Free Republic

Explanation: Can you create a planetary system that lasts for 1000 years? Super Planet Crash, the featured game, allows you to try. To create up to ten planets, just click anywhere near the central star. Planet types can be selected on the left in order of increasing mass: Earth, Super-Earth, Ice giant, Giant planet, Brown dwarf, or Dwarf star. Each planet is gravitationally attracted not only to the central Sun-like star, but to other planets. Points are awarded, with bonus factors applied for increasingly crowded and habitable systems. The game ends after 1000 years or when a planet is gravitationally...

They thought they were doing a renovation, not an exorcism. The house had other ideas We walked into the house for the first time on an impeccable autumn afternoon, the kind where the light takes on the hue of burnished gold. It was October of 2009, and we were looking at homes in a small, appealing town in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The place had been staged for our visit, of course, but the red and burnt-yellow leaves falling from an old maple tree in the backyard twirled and waltzed with an unpremeditated perfection. There was a huge hearth and a...

Spain's opposition People's Party won an absolute majority in Andalusia's regional elections on Sunday (June 19) for the first time in Spanish democracy, boosting the new Conservative leader's odds for the national elections in late 2023. Andalusia, with 8.5 million inhabitants, is the most populated region in Spain. For 40 years it was a stronghold of the main socialist party, which ceded power in 2018 to a conservative coalition government led by the People's Party (PP). The regional leader, Juan Manuel Moreno, won a historic victory by securing 58 seats and 43% of the votes with 99.5% of the votes...

Kazakhstan, an ally of Russia, has refused to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics. Both the leaders of the disputed Donbas region, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, were present at the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). But even Russian allies for now are apprehensive to recognise them as ‘Heads of Government’. On Friday, one of the key dignitaries, Kazakhstan President President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, while sharing the stage with President Putin at the plenary session, hit a rare discordant note from Kremlin’s position. “If the right to self-determination is put into practice all over the world, then...

Neil Oliver uses language to hack the great red pill vending machine and feed the masses. In his weekly monologue today, Oliver notes the great resetters, the alliance of multinational corporations and government leaders, are intent on using fear and finance to build the post-covid control mechanisms over the people within western society.Create massive costs, destabilize the people, manipulate the crisis and leave the common family left trying to figure out what is happening. Government and bankers using fear and finance respectively; both leveraged against the people, while drumbeating the continued nonsense of climate change and the need to ‘save...

David Aguilar SALINAS, Calif. — Jury selection for the trial of the men charged in the 1996 disappearence and murder of Cal Poly student Kristin Smart has been postponed at least a week, the court announced Sunday. Monterey County Superior Court said proceedings were postponed due to a health concern with one of the trial participants. The court did not name the person. Advertisement Jury selection for Paul Flores was scheduled to begin Monday but has been pushed back to June 27. The court has not set a date for the start of jury selection for Ruben Flores, the other...

Fifty years after the Watergate burglary that led to the downfall of US president Richard Nixon, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is still haunted by one question. "The unanswered question that pulses through all of this is 'Why?' Woodward said at an event at Post headquarters with his former reporting colleague Carl Bernstein.

French voters have cast their votes to fill the 577-seat National Assembly, the French parliament’s lower-house chamber, and shorn President Emmanuel Macron of his parliamentary majority. The latest estimations show Macron’s centre-right alliance Together won 234 seats, the leftwing bloc NUPES has taken 141, and the far-right National Rally has won 90 seats, among others. Reacting to the night's first estimates, Macron's Budget Minister Gabriel Attal said, "It's less than what we hoped for. The French have not given us an absolute majority. It's an unprecedented situation that will require us to overcome our divisions."

The Biden administration’s push for Americans to buy electric vehicles even as they confront skyrocketing gas prices when they go to fill up their cars reflects a “smug superiority,” said Sen. John Barrasso in a new interview. Barrasso (R-WY) blasted President Biden’s energy policies as gasoline continues to hover around $5 a gallon and inflation, which is at 40-year highs, has caused the cost of groceries and everyday goods and services to soar.

Pro-choice activists protested outside Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s house over the weekend, donning fake-blood-stained clothes and holding baby dolls. The protesters marched to the judge’s Falls Church, Va., home Saturday and held signs including one with a coat hanger on it that said, “Not going back.”

