Free Republic

Phantom Lady is the story of a good girl who pretends to be a femme fatale. She does it all for a noble cause, to save the life of an innocent man, but she scares herself by just how well she pretends. The underrated Ella Raines stars as Carol ‘Kansas’ Richman, a dogged secretary who launches her own criminal investigation when the boss she secretly loves is convicted of murder. Although the film’s title, Phantom Lady, ostensibly refers to the condemned man’s elusive alibi—a strange, sad woman who vanished without a trace—it could equally apply to Kansas, a lucid and...

The Vatican has defrocked a US-based priest for "blasphemous" social media posts and activism in support of former President Donald Trump. A letter to US bishops from the Vatican's US ambassador accused the priest, Frank Pavone, of "persistent disobedience". In 2016, Mr Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, put an aborted foetus on an altar and broadcast it online. His defrocking cannot be appealed. Defrocking - the process of being reduced to a 'lay state' in which clerical status is taken away from a priest - is among the harshest sanctions available in the Catholic church's canon...

Jurors have found Harvey Weinstein guilty of three out of seven counts he was facing in a Los Angeles sex-assault and rape case. Weinstein was found guilty on counts of forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by foreign object and forcible rape. Jurors reached a not-guilty verdict on one count of sexual battery by restraint and were deadlocked on three additional counts. The jury is expected to return to the courtroom Tuesday to hear arguments on special findings in the case. The 70-year-old former movie mogul was on trial for two rape counts and five sexual assault counts. The charges involve...

Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential matchup, the most recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found.The survey asked respondents, “If the 2024 election for President were held today and it was between Donald Trump, the Republican and Joe Biden, the Democrat, who would you vote for?”Overall, 45 percent chose Trump, and 40 percent chose Biden, giving Trump a +5 percent advantage. That reflects a three-point expansion from his lead in November’s survey, which saw Trump besting Biden by two points, or 44 percent to 42 percent.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that high doses of cholesterol-lowering statins impair bone quality in mice. The finding came as no surprise for the scientists, who observed the correlation in a big data analysis of the Austrian population in 2019. A 3D detailed imaging technique was used to examine the bone quality of the mice and found that long-term high dose statin therapy had detrimental effects on bone in both males and ovariectomized female mice. Different parts and characteristics of bone, such as volume and thickness, were affected. In male mice, bone volume of the trabecular femur (the...

Update from Ukraine | Ukraine targeted the Main Supply line from Crimea | Ruzzians in shock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziljuaRDHEY Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ SUMMARY & MAPS Military Maps & Comment here: Invasion Day 298 – Summary December 18, 2022 Jerome News The summary of the situation of Russian re-invasion to Ukraine covering the last 48 hours, as of 18th December 2022 – 22:00 (Kyiv time).

Jurors in Los Angeles have reportedly reached a verdict on the sex-assault trial of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein. Monday marks the 10th day of deliberations, and the jury is expected to announce the verdict in the coming minutes. In a previous report from the City News Service Monday afternoon, the panel spent the morning session re-hearing some testimony.

Amber Heard will pay Johnny Depp $1 million to settle their long-running legal battle, in which each accused the other of domestic violence. The sum is a significant reduction from the $8.35 million she was ordered to pay after a six-week trial in Virginia earlier this year. The payment is expected to come from her insurance carrier. In a statement, Depp’s attorneys said that he would donate the money to charity. His attorneys have previously said that the case was “never about the money” for Depp. In her own statement, Heard said she had “lost faith in the American legal...

The FBI paid Twitter millions in tax dollars to censor, suspend and harass Twitter users who only wanted to share the truth. Earlier today, Twitter released another traunch of tweets, this one focused on the FBI and Hunter Biden’s laptop. In one of the tweets, Twitter reports that the FBI paid Twitter millions for their work censoring free speech. Here is the tweet from Michael Shellenberger sharing that the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million:

The legal heirs of a German Jewish banker who was forced to sell his art collection to avoid persecution by the Nazis are suing a Japanese holding company to reclaim ownership of a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Three heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, based in New York and Germany, filed a lawsuit on December 13 in an Illinois district court against Sompo Holdings, an insurance company based in Japan, to dispute its legal title to the painting Sunflowers (1888). The claim states that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a “casualty” of Nazi-era policies and economic sanctions that forced him to sell his...

