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The Canadian women's national soccer team is on strike due to pay equity problems and budget cuts. Star forwards Christine Sinclair and Janine Beckie confirmed the news to Rick Westhead of TSN on Friday: The players also released a statement: "With the biggest tournament in women's football history less than six months away, our preparation for the World Cup and the future success of the women's national team program are being compromised by Canada Soccer's continued inability to support its national teams," the statement read, in part. "Despite our strong track record of success and history-making achievements for more than...

Japanese zookeepers believe they have solved the mystery of how a gibbon became pregnant despite living alone in her cage. Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, shocked her keepers at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave birth despite having no known male companionship. Now two years later, following a DNA test on her baby, the zoo has worked out who the father is – and even has a theory about how the gibbons mated. The test showed the father to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjacent enclosure to...

This week, House Republicans blocked a law that would have allowed non-citizens to vote in municipal elections in Washington, DC. This is a reminder of how important the midterm elections are. If the Novermber elections had only gone a little bit differently, this law would have passed. More than 150 Democrats voted for this measure. The Federalist reported: House Republicans Block DC Law That Would Allow Illegal Residents To Vote In a win for election integrity, the House of Representatives voted to overturn a D.C. law that would give noncitizens a right to vote in municipal elections Thursday. “I applaud...

In the context of another thread here at Free Republic, I chanced to use the term "moral elephantiasis," which I remember from a long ago reading of National Review. Out of curiosity, I typed those two words into Google, in quotes, and found a number of interesting things. One of the things I found was the full text of the original article which I read, at the age of 23 or so; that article had been read into the Congressional Record by then Georgia Congressman Larry McDonald. I transcribed the article (with significant help from the PDF OCR algorithm), and...

Young Australian actor Sariah Saibu, who starred in the award-winning film Beautiful They has died suddenly.Young Aussie actress Sariah Saibu, who starred in the award-winning film Beautiful They has died suddenly. Sariah’s family confirmed on social media that she passed on January 30th but didn’t share her cause of death. “This morning we lost our darling Sariah,” her aunt Cassandra Colvin wrote on Facebook. “I am struggling to find the words to express the grief that I and her family are feeling at this time. “RIP beautiful – all our love always.” Sariah starred in the short LGBTQI+ film Beautiful...

In less than two years, 11 people perished and 251 were injured in NYC fires sparked by lithium-ion batteries used to power e-bikes and e-scooters, the FDNY said. In 2021, four persons died and 79 were injured in 104 lithium-ion battery fueled blazes in homes, fire officials said. Last year, those numbers took a concerning climb: six people were killed and 142 hurt in 220 battery-related fires. Lithium ion batteries were the cause of the fourth most fire deaths last year, the FDNY said, behind electrical, portable heaters and smoking. In the first month of 2023, there have been 1,563...

A teacher says she received $116 after a parent picked up their child from her class late. The teacher, known as Kristin Evans (@mrs._evans) on TikTok, posted a 30-second video explaining what happened, and it racked up 3.5 million views as of Friday. In the video, Evans says the director of her school handed her $116 in cash. She says the director told her she got the money because one of her half-day students was picked up nearly an hour late, and teachers get paid $2 for every minute that they’re late. “So this parent was charged $2 a minute...

Hoover built the FBI and abused its power, which is why he's left behind a legacy controversial enough to warrant repeated calls for the “J. Edgar Hoover Building” that headquarters the FBI to be renamed. It never has, but the 10-year tenure for FBI directors is arguably a much more important impact of his time. Instead of serving 37 years like Hoover, each FBI director gets 10 unless an extension is proposed by the President and affirmed by the Senate.

Citing a Zerohedge report, The Gateway Pundit noted that the Chinese altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613, fired green laser bursts over Maunakea, Hawaii on January 28, 2023. That Chinese military operation occurred simultaneously with the arrival of a Chinese spy balloon, which entered U.S. airspace over the Aleutian Islands in Alaska also on January 28, 2023. After being allowed to fly over the entire U.S. mainland, including sensitive military installations, the Chinese spy balloon was finally shot down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, 2023. Within the last 24 hours, a “high altitude object,” presumably another Chinese spy balloon,...

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in France on Saturday in a fourth day of action against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform, with unions planning to ramp up strikes if the plan is not dropped. Unlike on the three previous protest days there was no call for a day of nationwide strikes, although air traffic controllers at Paris' second airport staged a surprise walkout that resulted in the cancellation of half of flights. Macron and his government face a two-way fight to implement the plan to raise to pension age from 62 to 64 by overcoming resistance...

Although courts have already ruled that President Biden's attempt to unilaterally decree the forgiveness of a portion of student loan debt is not legal, plans are underway to reissue the illegal decree with a new twist. Students who major in studies that provide few opportunities for remunerative employment will be given "first dibs" on loan forgiveness. Secretary of Education Miguel Angel Cardona explained "there's little sense in forgiving the debt of students who major in science or engineering. Grads with degrees in these subjects are in great demand in the private sector and will likely be paid well. In contrast,...

