Free Republic

China emits 27% of global carbon dioxide and one-third of the world’s greenhouse gases. That exceeds those of the U.S. and other developed countries combined. Fundamentally, a nation’s capacity to grow, prosper, and safeguard the environment hinges on the quality of its institutions and economic system. It’s the freer economies that do a far better job of achieving more dynamic growth while creating a healthier, cleaner natural environment.

Despite maintaining ‘good relations’ with Moscow, Iran says it will never recognise Crimea and four other regions of Donbas as Russian. During an interview on Thursday, January 19, with the Turkish TV channel TRT World, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Iran confirmed that Tehran did not recognise Crimea and four other regions of Donbas as Russian. This will come as a huge blow to President Vladimir Putin who clearly sees the Republic of Iran as an ally. Abdollahian insisted that Crimea, DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, with reference to the observance of international laws, were Ukrainian...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Thursday that he is unsure if his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is “alive” and does not know who within the Russian government he would have to speak to if he wanted to begin talks with Moscow. The bizarre remark follows months of pressure on both sides of the Ukrainian war to come to the negotiating table, pressure largely ignored, and sometimes mocked, by both the Russian and Ukrainian governments. Zelensky and Putin last met in talks in 2019, which did nothing to resolve...

An unsecured server discovered by a security researcher last week contained the identities of hundreds of thousands of individuals from the U.S. government’s Terrorist Screening Database and “No Fly List.” Located by the Swiss hacker known as maia arson crimew, the server, run by the U.S. national airline CommuteAir, was left exposed on the public internet. It revealed a vast amount of company data, including private information on almost 1,000 CommuteAir employees. Analysis of the server resulted in the discovery of a text file named “NoFly.csv,” a reference to the subset of individuals in the Terrorist Screening Database who have...

Politicians try to hide the pocketbook politics of migration — but Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) accidentally let the cat out of the bag during a staged PR event when she asked a plain-spoken mayor what he wants from a 2023 migration bill. “We need cheap labor,” responded Gerardo Anaya, the mayor of Somerton, an Arizona agricultural town between Yuma and the Mexican border.

These people are definitely different from the rest of us, and I’m saying that as an insult. Once again, the world’s powerful “thought leaders” have assembled in the exclusive Swiss town of Davos to figure out how to use their “extraterrestrial” power to solve the world’s problems. Of course, solving the world’s problems means creating a tiered system in which they live the lives of Roman emperors, while the rest of us peons (the ones who are allowed to survive) grovel in the dust, eating insects. Knowing that, I guess it won’t shock you too much to learn about the...

Mark 3:13-19 Friends, today in the Gospel, Jesus gathers his disciples. And he appointed twelve Apostles “that they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach.”St. Thérèse of Lisieux tells us that she endeavored to write down her spiritual memoir at the prompting of her sister, who was also her religious superior to whom she was bound in obedience. After praying that she say nothing displeasing to Christ, she took up the Gospel of Mark, and her eyes fell on these words: “Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted and they came...

Last month, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, held several meetings with company executives. The topic: a rival’s new chatbot, a clever A.I. product that looked as if it could be the first notable threat in decades to Google’s $149 billion search business. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who had not spent much time at Google since they left their daily roles with the company in 2019, reviewed Google’s artificial intelligence product strategy, according to two people with knowledge of the meetings who were not allowed to discuss them. They approved plans and pitched ideas to put more chatbot...

Adam Schiff and a group of Democrats introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision, one of the greatest free-speech victories in history. It’s just a political stunt, of course, as Schiff doesn’t have the votes. But it does reflect the authoritarian outlook of the contemporary left on free expression. From the day the decision came down, 13 years ago this week, Citizens United was a rallying cry for those threatened by unregulated discourse. President Barack Obama infamously, and inaccurately, rebuked the justices during his State of the Union for upholding the First Amendment. Since then, Democrats...

Joe Biden’s name was mentioned prominently in an October 2017 email seeking to firm up a controversial, multimillion-dollar deal to ship natural gas from the US to China, the communication, found on first son Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, reveals. In a missive dated Oct. 27 of that year, Louisiana attorney Robert W. Fenet told Hunter and his uncle, first brother Jim Biden, that he had secured a contact for them at Houston energy company Cherniere, the Daily Mail reported Friday. “I confirm I have requested [the contact] to be available for a call from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on...

