Free Republic

Wildfires pushing tigers towards Sumatran villages. Drought prodding elephants into African cropland. Hotter ocean temperatures forcing whales into shipping lanes. Humans and wildlife have long struggled to harmoniously coexist. Climate change is pitting both against each other more often, new research finds, amplifying conflicts over habitat and resources. "We should expect these kinds of conflicts to increase in the future," said lead researcher Briana Abrahms, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington. "Recognizing that climate is an important driver can help us better predict when they'll occur and help us [intervene]." Human-wildlife conflict is defined as any time humans...

What is almost never mentioned is the role the Soviet Union played in helping North Vietnam...and the mistaken belief of most people that they never played an active part at all.... Starting in 1964, North Vietnamese fighter pilots and anti-aircraft gunners were being trained in the Soviet Union, with Soviet advisors also being stationed in North Vietnam... Soviet archives opened after the fall of the USSR indicate that these anti-aircraft crews, mainly Ukrainian, served for much of the war... Early on, when the North Vietnamese troops were still unfamiliar with the new Soviet anti-aircraft batteries, Soviet crews manned the guns...

Medical establishments prove time and time again how easily polluted they are by leftism. Treat human life as anything less than sacred, and humanity is rapidly dehumanized. Canada's MAiD, like all medical homicide programs, is the metaphorical foot in the door, an obstinate wedge, breaking the seal of a once-closed divider. Or we call it what it is (genocide), and MAiD is like an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson in The Shining. For context, in 2016, the year "assisted suicide" became legal, the number of MAiD deaths was 1,018. Five years later, the 2021 data showed that number at 10,064. This is...

A transgender teacher with prosthetic Z-cup breasts has finally been suspended from her Canadian school after pictures showed her in men's clothing, proving she does not wear the provocative attire all the time. Kayla Lemieux, who claims the breasts are real and the result of a medical condition, has come under fire for her tight outfits and huge prosthetics, with parents previously claiming she 'mocks women and the education experience.' The Halton District School Board (HDSB) confirmed she had been placed on paid leave on Tuesday - though she continues to be paid for her role at Oakville Trafalgar High...

PORT ROYAL, S.C., Wednesday, Feb. 25, 1863. I am glad to be able to inform you that the Foster-Hunter imbroglio, which had assumed so complicated a form at the date of my last writing, and which for a moment seriously threatened to interfere with active operations in this Department, has been disentangled and finally settled. The solution of the difficulty will, I am sure, be as satisfactory to the country as it certainly is to this command. Gen. FOSTER does not return, and Gen. FOSTER's troops do not depart. They remain here as an integral part of Gen. HUNTER's command...

One of the reasons why we don't deserve dogs is because they give us joy that we aren't capable of giving them that back. In a viral video, a cute dog is seen giving a hilarious dance to an elderly woman's singing and clapping.

President Biden said in a speech on Wednesday that he's going to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines "come hell or high water." Biden made the comments at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on Wednesday night. "I know it may make some of you uncomfortable, but that little state above me, Delaware is one of them, has the highest rate, one of the highest rates of gun ownership. But guess what? We're going to ban assault weapons again come hell or high water and high capacity magazines. When we did it last time to reduce...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Dozens of Iranian schoolgirls needed hospital treatment on Tuesday after another mysterious poisoning, a news agency reported, the latest in a spate of suspected attacks in the Islamic republic. Hundreds of cases of respiratory distress have been reported in the past three months among schoolgirls mainly in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, with some needing hospitalisation. A government official said on Sunday that the attacks were believed to be a deliberate attempt to force the closure of girls' schools. "Today (Tuesday) at noon, a number of students were poisoned at the Khayyam Girls' School in the city...

I found several threads discussing this classic new movie, but didn't find any links to the trailer.This trailer has no foul language and is child and preacher friendly (just kidding, "this bear is f*cked")From Youtube:Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner's plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow … and blood. Cocaine...

In the last couple of days, I’ve written about how FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted that his agency concluded “quite some time ago” that the COVID virus escaped from a Wuhan, China virology lab, and how “sources” recently told the Washington Post that FBI agents were against the August 2022 raid on former President’s Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. What’s the commonality between the two stories? They both make the FBI look better, and they both indicate that Wray might be playing a game of CYA and distancing himself from the dictatorial, partisan Attorney General, Merrick Garland.