Why Food Inflation Is Only Getting StartedTake a look at this: Chart of Food Production vs Food Prices The US has just experienced an 8.8% increase in food prices. The problem (and there are many, actually) is that this doesn’t take into account the spiraling costs farmers are now experiencing. It’s worth remembering that because farmers pay upfront and only recoup their expenses at the point of sale/harvest months later, all the opex they’ve experienced has a lag. This lag is dependent on produce but certainly, we’re looking at a tsunami of food inflation 12 to 18 months out. Then...

Authorities in California are investigating a smash-and-grab robbery at a Macy’s in Walnut Creek Saturday morning after three suspects stole high-end watches before fleeing the scene, officials said. The Walnut Creek Police Department said "three black male adult suspects" entered the store located in the Broadway Plaza shopping center at approximately 10:48 a.m., when they began "smashing jewelry display cases with hammers." The suspects, all wearing hoods and masks to obstruct identifying elements, stole the valuables and fled the scene. Last year, dozens of suspects robbed the Broadway Plaza Nordstrom in what witnesses described as a brazen theft like something...

President Biden on Sunday marked Juneteenth as “a day of profound weight and power.” “It is a day of profound weight and power that reminds us of our extraordinary capacity to heal, hope, and emerge from our most painful moments into a better version of ourselves. Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” Biden said in a statement. “They confront them to grow stronger. And that is what this great nation must continue to do.”

The incoming commander of the British Army has reportedly told his troops to prepare to fight a land war in Europe, citing Russia as a significant threat to peace. General Sir Patrick Sanders, the British Army’s newly appointed overall commander, is said to have told his troops to prepare for potential deployment in Europe in order to counter the threat of Russia. According to a report by the Daily Mail, General Sanders — who only assumed full command of the UK’s army last week — told his troops that they are now facing the possibility of having to fight a...

ro-abortion protests have been popping up all over the country, disrupting Catholic churches, doctor offices and pro-life centers all in hopes of keeping their “right” to kill an innocent baby before it even gets a chance at life. In the latest event, pro-choice protestors gathered outside of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s home in Virginia holding signs that read “Abortion on demand and without apology,” while also having baby dolls taped to their wrists. The group, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, were dressed in white clothing with what appears to be fake blood soaked onto the pants between the...

US Treasury Secretary and former Federal Reserve Chain, Janet Yellen, admitted on ABC’s This Week that US inflation is “unacceptably high”and prices are likely to stick with consumers through 2022, and that the US economy is likely to slow down. “We’ve had high inflation so far this year, and that locks in higher inflation for the rest of the year,” she said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I expect the economy to slow,” she said, adding: “But I don’t think a recession at all inevitable.” US inflation accelerated to 8.6% in May, a fresh 40-year high that signals price pressures...

2 killed, 2 more injured in shooting at South Carolina nightclub, sheriff’s office says Police crime scene. (Dreamstime/TNS) JUNE 19, 2022 NOAH FEIT - THE STATE Two men were killed and two other people were injured Sunday in an early-morning shooting at a South Carolina nightclub, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office said. Deputies responded to reports of a shooting at the Hang Time Grill & Lounge, at 1109 Rivers St., in Walterboro at about 2:40 a.m., the sheriff’s office said in a news release. At the scene, deputies found two men who had been shot and began rendering aid, according...

When a franchise sets out to compete with other companies that have a superior market or branding presence, they will sometimes exploit a strategy called “market saturation” in order to undermine their opponent’s visibility. An example of this is Starbucks, which sought to co-opt and then destroy the concept of the neighborhood hipster coffee shop by flooding every city and town with their own stores. After several years, there was at least four Starbucks within a mile of every other Starbucks store and often these franchises would sit right across the road from each other. Every coffee house was now...

New York(CNN Business)US drivers got a slight — very slight — break on prices this weekend as the AAA average for a gallon of unleaded gas fell below the $5 mark. The average price Sunday was $4.98 a gallon, down from $4.99 in Saturday's reading. The average gas price had been $5 or above for the previous seven days, the first time on record prices crossed that mark. It hit a high of $5.02 a gallon on Tuesday and has declined by a fraction of a penny each day since then.