Large Antarctica meteorite The large meteorite that's been recovered. (Maria Valdes) ******************************************************************* Antarctica has a lot going for it when it comes to meteorite hunting. The dark rocks stand out against the icy landscape. Its dry climate keeps weathering to a minimum. And even when meteorites sink into the ice they are often returned to the surface by the churning of the glaciers. In spite of these ideal conditions, finding sizeable chunks of space rock is rare. A group of researchers have just returned from the ice-covered continent with five new meteorites that include an unusually large specimen. The big...

Trauma from environmental and climate disasters can cause long-term changes in cognitive functioning, according to research published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Climate. Researchers from the University of California San Diego and California State University used existing data from survivors of the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history. In the 2023 study, researchers found that among a subset of people directly exposed to the fire, electroencephalography (EEG) scans showed noticeable differences in brain activity and cognitive function. ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT Study: Trauma from climate disaster can change brain function BY ZACK BUDRYK - 01/20/23 1:53 PM ET...

Remember when the Paul Pelosi story was big news for a while, then weird things started coming out, and then suddenly everyone stopped talking about it?Yeah, I do.Back in October, the story came, and Democrats pounced on it, pushing the narrative that some deranged Trumpster had broken into the Pelosi home and attacked the husband of the then-House Speaker in some politically motivated MAGA attack. Of course, it was soon revealed that the attack was most definitely not a Trump supporter — but actually a left-leaning supporter of Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ causes, as well as a nudist activist...

Donald Trump's campaign is asking Facebook's parent company to reinstate his access on grounds he's a declared 2024 presidential candidate and that keeping him off the platform is interfering with the political process. Trump's campaign sent a letter Tuesday to Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other company officials requesting a meeting "to discuss President Trump's prompt reinstatement to the platform." "At a time when the United States faces critical issues that impact its citizens and the world, and at a time when the country begins the process of choosing its next president, we believe that Meta should...

Cells Being Exposed to a UV Nail Polish Dryer Researchers at UC San Diego studied the UV light-emitting devices used to cure gel manicures, and found that the chronic use of these nail polish drying machines is damaging to human cells. Credit: David Baillot/ UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering The ultraviolet nail polish drying devices used to cure gel manicures may pose more of a public health concern than previously thought. Researchers at the University of California San Diego studied these ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting devices, and found that their use leads to cell death and cancer-causing mutations in...

More and more eggs are being seized at the U.S.-Mexico border from people looking for better deals down south as prices soar in America.Confiscations of egg products by U.S. border officers increased 108 percent from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, according to Border Report. During that time, egg prices climbed to record highs.December prices averaged $5.03 per dozen, a more than 207 percent increase from December 2021, according to a report from the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Prices have fallen since then, but are likely to stay higher-than-usual because 43 million egg-laying hens recently died...

Election Watch (EW), a Wisconsin election integrity watchdog organization, has discovered that more than 150,000 votes cast in the 2020 presidential election cannot be connected with a valid address. EW computer analyst Peter Bernegger said the group’s study of Wisconsin’s voter rolls found 45,000 such occurrences involving people who were living out of state in the Nov. 3 ballot, with another 107,000 documented instances on the part of voters who moved to another address within the state and cast a ballot in a different jurisdiction from the one in which they actually reside. “That’s over 150,000 votes cast in the...

Former President Trump was fined $937,000 for filing improper lawsuits against Hillary Clinton and her campaign, according to a court ruling by a judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled that Trump and his legal team displayed a “continuing pattern of misuse of the courts” in order to “dishonestly advance a political narrative,” according to the court ruling.

One billion people should stop eating meat in order to save the climate, the chairman of the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe told a panel at the World Economic Forum. Danish businessman and chairman of the German manufacturing giant Siemens, Jim Hagemann Snabe pushed the Great Reset agenda of replacing meat with synthetic proteins at a “Mobilizing for Climate” panel at the annual globalist meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. “If a billion people stop eating meat, I tell you, it has a big impact. Not only does it have a big impact on the current food system, but...

A 36-year-old trans dad from Seattle who identifies as non-binary and queer has been documenting how they “took advantage of the body organs I was born with” to give birth after a one-night stand during their medical transition. Danny Wakefield came out as transmasculine — a person assigned female at birth but who identifies with masculinity — when they were 25, went on testosterone treatment for nine years and had a double mastectomy in Florida during the transition. “Although I identify as transmasculine rather than male, people often read me as a cisgender gay man. So I’m aware that it...