Free Republic

Householders who flout air pollution rules on wood-burning stoves could face on-the-spot £300 fines and even a criminal record after the government promised to clamp down on the oldest and dirtiest appliances. Local authorities responsible for enforcing smoke control rules in urban areas have found it difficult to take people to court and provide evidence beyond reasonable doubt. English councils have issued only 17 fines over six years, despite more than 18,000 complaints. Now the government has instructed local authorities to consider using powers in the 2021 Environment Act to issue on-the-spot civil penalties, which can range from £175 to...

China’s state-run medicare program recently failed to reach an agreement with Pfizer to import more Paxlovid, claiming the COVID-19 treatment drug is too expensive. This is despite the drug being offered to the state at a reduced rate in comparison with that offered to other developed countries. Lack of Paxlovid will leave only Azvudine, an anti-HIV drug the Chinese communist regime rushed through development and re-branded as an anti-COVID drug, as a treatment option.An ivermectin bottle next to a positive blood sample of COVID-19. (Novikov Aleksey/Shutterstock)Given the recent explosive spread of COVID and the resulting skyrocketing rates of hospitalization, finding...

what is the true reason for these mass cuts that have left tens of thousands (80% of them in the US) out of work? This was what data experts at 365 Data Science attempted to get to the bottom of when they decided to run their own analysis of the figures. ...the median time a recently laid-off employee has been in their role is roughly two years. This could suggest that, in some ways, these cuts represent a winding-back of hiring policies put in place since the pandemic. More surprising though, was the fact that the median level of experience...

The world is facing a long list of troubles often isolated to specific regions. Still, one issue experts warn is just on the horizon is a global food shortage that is likely to threaten every country. Farmers everywhere are already noting there is a shortage of fertilizers needed to keep crop yields at their highest levels to feed the nearly 8 billion people of the world. Last year, for instance, U.S. Army Special Forces veteran and author Michael Yon told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily that all of the 26 major plants in Europe that produce nitrogen-based fertilizers are either closed...

I am not a basketball fan. I never have been, and, quite frankly, the current crop of blowhard anti-American racist multi-bazillionaires like Lebron James make it easy to stay that way. All the posturing and lecturing and finger-pointing from those oppressed folks drawing down hundreds of millions for playing a game gets a little tedious in the face of the challenges of real life. The life where you have a job every day, worry about money if the transmission goes in the car or the dog needs a vet visit or, God forbid, you’re buying food for a tween-age boy...

What is the “most important problem” facing the country today? That’s a question that Gallup regularly asks Americans and the most recent edition of that survey just dropped this week. You might imagine that crime, inflation, high prices, or the border crisis would be at the top of the list. To be sure, plenty of people cited those issues. But the number one problem on the list was “The Government/Poor Leadership.” More than one in five people (21%) chose that answer, a notable increase from the same survey conducted a few months earlier. So Joe Biden’s presidency continues to set...

The tide sounds like it’s shifted on the question of the vote to kick Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) off the Foreign Affairs Committee. While Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) could be kicked off the House Intelligence Committee at the will of the Speaker of the House because it was a select committee, because Foreign Affairs is a standing committee, getting Omar off requires a floor vote. There has been a question about whether or not they had the votes to be able to do it.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is now saying he thinks he has...

The Oscar-winning actress recalls encounters she experienced soon after moving to Hollywood. Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer has revealed that she experienced more racism in Los Angeles than her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. After appearing on a recent episode of Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, Spencer shared that she expected the West Coast, blue state of California, to be a “free and liberal thinking place,” after she moved there in 1996 but since has experienced “more racism” than her southern hometown. “It is so funny. It’s right out of ‘Pretty Woman,’” the Truth Be Told actress said. “I remember going into a...

Days ago marked 50 years since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords which effectively ended American participation in the Vietnam war. One of the consequences, according to Georgetown University international affairs scholar Charles Kupchan, was that an “isolationist impulse” made a “significant comeback in response to the Vietnam War, which severely strained the liberal internationalist consensus.” As the Cold War historian John Lamberton Harper points out, President Jimmy Carter’s hawkish Polish-born national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, scorned his intra-administration rival, the cautious, gentlemanly secretary of state Cyrus Vance as “a nice man but burned by Vietnam.” Indeed, Vance and...

LONDON, Jan 26 (Reuters) - A new song by a well-known Russian comic that satirizes Moscow's war in Ukraine and its supporters has been referred to prosecutors by a patriotic organization which believes it discredits the army, now a criminal offense. The song, by Semyon Slepakov, is called "Lullaby" and likens Russia, with dark irony, to a mother who glorifies the idea of dying on the battlefields of Ukraine and believes it is her sons' duty to lay down their lives for her own greatness. [skip] 'LATTE AND CHEESECAKE' In the song, which includes the line "there's nothing better than...

The United States has moved four suspects in the killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moise out of the country to US territory for prosecution... Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia calling for the House Oversight Committee to look into violations of rights including civil rights involving people who entered the US Capitol on January 6th... Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan urging Russian assistance in dealing with a blockade of the Lachin Corridor by Azerbaijan... In Peru today the debate in Congress on early elections suspended as the protests continue... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling CNN he's willing to...

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec Nikki Haley once compared Trump's speeches to Dylann Roof and tried to tie him to the KKK 9:49 PM · Jan 31, 2023

You may have already heard about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s announcement last year that his state will ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Restrictions on how many non-electric vehicles can be sold will begin in just three years. This is making all of the climate alarmists very happy, of course, but there is a significantly large fly in the ointment of this plan. In order to charge up roughly 12.5 million EVs on a daily basis, the state will need to have a lot of electricity available on the power grid. But nobody seems to have run through...

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec FLASHBACK: Nikki Haley slams Trump supporters: 'We shouldn't have followed him'

The comments were made on 1/31/23

The great nightmare of the Cold War was that giant Russian tank armies would not only crush their immediate neighbours but also sweep across the north German plains, hug western cities like Hamburg and hold them hostage, confounding all our calculations about a cautious escalation ladder. Now we have promised to supply Ukraine with a Nato tank army, there is a new version of this bad dream: is the war set to run out of control? It is difficult to see the relatively small number of pledged tanks matching their billing of becoming a game changer. At the Battle of...

[Catholic Caucus] Fr. Gerald Murray slams Pope Francis’ comments on homosexuality, African bishops'The people that have to undergo conversion are those who want to commit sodomy, not the bishops who are telling them this is a sin, it’s wrong, and the state should not legitimize it.'Renowned canon lawyer Fr. Gerald Murray blasted Pope Francis’ recent call for the global decriminalization of homosexuality and his criticism of bishops who support anti-sodomy laws. Murray, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, denounced the “confusion” of the pope’s remarks in a hard-hitting interview Thursday with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s The World Over....

Cementing what has been in the works for months, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will formally announce she is running for president and will seek the Republican nomination for her party’s 2024 ticket, The Post and Courier has learned.

President Biden posed a challenge to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday amid rising tensions surrounding the debate over raising the federal debt ceiling: "Show me your budget and I'll show you mine." Biden made the remarks while responding to a question from CNN about what his message to McCarthy would be during the upcoming meeting between the two, expected to be held Wednesday at the White House. McCarthy ...

Jan 31 (Reuters)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he would be willing to serve as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine if asked by both countries and the United States...