Free Republic

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court ruled Monday that the country’s ban on same-sex marriage does not violate the constitution, and rejected demands for compensation by three couples who said their right to free union and equality has been violated. The Osaka District Court ruling is the second decision on the issue, and disagrees with a ruling last year by a Sapporo court that found the ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional. It underscores how divisive the issue remains in Japan, the only member of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations that does not recognize same-sex unions. In its ruling,...

Tennis legend Chris Evert has opened up about how her younger sister's devastating death from ovarian cancer helped to 'save her life', revealing how her sibling's battle with the disease prompted her to undergo testing - allowing her own cancer to be detected incredibly early. The 67-year-old offered a candid glimpse into her cancer battle for an upcoming episode of HBO's Real Sports, with GMA airing a preview clip on Monday morning - in which Evert is seen undergoing her final rounds of chemo, while paying tribute to her late sister Jeanne Evert Dubin. 'My sister's death saved my life,'...

US women's soccer hero Megan Rapinoe has come out strongly in favor of including transgender women in women's sport, labelling the arguments against 'cruel and disgusting'. The veteran soccer star, who co-captained the United States Women's National Team in 2019 as they won a second successive World Cup, was dismissive of the notion that trans women are dominating women's sports and thus need regulating. Instead, she argued that excluding them from competing at lower levels is cruel, as people value their 'kid's high school volleyball team' ahead of the lives and wellbeing of transgender people. Her comments come in the...

We have all seen these protests where leftist agitators fill roadways with demonstrators, blocking cars, and shutting down the streets. But this time, motorists in Rome were not just going to sit idly by and let their lives be disrupted by leftist demonstrators. How many times have you watched these protests that shut down the roads and wondered why drivers don’t just get out of their cars en masse and start physically draging the screeching demonstrators out of the way? Well, motorists in Rome did just that this month when members of the extremist climate change group Extinction Rebellion infested...

I get my Beatles fandom honest. My mom turned me on to the Fab Four at an early age, and although her tastes lean heavily toward the early, Beatlemania days, that exposure to their music served as a gateway drug to their whole catalog. Nearly every Beatles fan has his or her favorite Beatle, and I knew early on that mine was Paul McCartney. John Lennon? He always came across as pretentious and obnoxious — a bit of an ass, if you will. (Although I’ve read that he came close to embracing both conservatism and Christianity before he was killed,...

TikTok's parent company is required to share data with the Chinese government The Chinese parent company of TikTok had access to American users' data for months even while U.S. employees did not have access themselves, according to leaked audio. The audio, obtained by BuzzFeed News, covers more than 80 internal meetings at TikTok between the months of September 2021 and January 2022. It showed that U.S. employees were not permitted to access user data and instead relied on Chinese employees to do so, according to BuzzFeed. TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is required under Chinese law to share its data with...

China imported a record volume of Russian crude in May, with arrivals surging by 55 percent to nearly 2 million barrels per day (bpd). This has made Russia the top oil supplier to the world's leading crude importer—putting it ahead of Saudi Arabia for the first time in a year and a half. A record volume of cheap Russian oil, which sells at steep discounts to crude from other countries, made its way to Chinese refiners last month, according to figures from China's General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters. China imported 1.98 million bpd of Russian crude oil in...

China has concerns that such cars could enter a military base, or really any other high-security location, and capture footage. The footage captured by Tesla's in-car camera systems can be stored locally and then shared. Moreover, Tesla's vehicles send data back to the cloud, which could be cause for concern. We haven't heard much about the issue since Tesla's major concerns in China have seemed to subside. However, according to a recent report by Electrek, Tesla's vehicles are now banned from entering Beidaihe, a resort town near Shanghai. In fact, the town has banned all Tesla's EVs for the next...

"Each mine usually consists of thirty-five to forty humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment," he writes. "Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. So, with an inventory of just thirty-five the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site." A typical EV battery, Stein notes, weighs 1,000 pounds, contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel and plastic. Inside are over...

As a result of the mishap, some passengers had to fly without their bags, while others dealt with check-in delays as long as two hours. According to the BBC, a Heathrow spokeswoman apologized for the chaos. “Earlier today there was a technical issue with the Terminal 2 baggage system which has now been resolved,” she said. Due to the coronavirus pandemic [sic], the aviation industry is suffering from staff shortages after letting thousands of employees go.