A former youth pastor at First Baptist Church (FBC) of Bentonville, Arkansas, has accepted a plea deal for his victimization of children and pleaded guilty to 13 counts of sexual assault. Former FBC youth pastor Keenan Hord, who also served about two years as a youth pastor at well-known Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault in the first degree. Hord also pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual assault in the second degree; one count of sexual indecency with a child; and three counts of distributing, possessing, or viewing matter depicting sexually...

Industrial-scale fraud, committed by organized actors, accelerates over time like a drug-resistant bacterium. If you want to know how America is going to get screwed in 2024, follow the dough. That is the Zuckerberg dough. Zuck and pals are spending tens of millions of dollars, not padding voter rolls, not fighting lawsuits, not getting voters out early… they are spending the dough infiltrating and controlling election commissions. For those who think cleaning the voter rolls and voting early are enough protect 2024, our data proves you are delusional. The Left is all in controlling election commissions. Expect Kari Lake’s outcome...

Two civil lawsuits have been filed against Kyle Rittenhouse and others, stemming from Rittenhouse’ self-defense shootings of three men who assaulted him during the Kenosha riots. One of the lawsuits was filed by attorneys for Gaige Grosskruetz, who was wounded after pursuing Kyle Rittenhouse and while pointing his pistol at Kyle. The Grosskruetz lawsuit was filed in 2020. An amendment to the complaint was filed on February 14, 2021, adding Rittenhouse’ name. The other lawsuit was filed by attorneys representing the estate of Anthony Huber, who attacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard after pursuing Rittenhouse while he was on the ground,...

Yosemite National Park remains closed indefinitely as startling photos show popular parts of Yosemite Valley buried in snow. Heated tents in Curry Village and a shuttle stop near Yosemite Falls, both highly trafficked locations even during the cold season, were blanketed in snow. The park originally closed to visitors last weekend as severe winter weather approached the Sierra Nevada. The storm ultimately dumped "up to 15 feet" of snow in some areas of Yosemite, the park noted on Twitter, and created whiteout conditions across the region over several days. For its part, Yosemite Valley tallied 40 inches of snow Tuesday...

Indian leader calls on bloc to find common ground on global issues as he inaugurates the meeting set to be dominated by Ukraine war. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has criticised global institutions for failing to address the world’s biggest challenges, calling on countries to find common ground on divisive issues. Speaking at the opening of the Group of 20 (G20) foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, Modi said that countries should acknowledge that multilateralism is currently “in crisis”. “The experience of the last few years – financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, terrorism and wars – clearly shows...

In Chicago on Tuesday, current Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election. In a race where only the top two finishers would advance to the final round, Lightfoot finished third, with 17.1% of the vote. Of nine total candidates, the top two vote-getters were Paul Vallas (33.7% of the vote) and Brandon Johnson (20.3%). Those two will now compete in a runoff in April. The New York Times, which provided those voting data, described Lightfoot in its February 28 report as someone “whose outsider status and promises to enact sweeping reforms propelled her to office four years ago,” but...

Keen technophiles may recall that the internet is “a series of tubes” (not a “big truck”), and sometimes those tubes get congested. The late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) fretted about streaming services crowding out other data packets. The analysis is highly technical, but do your best to follow: “Ten movies streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet? I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going...

After a mother found disturbing content on her 16-year-old’s phone, police investigated and arrested a Florida youth pastor, charging him with multiple counts of sexual misconduct. February 9, Human Trafficking detectives arrested Moises Escoto, 36, after learning he had made contact with the child two years earlier on a chat and meetup app called Sniffies. Sniffies is a map-based meetup app launched in 2018 for gay, bisexual, or curious men. While the site claims to have strict rules for regulating and reporting underage users, a discussion thread on Reddit suggests that many underage users lie about their age on the...

2 March 2023Thursday of the 1st week of Lent Saint Agnes of Bohemia Catholic Church, Chicago, IL Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(I).First readingEsther 4:17 ©I am alone, Lord, and have no-one but youQueen Esther took refuge with the Lord in the mortal peril which had overtaken her. She besought the Lord God of Israel in these words:‘My Lord, our King, the only one,come to my help, for I am aloneand have no helper but youand am about to take my life in my hands.‘I have been taught from my earliest years, in the bosom of my family,that you,...