first began working at the center. He lives in the same building as the day care center, state records show, with the capacity to care for 12 children between...

President Joe Biden warmly welcomed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to the White House on Tuesday, expressing his interest in her views on gun control and online censorship in her country. “We need your guidance,” Biden said as he welcomed Ardern to the Oval Office. “And it’s a pleasure to see you in person.” He praised the prime minister warmly for making progress on issues like climate change, combatting “violent extremism online,” and gun control. “You understand that your leadership has taken a critical role on this global change, it really has,” he said. Ardern has become a darling...

THE DEEP STATE AND THE RATCHET: HOW POWER INSIDE THE US GOVERNMENT REALLY WORKS As the Biden administration attempted to create its own Ministry of Truth with the Disinformation Governance Board this month, it was common to hear conservatives and Republicans saying things like “just wait until President Trump or President DeSantis is the one appointing the head of that agency, then you’ll be sorry.” The underlying assumption is that, once the administration changes, the natural pendulum swing of democracy will act to punish the Left for overreaching and consolidating government power while in office. But that’s a common and...

- Photo: GreatLeap.com.my The cake pictured above is a Malaysian Lapis (layer) Cake. It’s usually made as a ‘spicy’ cake with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and it can take an entire day to make one. They are generally purchased for special occasions in Malaysia. If you’re up for trying something as colorful but not quite as gruelling to make, the blog ‘Mel’s Pantry Kitchen’ has posted a simplified ‘rainbow’ cake: https://melspantrykitchen.blogspot.com/2012/09/rainbow-lapis-legit.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarawak_layer_cake_______________________________________________________ I’ve been seeing an Arby’s commercial lately about a Chicken-Pecan salad sandwich. It looks wonderful in the ad, but there isn’t an Arby’s very convenient to us here, so...

Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Luke 1:39-56 Friends, today’s Gospel tells of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth. I’ve always been fascinated by Mary’s “haste” in this story of the Visitation. Upon hearing the message of Gabriel concerning her own pregnancy and that of her cousin, Mary “set out and traveled to the hill country in haste” to see Elizabeth. Why did she go with such speed and purpose? Because she had found her mission, her role in the theo-drama. We are dominated today by the ego-drama in all of its ramifications and implications. The ego-drama is the...

This is kind of weird… The aircraft was in Uvalde for the first time this year during the shooting. The plane landed 3 minutes before the shooter crashed his vehicle. The plane then left 2 minutes before the shooter was killed. Why was this aircraft in Uvalde for the first time in 2022 at the exact moment that one of the deadliest US shootings was unfolding? Again, the plane landed 3 minutes before the shooter crashed his vehicle. The plane then left 2 minutes before the shooter was killed. The plane left Ft. Hood and it went straight to Uvalde....

The grandmother of the crazed gunman who killed 21 at a Texas elementary school last week worked at the school as a teacher’s aide, a close friend of the family told The Post. The friend, who asked to be kept anonymous, did not know if that’s why Salvador Ramos, 18, chose Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, as his target — but his grandmother’s employment there is the first direct link between Ramos and the school, which is a half-mile from her home. “His grandmother worked in one of those classrooms a lot of the time,” the friend told The...

Explanation: The launch of a rocket at sunrise can result in unusual but intriguing images that feature both the rocket and the Sun. Such was the case last month when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center carrying 53 more Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. In the featured launch picture, the rocket's exhaust plume glows beyond its projection onto the distant Sun, the rocket itself appears oddly jagged, and the Sun's lower edge shows peculiar drip-like ripples. The physical cause of all of these effects is pockets of relatively hot or rarefied air deflecting...

Japan's Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) on Monday said it missed its global production target for April as COVID-19 outbreaks and a parts shortage slowed its post-pandemic recovery. The world's largest automaker by sales produced 692,259 vehicles last month, a 9.1% drop from the same month last year, and falling short of an earlier plan of making about 750,000 vehicles worldwide.

The married church pastor publicly accused of taking a 16-year-old girl’s virginity on his office floor began grooming her as early as 14, her family have alleged to DailyMail.com. And victim Bobi Gephart, now 43, was held in a Svengali-like grip by 65-year-old preacher John Lowe II for at least eight years as he had sex with her ‘many, many’ times, they add. Lowe – forced to quit the large church he built from scratch in Warsaw, Indiana, because of the storm – was so desperate to keep his illicit lust secret that he verbally blackmailed her into staying silent,...

A woman who grew up in an ultra-conservative Christian sect has detailed how she left the fundamentalist group, came out as a lesbian, and wrote her first novel after her therapist helped her realize she was in a 'cult.' Elizabeth Hunter, 28, was raised by a family in Texas that belonged to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) — also known as ATI — after being abandoned by her biological parents and rehomed. The ministry founded by Bill Gothard promotes a patriarchal family system in which children are expected to follow his interpretation of Bible scriptures and always obey...

“Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are ‘through the roof,’ our Military ‘Leadership’ is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty. How’s everything else doing? Enjoy your day!!!”

An employee at Robb Elementary School had propped open a door to carry food from a car to the classroom last Tuesday, but closed it shut after realizing that a gunman was loose and heading toward the school, her San Antonio lawyer said...... McCraw told reporters on Friday that the employee propped open the door about the time the gunman crashed the truck, and that the employee called 911. But Flanary said he wants to make clear that the door was not left propped open. “She saw the wreck,” Flanary said. “She ran back inside to get her phone to...

A Robb Elementary School employee did not leave a door open to the building before last week's deadly school shooting in Uvalde, her lawyer said, refuting authorities' previous claims as the department faces backlash for its changing story around the massacre. Attorney Don Flanary told San Antonio Express-News reporter Guillermo Contreras on Tuesday that the unidentifiable employee did prop open a door to the school, but shut it when she saw the gunman, who eventually entered and massacred 19 children and two adults on May 24. Flanary told the Express-News that the employee remembers kicking away the rock used to...

KYIV (Reuters) - As volunteer fighters Oleksandr Zhuhan and Antonina Romanova pack for a return to active duty, they contemplate the unicorn insignia that gives their uniform a rare distinction - a symbol of their status as an LGBTQ couple who are Ukrainian soldiers.Members of Ukraine's LGBTQ community who sign up for the war have taken to sewing the image of the mythical beast into their standard-issue epaulettes just below the national flag.The practice harks back to the 2014 conflict when Russia invaded then annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, "when lots of people said there are no gay people...