Free Republic

Mass protests involved some 3.5 million people this last Tuesday according to union organizers, the government claiming a smaller number 1.28 million. It was a day of strike action a shutdown day in France with oil refineries, airports, railroads and schools impacted. The strongest signs yet of mass opposition to the "pension reform' proposed by President Emmanuel Macron... The mainstream media in France broaching the notion that President Macron may have to use the "nuclear option" of Article 49.3 to push through the pension overhaul. That constitutional provision gives a French President the ability to pass legislation without approval of...

The question of who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines is likely to remain an unsolved mystery for some time.Even as new details surface from European investigators, one of the most intriguing clues to recently emerge comes not from official probes but via a 29-year-old open-source analyst based in Denmark. Oliver Alexander spent months analyzing data from the maritime Automatic Identification System, or AIS, from vessels that passed near the site of three out of the four pipeline ruptures shortly before the damage. He noticed that the Minerva Julie, a 600-foot Greek-flagged tanker, was headed east from Rotterdam when, on...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis pushes more confusion on the reception of Holy Communion in new interviewIn a new papal interview, Pope Francis cast doubt on the Catholic teaching prohibiting practicing homosexuals and the divorced and 're-married' from Holy Communion. In an interview granted to Argentinian news outlet infobae, Pope Francis has issued fresh confusing comments on homosexuality and the divorced and “re-married,” appearing to state that such individuals can receive Holy Communion without clarification.The newly released interview was to mark the Pontiff’s 10-year anniversary upon ascending the papal throne, and forms one of many such initiatives which are taking place...

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — In Hendersonville, there is a saying: commit the crime, do the time, regardless of your age, and the police chief told News 2 it’s worked in reducing juvenile crime in the city. “They say, ‘Well, when am I going home?’ I told them, I said, ‘You’re not going home. You’re going to jail,'” Chief Mickey Miller said, describing a conversation with a juvenile suspect. County by county breakdown of juvenile crimes Miller told News 2 juvenile crime skyrocketed three or four years ago as Nashville experienced rapid growth. During that time, the police department sent the...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Ten years ago this week, we witnessed the largest manhunt in Southern California history. Former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner was heavily armed and seeking revenge for losing his job. Dorner murdered four people before taking his own life during a fiery standoff in the San Bernardino Mountains. In the beginning, it was a mystery: A double murder in Irvine - the victims were Keith Lawrence and his fiance Monica Quan. Irvine police had no leads. But two days later, there was a break in the case: LAPD equipment found in a dumpster in National City, along...

Dozens of customers lined up outside of a First Republic Bank in northern California on Saturday eager to withdraw their funds in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. There had been fears following SVB's demise for First Republic's future when analysts pointed out the similarities between the estimated value of their assets versus the actual value. Brentwood is located in the Golden State's winemaking community, just south of Napa Valley, with the area's vineyards, notably Bloomfield, Tamayo and Hannah Nicole, having gained international attention in recent years. The news of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse sent shockwaves through...

America may be deeply divided, but politics and the culture wars will not be center stage at this year’s Oscars if the organizers have their way. “We’re not interested in distractions or partisan debate, we’re interested in Tom Cruise,” a 95th Academy Awards ceremony insider says of this weekend’s superstar and blockbuster rich show. “We want to embrace the diversity of talent and nominees this year, and we want to try to go back to the days of escapism,” an AMPAS source adds of the dual ethos of the 2023 Jimmy Kimmel hosted shindig. Escapism may be a hard sell...

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s dreams of resurrecting the Soviet Union could actually be going quite the opposite direction with the majority of inhabitants of five of the Federation’s regions supporting the idea of breaking away and proclaiming independence According to the survey, 72.1 percent of respondees in the Kaliningrad oblast want to break away from the Russian Federation. In Ingria, 66.2 percent of respondees wanted their oblast to gain independence. In Ural, the percentage amounted to 68.2 percent, in Syberia to 63.9 percent, and in the Kuban oblast to 55.7 percent.

First elected to represent Montana in the Senate in 2007, Tester has attempted to mark his role in the upper chamber as a "tireless defender of rural America." His net worth is between $1,768,009 and $6,695,000, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data from 2021. Additionally, Tester reported thousands of dollars worth of stock and other investments, as well as bank deposits, in the 2021 records. While his net worth is partially made up of the value of his farmland and associated assets he owns, Tester's campaign and leadership PAC have spent at least $1.2 million on restaurants and on...

