Free Republic

Moscow is currently grappling with a barrage of sanctions and restrictions amid the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently adopted a new foreign policy that identifies China and India as its primary allies on the global stage. The alliance between the three nations, along with a few others, is set to take a step forward with the establishment of a new currency. According to reports, the BRICS nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are in the process of creating a new medium for payments that is not dependent on...

I took my weekly trip to San Diego this week. This is something I have done for more than a decade, just to get a change of scenery, look at the ocean take in a ballgame and just relax for a short spell…it’s a manageable drive from where I live, in a state without an ocean. I have, over the years, noticed a degradation in San Diego, mostly downtown, but the obvious destruction and malaise in California, while present, was actually somewhat muted in the once fair and relatively conservative city of San Diego. But this week I witnessed things...

Vacuum chamber containing the atom chip. Credit: Thomas Schweigler, TU Wien How do quantum particles exchange information? An intriguing hypothesis regarding quantum information has recently been validated through experimental verification conducted at TU Wien. If you were to randomly pick an individual from a crowd who stands remarkably taller than the average, it’s quite likely that this person will also surpass the average weight. This is because, statistically, knowledge about one variable often gives us some insight into another. Quantum physics takes these correlations to another level, establishing even more potent connections between disparate quantities: distinct particles or segments...

Author and pastor Tim Keller, who planted a church in New York City that grew to 5,000 attendees and who pioneered work in urban ministry, died Friday after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 72. Keller and his wife Kathy launched Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in 1989 and watched as it grew to a weekly attendance of thousands. Keller was known for his staunch yet winsome defense of orthodoxy in the liberal bastion of New York City. He defended the exclusivity of the gospel and the biblical definition of marriage and even engaged with critics on social...

Republican-led legislatures and governors seeking to put the brakes on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removal of healthy breasts and genitals for gender-confused minors have a new weapon from the U.S. military. Nearly a third of "transgender and gender-diverse" patients who received so-called gender-affirming hormones had stopped taking them within four years, according to a study of children and spouses of soldiers who received treatment through the U.S. Military Healthcare System. Those most likely to stop were females and adults, which could be seen as supporting theories that the explosion in gender-confused teen girls is driven by "social contagion"...

The FBI has failed to comply with a Congressional subpoena seeking an FBI-generated "FD 1023 form" that allegedly details a bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national. Based on whistleblower disclosures, House Oversight Republicans say the Department of Justice and the FBI possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. The whistleblower disclosures further state that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose. The House Oversight Committee is investigating what many see...

Four asylum seekers have left the site of accommodation that was provided for them in Co Clare, during an ongoing blockage of access routes by locals to the site. A group of 34 asylum seekers was accommodated at three holiday homes on the site of Magowna House Hotel in Inch on Monday evening. However, access roads to the the site were then blocked by local protesters using tractors with another gate being blocked by a silage bail. On Tuesday, some asylum seekers expressed fear over the ongoing situation. One of the drivers of the tractors, who did not want to...

The first human trial of a pill to reverse nuclear radiation poisoning has been launched in the United States. In the trial, 42 participants will receive the drug — named HOPO 14-1 — as an oral pill in Plymouth, Michigan, and then be monitored to see how well it is absorbed and removed from the body. If the trial is successful, the treatment could become available by 2024, according to the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is funding the research. News of the trial comes amid heightened fears about nuclear war as Russia continues to issue...

British women are turning to Denmark hoping for 'Viking babies' as the UK suffers a nationwide shortage of sperm donors. In Denmark sperm banks are booming and many students can earn more than £400 a month from donating regularly. In the more open-minded Danish society there is less taboo attached to sperm donation than in the UK and many donors are similarly relaxed about the prospect of their offspring making contact once they become adults.

