Free Republic

Central European countries like Croatia, Hungary, and also recently Austria too are beginning to emerge as voices of reason in the West after their de facto New Cold War bloc’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine over the past year failed to defeat that Great Power. They rightly realize how counterproductive this NATO-led campaign has been for their collective interests, ergo why they’re urging restraint and even an outright reversal of policy at this point in time. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic is unexpectedly giving Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a run for his money when it comes to being the...

The brain has been hiding inside a fossil fish skull and it's now revealing secrets of animal evolution. Illustration of a small gray fish with a dark stripe down its side with an extra bit showing what its little pink brain looked like.This artist's rendering shows what Coccocephalus wildi might have looked like back when it lived over 300 million years ago. - Márcio L. Castro A very long time ago, a fish died, was buried in sediments and eventually became fossilized. Today, 319 million years later, it's the star of a study that reveals "the oldest example of a...

A former ABC journalist who went missing after the FBI raided his home and seized his laptop has been arrested for transporting child pornography. As reported last year, Emmy-winning investigative journalist James Meek went missing after the FBI raided his Virginia home and seized classified information from his laptop in April 2022. James Gordon Meek, 52, went missing after the feds raided his Arlington penthouse apartment, the Rolling Stone reported. Meek produced the Hulu documentary “3212 Unredacted” which detailed the 2017 Pentagon coverup of the deaths of US special forces in Niger. The “lightning raid” was conducted after a search...

Bp. Strickland urges Vatican to refute Biden’s claim that Pope doesn’t oppose taxpayer-funded abortions'Mr Biden can’t be allowed to twist the words of Pope Francis in this way,' the Bishop of Tyler wrote on Twitter. Bishop Joseph Strickland called on the Vatican to deny President Joe Biden’s claim that Pope Francis does not support the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) call for a halt to taxpayer-funded abortions. “Mr Biden can’t be allowed to twist the words of Pope Francis in this way,” Stickland wrote on Twitter. “I implore the Vatican press office to emphatically clarify that Pope Francis...

A former “Dances With Wolves” actor accused of leading a cult could be facing multiple felonies and life in prison after police said he sexually assaulted young Indigenous girls and took multiple wives during a period spanning two decades, court records show. As of Wednesday, Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, who goes by Nathan Chasing Horse, will be charged with at least two counts of sex trafficking and one count each of sexual assault of a child younger than 16, child abuse or neglect and sexual assault, according to the records. Authorities have not said when he will be formally...

Daytime television psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw says he plans to end his talk show after 21 years in the coming months, but viewers haven’t seen the last of him. “Dr. Phil” was the most prominent spinoff from Oprah Winfrey’s show, which once dominated daytime TV. The Texan’s program debuted in September 2002 after he’d been featured as a regular guest on Winfrey’s. […] The traditional broadcast TV season ends in spring; there was no date given for Phil’s final show. McGraw, 72, said he wants to focus on prime-time programming and is planning an unspecified project for early next year....

Here's a look at the 2023 nominees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Cyndi Lauper Kate Bush Sheryl Crow Missy Elliott Joy Division/New Order Iron Maiden George Michael Willie Nelson Rage Against The Machine Soundgarden The Spinners A Tribe Called Quest The White Stripes Warren Zevon

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.