A reporter, his cameraman, and a third unidentified person were allegedly assaulted Friday during a detransition awareness event in Sacramento, California, according to videos and text-based accounts posted by the reporter and other outlets. "Militant anarchists and communists brutally assaulted a man with a weapon, splitting his head open and giving him a concussion," Kalen D'Almeida, Frontlines reporter with TPUSA tweeted Friday. "I was also assaulted. [I was] hit in the face with a long rod, leaving me with a cut on my face. My cameraman Charlie was also assaulted, and his camera was damaged by a strike from a...

March 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp are weighing the creation of a fund that would allow regulators to backstop more deposits at banks that run into trouble in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse...

https://rumble.com/v2cpfl4-j6-vigil-in-dc-3112023.html Live - I know they do this every night and several bloggers carry it. Tonight’s vigil should be interesting given the surge in interest as a result of Fox/Tucker Carlson coverage

In the late hours of Saturday, 11th March 2023, news floated on Twitter that South African musician Costa Titch has passed away after slumping and dying on stage. According to reports, the 27 year old artist was performing at a show before suddenly slumping on stage and confirmed dead a few minutes later. As at the time of filling this report there was no certainty as to what led to the slump or the cause of his death. Tributes have been pouring in on Twitter since the news broke. Politician Julius Malema tweeted a heart break emoji while fans have...

SECOND SATURDAY OF LENT Luke 15:1-3, Luke 15:11-32 Friends, at the core of today’s Gospel is a portrait of our God, who is prodigal. The father stands for the God whose very nature is to give, the God who simply is love. And the younger son stands for all of us sinners who tend to misunderstand how to access the divine love. Since God exists only in gift form, his life, even in principle, cannot become a possession. Instead, it is “had” only on the fly, only in the measure that it is given away. When we cling to it,...

The U.S. guided-missile cruiser Chancellorsville, which was homeported in San Diego for many years, has been renamed Robert Smalls, honoring a Civil War-era maritime pilot who commandeered a Confederate ship in 1862 and turned it over to the Union forces. Smalls was born a slave and went on to become a mariner, a businessman, a publisher and a congressman who represented South Carolina, the state where he was born. The Navy decided to change the cruiser’s name because it was named after the Battle of Chancellorsville, a Confederate Civil War victory.

A Florida motorcyclist is facing multiple charges after he blew through a red light while fleeing from local police and flipping them off seconds before getting T-boned by an oncoming truck. “Here’s a good way to get yourself killed,” the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Facebook post. The three-minute video shared by police shows Deputy Bissonnete attempt to pull over a group of motorcyclists who were “popping wheelies” late on Friday, March 3. The group ignored authorities requests to pull over and decided to speed off, leading police on a high-speed chase. Dashcam footage shows the group of...

A head of risk assessment at the beleaguered Silicon Valley Bank has been accused of prioritizing pro-diversity initiatives over her actual role after the firm imploded on Friday. Jay Ersapah - who describes herself as a 'queer person of color from a working-class background' - organized a host of LGBTQ initiatives including a month-long Pride campaign and implemented 'safe space' catch-ups for staff.

Vermont is the latest state trying to remove priest-penitent privilege to combat sexual abuse.The latest attempt to force members of the clergy to report information they learn in confidential settings is taking place in Vermont, and the sole Roman Catholic bishop in the state appeared before a legislative committee to argue against that effort. Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vermont, and two other Catholic priests sought to assure legislators that it’s possible to both protect vulnerable children and preserve religious liberty at the same time. Since the Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal started making headlines in the early 2000s, quite...

The members of the Christian group have been under state monitoring since 2018 The police in a central province of Vietnam has ordered followers of the Church of God, a Christian movement that originated in South Korea, to stop practicing the “illegal religion.” In a statement on March 6, the police at Cam Ha Commune in Quang Nam said they inspected a local village house and found six women and four men illegally carrying out a ceremony as followers of the banned faith, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on March 7. During the raid, police seized a laptop, three computer...

A dad walked into a Minnesota police station "covered in blood" and told police he beat a man with a shovel 15 to 20 times and "finished him off" with a moose antler, according to court documents. The suspect, Levi Axtell, 27, was taken into custody and arraigned Friday on a second-degree murder charge in the death of 77-year-old Lawrence V. Scully, who was convicted of molesting a 6-year-old girl in 1979. Axtell was suspicious of Scully and believed he was stalking his toddler daughter at her day care, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Fox News Digital.