President Trump reportedly will provide DNA and will testify in the Whackjob Jean Carroll hearing. Anderson Cooper will be be asked to take the stand. What a bunch of criminal gangsters the Democrats have become. They want power and will do anything to get it. Anything. Corrupt Clinton Judge Lewis Kaplan allowed crackpot E. Jean Carroll’s case to move forward against President Trump. The lady is a whackjob President Trump says. This same judge is overseeing the FTX case. This corrupt judge appears to have been picked to oversee this unwarranted case. It’s not based on facts, when you see...

Smack-Down! Hungary Pushes Back Against Obnoxious US Ambassador written by daniel mcadams saturday february 4, 2023 undefined US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman and his husband. Biden's Ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, is a particularly odious specimen in a long line of obnoxious US residents of Szabadság tér since the end of Hungary's subjection to Soviet control in 1989. Before him, Soap Opera producer and Obama glamor-queen moneybags Coleen Bell warned Hungarians in 2016 to get on board with the destruction of Syria or face the wrath of DC. Secretary of State Tony Blinken's own father, Donald, did the Clinton...

Fifteen people have been arrested after members of an allegedly “far-right” protest and leftist “anti-fascist” counter-protesters clashed outside a migrant hotel over social media footage that appeared to show a migrant making sexual advances on an underage girl. On Friday evening, violent scenes were seen outside the Suites Hotel, Knowsley in Merseyside, which like hotels across the country has been housing migrants free of charge amid the growing Channel boats crisis. A police van was set on fire and a total of 15 people, including 13 men and two women, were arrested on suspicion of violent disorder. Police also reported...

Florida Sen. Rick Scott this week announced a proposed bill that would protect federal old-age entitlements in part by rolling back funding for tens of thousands of new tax enforcement agents. Scott on his Senate website said his proposed legislation would "safeguard the benefits" of Medicare and Social Security, funding for which he claimed President Joe Biden has a history of cutting. The bill in part would "rescind funding for Joe Biden’s new 87,000 IRS agent army and redirect those funds to Medicare and Social Security to shore up these programs and address threats of insolvency," Scott said. Another provision...

Freda Brasfield, the Administration and Finance Director in Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office, was arraigned Friday on money laundering charges in an alleged prison drug smuggling scheme. Brasfield, who is also a longtime Boston Democratic political activist and community organizer, appeared in Woburn Superior Court, along with two co-defendants, Jaime Liberty and Jayleen Rivera, both of whom are facing charges of conspiring to smuggle drugs into MCI Shirley. Brasfield, who is represented by Boston attorney David Meier, entered a plea of not guilty to one charge of money laundering and a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Brasfield, Liberty,...

Madrid offered to replace Barcelona as Tel Aviv’s Spanish twin city, after Barcelona announced it would be cutting ties with Israel, JTA reports. Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau stated on Wednesday that she is suspending all of the city’s ties with Israel, citing what she called “the repeated violations of human rights of the Palestinian population and non-compliance with United Nations resolutions.” She added that Barcelona will maintain relations with “Israeli and Palestinian entities that continue to work for peace and against apartheid.” A day later, on Thursday, Madrid’s mayor, José Luís Martínez-Almeida, offered to step up as a replacement. In...

“Our main market is the United States,” said Chan, CEO of Man Wah’s Mexico subsidiary. “We don’t want to lose that market.” That same objective explains why scores of major Chinese companies are investing aggressively in Mexico, taking advantage of an expansive North American trade deal. Tracing a path forged by Japanese and South Korean companies, Chinese firms are establishing factories that allow them to label their goods “Made in Mexico,” then trucking their products into the United States duty-free. The interest of Chinese manufacturers in Mexico is part of a broader trend known as near-shoring. International companies are moving...

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Friday afternoon said he had instructed the Commissioner of Israel Police and senior officials in the Jerusalem District to prepare for "Operation Defensive Shield 2 in eastern Jerusalem" starting on Sunday. "The purpose of the operation is to fight and root out terrorism, to reach the terrorists' homes and to stop terrorism before it comes to carry out attacks," said a statement issued by Ben Gvir’s office. The statement, which was published just before the start of Shabbat in Israel, followed the deadly terrorist attack in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem, in which...

James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, was put on paid leave from his non-profit journalism enterprise on Wednesday amid what some are calling an attempted “hostile takeover” being executed by certain board members. The Project Veritas Board of Directors will reportedly decide whether to remove him from his leadership position in a meeting scheduled for Friday. Project Veritas put out a statement in response to this news Wednesday evening, saying that the board is conducting an “internal evaluation to assure our long term success.” “Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and...