The video was shot at a rally in London. The day before, Great Britain decided that the United States would extradite WikiLeaks founder

Germany is "very confident" that an agreement on Finland and Sweden joining the Nato alliance can be reached, a source inside the German government has told news agency Reuters (siirryt toiseen palveluun). However, the source considered it unlikely that a consensus could be found before a Nato summit in the Spanish capital Madrid next week, as Turkey continues to block accession talks. "As nice as it would be to announce concrete steps .. it would not be a catastrophe if it needed a few more weeks," the source said, adding that the German government has not identified any "insurmountable problems"...

The White House’s newest economic catchphrase to blunt the force of a potential recession in 2023 is to tell the American people that it is not “inevitable.” On Sunday, members of President Joe Biden’s team told the establishment media four separate times that inflation is not inevitable, despite polling and data that suggest a probability of recession.

NEW YORK (PIX11) — In less than two weeks, New Yorkers will cast their vote for who they want to be their party’s representative in the gubernatorial primary. Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent frontrunner, faces a number of Democratic challengers. In the Republican Party, Andrew Guiliani, Harry Wilson, Rob Astorino and Congressman Lee Zeldin will square off against each other in the primary on June 28. Early voting runs until June 26. Zeldin was the favored candidate of choice among Republican voters ahead of the forum. He had 34% of the vote in a recent PIX11/Emerson College Polling/The Hill poll....

President Joe Biden took Monday off for the recently created Juneteenth federal holiday, remaining at his beach house in Delaware for the fourth day away from the White House. The president had nothing on his public schedule on Monday to recognize the federal holiday that he signed into law in 2021.

Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) reacted to a Wall Street Journal report that Democrats were expecting President Joe Biden to run again in 2024 but were not sure if he should. Host John Berman asked Clyburn to expound on his remarks in the report that he supported Biden first and then Vice President Kamala Harris if not.

“If Planet Nine is real, it would be on such an odd orbit and so far out in the outer Solar System, that it would really challenge our ideas of planet formation and dynamics,” Ann-Marie Madigan, assistant professor of astrophysics... Madigan isn’t searching for just one planet — she’s looking for an entire belt of celestial objects. Like Planet Nine, this proposed Zderic-Madigan, or ZM, belt would be really out there, far beyond the Kuiper belt, with some of its closest bodies being more than twice as far from the Sun as Pluto at perihelion. Unlike the Kuiper belt, this...

Sharp chest pains. Myocarditis and pericarditis. Heart attacks. Strokes and subsequent blindness.These are just some of the many COVID-19 vaccine-related adverse events reported by commercial airline pilots and by a growing number of advocacy groups representing aviation industry workers.According to these individuals and groups, the number of pilots speaking out about their vaccine injuries is dwarfed by the number of pilots who are still flying despite experiencing concerning symptoms — but not speaking out because of what they describe as a culture of intimidation within the aviation industry.These individuals fear they will lose their jobs and livelihoods in retaliation if...

Alasdair Burns, a stargazing guide on Stewart Island/Rakiura, received a text from a friend: go outside and look at the sky. “As soon as we actually went outside, it was very obvious what it was he was referring to,” Burns said. He saw a huge, blue spiral of light amid the darkness. “It looked like an enormous spiral galaxy, just hanging there in the sky, and slowly just drifting across,” Burns said. A spiral of blue lights as seen from Stewart Island/Rakiura, New Zealand, on Sunday. Theories on social media about its origins ranged from aliens to foreign rockets to...

Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) was confronted by conservative activists for his controversial stances regarding “red flag laws” and using American tax dollars to fund Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, as well as his connections to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Among those who confronted the Congressman was Alex Stein, a prominent YouTuber and conservative activist. Stein is also a delegate for the Texas State legislature. When confronting Crenshaw, Stein called him “Eyepatch McCain” and “Globalist RINO”, a dig at Crenshaw’s neoconservative foreign policy stances and moderate stances on cultural issues affecting Americans. Stein even likened him to late Senator and...