On the same day that the Netherlands officially apologised for 250 years of slavery, MPs in neighbouring Belgium failed to agree on how to seek atonement for colonial-era abuses. The Belgian parliament set up a commission in 2020 in the wake of protests triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement to examine their country's record in its former central African colonies. But the panel admitted they had failed to reach a consensus on how to formulate an apology for the notoriously bloody excesses of Belgian rule in what is now DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. They had been due to...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked an order that would lift Title 42, the pandemic-era health policy that has been used to deter migrants more than 2.5 million times. The order Monday by Chief Justice John Roberts comes as cities along the U.S.-Mexico border have been scrambling to prepare for an expected influx of migrants in anticipation of Title 42’s end. Earlier Monday, 19 states had asked the high court for an emergency stay that would keep Title 42 in place.

WETUMPKA, Ala. (AP) — Two women are scheduled to stand trial in an Alabama city court where they’re accused of committing misdemeanors in their efforts to feed and trap stray cats. Mary Alston, 60, and Beverly Roberts, 84, were arrested and taken to jail by police in Wetumpka over the summer. The police chief said the women had previously been warned not to feed stray animals. A trial was set for Tuesday morning in Wetumpka Municipal Court. Both women, who were arrested on public property, face misdemeanor counts of criminal trespassing, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. Roberts was also charged with...

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (CA) on Sunday threatened social media companies after Elon Musk allowed conservatives back on Twitter.Adam Schiff is not happy that Democrats can no longer control the narrative on Twitter.Schiff on Sunday told social media companies that Congress will take away their Section 230 immunity if they don’t ‘moderate’ content (code word for banning conservatives).“We’ve got a big problem right now with social media companies and their failure to moderate content and the explosion of hate on Twitter, the banning of journalists on Twitter. We can’t tell them what to say or not say, but we gave...

Pope Francis’s heresy concerning reception of the Eucharist? — Response by John Lamont to Harrison and FastiggiOn November 17 and 24, 2022, the American Catholic newspaper The Wanderer published articles by Fr. Brian Harrison about the statement ‘The Teaching of the Catholic Faith on the Reception of the Holy Eucharist,’ concerning Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi (DD). The statement in question was signed by 56 Catholic clerics and scholars, and was issued on September 16, 2022. It accused Pope Francis of teaching heresy in the Apostolic Letter, as follows:The recent Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi, given June 29th 2022,...

A recent study has found that adults who initially visit a chiropractor to receive spinal manipulation for low back pain caused by disc herniation or radiculopathy (i.e., sciatica) are less likely to undergo discectomy (i.e., disc surgery) over the subsequent two years. Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on treatment of musculoskeletal conditions such as low back and neck pain. The most common therapy that chiropractors use is spinal manipulation, which includes a range of hands-on treatments directed to the joints of the spine. While chiropractic spinal manipulation has been found to be effective for treating low back...

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday (Dec 19) officially apologised for 250 years of the Netherlands' involvement in slavery, calling it a "crime against humanity". The apology comes almost 150 years after the end of slavery in the European country's overseas colonies, which included Suriname and islands like Curacao and Aruba in the Caribbean and Indonesia in the East. In the first of the former Dutch colonies to react, Aruba's Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes accepted the apology, but others like the island of Sint Maarten said it would not.

"And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." "Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever...

SINGAPORE: President Halimah Yacob on Monday (Dec 19) suggested that rapists aged 50 or older should not be spared caning, in a Facebook post expressing her dismay at recent cases of children being raped in their own homes. Under Singapore's Penal Code, a convicted rapist can be jailed up to 20 years and fined or caned. Those 50 years old and above cannot be sentenced to caning, but can be imprisoned longer in lieu of corporal punishment.

"The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d'état from which our democracy has never recovered." Robert Kennedy Jr Twitter