Kevin Morris, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, has emerged as a main character in the Hunter Biden investigation. As the husband of Gabrielle Morgerman, “one of the most powerful women in the entertainment industry,” Morris is a legal heavyweight with tentacles in nearly every aspect of Hunter Biden’s professional life. In 2022, news reports surfaced that Hunter Biden retained Morris to oversee his public relations and media strategies. In turn, Morris reportedly paid Hunter’s over two-million-dollar IRS tax delinquency and bankrolled his $30,000-a-month apartment in Malibu, California. Morris runs a successful law firm. He launched the firm in 1996 and...

ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin told her co-hosts Friday on ABC’s “The View” that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) saying she felt threatened by Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is a racist “dog whistle.” At a congressional press conference, Greene said, “What’s on video is Jamaal Bowman shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing, calling me a white supremacist, which I take great offense to. That’s like calling a person of color the n-word, which should never happen. Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that. That’s wrong. She added, “I think there’s a lot of concern about Jamaal...

Some 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as both fertilizer and a component in explosives, went missing as it was shipped by rail from Wyoming to California last month, prompting four separate investigations. A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment. The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center,...

Dave Matthews says lawmakers have been able to convince the nation that the public is “powerless” against gun violence and the “vulnerability of innocent people in this country is a sacrifice we have to make if we want to be truly American.” “It’s so mind-bogglingly cruel. It’s insanity,” the Dave Matthews Band frontman said in an interview with USA Today, published Friday. “I have no idea how people can stand up and say it’s ‘not guns’ and ‘it’s not the [National Rifle Association],’ it’s just mental health. And then do nothing to address the fact that from the ‘80s we’ve...

MOSCOW (AP) — In response to a new round of U.S. sanctions, Russia announced Friday that it was banning 500 Americans from entering the country, including former President Barack Obama and comedian Stephen Colbert. ... The ban includes 45 members of the U.S. House, Sens. J.D. Vance, Katie Britt and Eric Schmitt, and former ambassadors to Russia John Tefft and Jon Huntsman.

The family of a US tourist who died in Mexico last year under suspicious cricumstances are demanding President Biden and the State Department intervene in the death investigation. Shanquella Robinson died while vacationing with friends in San Jose del Cabo in Mexico in October 2022. Shortly afterward videos emerged of her being viciously beaten by other members of her party. However, the FBI have declined to bring any charges in the case. “We were hopeful that once the FBI got engaged, that they would respect this American citizen, this young black woman who, based on the video, did absolutely nothing...

In 2019, two-thirds of American fourth-graders scored below "proficient" in reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, scores declined again, reaching a 30-year low. However, despite a widespread national literacy problem among American schoolchildren, several states have managed to stave off the dramatic declines in test scores that plagued other states. Since 2013, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have all passed legislation mandating that teachers be trained in the "science of reading"—methods that typically center around phonics, an approach in which children are taught to read words by decoding the sounds that different letters...

Biden in Hiroshima, Japan on 5/19/23.

Women are at least twice as likely as men to be injured in Army basic training, according to data collected over six years by the service. Most of those injuries were musculoskeletal -- meaning they affect the bones, muscles, joints and tendons of female recruits. Military.com obtained the injury data as the Army is looking for ways to boost recovery for men and women moving through boot camp. During 2022, nearly 30% of female recruits were injured on average each month during Army basic training. The average was 23% per month between 2017 and 2022, the data shows. During those...

Democrats have been left scrambling to avoid a potential embarrassment for President Joe Biden in New Hampshire in 2024 after the Democratic National Committee approved a calendar that gave the state's slot to South Carolina. The move puts New Hampshire in a shared second slot on the primary calendar with Nevada, but it could actually keep Biden's name off the ballot. New Hampshire has a state law that requires it to have its primary a week before the rest of the country. With a Republican-led state legislature and governor, changing the state law to appease Democrats is not likely. “We...

I used the link above but I mostly want to see if others are slow at work. We sell processing equipment to the food, pharma and plastic industries. We're dead---slower than 2016 and it's getting worse. Our shop is going to 4 day work weeks with no overtime allowed and most likely we will have layoffs in the office. I have been here for 35 years and have never seen it this slow. Heck, this company started during the great depression---if this keeps up it will be closed in a matter of 6 months. Our competitors and customers are saying...