Free Republic

In the absence of workplace health and safety regulations and ethical superintendence, Pakistan’s sanitation workers, about 80 percent of whom are Christian, are routinely exposed to a host of unsafe and deadly work practices. Generation after generation of Pakistani Christians like Nadeem, Faisal and Michael face preventable workplace deaths and accidents as they are forced into the hazardous work of cleaning the country’s streets and gutters. Pakistani Christians have continued to endure substandard living conditions, and in recent years, the community has been the target of escalating attacks due to growing intolerance. Christians have faced persecution, targeted killings – including...

Under the hotly debated impacts of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) lies the deeper problem of biased data teaching AI. Perhaps now more than ever, with growing numbers of people and organizations turning to tools such as ChatGPT to write their essays, legal briefs, or make critical decisions, the challenge of algorithmic bias and injustice built into AI systems is urgent. While racial and gender discrimination are often cited among harms resulting from bias in AI, broader and interrelated areas of impact include job loss, privacy violations, health care discrimination, political polarization, and the spread of disinformation. "AI is predominantly a...

America’s Censorship Regime Goes on TrialMissouri v. Biden will test the government’s ability to suppress speech in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’Ernest Ramirez, a car-wash technician in a small, south Texas town, led a simple but fulfilling life with his son, Ernesto Junior. Junior was a “wonderful child, full of smiles.” Ramirez had raised his son alone; he’d never known his own father and sought to provide Junior with the paternal love he had missed. A talented baseball player, Junior dreamed of playing professionally. The two lived paycheck to paycheck but were happy because, as Ramirez put it, they had...

Indigenous peoples as far north as Wyoming and Idaho may have begun to care for horses by the first half of the 17th Century, according to a new study by researchers from 15 countries and multiple Native American groups.A team of international researchers has dug into archaeological records, DNA evidence and Indigenous oral traditions to paint what might be the most exhaustive history of early horses in North America to date. The group's findings show that these beasts of burden may have spread throughout the American West much faster and earlier than many European accounts have suggested...To tell the stories...

My general position on last week's Tennessee flap was that the expulsions may have been a bit heavy-handed, despite clear cause for disciplinary action. Ejecting elected representatives from a legislative body is a very serious step, and should generally be avoided to the greatest extent possible. Instead, perhaps some combination of formal censures, stripping of committee assignments, and an official final warnings against future misconduct (more instances of which would result in a zero tolerance response) may have been the better path. Plus, it would've denied these loud showboats the tribal martyrdom and accompanying prominence they clearly crave and relish....

Country music star John Rich has joined Travis Tritt and Kid Rock in boycotting Bud Light as the controversy over the beer giant retaining trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney as an ambassador rages on. During an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday, Rich confirmed that he was removing the beer from this Nashville bar, Redneck Riviera. 'The customers decide. Customers are king. I own a bar in downtown Nashville. Our number one selling beer up until a few days ago was what? Bud Light. We got cases and cases and cases of it sitting back there.' 'But in the past...

Simon Fraser University researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti—and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti—as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.Working with the University of Ottawa, the researchers published their early findings in Egyptian Archaeology and have returned to Philae to advance the project...As an expert in spatial reality capture, Hedley leads the team's innovative visualization efforts, documenting the graffiti, their architectural context, and the spaces they are found in using advanced methods like photogrammetry, raking light, and laser scanning...With hundreds if not thousands of graffiti, some carved less than a...

Bizarre blue blobs have washed up en masse on beaches across South California—but they aren't jellyfish or Portuguese Man O' War as one might expect. Photographs of the strange gathering were uploaded to social media by Point Reyes National Seashore, which stated that these creatures are actually Velella velella, also known as By-the-Wind Sailors. This was also backed up by Rita F. T. Pires, a research assistant at the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere. "The species usually forms large agglomerations when beached, as pictured, so it seems it could be the case," she told Newsweek. Velella velella are hydroid...

A Ukrainian fintech founder and drone developer is offering about $540,000 in prize money to the winner of a race to land a drone on Moscow's Red Square. Volodymyr Yatsenko, the co-founder of Monobank, a Ukrainian online banking service, announced the competition in a Facebook post last week. The competition is open to any Ukrainian drone developers and will take place on May 9, according to the Ukrainian Military Center, a Ukrainian news outlet covering defense. May 9 in Russia is Victory Day, a time when the country celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Yatsenko himself is the developer...

