Free Republic

Sturgeon embarrasses herself in car crash interview. Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon says transgender criminals convicted for raping women are women, despite a car crash interview in which she appeared to flip flop all over the place. The controversy began after 31-year-old Adam Graham, who was was found guilty of raping the two women during frenzied sex attacks, was sent to Scotland’s only all female prison. Only when on trial for the attacks did Graham announce that he was “transitioning” into a woman, a process which seemingly culminated in him wearing a bad wig and cheap make-up. The rapist was clearly...

Poorly informed Pope criticised German church claims Bishop Bishop Wiesemann of Speyer: "Pope perhaps not well informed"The German inner-church reform movement "Synodal Path" wants to modernise the Catholic Church. Again and again, criticism comes from the Vatican. Now the Bishop of Speyer has spoken out.Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer has rejected criticism from the Vatican against the reform process in the Catholic Church. "I believe that the Pope is perhaps not well informed there in the end," Wiesemann said in Speyer on Monday. The so-called Synodal Way was "not a story of a few". "Our process is not elitist....

Electric truck maker Rivian Automotive said it is laying off 6% of its workforce in a bid to conserve cash as it braces for a possible industry-wide price war. In an email to employees that was seen by CNBC, CEO RJ Scaringe said improving the company’s operating efficiency must be a “core objective.” The company is focusing on ramping up production of its R1 trucks and the EDV delivery vans it builds for Amazon, as well as on development of its upcoming smaller R2 vehicle platform.

A Metro employee was killed on the platform at the Potomac Avenue station in Washington, D.C., as he tried to stop a shooter who opened fire on commuters, injuring three others on Wednesday morning. A man brandishing a weapon on a Metro bus followed one individual off the vehicle at 14th Street and Potomac Avenue in Southeast D.C. and shot at them, striking their legs, police said at a press conference, in the first of what authorities are calling a “series of individual events.” The shooter then traveled down a station escalator toward the underground rail platform and got into...

A large liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Grace Emilia ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Wednesday. Local media reports the shipping traffic is unaffected as the incident took place in a southern section of the canal where a second channel allows for ships to bypass the blockage. AIS data from Vesselfinder (below) showed four tugboats working to move the 293-m-long vessel. Equasis lists the 2021-built 174,000 cu m ship, which entered the canal early Wednesday morning, as owned by Japan’s NYK. The latest incident comes just three weeks after the bulker Glory bound for China carrying 66,000 mt of...

A spike in the number of deaths in recent weeks has disrupted funeral arrangements and put mortuaries under unprecedented stress. An Irish Examiner analysis of death notices on the website rip.ie shows there were 9,718 published in the eight-week period from December 1, 2022, to January 25, 2023 — up 20% from 8,075 in the same period a year earlier. The figure is also considerably higher than the 8,135 death notices published in the same period to January 25, 2021, when the country was in the grip of the worst period of the Covid pandemic. Pre-pandemic, 6,802 death notices were...

Investigators in Dallas, Texas say they have located the two monkeys that were reportedly stolen from the Dallas Zoo alive inside a closet at an abandoned house on Tuesday. The two emperor tamarin monkeys were found shortly after police released a photo of a person of interest in the bizarre case.

A white male student has sued six Texas medical schools that rejected him for admissions but allegedly admitted other students — namely students of color and women — who had lower MCAT scores. The class-action lawsuit was filed Jan. 10 by the America First Legal Foundation’s Center for Legal Equality.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- As they head into an offseason full of quarterback uncertainty, the one thing the San Francisco 49ers know for sure is that they have two signal-callers -- Brock Purdy and Trey Lance -- under contract and recovering from injuries. As of Tuesday, the Niners have a good idea of when one will return, while the other is still, to some degree, up in the air. Purdy suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right (throwing) elbow in the first quarter of Sunday's 31-7 NFC Championship Game loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. An MRI on Monday...