The Viking shields found on the Gokstad ship in 1880 were not strictly ceremonial and may have been used in hand-to-hand combat, according to a new analysis.Dozens of Viking round shields from a famous ship burial unearthed in Norway were not strictly ceremonial as long thought; instead they may have protected warriors in battle, a new study finds.A reanalysis of the wooden shields, which were unearthed in the Gokstad ship in southern Norway in 1880, suggests they may have once been covered with rawhide (untanned cattle skin) and used in hand-to-hand combat, according to a new study published on March...

The two boys arrested on charges of murdering three teenagers in central Florida robbed a man at gunpoint, hours before their victims were found shot dead, police said. Robert Robinson, 17, and 12-year-old Christopher Atkins had arranged to meet a man and sell him a gun for $240 on the evening of March 30. They drove up to his house shortly after 7pm, and the prospective buyer got inside their vehicle. The gun was placed on the buyer's lap who then took $240 from his pocket. The weapon was snatched back by one of the boys: Robinson pistol-whipped the man,...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will propose strict new automobile pollution limits this week that would require at least 54% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030 and as many as two of every three by 2032, according to industry and environmental officials briefed on the plan.</p>

Governors of two Russian regions have cited security concerns in scrapping military parades next month, although one theory suggested the cancelation was due to a lack of military equipment caused by the war in Ukraine. Victory Day parades on May 9 are held throughout Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union to commemorate the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, which is widely known as the Great Patriotic War. The most prominent event takes place in Moscow's Red Square in which a march past of troops and military equipment provides a colorful display of Russian military might,...

A recent study looks at the spatial organization of a Neanderthal hunting camp at the Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter site in Pinilla del Valle (Madrid), and concludes that these groups employed different models of occupation of the space to fit their needs.Abel Moclán, a predoctoral researcher attached to the Universidad de Burgos (UBU), the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), and the Institute of Evolution in Africa (IDEA), is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, which undertakes a spatial analysis of the faunal remains and lithic tools for the Neanderthal...

The body of a missing Northern California man was found in a shallow grave in Mexico .. Wilmer “Dino” Trivett was abducted and killed by a Mexican man and his sister, with whom he allegedly got into a heated dispute following a car accident, prosecutors in the state of Baja California Sur said. The 80-year-old, who had been visiting Mexico, was last seen Feb. 11,.. A specially trained dog made the grim discovery of Trivett’s body, which was hidden in a shallow pit in the town of Todos Santos, on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. State prosecutor Daniel de la Rosa...

Online grocery prices continued to rise by double-digits in March, as inflation continues to bite. Although online grocery prices have eased over the past six months, costs were up 10.3 percent in March from the previous year, according to the Adobe Digital Price Index on April 10. Adobe analyzed 1 trillion visits to retail sites and more than 100 million items across 18 product categories to track price changes. There was a 0.4 percent rise in the growth of food prices from February, which had been slowing since their height last September, when they hit a record 14.3 percent year-over-year...

You like the Latin Mass? You’re a white supremacist. You like the old traditions of the Catholic Church? You’re a radical. FBI headquarters revoked the documents from the Richmond office. The House Judiciary Committee has been demanding all documents about the operation since February: On February 16, 2023, Chairman Jordan and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) sought information from the FBI relating to a January 23, 2023 “domain perspective” document generated by the Richmond Field Office entitled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.” “The documents produced to date show...

Remember when Biden’s White House purported to be ‘stunned’ by the raid of Mar-A-Lago? They couldn’t possibly have been ‘stunned’. They were in on it. The whole issue centers on a ‘special access request’ by the DOJ that has been discovered by America First Legal, as they state in their presser (link below): However, new NARA records obtained through America First Legal’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid further confirmed that the FBI obtained access to these records through a “special access request” from the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ). –AFL This...

WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee selected Chicago to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention, the Sun-Times has learned, with the city beating bids from Atlanta and New York. The convention will take place Aug. 19-22 next year. It is expected to draw between 5,000 and 7,000 delegates and alternates and attract up to 50,000 visitors to Chicago. Evening events will be at the United Center — the main site of the 1996 Democratic convention in Chicago — with daytime business to be conducted at the McCormick Place Convention Center, the location of the 2012 NATO Summit. Delegates will be...

One of the most influential books of my life is the book Amusing ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. This is a must read by any who would call themselves an intellectual or a thinking person. The book discusses how the medium is the message, and how the form of communications which we utilize greatly impact the information that is being transposed. Postman goes on to bemoan the negative impacts of television, radio, and the telegraph on society (all before the Internet and the smartphone). The progression from books to newspapers to radio to television to the internet and now...