The Federal Reserve slowed its drive to rein in inflation and said further interest-rate hikes are in store as officials debate when to end their most aggressive tightening of credit in four decades. Policymakers lifted the Fed’s target for its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%. The smaller move followed a half-point increase in December and four jumbo-sized 75 basis-point hikes prior to that. The unanimous decision by the Federal Open Market Committee was in line with financial market expectations. Markets are forecasting a pivot after the June meeting in 2023. The...

Federal investigators on Wednesday found no documents with classified markings during a search of President Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., home, his attorney said in a statement.

MOSCOW, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- More than 146.4 million people permanently resided in Russia as of Jan. 1, down 555,332 from the past year, data published by the country's Federal Statistics Service showed on Wednesday. More than 40 million people lived in the Central Federal District and over 13 million of them lived in Moscow, the capital and largest city of Russia. More than 13.6 million people lived in the Northwestern Federal District and almost 5.6 million of them lived in the country's second largest city of St. Petersburg. Some 109.6 million people permanently resided in urban areas, with 16...

NBC News committed a random act of journalism on Tuesday, interviewing the chief investigator for the January 6th committee, and the revelations were astounding. Without trying to sound hyperbolic, what Tim Heaphy says to Lester Holt may be the most significant admission regarding January 6th since the attack took place. Previously, surveillance videos had revealed how complicated and confusing the situation was, but according to Heaphy, the attack was preventable before the first person stepped foot on the Capitol grounds.

Media outlets are reluctant to admit any wrongdoing in their coverage regarding the narrative of collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia in the 2016 election, according to a report by the Columbia Journalism Review. The New York Times and the Washington Post were both awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on Russian interference in the election, despite questions surrounding the legitimacy of some of the claims made. “On the few occasions in which new information emerged that caused us to reexamine past reporting, we did so forthrightly,” the Post told CJR. Major media outlets that played a...

Relatives of a Ms Nakajjigo initially sought $140m in damages from the US government. The $10.5m decision came after a wrongful death trial in Salt Lake City for the philanthropist who was tragically killed on a camping trip with husband Ludovic Michaud on 13 June 2020, the Associated Press reported. Attorneys for Ms Nakajjigo’s family argued that the US National Park Service were negligent for not securing a metal traffic control gate that whipped around in high winds and sliced through the car’s passenger door, instantly killing her. US attorneys don’t dispute that park officials were to blame. But they...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday responded to a question about former President Trump’s latest critiques, but the governor refused to criticize the former commander-in-chief, maintaining that attacks are coming “from all angles” and noting that his landslide victory in the state shows that his leadership style has been effective. When asked about Trump’s latest critiques, DeSantis quickly responded, “What I would just say is this: I roll out of bed. I have people attacking me from all angles.”

We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting. Now, former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward have released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.” Notably, while Bob Woodword and others...

Over the last few weeks, YouTube has censored some of the biggest firearms channels on the platform for simply uploading videos that show them attaching suppressors to their guns. In response, many of these channels have embraced free speech video sharing platform Rumble and used it to post uncensored versions of their content. The recent wave of YouTube censorship appears to be related to a change in the way YouTube is interpreting its Firearms policy. This policy prohibits content that provides instructions on manufacturing “homemade silencers/suppressors” but there are no explicit restrictions on attaching suppressors to firearms.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Wednesday on “CNN This Morning” that President Joe Biden should “absolutely not” negotiate on the debt ceiling. Anchor Poppy Harlow said, “Yesterday, Speaker McCarthy said he thinks Biden will, quote, ‘sit down and negotiate,’ close quote, today. Do you think President Biden should negotiate on the debt ceiling?” Durbin said, “Absolutely not. The debt ceiling is a critical vote for our economy, for jobs for the fate of businesses, and the reputation of the United States to pay its bills. That should not be negotiated.”

Pets, especially dogs, never cease to amaze their owners. From time to time, they give us a surprise of a lifetime. In viral video shared by a TikToker under the username @_lucy_webb_, the adorable dog gave his owner a surprise of a lifetime when he seemingly asked her a simple question!